Media reporting of neuroscience depends on timing, topic and newspaper type

From developmental neuroscience to policy: A novel framework based on participatory research

Insights from developmental neuroscience are not always translated to actionable policy decisions. In this review, we explore the potential of bridging the gap between developmental neuroscience and policy through youth participatory research approaches. As the current generation of adolescents lives in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing society, their lived experiences are crucial for both research and policy. Moreover, their active involvement holds significant promise, given their heightened creativity and need to contribute. We therefore advocate for a transdisciplinary framework that fosters collaboration between developmental scientists, adolescents, and policy makers in addressing complex societal challenges. We highlight the added value of adolescents' lived experiences in relation to two pressing societal issues affecting adolescents' mental health: performance pressure and social inequality. By integrating firsthand lived experiences with insights from developmental neuroscience, we provide a foundation for progress in informed policy decisions.

The political leaning of the neuroscience discourse about school education in the French press from 2000 to 2020

Political actors pay attention to newspapers because they stimulate them to address a topic, reflect public opinion, provide feedback to their decisions, and help them to generate effective messages. Previous surveys showed that this is true for scientific issues. It follows that the newspaper coverage of scientific issues should appear as politically oriented, as observed regarding climate change. Here, we tested this prediction regarding educational neuroscience. This scientific issue is interesting because it implies no major economic interest and because the relevance of neuroscience regarding teaching in the classroom is still highly controversial. As hypothesized, we observed that the French press appeared strongly polarized: the right-leaning press was mostly favorable to educational neuroscience, whereas critical opinions were mainly found in the social-democrat press. Although the relevance of neuroscience toward teaching was rarely discussed in scientific arguments, political actors often invoked educational neuroscience in the press to legitimate their decision.

Neuroscience literacy in educators' training programs in Asia: A call to action

The center of learning is the brain and the disciplinary science that examines its structure and functioning, and the nervous system as a whole, is called neuroscience. The assimilation of essential neuroscience-related content by educational systems has gained global interest, given the relevance of learning to education. Recognizing the significance of frontline workers, several governmental agencies and educational institutions have launched initiatives to foster the inclusion of neuroscience literacy in educators' training programs. Their success, however, has depended on collaborative efforts among educators, researchers, and other educational stakeholders, and the process has involved considerable debate. Here, we aim to articulate a rationale to promote neuroscience literacy for educators. In doing so, we revisit prior arguments on the importance of training educators and build up on other reasons to advocate for this kind of endeavor considering cutting-edge research. Following this, we discuss critical elements to advance neuroscience literacy for educators and examine the most important challenges to execute successful initiatives. Finally, we appraise the significance for Asia, reviewing the scholarly literature on educators' prior experiences, and highlight the case of Singapore as an exemplar initiative that catalizes human capital, infrastructure, and strategies to advance neuroscience literacy. We conclude by arguing that governmental agencies and educational institutions should strengthen their efforts to accommodate their programmatic plans and agendas to embrace neuroscience literacy in educators' training programs. This global trend has arrived to stay.

Regional communication and media analysis of aquaculture in Atlantic islands

The way the media portrays aquaculture-related events can influence how this industry is perceived by the public and affect its success. Since media are an important source of public information, media content analysis has been carried out in several regions of the world. This study aimed to determine which aspects of aquaculture were more exposed and how they were discussed by regional media in the Madeira archipelago, an oceanic group of Portuguese islands. Analysis of aquaculture's media coverage in the two most-read regional newspapers of Madeira was carried out over a 5-year period (2017 to 2021). For each news article, the assessment focused on the geographic scope, the main topics covered, the stakeholders with access to the debate, and the general tone of the article (risk/benefit framework). A total of 297 articles were analyzed. Results indicate the occurrence of trigger events that contributed to a shift in the amount of news published and in the way media framed aquaculture. In general, political and economic issues dominated the coverage, whereas social, environmental, scientific, and landscape matters received less media attention. The voice of the government was predominant throughout the 5 years in analysis and aquaculture was generally framed with a balanced tone, slightly more negative. Open and transparent communication between the stakeholders and the media is fundamental for the sustainable development of the aquaculture industry.

Draw me a brain: The use of drawing as a tool to examine children's developing knowledge about the “black box”

Recent studies in neuroeducation highlight the benefits of teaching children about how the brain works. However, very little is known about children's naive conceptions about the brain. The current study examined these representations, by asking 6–10 year-old children (N = 257) and adults (N = 38) to draw a brain and the inside of a belly as a control drawing. The drawings were scored using a content analysis and a list of graphic indicators was derived. First, all the graphic indicators used in the brain drawings were different from those used in the belly drawings, suggesting that children are able to distinguish these two organs. Second, with age, children depict (i) an increasing number of indicators, (ii) more complex indicators, (iii) indicators that are more anatomically correct, to depict the brain. There is an important evolution between 6 and 8 years-old but also between 10 years-old and adults. These results are discussed in relation to children's metacognitive knowledge and to their implications for neuroeducation.

The dissemination of brain imaging guidelines and recommendations

Many neuroimaging guidelines and recommendations have been published in the literature to guide fellow researchers to conduct and report research findings in a standardized manner. It was largely unknown if they were cited or read by the scientific community. Analyses were conducted to assess their impact in terms of citations, Twitter posts, and Mendeley reads. Web of Science Core Collection database was accessed to identify relevant publications. The number of their Twitter posts and Mendeley reads were recorded from Altmetric and Mendeley databases respectively. Spearman correlation tests were conducted to evaluate if the citation count had a relationship with these metrics. When all 1786 publications were considered, citation count had a strong positive correlation with Mendeley reads (rho = 0.602, p < 0.001), but a weak negative correlation with Twitter posts (rho = −0.085, p < 0.001). When publications in the 2010 s were specifically considered, citation count had an even stronger positive correlation with Mendeley reads (rho = 0.712, P < 0.001), whereas the correlation with Twitter posts became positive but still weak (rho = 0.072, P = 0.012). Temporal profiles of citation and Mendeley counts showed that these guidelines and recommendations had a relatively stable influence in the field for years after being published.

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1786 publications providing neuroimaging guidelines and recommendations were analyzed.

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Citation count had a strong positive correlation with Mendeley reads.

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Citation count had a weak negative correlation with Twitter posts.

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It had a weak positive correlation with Twitter posts for publications in the 2010s.

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Temporal profiles of citation and Mendeley counts showed their stable influence.

Systematic Review: Comparison of the Main Variables of Interest in Publications of Canine Bite Accidents in the Written Press, Gray and Scientific Literature in Chile and Spain, between the Years 2013 and 2017

Simple Summary

Dog bites are a major public health problem throughout the world. The different types of information sources that exist in relation to this issue are influencing decision making to control and prevent these incidents. For this reason, the present study aims to compare the main variables of interest in the publications of dog bite accidents in the written and grey press and scientific literature in Chile and Spain, between 2013 and 2017. The results showed that sensationalist variables in dog bite articles are reported more frequently in the press literature compared to the indexed and grey literature. Examples of these variables are involvement of potentially dangerous breeds, articles with death reports, among others. In conclusion, an improvement in the quality of the information that reaches the population about dog bites could be achieved through better and more fluid communication between scientists and journalists who publish on this topic.

Abstract

Dog bites are a major public health problem, with consequences such as physical injury, psychological trauma, transmission of zoonoses, infections, and economic costs. For this reason, it is necessary to develop preventive programs, which require quality information to support the authorities’ decision-making and to raise public awareness about the application of the proposed measures. The objective of this review was to analyze the press, indexed and gray dog bite literature published during the 2013–2017 period. During that period, 385 articles from three sources of information were analyzed: Press literature, scientific literature, and gray literature. Of these, the greatest amount of information corresponding to the context and the aggressor animal was found in the press literature, where it was recorded that the greatest number of records reported in the Chilean articles were caused by potentially dangerous breeds (87.50%), having significant differences with the gray literature (p = 0.030), and in Spain, the greatest number of attacks was also made by potentially dangerous dogs 91.30% (21/23), statistically significant differences with the gray literature (p = 0.002) and with the indexed (p < 0.001). In the case of the scientific and gray literature, the greatest amount of information was found about the victim of the attack and the treatments applied to them. In these cases, the highest percentage of victims included in the reports contained both sexes for the two literatures (44.62% and 87.71%, respectively). Regarding the treatment applied, in the scientific literature in most of the reports, the patients received washings, rabies vaccine, and tetanus vaccine (46.26%) and presented significant differences in Chile with the information contained in the gray literature (p = 0.023), in Spain with the gray (p = 0.017) and with the press (p = 0.023). In conclusion, the press literature differs in multiple variables with the information reported in the scientific literature and, in some cases, with the gray literature. The reason why the material that is being distributed to the population would not coincide in multiple relevant variables in other literature and the representative reality of the problem is the basis for this topic.

Making a murderer: Media renderings of brain injury and Aaron Hernandez as a medical and sporting subject

This paper examines the entanglement of medicine, brain injury, and subjectivity within newspaper discourse and through the case of ex-American footballer Aaron Hernandez. In 2017, two years after being found guilty of murder and five years after scoring in the Super Bowl, Aaron Hernandez died by suicide in his prison cell. Hernandez was posthumously diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with violence, depression, and dementia-like symptoms. I examine newspaper coverage of the Hernandez case, focusing upon the murder, arrests, conviction, suicide, and diagnosis of CTE in order to examine understandings of Hernandez's subjectivity. I make three conclusions: First, the disease is not mentioned prior to diagnosis with family instability, friendship groups, individual psychology, and the entitlement of celebrity foregrounded. Second, CTE is foregrounded after the diagnosis and is used to explain much of Hernandez's behaviour. Third, the diagnosis of CTE goes someway to normalizing the behaviour of Hernandez, rendering his behaviours comprehensible. I conclude by considering how the specific narrative of CTE-as-acquired-dementia shapes depictions of Hernandez's subjectivity and discuss how this case troubles existing literatures on the neurologization of selfhood.

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CTE is a neurodegenerative disease popularly associated with contact sport.

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Aaron Hernandez was convicted of murder, died by suicide, and diagnosed with CTE.

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Through media analysis, I ask if Hernandez's actions were seen as shaped by CTE.

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CTE is not mentioned prior to suicide and rarely prior to formal diagnosis.

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After diagnosis CTE is used to explain and normalize much of Hernandez's behaviour.

Responsible Research and Innovation as a Novel Approach to Guide Educational Impact of Mind, Brain, and Education Research

We propose a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework to improve the alignment between mind, brain, and education (MBE) research, the educational practice, and other societal stakeholders. RRI is an approach that has successfully been used in different research fields, but not yet in MBE research. After substantiating the need for, and possibilities of using this framework within MBE research, we report a case study to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of RRI within an MBE context. This case study entails developing an educational intervention to improve learners' sense of agency regarding their own learning processes using neurofeedback. Using RRI, we found that societal stakeholders (teenagers, parents, and teachers) anticipate different potential impacts of this neurotechnology-based intervention than researchers did, enabling us to adapt the intervention according to these perspectives. This example demonstrates that RRI enables researchers to be reflexive and responsive to the stakeholders needs and values, to ultimately improve the educational and societal value of MBE research.

Canadian French and English newspapers' portrayals of physicians' role and medical assistance in dying (MAiD) from 1972 to 2016: a qualitative textual analysis

OBJECTIVE

To examine how Canadian newspapers portrayed physicians' role and medical assistance in dying (MAiD).

DESIGN

Qualitative textual analysis.

SETTING

Online and print articles from Canadian French and English newspapers.

PARTICIPANTS

813 newspaper articles published from 1972 to 2016.

RESULTS

Key Canadian events defined five eras. From 1972 to 1990, newspapers portrayed physician's MAiD role as a social issue by reporting supportive public opinion polls and revealing it was already occurring in secret. From 1991 to 1995, newspapers discussed legal aspects of physicians' MAiD role including Rodriguez' Supreme Court of Canada appeal and Federal government Bills. From 1996 to 2004, journalists discussed professional aspects of physicians' MAiD role and the growing split between palliative care and physicians who supported MAiD. They also reported on court cases against Canadian physicians, Dr Kevorkian and suffering patients who could not receive MAiD. From 2005 to 2013, newspapers described political aspects including the tabling of MAiD legislation to change physicians' role. Lastly, from 2014 to 2016, newspapers again portrayed legal aspects of physicians' role as the Supreme Court of Canada was anticipated to legalise MAiD and the Québec government passed its own legislation. Remarkably, newspapers kept attention to MAiD over 44 years before it became legal. Articles generally reflected Canadians' acceptance of MAiD and physicians were typically portrayed as opposing it, but not all did.

CONCLUSIONS

Newspaper portrayals of physicians' MAiD role discussed public opinion, politicians' activities and professional and legal aspects. Portrayals followed the issue-attention cycle through three of five stages: 1) preproblem, 2) alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm and 3) realising the cost of significant progress.

The Teenage Brain: Public Perceptions of Neurocognitive Development during Adolescence

Over the past decade, important insights have been obtained into the neurocognitive development during adolescence. To better understand how these neuroscientific insights impact the real world, we investigated how neuroscience has shaped public perceptions of the "teenage brain" and if these perceptions influence adolescent behavior. When asking to generate free associations with the word "teenage brain," adolescents ( n = 363, M_age = 14.47 years) and parents ( n = 164, M_age = 47.16 years) more often mention undesirable behaviors (e.g., "irresponsible") than desirable behaviors (e.g., "creative"). Despite these dominantly negative associations, priming adolescents with positively versus negatively framed statements about adolescent brain development did not influence their subsequent risk-taking, impulsivity, and performance on response-to-failure tasks. However, we did find a more nuanced effect, related to how much adolescents agreed with the negative versus positive priming statements: Adolescents' negative beliefs about adolescent brain development reinforced negative behaviors by increased risk-taking behaviors, and adolescents' positive beliefs reinforced positive behaviors by using positive strategies to cope with academic setbacks. The current findings underline the impact of views that build up over time and that these are not easily influenced by a one-time instance of information but rather reinforce the impact of new information. To prevent negative perceptions of the teenage brain from becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, it is important that communication about adolescent neurocognitive development is framed in a more balanced way. Neuroscientists need to be more aware of how their research impacts the real world, before we are fully ready for "real-world neuroscience."

Readability of the 100 Most-Cited Neuroimaging Papers Assessed by Common Readability Formulae

Background: From time to time, neuroimaging research findings receive press coverage and attention by the general public. Scientific articles therefore should be written in a readable manner to facilitate knowledge translation and dissemination. However, no published readability report on neuroimaging articles like those published in education, medical and marketing journals is available. As a start, this study therefore aimed to evaluate the readability of the most-cited neuroimaging articles.

Methods: The 100 most-cited articles in neuroimaging identified in a recent study by Kim et al. (2016) were evaluated. Headings, mathematical equations, tables, figures, footnotes, appendices, and reference lists were trimmed from the articles. The rest was processed for number of characters, words and sentences. Five readability indices that indicate the school grade appropriate for that reading difficulty (Automated Readability Index, Coleman-Liau Index, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog index and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook index) were computed. An average reading grade level (AGL) was calculated by taking the mean of these five indices. The Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score was also computed. The readability of the trimmed abstracts and full texts was evaluated against number of authors, country of corresponding author, total citation count, normalized citation count, article type, publication year, impact factor of the year published and type of journal.

Results: Mean AGL ± standard deviation (SD) of the trimmed abstracts and full texts were 17.15 ± 2.81 (college graduate level) and 14.22 ± 1.66 (college level) respectively. Mean FRE score ± SD of the abstracts and full texts were 15.70 ± 14.11 (college graduate level) and 32.11 ± 8.56 (college level) respectively. Both items indicated that the full texts were significantly more readable than the abstracts (p < 0.001). Abstract readability was not associated with any factors under investigation. ANCOVAs showed that review/meta-analysis (mean AGL ± SD: 16.0 ± 1.4) and higher impact factor significantly associated with lower readability of the trimmed full texts surveyed.

Conclusion: Concerning the 100 most-cited articles in neuroimaging, the full text appears to be more readable than the abstracts. Experimental articles and methodology papers were more readable than reviews/meta-analyses. Articles published in journals with higher impact factors were less readable.

A Translational Framework of Educational Neuroscience in Learning Disorders

Neuroimaging has undergone enormous progress during the last two and a half decades. The combination of neuroscientific methods and educational practice has become a focus of interdisciplinary research in order to answer more applied questions. In this realm, conditions that hamper learning success and have deleterious effects in the population - such as learning disorders (LD) - could especially profit from neuroimaging findings. At the moment, however, there is an ongoing debate about how far neuroscientific research can go to inform the practical work in educational settings. Here, we put forward a theoretical translational framework as a method of conducting neuroimaging and bridging it to education, with a main focus on dyscalculia and dyslexia. Our work seeks to represent a theoretical but mainly empirical guide on the benefits of neuroimaging, which can help people working with different aspects of LD, who need to act collaboratively to reach the full potential of neuroimaging. We provide possible ideas regarding how neuroimaging can inform LD at different levels within our multidirectional framework, i.e., mechanisms, diagnosis/prognosis, training/intervention, and community/education. In addition, we discuss methodological, conceptual, and structural limitations that need to be addressed by future research.

Neuroimaging of learning and development: improving ecological validity

Modern neuroscience research, including neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has provided valuable insights that advanced our understanding of brain development and learning processes significantly. However, there is a lively discussion about whether and how these insights can be meaningful to the educational practice. One of the main challenges is the low ecological validity of neuroimaging studies, making it hard to translate neuroimaging findings to real-life learning situations. Here, we describe four approaches that increase the ecological validity of neuroimaging experiments: using more naturalistic stimuli and tasks, moving the research to more naturalistic settings by using portable neuroimaging devices, combining tightly controlled lab-based neuroimaging measurements with real-life variables and follow-up field studies, and including stakeholders from the practice at all stages of the research. We illustrate these approaches with examples and explain how these directions of research optimize the benefits of neuroimaging techniques to study learning and development. This paper provides a frontline overview of methodological approaches that can be used for future neuroimaging studies to increase their ecological validity and thereby their relevance and applicability to the learning practice.

[Exhaustivity and critical tone of the news in print media reporting medical innovations]

OBJECTIVE

To quantify how exhaustive and critical were stories reporting medical innovations published in print media and to analyze the characteristics that may be related.

METHOD

Content analysis of the newspapers stories related to the discovery, introduction or improvement of a medical innovation through a questionnaire with ten criteria that allows calculating an overall score of exhaustiveness. The critical view was also included.

RESULTS

We analyzed 204 newspapers stories that on average obtained a comprehensiveness score of 4.5. Were optimistic 70% of the stories. The most valued criteria were: level of detail of the explanation of the innovation and the correct differentiation between facts and opinions. While the worst-valued criteria were: disclosure of financial conflicts of interest and the quantification of harms. The variables author, length of the story and classification of the innovation were related to both the comprehensiveness score and the critical view. The comprehensiveness score was also related to the pathology, number of sources of information and the critical tone of the story, while the critical view was also related to the newspapers diffusion and the relevance of the news.

CONCLUSIONS

The analyzed stories presented inaccuracies, biases or an excess of optimism (either intentional or involuntary). Some aspects of the stories discussed in more detail would provide solutions to many of the identified shortcomings.

How the Public Engages With Brain Optimization: The Media-mind Relationship

In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience's role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring individuals to expend calculated effort in cultivating culturally desirable forms of selves and bodies. However, little research has investigated whether the themes that characterize media dialogue are shared by lay populations. This article considers the relationship between the representations of brain optimization that surfaced in (i) a study of British press coverage between 2000 and 2012 and (ii) interviews with forty-eight London residents. Both data sets represented the brain as a resource that could be manipulated by the individual, with optimal brain function contingent on applying self-control in one's lifestyle choices. However, these ideas emerged more sharply in the media than in the interviews: while most interviewees were aware of brain optimization practices, few were committed to carrying them out. The two data sets diverged in several ways: the media's intense preoccupation with optimizing children's brains was not apparent in lay dialogue, while interviewees elaborated beliefs about the underuse of brain tissue that showed no presence in the media. This article considers these continuities and discontinuities in light of their wider cultural significance and their implications for the media-mind relationship in public engagement with neuroscience.