Briefs in Neuroscience

Motivation can hinder goal achievement

Albarrac??n Hepler and colleagues at Idaho State University conducted a study to determine the effect of self-control on the success of reaching one's goals. Contrary to most people's beliefs, active attempts to change one's behavior are actually counterproductive. When people overly control what they do and fight to suppress their temptations, they are set up to make impulsive decisions, leading to failure.
In one experiment, researchers primed participants with either action or inaction words, such as "start" and "stop." Then, the experimenters tested self-control by measuring the subjects' willingness to choose a later larger reward over an immediate but smaller one. Results show that participants in the action group were more likely to pick the immediate rewards.
In another experiment, self-control was measured through the subjects' impulse control on a computer game. Results were similar to those of experiment one, supporting the theory that motivation to be active can lead to impulsive decisions, ultimately hindering the pursuit of one's goals.

Warm temp challenges cognition

Think everyone is enjoying mild temperatures and refreshing breeze? Think again. Research shows that warmer weather negatively affects cognition in those with multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease.
Victoria M. Leavitt and colleagues at the Kessler Foundation recently showed in a study that patients with multiple sclerosis performed worse on memory and processing tasks when the temperature is warmer. 40 participants with the disease and 40 without were asked to perform various tasks to assess memory and processing speeds.
Results showed that those with multiple sclerosis scored 70 percent higher when the temperature was lower, while no correlation between temperature and cognition was found in those without the disease.
Of those with affected cognitive abilities, 50 to 60 percent experienced thinking and learning problems that are disabling. This information can hopefully assist therapists in scheduling sessions that may involve important decision making.

Established psych theory challenged

Contrary to the common misconception that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, meaning that what people see holistically is more than just a combination of each individual feature, recent research suggests otherwise.
The study used a model called the optimal Bayesian integrator to compare people's perception of individual features with how they see things, in this case faces, as a whole. If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the ways by which facial features are connected together should result in a score that is higher than the sum of the individual scores for each feature.
Participants were tested on their ability to recognize either isolated facial features or whole faces. Results show that the average performance for both conditions were similar, suggesting that people do not process facial information differently when shown in combination than in parts. The findings offer invaluable knowledge to treat disorders, such as prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces.