Горизонт N23/852

RUSSIAN DENVER
Colorado Russian Newspaper published in English 720-436-7613 www.gorizont.com/rd
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resonance imaging (fMRI),
which measures brain activity
by detecting changes associated
with blood flow.
f Andreasen selected the creative
subjects from the University
of Iowa Writers’ Workshop,
and a control group from a mixture
of professions. The control
group was matched to the writers
based on age, education and
IQ– with both test and control
groups averaging an IQ of 120,
considered very smart but not
exceptionally so, according to
Andreasen.
Based on these controls, Andreasen
looked for what separated
the creative’s brains from
the controls.
During the fMRI scans of
y
By Sara G. Miller, Staff
Writer
When men and women work
together, their brains may not
take the same approach to cooperating,
a new study suggests.
In the new study, the areas
of the brain that lit up were
synchronized when two guys
worked together to do a task, and
when two women did, although
the areas were different in men
and women. In pairs where there
was one man and one woman,
the brain activity didn’t sync up.
More than 50 years of research
has shown that men and
women have different ways of
cooperating, according to the
study, published today (June 8)
in the journal Scientific Reports.
«It’s not that either males or
females are better at cooperating,
or can’t cooperate with each other.
Rather, there’s just a difference
in how they’re cooperating,» Dr.
Allan Reiss, a professor of psychiatry
and behavioral sciences
at Stanford University School of
Medicine, and the senior author
of the study, said in a statement.
In the study, the investigators
By Geraldine Richmond
Advances in science can enhance
human knowledge and
health, but implicit bias by even
the most well-meaning journal
editors, science funders and
peer-reviewers can undermine
innovative ideas.
y Let’s talk about unconscious
bias
It is time for scientists to talk
openly about this problem.
We have known about implicit
bias for some time now. In
2012, for example, Yale University
researchers provided a group
of male and female scientists
with a paper attributed either to
«John» or «Jennifer,» and asked,
y«Would you hire this student
as a lab manager?» The results,
detailed in the journal Proceed-
of the National Academy of
fings
Sciences, were troubling. John
participants, the subjects were
asked to perform three different
tasks: word association, picture
association and pattern recognition.
The creatives’ brains
showed stronger activations in
their association cortices. These
are the most extensively developed
regions in the human
brain and help interpret and
utilize visual, auditory, sensory
and motor information.
Andreasen set out to find
what else, in addition to brain
processes, linked the 13 creatives’
brains.
«Some people see things others
cannot, and they are right,
and we call them creative geniuses,»
Andreasen wrote in
The Atlantic, referring to participants
in her study. «Some
people see things others cannot,
and they are wrong, and we call
them mentally ill.»
And then there are people
who fit into both categories.
What Andreasen found is
that there is another common
mark of creative genius: mental
illness.
Through interviews and extensive
research, Andreasen
discovered that the creatives
she studied had a higher rate of
mental illness, which included a
family history of mental illness.
The most common diagnoses
were bipolar disorder, depression,
anxiety and alcoholism.
The question now is whether
the mental illness contributes to
the genius or if it’s the other way
around, she said.
In a study of the brain of one
of the most famous geniuses
in history, Einstein, scientists
found distinct physical features,
which may help to explain his
genius, Live Science reported
when the study came out in the
journal Brain in 2012.
Previously unpublished photographs
of the physicist’s brain
revealed that Einstein had extra
folding in his gray matter, the
part of the brain that processes
conscious thinking, the study
researchers found. His frontal
lobes, the brain regions tied to
abstract thought and planning,
had particularly elaborate folding.
Working Together? Male and Female Brains Just Aren’t in Sync
wanted to understand what happens
in the brain when men and
women cooperate to cause these
differences.
They did brain scans on
111 pairs of participants, who
were asked to cooperate with
each other to complete a computer
task. In 39 of the pairs,
both participants were men;
34 pairs had one man and one
woman; and 38 pairs had two
women. None of the participants
knew each other before the experiment,
the researchers noted.
During the computer task, the
people in the pair each looked
at a computer screen, and when
a circle on the screen changed
color, they had to press a button.
The goal was to press the button
at the same time as their partner,
but the participants in the pair
couldn’t talk to each other, and
they could not see their partner’s
computer screen. The pairs were
given 40 tries to synchronize
their timing, according to the
study. After each attempt, they
were told who pressed the button
sooner, and how much sooner
they did so.
To Advance Science, It’s Time to Tackle Unconscious Bias (Op-Ed)
was more likely to be hired than
Jennifer, and he was likely to be
paid15 percent more than Jennifer.
Clearly, there was a gender
bias in play, even though the
scientists evaluating the files believed
that their decisions were
completely objective. Implicit
bias affects everyone, no matter
how objective and fair-minded
they aspire to be.
Try these for a quick bias
check: What if John or Jennifer
were replaced by Tyrone and
Andrew, or by Tulinagwe and
Caroline, or by Hussein and Michael?
What if a peer-reviewer
Googled the author of a proposal
and found her to have a physical
disability? Would that alter
the reviewer’s thinking about
the proposal? The human brain
uses past experiences and surroundings
to help a person make
mental shortcuts in navigating
decisions that, in ancient times,
could have meant the difference
between survival and death. It is
no wonder then that people’s inherent
biases are more prevalent
when they make snap decisions,
instead of putting some time into
the decision process.
Limited data about the authors
of grant applications and
journal submissions has so far
made it difficult to understand
the impact of implicit bias in
peer review. Data presented at
the recent forum discussion suggested
that publishers have made
progress in addressing potential
gender bias; male and female
authors have papers accepted at
about the same rate in many top
journals, according to research
presented at the recent AAAS
panel.Some journals, particularly
in the social sciences, have
for a number of years been conducting
double-blind reviews, in
which authors and reviewers are
unaware of each other’s identities.
But most of the natural sciences
have yet to pick up this
practice, or even experiment
with it. As for research funders,
a 2015 report of the U.S. Government
Accountability Office
called for better data and information-sharing
on the gender
demographics of proposal submitters
and grant recipients.
What can be done?
Simply making reviewers
aware of the roots of implicit
bias can backfire, causing some
to believe that there is no way
to avoid the problem. Training
can help to reduce implicit bias,
but the positive impacts of such
interventions tend to be shortlived.
Brian Nosek, an expert
in this area from the University
of Virginia, has recommended
«It’s a really sophisticated
part of the human brain,» Dean
Falk, study co-author and an
anthropologist at Florida State
University, told Live Science,
referring to gray matter. «And
[Einstein’s] is extraordinary.»
Be it high IQ, curiosity or
creativity, the factor that makes
someone a genius may remain
a mystery. Though Mensa can
continue to test for quantitative
intelligence in areas such as verbal
capacity and spatial reasoning,
there is no test for the next
Einstein, Lawlis said.
«I don’t know anybody that
could really predict this extremely
high level of intelligence
and contribution,» Lawlis
said. «That’s the mystery.»
The researchers used a brainimaging
technique called «hyperscanning»
to measure each
person’s brain activity during the
task. Unlike other forms of brain
imaging, hyperscanning can be
done while the participants are
sitting upright and moving.
The researchers found that,
on average, the male/male pairs
and the male/female pairs performed
similarly on the task, and
both did better than the female/
female pairs, the researchers
found.
The researchers also observed
that within the same-sex pairs,
the participants’ brain activity
was in sync. Among the samesex
pairs, the more in sync the
pairs’ brains were, the better they
did on the task, Joseph Baker,
a postdoctoral psychiatry researcher
at Stanford, and a colead
author on the study, said in
a statement.
Indeed, earlier brain scan
studies on two cooperating people
have found that the brain activity
of both individuals appears
to sync up, the researchers wrote
in their study.
In the new study, the researchers
said, the areas of the brain
where activity was synchronized
was different in the male/male
pairs, compared with the female/
female pairs.
In contrast, in the mixed-sex
pairs, the researchers did not
observe such synchronization
of brain activity, which further
suggests that each sex uses different
cognitive strategies when
it comes to cooperation, the researchers
wrote.
The study is an early finding in
this field and that more research
is needed to fully understand the
underlying brain mechanisms
of cooperation, the researchers
said. And they studied only one
type of task for cooperation, but
it’s possible that different tasks
could yield different results, they
wrote.
These findings may shed light
on how male and female brains
evolved for different tasks, according
to the study. For example,
others have hypothesized
that the male’s history of hunting
and warfare may have resulted in
evolutionary differences in how
men cooperate with one another,
the researchers wrote.
structuring processes for reviewing
journal articles and
grant proposals to help minimize
bias. At the same time, he
said, reviewers must simply
be encouraged to accept and
become more mindful of the
problem. Panel participants discussed
a range of other potential
creative solutions, such as double-blind
review and certifying
peer-reviewers worldwide, to
overcome the U.S.-centric focus
of many elite journals.
More-uniform data-collection
and data-sharing will be
critical next steps toward understanding
and minimizing implicit
bias in peer review. But at
the same time, scientists simply
must be willing to talk about the
issue. It’s time to tackle implicit
bias in peer review, to ensure that
the best science is funded and
published.