Features

Building back better after COVID-19 is about just that - better. Better for populations. Better for economies.  Better for the world.  A tomorrow better than yesterday.

It should be hard to argue with that, whatever your political persuasion. No one seriously wants things to be worse. And yet there is still a way to go, to persuade some groups that ‘better’ is about more than GDP.

No one seriously wants things to be worse. And yet there is still a way to go, to persuade some groups that ‘better’ is about more than GDP.

Brian O’Callaghan, the lead researcher on Oxford University’s Economic Recovery Project, is accustomed to doing just that. Over the last year, since the pandemic arrived in Europe, Brian and his colleagues have been keeping track of governments’ spending on recovery, through Oxford’s Global Recovery Observatory, supported by the UNDP as well as IMF, UNEP, and GIZ through the Green Fiscal Policy Network.

Brian and his academic supervisor Professor Cameron Hepburn established the Observatory in March last year, aiming to understand if economic recovery was going to lead to a better future. That meant looking at whether the policies enacted by governments around the world met social and economic needs, but also whether they were directed at a ‘green’ or sustainable future, one in which climate commitments were met...or not.

In the midst of the havoc of 2020, it was not always an easy ‘sell’. (Officially, just 18% of international recovery spending is currently ‘green’ – and just 2.5% of total spending).

But, says Brian [above left with Cameron Hepburn right] , an economics researcher, a green recovery really does mean ‘better’ – in every sense.  In a major report on Wednesday [10 March], written with Em Murdock from Harvard and published with the UNEP, they set out findings from the Observatory and make a powerful argument for the wrap-around benefits of sustainable recovery spending.

Brian O'Callaghan and Professor Cameron Hepburn established the Observatory in March last year, to understand if economic recovery was going to lead to a better future

The message is clearly already getting through. Since the middle of last year, a steady stream of administrations and policymakers from around the world have been beating their proverbial path to the Oxford team’s virtual door for advice on how to craft effective recovery plans.

In 2020, many requests came from advanced nations. But, in 2021, advice is overwhelmingly being sought by developing nations, which recognise the very real economic benefits of green spending - and are not so much building back but building for the first time.  

‘Quite simply, you can get a bigger bang for your buck with green spending,’ says Brian, the Australian-born engineer-turned-economist. ‘This is particularly true in the developing world. For instance, investment in renewable energy can bring electricity to people who have never had it before.’

Quite simply, you can get a bigger bang for your buck with green spending...This is particularly true in the developing world. For instance, investment in renewable energy can bring electricity to people who have never had it before

Brian O'Callaghan

It is the sort of language which governments of all persuasions want to hear - new jobs, building future industry and maximising future prosperity. If it saves the world too, so much the better.

Brian is insistent that this is not an ‘either, or’ dilemma, there is no contradiction in being pro-jobs, pro-livelihoods and pro-environment.

Along with the report, Wednesday saw the launch of the Global Recovery Observatory, a joint project between the university, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Development Program, the International Monetary Fund, and the German Agency for International Cooperation. It will continue and extend the work begun, and which still continues, in Oxford.

It is the sort of language which governments of all persuasions want to hear - new jobs, building future industry and maximising future prosperity. If it saves the world too, so much the better

Fitting the times, Brian’s first involvement with the project came through a Zoom meeting. In mid-March 2020, Brian’s doctoral supervisor, Professor Cameron Hepburn, wanted to discuss an urgent new idea. Brian had come to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to study renewable energy finance. But, given the international situation, the conversation turned to the imminent lockdown and the likely impact on the economy.

‘It seemed inevitable that the UK was going to go into a lockdown,’ says Brian. ‘And for us the first thought was that the economy was going to be in a lot of trouble.

This is not an ‘either, or’ dilemma, there is no contradiction in being pro-jobs, pro-livelihoods and pro-environment

At that point, it was not imagined that a year later, the world would still be reeling from the economic impact of the pandemic or that the impact would be as big. But the pair knew that even a few months’ economic shutdown would have major consequences. According to Brian, ‘It was obvious that the economy would come out of the lockdown in tatters and we would need a concerted effort on economic recovery.’

And so, thought the academics, what may a recovery look like? How could it impact climate progress? How about green energy investment and commitments to sustainability? Could there be an opportunity for ‘green’ spending to both aid recovery and progress climate targets?

Professor Cameron Hepburn determined on a project to survey leading economists around the world...a project was launched to call on some 230 other global leading economists, including central bank and ministry of finance leaders, to outline their thoughts on the crisis - it was to become a seminal work

Professor Hepburn determined on a project to survey leading economists around the world. Assembling an eight-strong team of assistants, a project was launched to call on some 230 other global leading economists, including central bank and ministry of finance leaders, to outline their thoughts on the crisis. As part of the project, Brian O’Callaghan and his team set about to launch Oxford’s Observatory, to track and understand COVID-19 spending.

Carefully avoiding any influence over the economists’ responses, the aim was to find out  which policy options could both bring high economic returns and be good for the environment. In May, Cameron and Brian’s paper was published in partnership with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the UK’s Professor Nick Stern and Dimitri Zenghelis – it was to become a seminal work.

But the work did not end there. Oxford’s Observatory kept tracking government recovery spending – and the Economic Recovery Project team became advisors to governments the world over.

As mentioned above, currently ‘green’ spending accounts for only 18% of recovery spending – and most of that comes from a few developed nations. Developing nations are keen to do the same. The main stumbling block is the high interest rates they would have to pay to fund the recovery spending. Brian O’Callaghan maintains, ‘Developing nations don’t have the same access to capital.’

He says, ‘We are issuing a big call to action [in the report] to advanced economies...to support investments in developing countries...or the crisis could put back by 10 years, the progress that has been made in alleviating poverty in these nations.’

Are we on track for a green recovery? Not Yet. But perhaps soon

 The report underlines two key points:

• ‘A green recovery... can kill two birds with one stone...you get higher bang for your buck. Governments must be spending a higher proportion of recovery funds here.’
• And, ‘Advanced economies must consider generous concessional finance for developing countries [so they can borrow at low or zero interest rates] – that could support both development and climate action.’

Now in combination with the UN, the Observatory will continue to grow, tracking and assessing the spending of countries around the world. It can help countries to learn from the experiences of others, to see what works, what brings employment, industry, and prosperity – as well as what supports climate commitments.

 More green recovery spending will follow, according to Brian. He emphasises the ‘yet’ in the headline of the report:  Are we on track for a green recovery? Not Yet. But perhaps soon.

Music is as an important point of connection. Listening to music can spark new ideas, remind us of particular moments in the past - and shared experiences.

In the context of International Women’s Day, this event also reminds us to seek out the women who have been creative leaders in the past, and inspires us to better support and recognise such people in the future

To mark International Women’s Day, Lincoln College and Oxford’s humanities research centre, TORCH, are hosting a lecture-recital with Dr Samantha Ege, as she traces the vibrant creative network formed by black women composers in Chicago in the early 20^th century.

The lecture-recital will paint a picture of a vibrant artistic community in Chicago between the 1930s and 1950s, with black women composers as its cornerstones

International Women’s Day is a moment of celebration and reflection. This year’s theme ‘Choose to Challenge’ asks us to challenge gender bias and inequality wherever we may find it, and to celebrate women’s achievements where they have previously been under recognised.

With The Black Chicago Renaissance Women: Lives & Legacies in Music, Dr Ege blends celebration and education, bringing to our attention the individual stories of women of the past - from the creative community space formed by the home of American composer Margaret Bonds to the ransacking of the majority of Nora Holt’s compositions. At the same time, the lecture is filled with music, the voices of these women brought into the current moment to be appreciated.

Dr Ege will play piano compositions by each of the four composers she discusses, including Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre in F Minor, a piece previously thought to be incomplete, and reconstructed on Dr Ege’s new album, Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price. One of Nora Holt’s two surviving compositions, the only ones remaining from the 200 she wrote, will also feature.

Through these pieces, the lecture-recital will paint a picture of a vibrant artistic community in Chicago between the 1930s and 1950s, with black women composers as its cornerstones. The Black Chicago Renaissance was a movement encompassing artists of all description.

These communities displayed strong models of black female leadership; they opened the doors for upcoming generations of black women to thrive as composers, performers, music entrepreneurs, and more

Dr Samantha Ege

Dr Ege says, ‘Though rightfully celebrated as a literary movement, in which writers such as Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Richard Wright voiced critical reflections of life on Chicago’s south side through their plays, poems, and novels, the Black Chicago Renaissance in fact comprised numerous creative threads.

‘Music-making abounded, birthing blues, jazz, and gospel innovations that would go on to transform American music. Black classical communities in Chicago similarly restructured the fabric of musical life in the United States. These communities displayed strong models of black female leadership; they opened the doors for upcoming generations of black women to thrive as composers, performers, music entrepreneurs, and more.’

This story of creativity and community feels particularly relevant in the current moment, as we have all been uprooted from our usual communities and as many creative people, particularly performers, have found their activities curbed. In the context of International Women’s Day, this event also reminds us to seek out the women who have been creative leaders in the past, and inspires us to better support and recognise such people in the future.

Dr Ege is deeply interested in exploring women as part of a creative network. She elaborates, ‘Florence Price was the first black woman composer to gain national recognition in the United States. It is easy to marvel at such an accomplishment in the era of Jim Crow America. But in doing so, we run the risk of overlooking the community to which she belonged, where many black women shared her ambition, passion, and talent.

‘In valuing women’s narratives upon their entry into historically male spaces, we end up viewing their lives narrowly and therefore incompletely. International Women’s Day commemorates a global history of women’s socio-political organising, protest, and triumph. It is a history shaped by diverse communities and diverse womanhoods. And this is what our event recognises.’

International Women’s Day commemorates a global history of women’s socio-political organising, protest, and triumph. It is a history shaped by diverse communities and diverse womanhoods. And this is what our event recognises

Dr Ege

Whether you are hoping to draw inspiration from the past, learn more about the history of this important movement, or simply appreciate some beautiful music, this lecture-recital provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the women composers of the Black Chicago Renaissance.

You can watch The Black Chicago Renaissance Women: Lives & Legacies in Music from 5pm to 6pm on Monday 8 March 2021 via the TORCH YouTube page, as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme and Lincoln College, Oxford.

You can find out more about Dr Samantha Ege’s work on her website.

Reliance on scientists and experts during an epidemic: evidence from the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy

Pietro Battiston, Ridhi Kashyap, and Valentina Rotondi

Twelve months on, we may be suffering from COVID-19 information overload, but a year ago it was a different matter. The world was frightened and people were eager for facts and information about the deadly new virus. 

Faced with an unknown threat, people initially flocked to experts, scientists and health authorities.  But, as the weeks progressed and the gravity of the pandemic intensified, reliance on experts and trust in them dwindled.

Faced with an unknown threat, people initially flocked to experts, scientists and health authorities.  But, as the weeks progressed and the gravity of the pandemic intensified, reliance on experts and trust in them dwindled

Out of fear, fatigue with anti-pandemic measures and frustration at the inability of countries to control the deadly virus, signs of scepticism began to emerge. 

For researchers from across the academic spectrum, COVID-19 offered an opportunity to study and understand first-hand public responses to the first pandemic of the digital age.

Sociologists and demographers at Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, led by Dr Ridhi Kashyap wanted to explore international reactions to COVID-19 as it moved beyond China and reached Europe.  How did information-seeking and trust in scientists and health experts evolve?

To answer this question, Dr Kashyap’s team acted quickly to capture responses to the virus, from the end of February to mid-April 2020, as the number of deaths increased and Italy’s northern regions [the first area affected after China] went into lockdown. The team gathered data from three social media platforms in Italy: Twitter, Telegram (a messaging app) and Facebook.

With social media full of conversations about the virus, it was possible to collect digital trace data in real time – to see what was going on, what people were thinking and, critically, where they were getting their information.

‘We could analyse these digital footprints leading to where people sought information about this novel threat. What’s more, we could conduct rapid online surveys to reveal if reliance on experts and trust in their information was sustained, grew or waned,’ says Dr Kashyap.

We could conduct rapid online surveys to reveal if reliance on experts and trust in their information was sustained, grew or waned

Dr Ridhi Kashyap

On Twitter, they examined  more than two million tweets and retweets in Italy which used the post popular Coronavirus hashtags (#coronavirusitalia and #covid19italia). 

They classified the accounts which posted the tweets into different categories such as scientists, health authorities, media, politicians and government authorities. They then focussed on retweets of the most popular accounts, because they signal interest in the issue and agreement in what is being said.

At the start of the outbreak, the findings showed considerable increases in attention was given to scientists and health authorities. But in mid-March, shortly after the nation went into lockdown, retweets of health experts began to decrease.

On Telegram, the team gathered around 9,000 responses on how keen people were to receive information about COVID-19 from doctors, scientists, the government, health authorities, such as the WHO - and from celebrities. The questionnaires went out in four waves. The first went soon after the first case was detected, then three more, roughly a week apart.

Similar to the findings from Twitter, the Telegram results initially revealed increases in interest in information coming from scientists, health and government authorities, as opposed to celebrities. But, as the weeks passed, that level of interest waned.  

Results initially revealed interest in information from scientists...as opposed to celebrities. But, as the weeks passed, that level of interest waned

Facebook is the country’s most popular social media platform, with 60% of the population using it.  From the middle to end of March 2020, the team quizzed 900 respondents, drawn from Facebook users in Lombardy and Veneto, the area hit hardest by the disease.

In this survey fielded on Facebook, the team asked questions about health behaviours and knowledge linked to COVID-19, as well questions about support for public health measures to contain COVID-19.

The goal of the survey was to examine public health knowledge and attitudes, but also assess the willingness to modify health beliefs when exposed to correct information from experts. The survey asked questions such as: Are antibiotics helpful in preventing the Coronavirus infection? Can young people also contract COVID-19? Is washing hands useful for preventing the Coronavirus infection?

When respondents gave an incorrect answer to one of these questions, a randomly-selected group was shown information relevant to the question without a clear source, whereas the other half was shown the same information, but with an explicit clarification that it was coming an expert public health source, such as the WHO or Italian Institute for Public Health.

The survey found that, although levels of basic health knowledge about COVID-19 was good, signs of scepticism had emerged of public health experts among those who held incorrect beliefs. For those who had incorrect beliefs, showing information as coming from expert sources led them to become hardened in their beliefs and less likely to modify them. Trust in science and public health authorities was linked to better knowledge of COVID-19 and support for public health measures.

Dr Kashyap says, ‘Our research proves that trust in experts cannot be taken for granted. Yes, people crave trusted professional information at the beginning of an emergency, about which they know little. But that trust is fragile and can fall away...we saw that, although interest in the pandemic did not diminish, interest and trust in what health experts were saying certainly did.

‘We know too well the evolution of the virus, the different stages: waves, peaks, variants and lockdowns. Our study shows that trust moves too.’

Our research proves that trust in experts cannot be taken for granted...But that trust is fragile and can fall away

Dr Kashyap

She adds, ‘Evolution continues. Now we are entering a new phase of the pandemic: the vaccine roll-out. We hope it will lead us back to normality and this hope brought about by the scientific achievements of a new vaccine have the potential to revitalise trust in scientists and health experts again.’

In this context, it is more important than ever to ensure that reliable and trustworthy health information is presented and accepted by the public. Health experts are rallying against anti-vaxx information and its collateral damage of lives lost due to vaccine hesitancy. In the UK, the rates of those accepting the vaccine have generally been good – which suggests that public health experts are being heeded, although this cannot be taken for granted.

But some populations are believed less enthusiastic, with estimates suggesting less than half in some countries are prepared to be vaccinated. The information battle continues.  

Oxford graduates are filling senior leadership roles in the new US government. 

It is inspiring to see alumni who once took their places in Oxford’s seminar rooms and sports teams called into public leadership

Dr Edward Brooks

Oxford university’s role in educating leaders, who put their academic training to work serving societies around the world, has been underlined as the names of a dozen Oxford graduates are among President Biden’s new administration.

Dr Edward Brooks, who heads the Oxford Character Project, a major research initiative focusing on responsible leadership, argues that universities are important sites of leadership development. 

Three of the 25 members of the new US Cabinet, Gina Raimondo, Pete Buttigieg, and Eric Lander are Oxford alumni - as are an array of other senior and junior appointees.

Dr Gina Raimondo (New College, 1993) was the first woman to be Governor of Rhode Island and has been praised for her firm response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She is moving to Washington, having been confirmed as Secretary of Commerce. Dr Raimondo completed an MA and then a DPhil in Sociology, focusing her thesis on single motherhood in the US, evidence of a social concern that has characterised her career.

Pete Buttigieg (Pembroke, 2005) came to public prominence in his bid for the Democrat’s Presidential nomination. Formerly a mayor in Indiana, he is the new Secretary of Transportation. Like many political leaders in the UK, Mr Buttigieg studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, enjoying a distinguished Oxford career. He was awarded a First, following exam revision on a cargo ship moving freight across the Atlantic. The boat, it seems, afforded a prime environment for distraction-free study.

Professor Eric Lander (Wolfson, 1978), will be leading the newly-created US Office of Science and Technology Policy. A Professor of Biology at MIT, and of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Professor Lander’s student days were spent at Wolfson, where he wrote a DPhil on algebraic coding theory. He has gone on to make landmark contributions to the sequencing of the human genome. As a senior science advisor to President Obama, he made an important public contribution, ensuring the proper use of scientific evidence in criminal justice.

Dr Brooks says, ‘It is inspiring to see alumni who once took their places in Oxford’s seminar rooms and sports teams called into public leadership. And it points to the importance of Oxford’s work to develop responsible leaders who are equipped to lead well in all sectors of society.’

Key to the success of Oxford’s alumni were the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, from which all of the alumni above benefited

Beyond the US Cabinet, other Oxford graduates have been appointed to senior positions:

Dr William J. Burns (St John’s, 1981) is the incoming Director of the CIA.

Dr Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall (Balliol, 1981) is the new Homeland Security Advisor.

Jake Sullivan (Magdalen, 1998) is the National Security Advisor.

Jonathan Finer (Balliol, 1999) is the Deputy National Security Advisor.

Dr Susan Rice (New College, 1996), the former National Security Advisor, will lead the Domestic Policy Council.  

Dr Kurt M. Campbell (Brasenose, 1981) will be Coordinator of Indo-Pacific affairs.

Bruce Reed (Lincoln, 1982) will serve as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.

In President Biden’s wider team are:

Megan Ceronsky (Hertford, 2001), the climate change advisor for the Obama administration, will take up a role in the Office of White House Counsel.

Machmud Makhmudov (Magdalen, 2016), who completed an MPhil in Political Theory in 2018, is serving as a Policy Advisor for the Office of COVID Response. He previously supported the Biden campaign as a Policy Analyst.

At a more fundamental level, it is bound up with the intellectual virtues the university has long sought to instil in its students: the capacity to think deeply and critically, to entertain alternative perspectives, and to undertake creative and generative research

Roger Revell

Key to the success of Oxford’s alumni were the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, from which all of the alumni named above benefited. Yet Oxford’s contribution to the formation of leaders is not limited to these prestigious initiatives.

At a more fundamental level, says research fellow, Roger Revell, it is bound up with the intellectual virtues the university has long sought to instil in its students: the capacity to think deeply and critically, to entertain alternative perspectives, and to undertake creative and generative research.

It is connected to the array of co-curricular activities, ranging from the debates at the Oxford Union to participation in college and university sport. When it comes to this cadre of Americans, the contribution of sport to leadership development is evident. Rowing, tennis, basketball, baseball, rugby and running all feature.

While writing a prize-winning thesis on Zimbabwean politics, Susan Rice not only rowed for New College but also led the Oxford women’s Blues basketball team to victory over Cambridge. Talking of her development as a leader, she commented, ‘I think my experience as an athlete has shaped who I am in more ways than I can describe. It’s made me strong. It’s made me not fear competition or bruising here and there. But it’s also made me willing to take risks, willing to see the whole court.’

While writing a prize-winning thesis on Zimbabwean politics, Dr Susan Rice not only rowed for New College but also led the Oxford women’s Blues basketball team to victory over Cambridge

More recently, Oxford’s role in equipping future leaders from around the world has found expression in cross-university programmes including the Global Leadership Initiative (GLI) and Global Leadership Challenge.

Machmud Makhmudov participated in the 2018 GLI cohort, joining a diverse group of postgraduate students from around the world in a six-month leadership learning journey. This unique programme aims to help students develop the qualities of character needed to lead in a way that is not merely effective but also responsible - oriented towards the flourishing of all people, the broader thriving of our societies, and the vitality of our planet.

The Oxford Global Leadership and Global Leadership Challenge are initiatives of the Oxford Character Project, an interdisciplinary initiative at the University, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, which focuses on the study and practice of responsible leadership.

By Dr Alessandro Bongioanni, Department of Experimental Psychology

One thing that makes our brain so fascinating is the staggering range of behaviours it allows. We are not just good at doing things in environments we know well (such as shopping at our usual grocery store), but we are surprisingly successful at navigating novel environments (such as scrolling this blog, making new friends, finding a job, etc.).

When I was an adolescent, I went for the first time to the only Thai restaurant in my city. Every single dish in the menu was new for me. I knew oysters, I knew beef, but I had never tried fried beef in oyster sauce before. Still, I was able to make up my mind and speculate that I would probably like the fried beef more than the chicken in coconut soup. This simple anecdote illustrates something bigger: all human progress required people to leave the comfort of a familiar situation and explore new places or new ideas. Today, with social and technological changes accelerating, we are continuously exposed to novel objects and situations and we generally cope very well with them.

If the ability to make adaptive choices in novel situations is so crucial for our human exploits, surely this is a unique ability of our species? Well, no. Animals too are able to adapt to new environments and to express meaningful preferences among objects or situations that they have never encountered before, based on similarities with what they know.

In the last few decades, scientists have understood a great deal about the neural mechanisms for learning the value of things, and for making decisions based on these values. However, by necessity, most neuroscience research is done with animals, and often with monkeys who are our closest relatives. Findings in monkeys allow to get an understanding of what may happen in the human brain as well, in the case of fundamental behaviours that both species display.

To study decisions in monkeys, scientists use very simplified and abstract tasks. All the irrelevant features of the real world are stripped down, to ensure that the neural activity measured is uniquely due to the key decision process. Many classic studies, for example, required binary choices between coloured images on a screen: initially, the blue stimulus gives a larger reward (in the form of fruit juice) than the red stimulus; in the next stage, the stimulus values reverse. Because this is all so abstract and unnatural for the animals, they may need months of training before data can be collected.

With this classic approach researchers discovered that the value estimate of each option is tracked by neurons in the most anterior part of the brain, just above the eyes. We gathered a detailed understanding of how this neural circuit represents the value of each individual item, and how it allows comparing options in order to make choices. But have we learned anything about the way our brain makes choices in our daily lives?

It turns out that if we put a person into an MRI scanner and ask her to make choices based on preferences, a distinct area usually lights up: it is still in the anterior part of the brain, but in the midline, where the two hemispheres face each other. So which one is the key brain area? Because MRI scanners cannot see individual neurons but estimate activity indirectly, for the past decade animal researchers and human researchers have thought that limitations to each others’ techniques have led their colleagues to focus on the wrong areas. But reaching a firm conclusion has been difficult.

A new explanation was put forward by a group led by Matthew Rushworth, professor at Oxford University and fellow of the Royal Society. He thought that different neural circuits may be involved in familiar and novel decision-making. Familiar items have been experienced repeatedly over a long time period and therefore the consequences of a familiar choice may be easily predictable. If, for example, I go to my favourite restaurant and I order my favourite dish, I can feel in advance how the experience is going to unfold. In contrast, novel decisions require constructing “on the fly” a somewhat hypothetical expectation of how the new options may feel like. This is what I did when I went to the Thai restaurant for the first time and I had to choose between fried beef with oyster sauce and chicken in coconut soup.

An experiment run by myself (Dr Alessandro Bongioanni), Dr Miriam Klein-Flügge and others in the Rushworth team, used MRI scans of monkeys to prove that indeed we can identify a specific brain circuit for novel choice; interestingly, its location in the brain corresponds with the one found in human fMRI studies, not previous monkey studies.

This discovery was accomplished thanks to a clever experimental design allowing monkeys to express preferences among items that they had not encountered before: stimuli were made of coloured dots, where colour represented the amount of juice at stake, and dot number the probability of receiving it. Some combinations of dot number and colour were highly familiar to the monkeys, others were new. Neural recordings revealed that it was the different degree of familiarity with the task items that had caused the puzzling mismatch between brain areas activated in humans and monkeys.

The fact that monkeys could solve the novel task quite easily opens new avenues for the study of decision neuroscience in primates: they are more intelligent than they may appear when faced with abstract lab tasks, and if the task is designed carefully, it is possible to elicit and study more complex behaviours than it was previously thought possible, such as choosing among novel options. This also bridges a gap between our knowledge of the human and the animal brains: making novel choices is not a unique human ability, but instead it is rooted in a neural circuit that is already present in our primate cousins.

We did not just find out where in the brain subjective value is computed, we also attempted to find out how this happens. We found that the monkeys mentally located each item offered in the “space” of all possible items (here, dot and colour combinations) and did so using a grid code. It is as if I “placed” the value of a given dish at a location in the space of all possible dishes, where one axis may represent texture, another axis flavour, and then temperature, price, etc.

We know that the brain’s “GPS system” for spatial navigation employs a grid code, the discovery of which led to the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to professors O’Keefe, Moser and Moser. Now, our new results suggest that the brain may use the same neural code employed to represent physical position in space, also to represent the value of a novel item in the space determined by the item’s features. This is interesting because it suggests that the mechanisms used by the brain to encode information are evolutionarily preserved and transferred across domains.

As Prof. Rushworth points out: 'It is intriguing to think that mechanisms for finding one’s way in physical space also underlie our ability to navigating an abstract space of choice possibilities.'

In order to validate this result, the same team also tested what happens if one disrupts specifically this small region of the brain. In order to do that, we relied on a newly developed ultrasound technique that permits stimulating deep in the brain without any invasive surgery; such stimulation can reversibly alter brain activity for one or two hours. Ultrasound provided the final proof: when the neural circuit for novel choice was targeted, the animals’ behaviour changed, as if they were no longer able to integrate the different features of a given novel option into a single mental representation.

While ultrasound has been around for a long time in medicine, it is only in the last couple of years that it has been used to modify brain functioning in this way. Jérôme Sallet, who developed the experimental setup in Oxford, says: 'Ultrasound neurotechnologies are offering new possibilities to identify the causal roles of brain areas. It is non-invasive and could be coupled with other techniques used to record brain activity. Beyond pure research, ultrasound stimulation might prove to be also a valuable tool to help patients with pharmaco-resistant conditions such as depression.'

This is because it avoids some limitations of current techniques such as TMS, which cannot reach deep into the brain or stimulate with precision. Other techniques such as DBS are precise but require surgery. Ultrasound may have the ideal combination of depth and precision without the need for surgery.

We never stop learning novel things about the brain, and if you think about it, this is the brain learning novel things about itself!

Read the full paper, which was published recently in Nature.