| Todd S. Braver |
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| Danger, Will Robinson! Brain region learns to anticipate risk, provides early warnings, suggests new study in Science (http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/4804.html) March 2, 2005 --
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| Scientists Try to Predict Intentions
Associated Press Online and 55 others March 5, 2007 -- At a laboratory in Berlin, Germany, scientists are trying to read the minds of volunteers using an MRI machine to figure out their intention before it is turned into action. The research has been generating strong interest in the scientific community. WUSTL psychologist Todd Braver, who was not connected with the research, comments about predicting human behavior. |
| New Year's resolutions: Have you broken yours?
St. Louis Post-Disptach and 20 others Jan. 3, 2005 -- Making a New Year's resolution may be putting your dukes up against evolution and your brain's own programming. WUSTL cognitive neuroscientist Todd Braver says the key may lie in persistence and choosing the right motivation. |
Braver offers the following description of his research:
(Source: downloaded from Neuroscience Web page 7/2003)
My research examines the psychological and neural mechanisms by which people actively maintain information such as goals, instructions, plans, or specific prior events for short-periods of time, and use this information to appropriately guide and control their behavior. This research has been guided by the following hypotheses:
1) The prefrontal cortex is specialized for representing and actively maintaining information related to behavioral goals. These representations serve to mediate control by focusing attention, by supporting storage in working memory, and by biasing action selection. 2) The mesocortical dopamine system serves to modulate activity in prefrontal cortex by regulating its access to incoming information. This enables goal-related representations to be flexibly updated while protected from interference. These hypotheses are examined through a research strategy that has two central themes. First, multiple methodologies are used in order to provide convergent information and overcome the limitations associated with each approach. Second, hypotheses are embodied in computational models in order to provide an explicit, mechanistic implementation that can be tested for its sufficiency, validity, and explanatory power.
One line of research uses functional neuroimaging methods (fMRI and PET) to examine questions related to the functional organization of prefrontal cortex. For example, are different regions within prefrontal cortex specialized for actively maintaining different types of information? Or instead are they subserving different cognitive functions related to control (such as active memory vs. inhibition)? What is the functional relationship between the prefrontal cortex and other cortical regions (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex, posterior parietal cortex) that are typically co-activated in working memory and controlled processing tasks? A second line of research examines how changes in dopamine activity affect controlled processing. These studies examine behavioral performance under conditions of pharmacological challenge (using low-doses of psychoactive drugs affecting the dopamine system) or in populations suffering from disorders of the dopamine system (e.g., schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease). A particular question of interest is in examining how dopamine affects behavior in task conditions that involve rapid switching of attention and/or intefering distractors. A third line of research utilizes computer simulations (using connectionist neural network models) to investigate how controlled processing might arise out of particular neural mechanisms acting in the prefrontal cortex and mesocortical dopamine system. Models are developed to simulate particular cognitive behaviors, such as performance in working memory tasks. Model performance is used both to capture existing empirical data and to generate new predictions that can be tested in future empirical studies.
Sampling of recent publications:
Barch DM, Braver TS, Akbudak E, Conturo T, Ollinger J, Snyder A. Anterior cingulate cortex and response conflict: effects of response modality and processing domain. Cereb Cortex. 2001 Sep;11(9):837-48.
Braver TS, Barch DM, Gray JR, Molfese DL, Snyder A.Anterior cingulate cortex and response conflict: effects of frequency, inhibition and errors. Cereb Cortex. 2001 Sep;11(9):825-36.
Braver TS, Barch DM, Kelley WM, Buckner RL, Cohen NJ, Miezin FM, Snyder AZ, Ollinger JM, Akbudak E, Conturo TE, Petersen SE. Direct comparison of prefrontal cortex regions engaged by working and long-term memory tasks. Neuroimage. 2001 Jul;14(1 Pt 1):48-59.
Botvinick MM, Braver TS, Barch DM, Carter CS, Cohen JD. Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychol Rev. 2001 Jul;108(3):624-52.
Zacks JM, Braver TS, Sheridan MA, Donaldson DI, Snyder AZ, Ollinger JM, Buckner RL, Raichle ME. Human brain activity time-locked to perceptual event boundaries. Nat Neurosci. 2001 Jun;4(6):651-5.
Casey BJ, Forman SD, Franzen P, Berkowitz A, Braver TS, Nystrom LE, Thomas KM, Noll DC. Sensitivity of prefrontal cortex to changes in target probability: a functional MRI study. Hum Brain Mapp. 2001 May;13(1):26-33.
Barch DM, Carter CS, Braver TS, Sabb FW, MacDonald A 3rd, Noll DC, Cohen JD. Selective deficits in prefrontal cortex function in medication-naive patients with schizophrenia. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001 Mar;58(3):280-8.
Nystrom LE, Braver TS, Sabb FW, Delgado MR, Noll DC, Cohen JD. Working memory for letters, shapes, and locations: fMRI evidence against stimulus-based regional organization in human prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage. 2000 May;11(5 Pt 1):424-46.
Barch DM, Braver TS, Sabb FW, Noll DC. Anterior cingulate and the monitoriing of response conflict: evidence from an fMRI study of overt verb generation. J Cogn Neurosci. 2000 Mar;12(2):298-309.
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