News

5/24/17

Dr. Erik Asp has been named the Director of the Neuroscience Program at Hamline University!

5/22/17

Here is a nice article on the Wesley and Lorene Artz Cognitive Neuroscience Research Center in Hamline Alumni Magazine.

4/28/17

Congrats to Artz laboratory manager Alexandra Lessard for a 2017 Ridgway Forum Fund Partnership Collaborative Research Award and Artz laboratory research assistant Laura Epding for a 2017 Summer Collaborative Research Award!

4/14/17

Congrats to Artz laboratory research assistant Madison Nowling-Kjellberg on being named a Rozanne Ridgeway Forum Fellow for 2017!

4/11/17

erikwasp.com has finally been updated.  Check out the new Artz research center page.  Also, I will be attending and presenting at APS’s conference in Boston this year.  I have a poster presentation on May 26th from 4-5pm at board # VIII-90:

“Sleep deprivation increases credulity to explicitly-labeled false information.”  Poster presentation, Association for Psychological Science, Boston, MA.

Abstract:

We gave sleep-deprived participants novel information and directly measured their ability to falsify that information. Sleep-deprivation resulted in a specific impairment doubting patently false information compared to non-sleep-deprived controls. Resource depletion acts to disrupt doubting but not believing ability.

 

We have developed the False Tagging Theory (FTT), which proposes that the prefrontal cortex and other structures putatively critical for emotion are necessary for somatic “false tags” in the psychological concept of doubt. Previously we have discovered that damage to the prefrontal cortex leads to a disrupted false tagging mechanism and a “doubt deficit,” which is accompanied by a tendency toward belief and credulity. We hypothesized that under conditions of resource depletion participants would also have disrupted false tagging.  Specifically, we examined sleep-deprivation as a method of resource depletion, as it has been shown to increase the likelihood of false confession and confabulation.  In addition, sleep-deprivation disrupts executive functions which are putatively mediated by the prefrontal cortex. Here, we put the FTT to a crucial test by giving sleep-deprived participants novel statements in the laboratory and directly measuring their ability to falsify (or doubt) those statements. Participants were given four stories in which a series of explicitly labeled false and true statements about the protagonist were presented. The explicitly labeled false statements were designed to sway the participants’ dispositional opinion of the protagonist, if mistakenly believed. The results show that compared to controls, participants under sleep-deprivation tend to misremember more explicitly-labeled false information as true. Sleep-deprivation impairs one’s ability to falsify information that is patently false, while leaving intact one’s ability to believe information. These findings indicate that resource depletion increases credulity generally.