12/7 Summary: "The Neuroscience of Changing Your Mind"
From Scientific American
（Summary）
A team from Johns Hopkins University has concluded that last-minute decision-making is a lot more complicated than previously known: it involves complex neural coordination among multiple brain areas. Th team recruited 21 subjects and made them cancel a decision in the study. The group watched what areas of the brain activated during the decision-making steps and after the subjects stopped their plan, finding that the prefrontal cortex and the frontal eye field are involved. It was found that changing an intended behavior requires ultrafast communication between them, so for instance, if we change our minds within about 100 milliseconds of making a decision, we can revise our plans, but we probably can’t within more than 200 milliseconds. The lead author of the study hopes that the insights from this study help researchers devise ways to help us make faster, safer decisions especially for elder people and people with addictions. (149 words)
