Transcriber: Ariana Bleau Lugo Reviewer: Alma Ghita
In my lab, we're developing
a brain-computer interface technique
that's designed to tweak the brain
in a way that may improve self-control.
So I thought I'd begin with
one example of successful self-control,
and one example of failed self-control.
I'll start with self-control failure here.
And in this clip, the boy's doing
something called the marshmallow test,
which involves leaving a kid in a room
for 15 minutes, alone, with one marshmallow.
(Laughter)
The kid's task: "Don't eat the marshmallow."
And this clip takes place just after
the experimenter leaves the room.
(Laughter)
OK. This next clip is an example
of self-control success,
and this is actually a home movie.
(Video) Sit. Now Wait.
OK. (Laughter)
So we're all familiar with the need
for self-control in everyday decision making.
We have to choose
between saving and spending,
between the gym and the couch,
between carrots and cookies.
And this decision, the ability
to exhibit self-control when
you are making this kind of decisions,
can have very important consequences.
Kids have poor self control.
They're going to be adults
who are more likely to commit crimes
and have financial problems.
They don't play well with others,
and they don't cope well with stress.
And kids with poor self-control
are more likely to grow up to be obese,
and to have many other health problems.
When you give a child a self-control test
like this marshmallow test,
something happens in the brain.
And, as a result of what happens in the brain,
the kid either successfully resists temptation,
or fails to do so.
Now the evidence suggests that
this kid who resists the marshmallow
may grow up to be a healthy, wealthy, educated,
socially competent, well-adjusted adult,
while this kid who ate the marshmallow
may end up an unhealthy, uneducated,
delinquent, socially incompetent inmate.
So if we can move people
along this top row more,
and this bottom path less,
that seems like a good thing.
My interest as a researcher:
What's going on here,
at the level of the brain,
we might be able to intervene on,
in order to improve self-control.
Of course, for that to work,
we need to know a little bit about
the neural mechanisms underlying self-control.
What's going on in the brain when
someone chooses carrots over cookies?
And that used to be a black box.
Fortunately, researchers
have recently opened that black box.
So we now know a little bit about
what's happening in the brain
when somebody resists the marshmallow.
And because we know something about
what's happening in the brain
when somebody exhibits self-control,
we may be able to actually
intervene on those neural mechanisms
to improve self-control ability.
So we've been working for several years
on a technique to do that,
and it's called
S
of Gratification through
biofeedback with
and you see why we needed an acronym.
And this is how it works.
This is a representation of
our brain-computer interface paradigm.
And this region that's kind of glowing here,
is very important for self-control.
As you can see,
when that region lights up,
the bar in the top panel goes up.
When that region is not lighting up,
the bar goes down.
So, brain and bar are linked.
All we do, we bring people into our lab,
and we hook them up to an EEG machine,
so they've got electrodes all over their scalp.
We use that to monitor brain activity
in the region shown, as well as in other regions.
And then we show people that bar in front of them,
on the monitor, going up and down.
So they're getting information about
what's happening in their own brain in real time.
And then we say to people:
"Make the bar go up."
So notice what's going on in your mind,
what you're thinking, what you are feeling
when the bar goes up, and whatever it is
that makes the bar go up, do more of that.
And through trial and error and operant conditioning,
people learn to do it.
Now when they're learning to make the bar go up,
they're really learning to make that region of the brain
light up, and if they are better
at making that brain region light up,
they may have better self-control ability.
We recently finished a study of this approach.
And these are the most important results.
Blue line represents change over time
in self-control performance for a control condition.
Red line is change over time in self-control performance
for the STRIDES group, the group
that did this brain-computer interface training.
And, as you can see for the control group,
self-control plummets as times goes on.
And that wasn't unexpected.
That's observed in the literature more often than not.
For the STRIDES group, on the other hand,
the group that did this treatment,
self control did not decrease over time.
And what that suggests is that
this brain-computer interface as a training
may be useful for preventing the erosion over time
in self-control performance
that's typically observed in the literature.
Now we used to think of self-control as, you know,
angel on one shoulder - devil on the other shoulder.
The two battle it out,
and that's what determines behavior.
But we now know, self-control doesn't look like that.
Self-control looks like that.
The self-control is not a magical, metaphysical phenomenon.
Self-control is a tangible, physiological process
that we should be able to intervene on.
Many people believe that self-control is fixed,
that you are born with a certain level of self-control,
there's not much you can do to change that.
And before we knew much about self-control
that was probably true.
But we are learning more and more,
and self-control is becoming more malleable.
And I suspect that we'll soon have
wide spread access
to technologies like this,
that will allow people to exercise
the neural mechanisms underlying self-control
in a manner that's very similar to how
you might exercise a muscle.
And that's gonna allow people
to transcend the limitation of their
innate level of self-control.
Thank you.
(Applause)