Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Hard Decisions Can Increase Activity In The Brain

Friday, May 27, 2016

Hard Decisions Can Increase Activity In The Brain

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In a study recently published in the journal Neuroscience, researchers were able to see evidence of increase activity in the brain’s insular cortex that is involved in the how the brain processes sensory information in relation to the environment and drive behaviours.

Researchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Georgia State University claimed that this is a big leap in answering what was previously been regarded as a mystery and as we are beginning to see a deeper understanding of the human brain and how it works.

They examined the activity in the anterior insulae with four perceptual decision-making scenarios with varying difficulties and showed a strong correlation between insular cortex activity and perceptual difficulty, concluding that “activity of the anterior insulae can predict how well the sensory data is perceived and the difficulty level of the task.”

“This research is important because the anterior insulae, along with two nearby brain structures, make up the salience network, and when this network is impaired, it affects the ability to switch between tasks and make coherent thoughts. Impairment in this network could possibly be linked to psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia, dementia and autism, so it’s essential to learn more about how this brain area should be functioning,” Dr. Mukesh Dhamala, associate professor and study author, said.

The study was conducted with 33 participants with normal or corrected-to-normal and normal neurological history, where they were subjected to several tasks involving visual and audiovisual tests that were designed to provide varying degrees of difficulty.

These behavioural experiments were done outside a magnetic resonance imaging scanner and a functional MRI out of the scanner.

Inside the scanner, the participants were asked to make their quick and most accurate decisions with either left or right mouse clicks for any given situation, while outside the scanner they were made to wait for a question mark on the screen before making a decision by choosing their response on a button box.

The participants’ blood oxygen level dependent signals were measured and assessed the role of the anterior insulae in the perceptual decision making process with easy and difficult scenarios.

The results showed that the consistent increase in anterior insulae activity with every task difficulty, as well as the perception of facial expressions that also showed increased anterior insulae when faced with an unclear vision displayed on the screen for the test participants.

These difficult audio-visual perceptions also raised blood oxygen level signals and changed behavioural performance leading to their choices when faced with an ambiguity of sensory information.

Researchers added that they may have shed light into this mystery behind an increase activity in the brain, but indicated that there is still a long way to go before science can fathom the deep secrets of the human brain.

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