Brain Scans Can Detect Who Has Better Skills, Research Says

To gain new insight into how highly specialized workers learn skills or react to stressful situations, researchers are leveraging advanced scanning technologies to look at what's happening inside the brain. From a report: In the latest findings, a team of researchers studied surgeons as they performed surgical simulations and found they could identify novice from experienced surgeons by analyzing brain scans taken as the physicians worked [The story could be paywalled]. The researchers, who described their findings Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, said that the part of the brain involved in planning complex behaviors was more active in the novices. Skilled surgeons had more activity in the motor cortex, which is important for movement. The researchers, who developed a machine-learning system to analyze the scans, also showed that training resulted in a shift toward higher activity in the motor cortex. In total, the brains of roughly 30 surgeons and trainees were monitored while they performed pattern-cutting tasks that are part of professional tests for certifications. The brain-data metrics were more accurate than current professional tests used to assess the same manual skills, according to the study.

Re:So which is it?

[Tablizer]

Learning skills or acquiring muscle memory?

It can be both. For example, learning Windows support gives you muscle memory for Ctrl+Alt+Del

Re:

[Tablizer]

plenty of very skilled people around, however, the number of those with GREAT ATTITUDES is very small.

Simply drug the neckbeards ;-)

Re:

[alvinrod]

Could well be both. Muscle memory isn't terribly useful if your conscious decision making is wrong about which memories should be used. Similarly, knowing what to do is of limited value if you're not capable of doing it.

Here it sounds like the experienced surgeons rely more on muscle memory, whereas the novices need to do more active thinking. If you're trying to assess how ready someone is, you'd probably want to go with the person who's working from muscle memory more, all else being equal.

I think i

Standard current-era brain scan stuff...

[RyanFenton]

This is like deciding if someone was rich by looking at how many lights you saw in their entire country by looking at the planet at night from space. With no knowledge of nation borders.

You can certainly draw a correlation - but not really a good conclusion on any individual.

Brain scans aren't reading the content of neurons. They're not even really reading activations or activity for certain, given the lack of real certainty on the full mechanics of brain activity. All they're reading is the heat and relative traffic areas of an unlabelled part of the brain, and saying that this is what has happened in other cases. Again - like watching blobs of house lights from space.

There's other studies that show that experts in a field actually activate LESS than non-experts on a subject - especially genius-level studies, because they tend to find the same answers with less mental work and stress or second-thoughts.

Avoid trying to base how you want to live your life on studies like these ones in particular. Or at least focus more on the base ideas, and less on trying to imitate the particulars here.

Ryan Fenton

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[gweihir]

And then there are mental things where a novice cannot solve it at all and an expert will. However one expert will take minutes and another will take days, but that difference does not matter, because not many people can get there at all. I think for mental skills, this is pretty much a non-starter.

Re:

[cshark]

All you're really doing at that point is pushing conformity, because your idea of what's "better" is going to diverge a lot. I think it'll be gamed, I think it'll be abused, and I think there will be companies that are absolutely obsessed with the technology. Sort of like the way people fixate on personality tests or blood nicotine levels now. It's one more thing for corporate america to waste their money on. The good news, is that you'll be able to spot the crazy ones. And just ignore any company that insi

Re:

[liquid_schwartz]

All you're really doing at that point is pushing conformity, because your idea of what's "better" is going to diverge a lot. I think it'll be gamed, I think it'll be abused, and I think there will be companies that are absolutely obsessed with the technology. Sort of like the way people fixate on personality tests or blood nicotine levels now. It's one more thing for corporate america to waste their money on. The good news, is that you'll be able to spot the crazy ones. And just ignore any company that insists on using it as part of their hiring process.

I think it will be used as a tool to promote diversity. Much easier to fake this data than real world examples of your skills. It will be much less overtly racist, unlike the (white males | Asian males) need not apply system that we have now.

In unrelated news

[ArhcAngel]

An increase in the diagnoses of brain cancer in surgeons has been reported.

Re:

[HornWumpus]

/. needs a specific 'not funny' moderation.

How was "more accurate" measured?

[Aristos Mazer]

The summary says, "The brain-data metrics were more accurate than current professional tests used to assess the same manual skills, according to the study." How was "more accurate" measured? You'd have to have an objective way of judging level of skill for a given task. A senior surgeon might have rote memorized the wrong action. How was that assessed? This makes sense if it is just looking for years of practice and not necessarily skill of practice.

Re: How was "more accurate" measured?

[alvinrod]

Iâ(TM)m sure there is some way to objectively measure accuracy, but that itâ(TM)s prohibitively expensive or time consuming which is why there are other, simpler measures used for evaluation. The brain scans probably track closer to that best objective measure than the existing evaluation that is used. However, Iâ(TM)m guessing the brain scan method is also probitively expensive, but at least thereâ(TM)s some results to suggest the technology could be useful if the costs could be brought

Not surprising for physical skills

[gweihir]

Especially for ones that need training and experience. Doing the same precision movements over and over again will leave some signatures in the motor-cortex. Whether this has any impact on non-physical skills remains to be seen.

Wow.... can this tech be used in a hiring process?

[mark-t]

Because that would be friggen *AMAZING*....

You could figure out who knows their shit from who doesn't without all the expense of a probationary period.

This would make an awesome bullshit filter on interviews.

Re:

[HornWumpus]

How will you tell my awesome coding skills from my awesome bullshitting skills?

Re:

[HornWumpus]

I get _paid_ to code.

My brain scan

[PPH]

Right here [wp.com].[NSFW]

Gosh!

[lgordon]

You know, like numchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!

Re:

[LynnwoodRooster]

What about bo staff skills?

Re: No it doesn't

[jrumney]

From my reading of TFS, the headline is wrong, as usual. They measured brainwaves during a skill test, and found a pattern correlated with years of experience. The traditional method of actually checking the result of that skill test is not as good at predicting years of experience, since years of experience is not necessarily correlated to skill.

This will be quickly banned for being "racist"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure such scans will soon be declared racist and banned from being used in the hiring process unless it can be shown to select the "correct" mix of races from the applicant pool. There is considerable evidence of certain races being differentiated on skills due to having evolved in different environments. This is no different than having dark skin and sickle cell trait being advantageous in an environment that has lots of sun and malaria, or having light skin and lactose tolerance in an environment wi

Very interesting

[Sqreater]

Actually "looking" at the development of "muscle memory."

But can it measure-

[Daralantan]

But can it measure the Dunning–Kruger effect?