Scientific publishing as it was meant to be

Last October I joined the editorial board of Cortex, and my first order of business was to propose a new format of article called a Registered Report. The essence of this new article is that experimental methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and peer reviewed before data is collected. This publication model has the potential to cure a host of bad practices in science.

In November the publisher approved the new article format and I’m delighted to announce that Registered Reports will officially launch on May 1st. I’m especially proud that Cortex will become the first journal in the world to adopt this publishing mechanism.

For those encountering this initiative for the first time, here are some links to background material:

1. The open letter I wrote last October proposing the idea. 

2. A panel discussion I took part in last November at the Spot On London conference, where I spoke about Registered Reports.

3. My freely-accessible editorial article where we formally introduce the initiative (March 2013).

4. **Update 03/05** Finalised author and reviewer guidelines. 
5. **Update 26/04**: Slides from my talk at Oxford where I spoke about the initiative.

Why should we want to review papers before data collection? The reason is simple: as reviewers and editors we are too easily biased by the appearance of data. Rather than valuing innovative hypotheses or careful procedures, we too often we find ourselves applauding “impressive results” or bored by null effects. For most journals, issues such as statistical power and technical rigour are outshone by novelty and originality of findings.

What this does is furnish our environment with toxic incentives. When I spoke at the Spot On conference last year, I began by asking the audience: What is the one aspect of a scientific experiment that a scientist should never be pressured to control? After a pause – as though it might be a trick question – one audience member answered: the results. Correct! But what is the one aspect of a scientific experiment that is crucial for publishing in a high-ranking journal? Err, same answer. Novel, ground-breaking results.

The fact that we force scientists to touch the untouchable is unworthy of a profession that prides itself on behaving rationally. As John Milton says in Devil’s Advocate, it’s the goof of all time. Somehow we've created a game in which the rules are set in opposition.

The moment we incentivize the outcome of science over the process itself, other vital issues fall by the wayside. A priori statistical power becomes neglected, as Kate Button and Marcus Munafo prove today in their compelling analysis of neuroscience studies (and see excellent coverage of this work by Ed Yong and Christian Jarrett).

With little chance of detecting true effects, experimentation reduces to an act of gambling. Driven by the need to publish, researchers inevitably mine underpowered datasets for statistically significant results. No stone is left unturned; we p-hack, cherry pick, and even reinvent study hypotheses to "predict" unexpected results. Strange phenomena begin appearing in the literature that can only be explained by such practices – phenomena such as poor repeatability, prevalence of studies that support stated hypotheses, and a preponderance of articles in which obtained p values fall just below the significance threshold. More worryingly, a recent study by John et al shows that these behaviours are not the actions of a naughty minority – they are the norm.

None of this even remotely resembles the way we teach science in schools or undergraduate courses, or the way we dress it up for the public. The disconnect between what we teach and what we practice is so vast as to be overwhelming. 

Registered Reports will help eliminate these bad incentives by making the results almost irrelevant in reaching editorial decisions. The philosophy of this approach is as old as the scientific method itself: If our aim is to advance knowledge then editorial decisions must be based on the rigour of the experimental design and likely replicability of the findings – and never on how the results looked in the end.

We know that other journals are monitoring Cortex to gauge the success of Registered Reports. Will the format be popular with authors? Will peer reviewers be engaged and motivated? Will the published articles be influential? This success depends on you. We'll need you to submit your best ideas to Cortex – well thought-out proposals that address important questions – and, crucially, before you’ve collected the data. We need your support to help steer scientific publishing toward a better future.

For my part, I’m hugely excited about Registered Reports because it offers hope that science can evolve; that we can be self-critical, open-minded, and determined to improve our own practices. If Registered Reports succeeds then together we can help reinvent publishing as it was meant to be: rewarding the act of discovery rather than the art of performance.

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I am indebted to many people for supporting the Registered Reports initiative, and my sincere apologies if I have left anyone off this list. For generating or helping to inspire the ideas (for which I take no personal credit), I’m grateful to Neuroskeptic, Marcus Munafò, Pete Etchells, Mark Stokes, Frederick Verbruggen, Petroc Sumner, Alex Holcombe, Ed Yong, Dorothy Bishop, Chris Said, Jon Brock, Ananyo Bhattacharya, Alok Jha, Uri Simonsohn, EJ Wagenmakers, Eric Eich, and Brian Nosek. I’m grateful also to Toby Charkin from Elsevier for working hard to facilitate the administrative aspects of the initiative. I also want to thank Zoltan Dienes for joining the editorial board. Zoltan will provide expert advice as part of the initiative for studies involving Bayesian statistical methods and his paper on the advantages of Bayesian techniques over conventional NHST is a must-read. My thanks as well to many members of the Cortex editorial board for their advice and valuable consultation, including especially Rob McIntosh and Jason Mattingley, and to Dario Battisti for the cover art accompanying the Cortex editorial (pictured above). Finally, I am especially grateful to the Editor-in-chief of Cortex, Sergio della Sala for having the vision and courage to support this idea and see it to fruition. A determined and progressive EIC is crucial for the success of any new publishing format, particularly one as ambitious as Registered Reports.

Research Briefing: How safe is transcranial magnetic stimulation?

Source Article: Maizey, L., Allen, C.P.G., Dervinis, M., Verbruggen, F., Varnava, A., Kozlov, M., Adams, R.C., Stokes, M., Klemen, J., Bungert, A., Hounsell, C.A., Chambers, C.D. (2013). Comparative incidence rates of mild adverse effects to transcranial magnetic stimulation. Clinical Neurophysiology, 124, 536-544.  [pdf] [monitoring forms]

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When I moved to Cardiff University back in 2008, the first thing I did was set up two labs for doing human transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). I’d been using TMS since 2002 and it was (and continues to be) a major part of my research programme. Unlike brain imaging techniques such as fMRI or MEG, TMS interferes with brain activity. This means that the effect of TMS on behaviour can tell us which parts of the brain are necessary for different cognitive functions. In my lab we use TMS to study processes such as perception, attention, consciousness, decision-making, and response inhibition.

In the process of setting up TMS – a new technique for Cardiff at the time – I had to submit a lengthy application for ethics approval. After several weeks of discussion, the committee and I decided that building a TMS lab offered the opportunity to do some novel research on the side effects of brain stimulation.

Since it was developed in 1985, TMS has been generally considered safe for human use. Serious adverse effects, such as seizures, are rare, and few incidents have been reported since international guidelines for TMS safety were established in 1998 (updated in 2009). However, TMS has been suspected to cause a range of more mild adverse effects, such as headache and nausea. Much less is known about these lesser side effects, even though they can be very unpleasant for participants.

So back in 2008 we decided to put in place a system for monitoring side effects. After every experimental session involving TMS, participants were given a form to complete that listed a series of possible symptoms occurring within 24 hours of the session (the forms can be downloaded here). Then, when the participant returned for their next session, we collected and archived these forms. Over several years of TMS experiments – and many different variants of the technique – we amassed more than 1000 such forms from over 100 unique participants. Last year, after four years, we decided we had enough data to commence the analysis.

I’m now happy to report that the paper documenting this analysis has appeared in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology, written primarily by my PhD student, Leah Maizey. To our knowledge this paper reports the largest TMS safety study yet conducted by a single research team.

Overall, participants in our study reported mild adverse effects (or MAEs) following ~5% of sessions, although 39% of participants reported at least one MAE at some point during their experimental regime. When MAEs did occur, the most common was headache (41%). Rates of adverse effects were higher for active TMS compared to sessions involving ‘sham’ (placebo) TMS, although a small number of adverse effects could nevertheless be attributed to coincidence or placebo effects. 

Two other findings are notable and may be of special interest to TMS researchers. First, MAEs were more likely to occur following a participant’s first session, even controlling for various extraneous factors. We believe this tendency could be explained by anxiety when receiving TMS for the first time, so steps taken by researchers to ensure that participants are relaxed and comfortable are likely to help.

Second – and most striking – nearly 80% of MAEs were reported after participants had left the laboratory at the end of their session. We don’t have a good explanation for why this is, but 80% is too big to ignore. Maybe the physiological aftereffects of TMS are longer lasting than is generally assumed, or maybe the immediate aftereffects can have knock-on effects to other physiological systems. This was a serendipitous finding, so it will be important to see whether other researchers can independently replicate such long-lasting effects.

The good news for TMS researchers is that our study adds to a body of evidence that TMS is safe for human use under carefully controlled conditions. The adverse effects we did observe were mostly very minor (no seizures!) and only a few participants withdrew from the experiments. Our main recommendation is that it would be useful for the TMS community to monitor adverse effects more closely and to adopt standard methods for doing so. We provide relevant monitoring forms as part of our paper.

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* Special thanks to Matthew Rushworth for helpful discussion at the outset of this project.

Rejected!

Whether you’re a teenager getting dumped or a Nobel prize nominee trundling in second, rejection sucks.

I’m none of the above (I used to be an expert at one of them) but today I had a funding application rejected by the Wellcome Trust. 

The application was for a research fellowship in basic biomedical science. I was planning to study in two parts, first, how training people to inhibit actions toward food and alcohol changes their brain chemistry and physiology, and second, how we might combine brain stimulation with inhibition training to help people recover from alcohol addiction and obesity. I felt these were closely linked themes: a basic strand followed by an applied strand that took the results to the streets.

I felt a bit like Sauron and the One Ring with this application, but with a bit less malice. Into it I poured everything I had done and learned over the last ten years of my research. I used all of my (very helpful and generous) connections and collaborators to devise a project that included such aspects as:

• a mass online internet experiment that would have been hosted by the Guardian and provided the world’s largest study of human inhibition to date
• the use of simultaneous brain stimulation (TMS) and brain imaging (fMRI) to study the effects of inhibition training on key connections in the brain
• randomised controlled trials on the effects of brain stimulation and inhibition training in alcoholism and obesity (a promising combination)

Still, my application wasn’t good enough – not even to make it to interview – and there’s a lesson in that. Science doesn’t care about effort, only about outcomes. I won’t quote the feedback from the Wellcome Trust's Expert Review Group, as it is intended to be confidential (for all concerned). But suffice to say, I felt the single paragraph of feedback rather misunderstood the project and made some factual errors. Of course, this is not the Committee’s fault – it is mine. In science, if you fail to communicate your message clearly then you have only yourself to blame.

I’ve had a lot of rejections in my career – far more than I've had successes – and I think you can learn a lot about yourself in terms of how you deal with them. In the junior years they feel like getting shot (sometimes stabbed), but with time the trauma gives way to the gentle thud of "not good enough" meteorites bouncing off your own rhinoceros hide. 

A few tips for beginners: 

1)   Remember it probably isn’t personal. Even if the reasons for rejecting your application are unfounded or based on a misunderstanding, it’s rare for decisions to be driven by personal grudges.

2)   The decision makers are human like you. They will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes will go in your favour and the panel will overlook a genuine weakness in your application. Other times they will pounce on non-existent problems. We have to accept that this decision process is noisy, like every other biological system.

3)   The basis for decisions is never entirely random, so getting things wrong helps you get them right next time. When I repackage and resubmit my application somewhere else, I'll use the feedback from the Trust to make it stronger. Never just blindly resubmit your application; always try to learn something from the rejection and improve it. Dealing constructively with rejection will make you a better scientist. 

4)   Resist the urge, implicitly or explicitly, to take out your disappointment on others. This is a surprisingly easy trap to full into and I suspect many scientists do. Next time a grant application (particularly one from the Wellcome Trust) lands on my desk to review, I might be tempted to treat it particularly harshly because I feel I was treated the same way. Or, what if I happen to be editing a manuscript submitted to Cortex or PLOS ONE by a member of the panel? We must resist being led by (natural) negative emotions because "an eye for an eye" is the anithesis of science.

5)   Finally, remember that reviewers and panel members are ultimately doing you a favour, whatever the outcome. They took the time to read something you wrote. They thought about it and gave you feedback on it. This is actually a pretty remarkable thing and we should be grateful.

So, my feeling about today’s grant rejection is that yes, it sucks! And yes I think the committee made a mistake because I could have settled all those concerns within the first minute of an interview (and yes, of course, I would say that!)

But I’m also grateful for the feedback and I recognise that comparing funding applications is difficult and noisy. Could my application have been stronger? Nope, I gave it everything I had. Could I have done a better job reviewing grants than this panel? No, definitely not. Science is a human enterprise on all fronts.

So I'm going to wallow for another day or so, then I'm going to scrape myself off the floor and rework that application.

On being shaped by death

How’s that for an ominous, grandiose title. Being the new year there are some wonderful, inspirational posts kicking around. If you haven’t seen them already, make sure you read this by Tania Browne and this by Gia Milinovich. Now really is the time to get up and make the world turn. Don’t let anyone stop you.

Early January is always an interesting time because it reminds me on the one hand of how important it is to start things fresh, while at the same time – for me – it carries the echo of death. Now, I can understand completely if you find self-indulgent posts about personal loss rather irksome. So if you read my blog purely for professional reasons, feel free to sneak out quietly and I won’t hold it against you.

On 2 January 1989, my mother died of cancer. I remember that her room in the hospital had a window that looked out on to a small garden. She loved nature and I like to think that having a garden in view made things easier for her at the end. Her life and death shaped my life – and my choice of career – in ways that I am still coming to understand as an adult.

At the time of her death I was a cocky, extraverted, smart-arsed 11-old kid who liked to run around in a tracksuit labelled “LIGHTING BOLT”. I had a big mouth and wanted to be a film director. I thought I was the smartest kid in town and that my mum would live forever despite being sick. I marched around that hospital like I owned it. I even stamped around my mum’s hospital room bragging how long I would live because I was sure she was going to make it too. I was a cheeky, embarrassing little turd.

All that changed pretty suddenly.

On 25 December 1988 my family had our last Christmas together with mum. She came home from hospital for the first time in weeks. I have no memories of that Christmas day, save one. In it my mum is sitting on the sofa in the lounge room while most of the others are in the dining room finishing off leftovers. My dad is sitting next to my mum, and they are speaking together in hushed voices that I can barely discern, accepting some grim reality that my immature senses read as a defeat. She isn’t going to make it.

Years later, I now know that mum came home that Christmas knowing for certain that she was going to die soon after – the cancer had metastasized and she was having her lungs drained with a needle every day to prevent drowning in her own lymphatic fluid. I shudder to think of the pain she must have endured during that time, especially while away from her morphine drip. But she simply wanted to see her family in her own home one last time. If only I had known all of this then, I’d have hugged her more. If only I could go back as the adult I am now, I would do more than act like a dumb arrogant kid.

Part of my 11-old identity was aware of this inevitability. Yet, at the time I maintained the doublethink that she wouldn’t die. I was confident for two reasons. First, I knew she had fought cancer for four years and it hadn’t beaten her yet – in fact she had gone into remission not so long before - so why now? And, in darker moments when I wondered if she might die, I prayed. Those who know me will balk. It seems strange (and inexplicably shameful) to admit this now as a scientist and atheist, but there it is, I prayed. I wasn’t sure what to, or how to do it. My mum was a failed Catholic who turned to Taoism and meditation, on top of chemo, when she was diagnosed with cancer. So I wasn’t sure where those higher powers resided. The sky? The earth? I was pretty ecumenical about it. I even remember asking the apple tree in our garden to let her live (I fell short of asking the cat).

When I overheard the conversation between my mum and dad that Christmas I realised something was wrong, so I upped the ante. I started bargaining with those higher powers. I prayed to get sick instead of my mum. A fair trade, surely. How could any god say no? I promised to behave better, to be less of a prank-playing, punishable shit. I asked for forgiveness. I did everything my religious instruction teacher (who I tortured mercilessly with questions about dinosaurs and evolution) said I should do. And more.

Still, the 2nd of January 1989 came and she died shortly after midnight. Soon after Christmas she had returned to the hospital and we saw her one last time in the afternoon. Then, that evening, we all sat on the floor, leaning on the wall of the back room in our house – me, my dad, my sister and my grandmother. After the phone call confirming her death, my father took off his wedding ring. I don’t remember what he said but it was at this point in life that I realised how alone we truly are. There was simply no reason for god and I never came close to believing in anything like it again. Gods were for the stupid and gullible.

The worst part was when my mum’s clothes and belongings returned from the hospital. They carried the biological smell of death: a sweet, cloying odour that I know now reflects the breakdown of metabolites in the body. That smell remained in the house for weeks and such was its strength that I can conjure it from memory.

My father became a shell of grief and much of my childhood ended as well. The confident extraverted kid was replaced by a shy death-conscious child who retreated into a world of books and rarely came up for air. My mother’s death coincided with starting in a new school, transitioning from primary school to high school. In the first year of that school I felt like an alien dropped in a zoo, surrounded by stupid creatures who I had absolutely no interest in, and who had absolutely no ability to understand me. I wished I could just skip school altogether.

The teachers were hopeless too. One time, early in first form, a particularly odious teacher made us stand up and say what our mothers and fathers did for a living. I immediately dreaded it. After seemingly endless examples of “dad works in insurance and mum does the shopping”, it was my turn. I didn’t even mention my dad and just cut to the chase. “My mother is dead”. Muffled laughter from other kids and a scowl from the teacher, followed by a loud reminder that this was a Serious Exercise. I was prompted again and repeated myself. The class laughed harder this time, a galvanised herd, as though I was performing a perverse comedy act for their amusement. I was promptly dispatched to the Principal’s office for lying and issued a detention notice. Once it became apparent that I was in fact telling the truth, I had the edifying experience of receiving (for the first time in my life) a grovelling apology from an adult.

As the years went on, my father declined further into depression but I slowly regained something resembling confidence and found myself gravitating toward the world of science. Like nothing else, science offered actual answers to existence, a taste of the future, and the opportunity to stand out and be noticed for something other than running fast or kicking a football. While my father retreated to his cave, David Attenborough and Carl Sagan stepped up to tell me about nature, while Gene Roddenberry, David Eddings, and Margaret Weiss kept my imagination alive. The ghost of my mother began to take shape and it had a clear message: The world is a big place. Don’t rely on higher powers to solve your problems, whether people or groups or gods. Be your own master, then you can solve your own problems and those of the people you care about. My mother’s death destroyed the confident, extraverted child but created something else, something more resilient and self-reliant.

Coming face-to-face with death as a child taught me – in the words of Hobbes – that life can be brutish and short (though of course, as an educated adult I now realise that it can be far worse on all fronts than what I experienced). Knowing this at such a young age was strangely empowering and helped me understand the importance of seizing opportunities when they arise.

All these years later, as I look forward at 2013 I see a lot of change being driven by me and others. A new kind of scientific journal article. New scientific projects in my lab looking at addiction and brain function. A new scientific information service to help politicians understand evidence. I wonder sometimes why I’m doing these things. They certainly aren't easy and I have a definite lazy streak. How did I go from being that scared and depressed child, reading Asterix comics in his bedroom to running my own science lab?

It's in early January that I’m reminded why: because that 11-year old kid isn’t dead afterall. He’s certainly a lot less noisy than he used to be and (thankfully) doesn’t wear bright tracksuits anymore. But his 35-year old replacement still has an overblown sense of self-entitlement and gets out of line pretty often.

As I conclude this indulgence about life, let me offer some advice. Nature, above all, rewards two things: creativity and persistence. So go forth in 2013 and do something you’ve never done before. Change something. Be innovative. Don’t be afraid of critics or criticism. Be self-entitled, just like an 11-year old pain in the arse I used to know.

The 'geek movement' is a straw man

I’ve been told I have a thick skin, but a recent post attacking the ‘geek movement’ pissed me off in a way that I generally reserve for articles by James Delingpole. It annoyed me not because it attacked me directly (and I wouldn’t care if it did) but because it has the potential to dissuade scientists – especially junior ones – from engaging proactively with politicians and society.

I won’t go into a detailed critique of the post here, but suffice to say that it spectacularly misrepresents everything and everyone it seeks to attack. The comments below the post from Brian Cox, Mark Henderson, David Colquhoun and Shane McKee say it all. Both the insulting tone and patronising rhetoric of the post suggests that this misrepresentation was a deliberate tactic to garner attention. Perhaps not the attention it expected, mind you.

Angry posts decrying a non-existent ‘geek movement’ do nothing to champion science or science communication. They also don’t challenge us in any meaningful or intelligent way. As far as I can tell, such articles serve only to generate faux dissent and ego-boosting publicity for those who author them. We need intelligent and nuanced discussion about the role of science in politics – not cheap shots.

So, to any scientists (especially junior ones) who happened to read the above post, please don’t be put off from engaging. Society needs you. Inspired by the Geek Manifesto, we’ve already seen fantastic campaigns to link scientists with politicians by Shane McKee and Dave Watts. We have also completed our own modest campaign to send the Geek Manifesto and personal letters to each member of the National Assembly for Wales, and we are also in the process of setting up a new evidence information service for MPs.

I say all this to accentuate the positive because in the last 24 hours my Twitter feed has become fairly unpleasant and acrimonious place. Intelligent discussions about the role of science in politics are vital and we mustn't allow this dialogue to be hijacked by trolling.

A manifesto for reform

Today saw the successful completion of the Welsh Geek Manifesto campaign. At midday we delivered 60 copies of Mark Henderson’s book to the National Assembly building in Cardiff Bay. I'm happy to say even the Sun made an appearance (the fireball, not the newspaper).

The Geek Manifesto is an important book because it not only lays out in stark detail the evidence crisis facing British politics - it also shows how the scientific community is an integral part of the solution. It is this call for action and self-reflection that makes the book unique.

From left: Petroc Sumner, Fred Boy, me, Gabi Jiga-Boy, and John Evans

Well, we are acting – and this is just the beginning. In addition to providing one copy of the book for each Assembly member we are also attempting to set up an evidence information service for politicians and civil servants that capitalises on the enormous untapped 'hive mind' of the UK STEM community. I’ll provide updates on this initiative as we proceed. For now I can say that we look forward to continuing our discussions with the Government Office for Science, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, and the National Assembly for Wales.

Together with each copy of the Geek Manifesto we also sent each Assembly member (AM) a personal letter that explains why s/he should read the book, providing some personal context based on the AM’s track record on science and health issues. The full archive of these letters can be downloaded here. I must say that, overall, I was actually rather impressed with the level of engagement on science issues by the Assembly. Almost all AMs had a recent track record of involvement in a STEM subject such as climate change, energy policy, or public health.

One of the 60 letters provided to each Assembly member.

I want to thank all the people who made this campaign possible. First, my gratitude and congratulations to Mark Henderson for penning such an important book at such a key time in British politics. I also want to thank the members of the organising group, including Tom Crick (who conceived the idea for this campaign), John Evans for painstakingly translating each of the 60 letters into Welsh, our intern Laura Smith for conducting the critical research on each AM’s scientific track record, Fred Boy for coordinating media coverage of the delivery event through Swansea University, and Gabi Jiga-Boy, Simon Dymond, and Leah Maizey for their support.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank the 60 donors who purchased the books. This is no small gesture in such tough economic times, and I hope the AMs will appreciate both your generosity and your sense of purpose.

Very Good Friday

Two pieces of news from the CUBRIC TMS group.

First – I’m delighted to report that on Friday my first PhD student, Chris Allen, passed his viva with flying colours. A big thanks to his diligent examiners, Simon Rushton and Kia Nobre. Chris’ PhD addressed the neural basis of visual consciousness in humans, using an impressive combination of brain stimulation (TMS) and brain imaging methods (including magnetoencephalography and magnetic resonance spectroscopy). The thesis is full of interesting experiments, but for me the most intriguing discovery was that inhibiting the visual cortex with TMS can (paradoxically) enhance conscious perception. Chris is currently preparing several papers for submission and we’ll be sure to post Research Briefings on this blog once the work is published.

Post-viva drinks with Chris (left) and his examiners, Simon Rushton (Cardiff) and Kia Nobre (Oxford)

Second – also on Friday – we heard that our BBSRC application, “Neural dynamics of response inhibition and gambling across the lifespan”, was successful. My sincere thanks to our grant assessors and BBSRC Research Committee A for supporting this project. And it's probably a good thing we didn't include this particular pearl of wisdom in the Pathways to Impact section (hat-tip to Mark Stokes).

This 3-year study extends work that we published in 2010 and 2012, and will take place in partnership with Frederick Verbruggen from the University of Exeter, John Evans at Cardiff University, Andreas Bungert from the Max Planck Centre in Tuebingen, and Sven Bestmann from UCL. In our previous experiments we looked at the psychology and neuroscience of cognitive control, focusing particularly on the ability to inhibit thoughts and actions (see here for the Research Briefing associated with the more recent of those projects).

Our BBSRC project seeks to discover how we control our impulses. Let’s say you’re in Las Vegas and have just won $200 on blackjack. The win is thrilling but you soon feel hungry for another hit. Do you stop and collect your winnings or risk what you’ve gained? And if you decide to resist temptation and stop gambling, what systems in your brain helped you arrive at that decision? One hypothesis is that the prefrontal cortex, our most advanced brain area, supports self-control by regulating the activity of deeper, more primitive neural circuits that – if left unchecked – would get us into a lot of trouble.

There is an interesting side note to this which I think is often understated in popular culture. We tend to think of the brain, intuitively, as a single system (perhaps because our own sense of self is unitary – i.e. there is only one “you”). But the reality is that different parts of our brains have evolved over very different time scales. The human brain didn't emerge from the mists of evolution as a whole entity. On the contrary, most of the older, deeper parts have been hanging around for a very long time, and the rest was built around them. These ancient areas are many millions of years old and are much the same in humans as in cats, mice and even birds. But the parts that truly ‘make us human’ lie in the neocortex, literally the ‘new’ part of the brain that evolved relatively recently. And the newest kid on the block is the prefrontal cortex, which we believe oversees all the other systems, including the unrulier deeper parts. Being a Johnny-come-lately has its advantages.

In the first phase of our BBSRC project we’re going to test how the prefrontal cortex regulates behaviour by stimulating it with TMS while people undergo a functional MRI scan to detect brain activity. Our reasoning is that if the prefrontal cortex controls primitive systems then when people are in the process of stopping a response, stimulating the prefrontal cortex at the right time should especially activate deeper areas. So we’ll be using TMS a bit like a torch in a dark room, lighting up the brain pathways that are important for inhibiting our impulses. We’re also going to apply this approach in younger and older adults to see how the normal ageing process alters these connections.

In the second part of the project we’re going to try and figure out why training people to inhibit simple motor actions reduces gambling behaviour. We already have an ESRC grant based in Exeter to study the psychological side of this question, but here with the BBSRC we’re going to tackle the neurological side. To do this we’ll measure brain activity after ‘inhibition training’ using functional MRI and a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which measures the concentration of various neurochemicals.  There are reasons to think that one of these chemicals, a neurotransmitter called GABA, could be important for regulating behaviour. If so we should see an increase in GABA after inhibition training.

Also – I’m excited to report that all studies in this BBSRC project will be conducted according to the principles of open science. This means we’re going to publicly upload all of our proposed methods and analyses (in detail) prior to collecting data. Then once the experiment is complete we’ll upload the raw data themselves for free public access, including behavioural and brain-imaging data. The benefits of open science are enormous: by pre-registering our research the scientific community can be assured that our results aren’t cherry picked or massaged to find ‘statistical significance’ – and by providing the raw data we will allow others to explore the results in ways we hadn’t considered.

Finally, we will be advertising soon for a 3-year full-time research assistant to work on this project with us (starting in the new year). So if this project grabs your interest, do keep an eye on this blog and you can follow me on Twitter for immediate updates.