Researchers discover which brain region motivates behavior change.

Researchers discover which brain region motivates behavior change.

Have you ever been stuck in a rut, going through the same motions day  in and day out? How do you motivate to change your behavior?

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania,  Yale University, Columbia University and Duke University now better  understand how this happens, and it has to do with a region in the brain  called the posterior cingulate cortex. They learned that neurons in  this central location ramp up firing rates, peaking just before a  divergent behavior occurs. They published their findings in the journal Neuron.

“The circuits in our brain that allow us to focus on a particular  task, especially a task that leads to reward, are well known,” said Michael Platt, the James S. Riepe University Professor in Penn’s psychology, neuroscience and marketing departments. “These evolved very early in the history of life on this planet.”

What’s less established is which trigger in the brain causes people  to break from a routine, especially when doing so poses potential risks.

Two experiments the research team conducted — one called the  patch-leaving task, the other dubbed the traveling salesman — provided  some important insights.

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In the first, Platt and colleagues looked at the foraging behaviors  of rhesus macaques, a non-human primate species the researchers have  studied both in the lab and in the wild. The animals had the choice  between harvesting a juice reward that depleted over time but was  guaranteed and immediate or moving to a new “patch,” which would require  more time and energy but offered a potentially larger reward.

“Imagine you’re picking berries in a tree,” he said. “At first it’s  easy, but after a while you have to climb farther and farther out on  weaker branches to get the berries, most of which probably aren’t ripe.  At some point it makes sense to take the time and energy to go to the  next tree.”

To understand the second experiment, think about an effective  traveling salesman. The merchant moves from door to door, interacting  with people in the hopes of making a deal. Not everyone purchases a  product, though there is an ideal pattern for success. Once the salesman  understands this, he follows that pattern until it stops working and a  behavior change is necessary for continued prosperity.

Monkeys in the traveling-salesman experiment had the option to visit  six different locations, two of which contained rewards, one large and  one small. The reward spots were randomized, and they changed each time  the experiment ran.

“The optimal solution is to develop a routine where you visit all of  them in a circle. That’s the best you can do; you go from nearest  neighbor to next neighbor. That’s what monkeys do in the wild. That’s  what bumblebees do in the wild,” Platt said. “Occasionally, these  animals break off to explore for something that might be better, kind of  like what people do in a grocery store. Suddenly monkeys here would  break off and go out of order. We didn’t know why.”

Simultaneous to watching the macaques’ behavior in both experiments,  Platt and his colleagues recorded neuron behavior in the posterior  cingulate cortex. Neural activity there built up until it peaked, at  which point the animals changed course, revealing correlational evidence  that this spike in brain function leads to the divergent thinking and  action rather than happens because of it.

“If you increased activity in the area exogenously, if I put an  electrode in there and stimulated, then you would break off from the  routine, you would become more exploratory,” Platt said. “Similarly, if  you could suppress activity, you’d see the opposite. You’d become  hyper-focused on one option, and you may never make a change.”

These findings have potential business applications in terms of  innovation and exploration. Techniques that directly activate the  posterior cingulate cortex like brain stimulation or game play that  promotes distraction, particularly within situations that don’t allow a  routine to form, can lead to more creativity.

“People who have more activity there have more mind-wandering, and  they tend to be more creative,” according to Platt. “It suggests that  capacity to be more creative evolved for a very specific purpose, which  is to allow you to forage efficiently in a landscape that’s always  changing.”

Source : penntoday.upenn.edu