all Mind Brain Behavior Initiative stories

Transitivity, the orbitofrontal cortex, and neuroeconomics

404132862 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:58:28 -0500

You study the menu at a restaurant and decide to order the steak rather than the salmon. But when the waiter tells you about the lobster special, you decide lobster trumps steak. Without reconsidering the salmon, you place your order — all because of a trait called "transitivity."

New online approach builds community around medical cases

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:22:01 -0400

A new suite of Internet tools is boosting student-faculty interaction in an engrossing twist on traditional case-based teaching at Harvard Medical School. Called ICON, for "interactive case-based online network," the cases are run by a faculty-student-IT specialist trio at Harvard Medical School, backed by extensive cross-faculty collaboration. ICON is revamping neuroscience case-based learning by engrossing both students and faculty in the plight of virtual patients struggling with real-world diseases. Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Medical School James Quattrochi, the program's director and ICON's developer and driving force, said ICON's online case-based learning modules allow a greater level of student and faculty participation than possible in traditional, paper-based case learning. ICON was designed and developed by the Harvard Interfaculty Neuroscience Program, a year-old program that includes faculty from the Medical School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Business School, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. ICON was developed with support from the Harvard Provost's Funds for Interfaculty Collaboration and Innovations in Instructional Technology.

Helping clear the air in China

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:08:14 -0400

Across China's industrial areas, black soot settles into people's lungs and bronchial tubes, producing an annual epidemic of respiratory disease. That's the result of heating homes, schools, and offices with coal. In the past, Chinese policy-makers paid only a small amount of attention to the pollution issue, believing that to force companies to clean up their smoky pollution would hold back progress. Such a policy, it was widely thought, would not be in the country's best long-term interests, regardless of the health gains that might be made. But what if it were possible to calculate the economic costs of air pollution? If Chinese officials knew how much their country was paying for air pollution, wouldn't they be more motivated to do something about the problem?