Re: update
jeffrey
a couple updates. first, not as easy as one would think to recruit the "team." Damasio is on the A team, but is swamped for a couple of months. he is key, and i know that you know each other. two others, both in england, are tied up as well, but are going to get back to me. one, mel slater, is a computer guy, and does the VR work. the second, essi viding, does behavioral genetics, imaging, and clinical populations, aimed at identifying genetic markers that arc predictive ofpsychopathy.
second, have an idea that i think you might like, and hopefully might support. We now have the platform to do the VR. The software is built for running moral dilemmas. But here is the very exciting potential: if we had a second set up of the hardware, we could use it to travel
around the world to test different, and unique clinical populations, such as the patients in South Africa that have bilateral damage to the amygdala; Damasio's frontal lobe patients; Viding's kids who have been genotyped for psychopathy; to Germany with a collaborator who has genotyped kids with a gene that either expresses a low or high level of serotonin/dopamine; autistics in England and Italy; psychopaths in Holland and in USA. By testing these diffemt populations with the same tool, we will nail the underlying mechanisms that support moral decision making, and that fall down due to deficits. Price tag: — $80k.
Damasio is keen to talk if you want to bring him into the conversation.
best
marc
Marc Hauser,
Harvard College Professor
Departments ofPsychology and Human Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
office tel/fax: 617-496-7077
URL: www.wjh.harvard.edul—mnkylab
For Appointment:
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what about a video conference ?„ why do yo have to travel with the machine, can't it be done remotely. Re call with tony„ any day/night next week
jeffrey
we could certainly do a video conference.
traveling machine, this is VR! sorry if i
- on didn't clarify. you have to have people in the VR machine, hooked up to heart rate, skin conductance and in the Rolls Royce version, ERPs (for brain activation). The technology must travel. It is not simply seeing 2D, but seeing and being in VR, and having all the autonomic measures going. The system now has realistic touch, so that when you push fatso onto the train tracks, you actually feel the resistance. And this is why the different clinical populations are so interesting, because you can systematically pick off the requisite mechanisms. Antonio is particularly excited about this because it would directly test some of the ideas that he and i have re the computations underlying consciousness and bodily states, how abstract judgment and action dissociate, and so on. does this make sense?
will let antonio know.
-marc
got it
nice!