What's New?

June 16, 2006

Reported here and here, a study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in Nature on 15th June on brain activity in contrasting but related undertakings:

• pursuing something that is reliably believed to produce profit and reward;
• pursing the as-yet-unknown-something that may disclose even greater profit and reward.

Though "constantly pulled between profiting from the things they know will reap rewards and exploring new options," we learn "it is exploration that uses high-level regions of the brain."

By analysing how people’s brains work while gambling, the team led by Dr Nathaniel Daw and Dr John O’Doherty, have found that trying out new things uses the human frontopolar cortex and intraparietal sulcus, whereas falling back on familiar territory involves areas of the brain associated with reward and pleasure. This brain activity may reflect the fact that exploring new options requires overriding the desire for immediate profit.

in order to explore new and potentially rewarding options, the brain must override the desire for immediate profit. 

As the participants were deciding to explore for higher rewards, regions of the brain located behind the forehead and associated with logic became active. If they chose to exploit, regions deeper in the brain associated with pleasure and reward were more active.

"You have logic pitted against these areas that are more associated with pleasure than value," said study co-author Nathaniel Daw of University College London. "Do you want to wait 10 minutes to eat two cookies or eat one cookie now?"

The study of gamblers may skew the clarity of these observations, favoring those whose brains are maximized by risk. Nevertheless, postponing gratification to a reasonable degree is correlated with many aspects of productivity and prosperity.

Long ago -- if anyone else knows the reference please help -- we read that only one thing reliably fires the more advanced portions of the brain, and that is interrupting the instinctual reflex to pleasurable habit. It can perhaps be taken too far, but religious ascesis may be on to something.

  All experience is an arch wherethro'
  Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades  
  For ever and for ever when I move.  
  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  
  To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  
  As tho' to breathe were life.  Life piled on life  
  Were all too little, and of one to me  
  Little remains:  But every hour is saved  
  From that eternal silence, something more,  
  A bringer of new things...
  Come, my friends,  
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.  
Push off, and sitting well in order smite  
The sounding furrows...

Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)

Via Marginal Revolution

Update:  Assistant Village Idiot remarks on the relation of impaired frontal lobe functioning to sex crimes. Another logical link suggesting that the "advanced" part of the brain is an alternative to and/or regulates obsessive, repetitive, pleasure-seeking behavior.  Since no one around Chez Dilys is a scientist or doctor, we can free-range our hypotheses:

Exercise the frontal lobe both by trying new strategies, and by interrupting or postponing the repetitive fulfilment of habits and addictions -- and become more capable of being both Good, & Happy.

It could work.

Comments

[Molly Gordon]

It does work, at least in my experience. How satisfying and inspiring to see evidence in support of both adventure and discipline.

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[Teofil]

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[SYDNEY]

Diamond is forever - A

[CARTER]

Beg the question

[MADISON]

A shot in the arm