Opening the Mind: Brain Stimulation, Theory, and Practice

Open-minded cognition (OMC) is a cognitive style that describes the willingness to consider a variety of perspectives, especially when they contradict one\u27s own. In this project, we seek to manipulate brain activation via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to test the causal effects of stimulating different brain areas on OMC and identify a non-invasive means for improving OMC. In addition to studying the neural underpinnings of OMC, we also study ways in which OMC may be affected by pedagogical interventions we have developed, which include facilitating conversations surrounding controversial topics within a group of people with multiple perspectives and beliefs

Reading A Mind

When I started collecting EEG data, I was blown away by how beautiful it can be. Each line corresponding to a different electrode is a different color, creating a rainbow of squiggles running across a light purple background. Participants were amazed that we could tell– even from a different room– anytime they moved their head, clenched their jaw, or just got sleepy. When I took a neuroscience class on sleep and circadian rhythm with Dr. Cavanaugh, I became even more impressed with this sort of “mind reading” because these little waves could tell the story of how our brains change during wake and throughout sleep. I have tried to illustrate this concept with the left side depicting what EEG waves might look like during waking hours and the right side depicting what these waves might look like at night and during sleep. On the left, the waves are lower amplitude and higher frequency. As someone who\u27s awake and restful transitions into sleep, the waves on the right show higher amplitudes and waveforms like K-complexes characteristic of NREM sleep. I combined this concept with another inspiration: how beautiful failure can be in the sciences. When there are issues or mistakes collecting EEG data– an electrode falls out or is damaged, the participant moves, or the connection is poor– the EEG looks wild and beautiful. In the middle of the piece I have tried to convey this. Some waves simply wobble while others wander across the screen in a chaotic pattern. While none of these are good for data collection, they remind me of how essential failure is to the scientific process. I hope this piece can be a reminder to students– and faculty– to embrace this failure more, even and especially when it’s difficult to do so

Please Don't Call Us Jerks

A review of Eric Schwitzgebel's book "A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures" (2020

The Influence of Media Violence Exposure on Explicit and Implicit Emotional Face Processing

Past studies from our lab have shown that short-term and chronic exposure to media violence can modulate the implicit processing of emotional faces (Stockdale et al., 2015, 2017). However, other research has shown that media violence can increase the speed and accuracy of identifying angry faces when participants are explicitly asked to attend to emotion. To investigate how media violence interacts with attention to emotional stimuli, we asked participants to complete a stop-signal task (SST) with happy and angry face stimuli, while they either categorized the gender (Implicit SST; n = 47) or the facial expression (Explicit SST; n = 40). Prior to completing the SST, participants watched a violent and non-violent film one-week apart in counterbalanced order. RT and SST accuracy did not differ based on film condition during the explicit version of the task. However, during the implicit task, exposure to the violent video eliminated differences in gender classification between happy and angry faces, once again showing the desensitizing effects of media violence on emotional face processing. A similar pattern emerged in N170 amplitudes, where violent film exposure eliminated differences between happy and angry faces when participants watched a non-violent clip. Media violence did not impact performance in the explicit task; however, processing angry faces received increased resources as measured by both increased angry face RT and increased amplitudes and delayed peak P100 and N170 latencies. These results suggest that short-term exposure to media violence differentially impacts emotional face processing depending on whether emotion processing receives focused attention