A role for endogenous brain states in organizational research:moving toward a dynamic view of cognitive processes

The dominant view in neuroscience, including functional neuroimaging, is that the brain is an essentially reactive system, in which some sensory input causes some neural activity, which in turn results in some important response such as a motor activity or some hypothesized higher-level cognitive or affective process. This view has driven the rise of neuroscience methods in management and organizational research. However, the reactive view offers at best a partial understanding of how living organisms function in the real world. In fact, like any neural system, the human brain exhibits a constant ongoing activity. This intrinsic brain activity is produced internally, not in response to some environmental stimulus, and is thus termed endogenous brain activity (EBA). In the present article we introduce EBA to organizational research conceptually, explain its measurement, and go on to show that including EBA in management and organizational theory and empirical research has the potential to revolutionize how we think about human choice and behavior in organizations

Society, organizations and the brain:building toward a unified cognitive neuroscience perspective

This e-book brings together scholars in both the neurosciences and organizational sciences who have adopted various approaches to study the cognitive mechanisms mediating the social behavior that we see within organizations. Such an approach has been termed by ourselves, and others, as ‘organisational cognitive neuroscience’. In recent years there has been a veritable increase in studies that have explored the cognitive mechanisms driving such behaviors, and much progress has been made in understanding the neural underpinnings of processes such as financial exchange, risk awareness and even leadership. However, while these studies are informative and add to our understanding of human cognition they fall short of providing evidence-based recommendations for practice. Specifically, we address the broader issue of how the neuroscientific study of such core social behaviors can be used to improve the very way that we work. To address these gaps in our understanding the chapters in this book serve as a platform that allows scholars in both the neurosciences and the organizational sciences to highlight the work that spans across these two fields. The consolidation of these two fields also serves to highlight the utility of a singular organizational cognitive neuroscience. This is a fundamentally important outcome of the book as the application of neuroscience to address economically relevant behaviors has seen a variety of fields evolve in their own right, such as neuromarketing, neuroeconomics and so forth. The use of neuro-scientific technologies,in particular fMRI, has indeed led to a bewildering (and somewhat suffocating) proliferation of new approaches, however, the speed of such developments demands that we must proceed carefully with such ventures or risk some fundamental mistakes. The book that you now hold will consolidates these new neuroscience based approaches and in doing so highlight the importance of this approach in helping us to understand human social behavior in general. Taken together the chapters provide a framework for scholars within the neurosciences who wish to explore the further the opportunities that the study of organisational behavior may provide

Magnetoencephalographic Signals Identify Stages in Real-Life Decision Processes

We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study the dynamics of neural responses in eight subjects engaged in shopping for day-to-day items from supermarket shelves. This behavior not only has personal and economic importance but also provides an example of an experience that is both personal and shared between individuals. The shopping experience enables the exploration of neural mechanisms underlying choice based on complex memories. Choosing among different brands of closely related products activated a robust sequence of signals within the first second after the presentation of the choice images. This sequence engaged first the visual cortex (80-100 ms), then as the images were analyzed, predominantly the left temporal regions (310-340 ms). At longer latency, characteristic neural activetion was found in motor speech areas (500-520 ms) for images requiring low salience choices with respect to previous (brand) memory, and in right parietal cortex for high salience choices (850-920 ms). We argue that the neural processes associated with the particular brand-choice stimulus can be separated into identifiable stages through observation of MEG responses and knowledge of functional anatomy

Endogenous context for visual processing of human faces and other objects

The human ability to quickly recognise faces and objects is an important skill. This skill may be facilitated by the prior existence of context-setting functional brain states. MEG was used to test the hypothesis that such states may be defined neurophysiologically. One type of state was identified by evaluating deterministic features in the dynamics of pre-stimulus brain activity in 10 individuals engaging in an object categorisation task. These states followed a statistical gamma-distribution similar to that seen in models of percept duration of competing stimuli. Both an early (42 ms) and a late (440 ms) response were only seen for face stimuli that were presented during states in which the MEG data displayed low determinism. A second type of state was identified by evaluating amplitudes of pre-stimulus brain activity. Between 140 and 150 ms, activity was highest for face as well as non-face stimuli presented during a low amplitude state. These findings suggest that detectable states may provide an endogenous context for object processing, independently of experimental parameters

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) as a tool to investigate the neurophysiology of autism

This chapter introduces a modern functional neuroimaging method, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and addresses how this technique is being applied to study dynamic brain actvity and neural processing in autism

Contextual integration the unusual way: a magnetoencephalographic study of responses to semantic violation in individuals with autism spectrum disorders

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with deficits in language and social communication. Behavioural studies indicate abnormal semantic organization in individuals with autism, but little is known about the neural mechanism underlying the processing of language in context. Magnetoencephalography was used to record neural responses in 11 able adults with autism spectrum disorders reading meaningful sentences and sentences ending with a semantically incongruous word (e.g. 'He sent a photo to the trumpet'). Spatially extended evoked signals at 400 ms (N4) and 750 ms (LPC), as well as synchronized gamma-oscillations, provided clear evidence for specific neuronal processes sensitive to sentence context that differed in individuals with autism compared with typically developing individuals (11 healthy volunteers). Amongst other differences, N4 responses following incongruous words were weaker over left temporal cortices, whereas LPC responses to incongruous words and long-latency gamma-oscillations following congruous words were stronger over central and prefrontal regions in individuals with autism compared with the control group. Also, incongruous words elicited long-lasting gamma-oscillations above 40 Hz in the clinical group, but not in typically developing subjects. These findings may indicate unusual strategies for resolving semantic ambiguity in autism. Moreover, the observed gamma-band responses provide evidence for sustained cortical synchronization across segregated areas in individuals with autism, contrary to claims that a general deficit in either temporal binding or long-range connectivity may explain autism

Phase-locked gamma band responses to semantic violation stimuli

This paper addresses the role of γ-band activity in semantic networks associated with the processing of words and sentences in humans. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to compare the responses of eleven normal volunteers to semantically congruous and incongruous words at the end of syntactically correct sentences. The averaged low frequency responses evoked by the two word classes were clearly different within the latency range associated with N400 components. The oscillatory characteristics of the evoked responses were analysed using Gabor transform techniques in conjunction with statistical re-sampling. This revealed transient γ-oscillations (35 Hz) that were significantly phase-locked to both types of stimuli but preferentially present at intermediate (300 ms) and long (>500 ms) latencies for incongruous words. This stimulus dependent phase locked γ-activity occurred at latencies that were distinct from the short latency and evoked N400 components. The findings suggest that synchronised oscillations provide independent information about brain dynamics and that some semantic processes may dissociate into distinct functional stages

Task-dependent early latency (30-60 ms) visual processing of human faces and other objects

Electrophysiological responses to previously seen faces reportedly differ from those to novel faces at shorter latencies than generally associated with complex visual analysis. It is unclear, however, whether such observations are unique to faces, and which stages of visual processing they reflect. MEG was used in 21 normal adults to record neural responses to images of faces, other objects and abstract patterns presented individually as part of a classification task and in sequential pairs as part of an image comparison task. The amplitudes of the short latency responses (30-60 ms) to the first image in pairs of faces were significantly greater than the responses to both the second faces and the individual face images. These early responses were recorded over predominantly right hemisphere parietal and occipito-temporal cortical regions including areas that, at longer latencies, have been associated with face specific activity. The differences in the responses within pairs were less for non-face objects and absent for abstract geometrical patterns. No early neuronal activity was observed in the classification task. The results indicate the existence of early latency neural networks that are sensitive to both stimulus type and task and are strongly activated by faces