Benjamin Julius Mueller

NEW YORK

Benjamin Julius Mueller, 18, of Great Neck, submitted a behavioral and social sciences project to Intel Science Talent Search studying the neural mechanisms underlying a parent's decision to reward or punish children. Ben used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in five adult volunteers as they responded to a child's hypothetical actions. He located specialized neural networks used by the adults when they decided to reward or punish; the decision to reward was largely a frontal lobe function while the parietal lobe was primarily responsible for the decision to punish. Based on this, and contrary to initial expectations, Ben concluded that the decision to reward involves a deeply ingrained emotional response while the decision to punish is a higher-level cognitive judgment. At John L. Miller-Great Neck North High School, Ben captains the varsity soccer and basketball teams and founded the microfinance club. The son of Thomas Mueller and Eleanor Berger, Ben hopes to study neurobiology and psychology at Yale and do research, such as the work he conducted in 2006 that resulted in a published paper that he co-authored and a research grant from NSF.