Doctors Can Do Better if They Learn from their Mistakes (IMAGE)

PLOS

Doctors Can Do Better if They Learn from their Mistakes

Caption

Physicians who suffered from confirmation bias -- the low performers -- tended to activate areas of their frontal and parietal lobes (related to cognitive control and attention, respectively) more after the successful trials than after the unsuccessful trials. These physicians paid more attention to the successful trials that confirmed their existing beliefs. In contrast, the high performers -- the physicians who learned effectively from experience -- displayed the exact opposite pattern, activating their frontal and parietal lobes much more after the unsuccessful trials, indicating that they were better able to learn from their failures.

Credit

Downar J, Bhatt M, Montague PR (2011) Neural Correlates of Effective Learning in Experienced Medical Decision-Makers. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27768.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027768

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All figures and photographic images will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL), which allows them to be freely used, distributed, and built upon as long as proper attribution is given. Downar J, Bhatt M, Montague PR (2011) Neural Correlates of Effective Learning in Experienced Medical Decision-Makers. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27768.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027768

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