Research ideas

[magnatom]

I certainly think it effects concentration big time.

Ah the problem with this is the scanner is noisy all the time, so all of the subjects will be listening to 'loud music'!

 

[marinyork]

Actually, there could be something in that. The scanner subject could be placed in control of a computer generated car driving through an artificial environment. They could be told to that to complete the game they need to get to a certain point. A real monetary reward could be offered for completing the game. Along the way they would come across various obstacles including cyclists which would be designed to hinder their progress etc. We could then investigate anger responses (we know where in the brain this usually resides) in relation to the obstacles.

We could compare groups, i.e, people who have somehow been shown to have road rage issues, normal drivers and advanced drivers. We could compare the brain responses of the three groups. It might be that results from this might shed some light on the psychology of road rage. Hmmm. More thought required.....

Well if you like it you can hire me out, I've always found the lattice stuff/FT/k-space/NMR stuff quite interesting

Seriously I'd have thought if you are going to have a play round things like rage are more interesting than SMIDSYs or trying to find slightly dozy drivers.

 

[Noodley]

what about riding no-handed and with hands on handlebars? Will people notice no-handed more than handed? Maybe drivers switch off to the crouched cyclist yet have greater perception of the more upright, hands draped at the sides cyclist?

 

[dan_bo]

As an aside, i know of someone who might need some help with some liquid helium. interested?

 

[Speicher]

I'd like research done to see what level of rage there is in some motorists when they see a cyclist ahead. Trickier to do I suppose.

Some motorists are not able to see!

I have a large dark blue car, and some drivers cannot see me at a distance of ten feet, they still think that they have room/time to pull out in front of me.

Can I suggest that Magnatom scans some drivers to see if they have a brain, and whether their brain, if they have one, is greater than pea-sized.

 

[Kirstie]

You might want to talk to a cognitive neuropsychologist too.
The brain registers lots of information but only attends to some of it because attention is selective. So the problem isn't necessarily registering that an object exists but also consciously attending to its presence and producing appropriate actions. The tricky bit would be establishing the link between the magnitude of 'subconscious' responses to a stimulus and the likelihood of conscious attention to it.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

There's a lot of dubious security research out there using MRI scanners trying to locate and identify 'bad thoughts' which makes this and many other mistakes...

 

[Kirstie]

There's a huge ethical problem around attributing intentionality/volition (and thus culpability) on the basis of subconscious electrical activity in the brain...

 

[magnatom]

You might want to talk to a cognitive neuropsychologist too.
The brain registers lots of information but only attends to some of it because attention is selective. So the problem isn't necessarily registering that an object exists but also consciously attending to its presence and producing appropriate actions. The tricky bit would be establishing the link between the magnitude of 'subconscious' responses to a stimulus and the likelihood of conscious attention to it.

Indeed. We have good relations with our university psychology department. Once I have a rough idea I will be taking it to them. If this work goes ahead it would likely be done on their scanner and not ours (which is more clinical and clinical research based).

 

[magnatom]

There's a lot of dubious security research out there using MRI scanners trying to locate and identify 'bad thoughts' which makes this and many other mistakes...

There is a lot of rubbish fMRI research out there and a lot of claims about what it can do which are exagerations to put it politely! Reliably detecting (in an individual) any type of thought is very, very difficult. Anyone who claims, for example, that they can use fMRI as a lie detector, reliably is talking through a hole in their...... You get the picture!

 

[magnatom]

There's a huge ethical problem around attributing intentionality/volition (and thus culpability) on the basis of subconscious electrical activity in the brain...

....and fMRI doesn't even detect electrical activity (it detects related oxy/deoxy haemoglobin changes). I really wouldn't worry about any civil liberties being threatened with the use of fMRI. It just can't do what some people claim it can!

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I really wouldn't worry about any civil liberties being threatened with the use of fMRI. It just can't do what some people claim it can!

Ah, but almost every technology used for surveillance doesn't do what it is claimed. That, however, has hardly ever stopped governments from introducing them, continuing to claim that they work, and demanding that people adjust their behaviour to fit the technology. There's plenty of investment going into fMRI and other brain-scanning techs for security right now.

 

[Fnaar]

inattentional blindness... ery interesting... this vid (takes a while to load, a 6MB java applet) has been on before I think (or similar)

Dudes passing basketball, count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball.
The watch it again and forget about counting.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Ah yes, quite a famous one that - I was about to call it 'The ____ Video' but that would have given it away!

 

[red_tom]

It's not cycling related but I was talking to a girl at the weekend who's a pretty stong synesthete. She said that she used to use it as a kid to help with learning spelling, it was easier for her to remember a pattern of colours rather than a pattern of letters.

I'm colourblind and pay very little attention to colours at all. I wonder if it's less likely for a colourblind person to be vision/other sense synesthetic, given our reduced colour perception. Would you be able to see activity in the 'wrong' parts of the brain of a synesthete?