05/01/2017

Manipulating brain activity to boost condence: New breakthrough in neuroscience: Self condence can be directly amplied in the brain -- ScienceDaily

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Manipulating brain activity to boost condence

New breakthrough in neuroscience: Self condence can be directly amplied in the brain
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December 15, 2016

ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratry Group
Is it possible to directly boost one's own condence by directly training the brain? Researchers have discovered a way to implicitly amplify
condence in the brain by combining the use of articial intelligence and brain imaging technology. The study could lead to important ap
plications in clinical, medical and social settings.

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Self-condence is an essential quality to succeed in the world, such as in business environments, politics or many other aspects
of our everyday life. Furthermore, condence is an important aspect in mental illnesses such as depression and Alzheimer's dis
ease, where the condition is often further complicated by patients thinking negatively of their own capacities. Recent advances in
neuroscience have highlighted the plasticity of the brain, indicating it is malleable even later in life.
The international team developed a state-of-the-art method to read and then amplify a high condence state using a new technique called 'Decoded
Neurofeedback'. This technique used brain scanning to monitor and detect the occurrence of specic complex patterns of activity corresponding to high
condence states, while participants performed a simple perceptual task. In the training sessions, whenever the pattern of high condence was detected,
participants received a small monetary reward. This experiment allowed researchers to directly boost one's own condence unconsciously, i.e. partici
pants were unaware that such manipulation took place. Importantly, the eect could be reversed, as condence could also be decreased.
Dr. Mitsuo Kawato, Director of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratories at ATR, Kyoto, and one of the authors on the study, has pioneered this
state-of-the-art technology. He explained the process:
"How is condence represented in the brain? Although this is a very complex question, we used approaches drawn from articial intelligence (AI) to nd
specic patterns in the brain that could reliably tell us when a participant was in a high or low condence state. The core challenge was then to use this
information in real-time, to make the occurrence of a condent state more likely to happen in the future."
Dr. Aurelio Cortese, of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, led the research:
"Surprisingly, by continuously pairing the occurrence of the highly condent state with a reward -- a small amount of money -- in real-time, we were able
to do just that: when participants had to rate their condence in the perceptual task at the end of the training, their were consistently more condent."
Dr. Hakwan Lau, Associate Professor in the UCLA Psychology Department, was the senior author on the study and an expert in condence and
metacognition:
"Crucially, in this study condence was measured quantitatively via rigorous psychophysics, making sure the eects were not just a change of mood or
simple reporting strategy. Such changes in condence took place even though the participants performed the relevant task at the same performance
level."
The sample size was relatively small (17 people), but is in line with basic science investigations of similar kinds. The team is currently working on the de
velopment of potential new clinical treatment for patients with various psychiatric conditions.
NOTE: The team, in a dierent study led by co-author Dr. Ai Koizumi, has indeed already discovered a new way to unconsciously erase fear memories, re
programming the brain to overcome fear. The study was recently published in the inaugural edition of Nature Human Behavior on November 21st, and
opens the potential for radical new treatments of conditions such as post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and phobias.

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Materials provided by ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratry Group. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161215085902.htm

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Manipulating brain activity to boost condence: New breakthrough in neuroscience: Self condence can be directly amplied in the brain -- ScienceDaily

1. Aurelio Cortese, Kaoru Amano, Ai Koizumi, Mitsuo Kawato, Hakwan Lau. Multivoxel neurofeedback selectively modulates condence without
changing perceptual performance. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 13669 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13669

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ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratry Group. "Manipulating brain activity to boost condence: New breakthrough in neuroscience:
Self condence can be directly amplied in the brain." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 December 2016.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161215085902.htm>.

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