Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory

This book outlines a unified theory of prudence and morality that merges a wide variety of findings in behavioral neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing. Chapter 1 lays out the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality. Chapter 2 then outlines a new theory of prudence as fairness to oneself across time. Chapter 3 then derives a revised version of my 2016 moral theory--Rightness as Fairness--from this theory of prudence, showing how the theory of prudence defends Rightness as Fairness against various critiques and unifies prudence, morality, and justice. Chapter 4 then argues that this theory explains a variety of normative philosophical and empirical neuroscientific phenomena better than alternatives. Finally, Chapter 5 responds to potential objections and explores future research avenues

An Online Multimedia Resource in Behavioral Neuroscience

The advance of web-based technology has stimulated innovation in education. This paper discusses the development and evaluation of an online multimedia resource for undergraduate-level behavioral neuroscience education. This resource surveys four major subject areas: language, attention and perception, thinking, and autism. It employs audio and video streaming, online demonstration experiments, computer simulation, and internet links. This online resource has two distinct advantages over a paper textbook. First, a considerable proportion of the content is conveyed using multimedia, thus making the learning experience more vivid and dynamic. Second, its interactive components provide opportunities for students to participate in the various experimental tasks introduced in the text and to compare their own performance with those of others. This hands-on experience not only enables students to gain in-depth procedural knowledge of the tasks but also has positive effects on their motivation. Feedback from three undergraduate classes that used this resource as supplementary material showed that students were highly positive about its pedagogical values. This free resource is available on the web at http://psych.rice.edu/mmtbn/

Neural Efficiency” of Athletes’ Brain during Visuo-Spatial Task: An fMRI Study on Table Tennis Players

Guo Z, Li A, Yu L. Neural Efficiency” of Athletes’ Brain during Visuo-Spatial Task: An fMRI Study on Table Tennis Players. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience. 2017;11: 72

Single-case experimental designs for behavioral neuroscience

Single-case experimental designs (SCEDs) are commonly used in behavior analytic research but rarely used in behavioral neuroscience research. The recent development of technologies that allow control of the timing of neurobiological events such as gene expression and neuronal firing enable the fruitful application of SCEDs for the study of brain-behavior relations. There are at least 3 benefits expected from applying SCEDs to study how neurobiological events affect behavior. First, SCEDs entail direct within- and across-subject assessments of reliability, likely increasing the probability of replication across studies and encouraging a search for the causes of replication failure when they occur. Second, SCEDs focus on behavior in individual organisms producing a body of knowledge that applies to individuals rather than population parameters. Finally, SCEDs require fewer animals, decreasing costs and effort and addressing the ethical obligation to reduce the number of animals used for research. Examples are provided using hypothetical data generated based on published research. Collaborations between behavior analysts and behavioral neuroscientists will bring the world within the skin under direct experimental control and broaden our understanding of the determinants of behavior