This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, behavior, psychology, and politics - as well as random curious stuff. (Try the Dynamic Views at top of right column.)
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Visual Illusions
My colleage Nansi Colley sent me this link to a great visual illusion involving color and motion adaptation. This motivated me to post this link to a library of visual illusions, also assembled by Michael Bach, that are great fun. This library was accessed from visionscience.com, using its 'demonstrations' link. Most illusion effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye, and some of the demonstrations are accompanied by a suggested explanation of their neural basis.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Dangerous Ideas......
Edge.org is a website sponsored by the "Reality Club" (i.e. John Brockman, literary agent/impressario/socialite). Brockman has assembled a stable of scientists and other thinkers that he defines as a "third culture" that takes the place of traditional intellectuals in redefining who and what we are.... Each year a question is formulated for all to write on... In 2004 it was "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" The question for 2005 was "What is your dangerous idea?"
The responses organize themselves into several areas. Here are selected thumbnail summaries most directly relevant to human minds. I've not included cosmology and physics. Go to edge.org to read the essays
I. Nature of the human self or mind (by the way see my "I-Illusion" essay on my website):
Paulos - The self is a conceptual chimera
Shirky - Free will is going away
Nisbett - We are ignorant of our thinking processes
Horgan - We have no souls
Bloom - There are no souls, mind has a material basis.
Provine - This is all there is.
Anderson - Brains cannot become minds without bodies
Metzinger - Is being intellectually honest about the issue of free will compatible with preserving one's mental health?
Clark - Much of our behavior is determined by non-conscious, automatic uptake of cues and information
Turkle - Simulation will replace authenticity as computer simulation becomes fully naturalized.
Dawkins - A faulty person is no different from a faulty car. There is a mechanism determining behavior that needs to be fixed. The idea of responsibility is nonsense.
Smith - What we know may not change us. We will continue to conceive ourselves as centres of experience, self-knowing and free willing agents.
II. Natural explanations of culture
Sperber - Culture is natural.
Taylor - The human brain is a cultural artifact.
Hauser- There is a universal grammar of mental life.
Pinker - People differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments.
Goodwin - Similar coordinating patterns underlie biological and cultural evolution.
Venter - Revealing the genetic basis of personality and behavior will create societal conflicts.
III. Fundamental changes in political, economic, social order
O'donnell - The state will disappear.
Ridley - Government is the problem not the solution.
Shermer - Where goods cross frontiers armies won't.
Harari -Democracy is on its way out.
Csikszentmihalyi- The free market myth is destroying culture.
Goleman - The internet undermines the quality of human interaction.
Harris - Science must destroy religion.
Porco - Confrontation between science and religion might end when role played by science in lives of people is the same played by religion today.
Bering - Science will never silence God
Fisher - Drugs such as antidepressants jeopardize feelings of attachment and love
Iacoboni - Media Violence Induces Imitative Violence - the Problem with Mirrors
Morton - Our planet is not in peril, just humans are.
The responses organize themselves into several areas. Here are selected thumbnail summaries most directly relevant to human minds. I've not included cosmology and physics. Go to edge.org to read the essays
I. Nature of the human self or mind (by the way see my "I-Illusion" essay on my website):
Paulos - The self is a conceptual chimera
Shirky - Free will is going away
Nisbett - We are ignorant of our thinking processes
Horgan - We have no souls
Bloom - There are no souls, mind has a material basis.
Provine - This is all there is.
Anderson - Brains cannot become minds without bodies
Metzinger - Is being intellectually honest about the issue of free will compatible with preserving one's mental health?
Clark - Much of our behavior is determined by non-conscious, automatic uptake of cues and information
Turkle - Simulation will replace authenticity as computer simulation becomes fully naturalized.
Dawkins - A faulty person is no different from a faulty car. There is a mechanism determining behavior that needs to be fixed. The idea of responsibility is nonsense.
Smith - What we know may not change us. We will continue to conceive ourselves as centres of experience, self-knowing and free willing agents.
II. Natural explanations of culture
Sperber - Culture is natural.
Taylor - The human brain is a cultural artifact.
Hauser- There is a universal grammar of mental life.
Pinker - People differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments.
Goodwin - Similar coordinating patterns underlie biological and cultural evolution.
Venter - Revealing the genetic basis of personality and behavior will create societal conflicts.
III. Fundamental changes in political, economic, social order
O'donnell - The state will disappear.
Ridley - Government is the problem not the solution.
Shermer - Where goods cross frontiers armies won't.
Harari -Democracy is on its way out.
Csikszentmihalyi- The free market myth is destroying culture.
Goleman - The internet undermines the quality of human interaction.
Harris - Science must destroy religion.
Porco - Confrontation between science and religion might end when role played by science in lives of people is the same played by religion today.
Bering - Science will never silence God
Fisher - Drugs such as antidepressants jeopardize feelings of attachment and love
Iacoboni - Media Violence Induces Imitative Violence - the Problem with Mirrors
Morton - Our planet is not in peril, just humans are.
Blog Categories:
consciousness,
culture/politics,
evolutionary psychology,
futures,
self
Pursuing Happiness
The Feb. 27 issue of the New Yorker has a review by John Lanchester of several books on happiness. Jonathan Haidt, "The Happiness Hypothesis"; Darrin McMahon, "Happiness, a history"; Richard Layard, "Happiness: Lessons from a New Science".
A first point is that we are hardwired to emphasize the negative, because being cautious and apprehensive makes us more likely to pass on our genes than being open, risk-taking, and happy. "Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures." But, "are we, left to our own devices, and provided with sufficient food and freedom and control over our circumstances, naturally happy?" It depends on circumstances. People living in poverty become happier if they become richer, but the effect of increased wealth cuts off at a surprisingly low figure. Americans are twice as rich as they were in the 1970's but report not being any happier. Data from all over the world show that people get stuck on a "hedonic treadmill": their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach.
There is considerable evidence (from identical twin and other studies) that we each have a natural "set point" level of happiness that is largely inherited. In the long run, it doesn't much matter what happens to you. Whether you win the lottery or break your neck, within a year you feel pretty much the same as you did before.
Positive psychologists, however, argue that there are conditions most likely to generate contentment or happiness. Csikzentmihalyi's studies show that people are more content when are are experiencing what he calls "flow", a state ot total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one's abilities." In this view, happiness is a by-product of absorption. The trouble is that asking yourself about your frame of mind is a sure way to lose your flow. If you want to be happy, don't ever ask yourself if you are.
A first point is that we are hardwired to emphasize the negative, because being cautious and apprehensive makes us more likely to pass on our genes than being open, risk-taking, and happy. "Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures." But, "are we, left to our own devices, and provided with sufficient food and freedom and control over our circumstances, naturally happy?" It depends on circumstances. People living in poverty become happier if they become richer, but the effect of increased wealth cuts off at a surprisingly low figure. Americans are twice as rich as they were in the 1970's but report not being any happier. Data from all over the world show that people get stuck on a "hedonic treadmill": their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach.
There is considerable evidence (from identical twin and other studies) that we each have a natural "set point" level of happiness that is largely inherited. In the long run, it doesn't much matter what happens to you. Whether you win the lottery or break your neck, within a year you feel pretty much the same as you did before.
Positive psychologists, however, argue that there are conditions most likely to generate contentment or happiness. Csikzentmihalyi's studies show that people are more content when are are experiencing what he calls "flow", a state ot total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one's abilities." In this view, happiness is a by-product of absorption. The trouble is that asking yourself about your frame of mind is a sure way to lose your flow. If you want to be happy, don't ever ask yourself if you are.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Our Wayward Minds
I want to mention the excellent book by Guy Claxton - THE WAYWARD MIND, an intimate history of the unconscious (2005, Little, Brown, and Co. Great Britan, published only in Britan but available from amazon.com with 4-6 week wait) Here is a excerpt and paraphrase from pp. 348-252:
"What we call our "self " is an agglomeration of both conscious and unconscious ingredients, cans, needs, dos, oughts, thinks - the temptation is to assume that the "I" is the same in all of them - so that instead of having an intricate web of things that make me ME, I have to create a single imaginary hub around which they all revolve, to which they all refer - the attempt to keep this fiction going, to "hold it together" can become quite tiring and bothersome - If "I" am essentially reasonable, if I imagine that my zones of control - over my own feelings for example - are wider and more robust than they are, then I am going to get in a tangle trying to "control myself." If I have decided that who I am is clever, attractive, athletic, stable, creating the hub of "I" locks everything together and prevents it moving. It stops Me expanding to include the unconscious, or graciously shrinking to accommodate old age. I can not enjoy my waywardness, nor see it as an intrinsic part of ME - (note: he gives Ramachandran's two foot nose pinocchio demonstration as evidence of plasticity of self image), and then says - The orthodox sense of self is thrown by such experiences, and tends to suffer a sense-of-humour failure. It sees all waywardness as an affront, and tends to become earnest or myopic in response. In a nutshell: it is bad enough to have a nightmare, without your rattled sense of self telling you that you are going mad. Weird experience can never be just funny (as the pinocchio effect can be) or matter-of fact (as possession is in Bali), or transiently inconvenvient (as a bad dream is), or wonderful (as a mystical experience can be), or just mysterious (as a premonition might be). For the locked-up self they have to be denied, explained or dealt with. All the evidence is that a more relaxed attitude toward the bounds of self makes for a richer, easier and more creative life. Perhaps, after all, waywardness in all its forms is in need not so much of explanation, but of a mystified but friendly welcome. We can explain it if we wish, and the brain is beginning to a reasonable job. But the need to explain, when not motivated by the dispassionate curiosity of the scientist, is surely a sign of anxiety: of the desire to tame with words that which is experienced as unsettling.
"What we call our "self " is an agglomeration of both conscious and unconscious ingredients, cans, needs, dos, oughts, thinks - the temptation is to assume that the "I" is the same in all of them - so that instead of having an intricate web of things that make me ME, I have to create a single imaginary hub around which they all revolve, to which they all refer - the attempt to keep this fiction going, to "hold it together" can become quite tiring and bothersome - If "I" am essentially reasonable, if I imagine that my zones of control - over my own feelings for example - are wider and more robust than they are, then I am going to get in a tangle trying to "control myself." If I have decided that who I am is clever, attractive, athletic, stable, creating the hub of "I" locks everything together and prevents it moving. It stops Me expanding to include the unconscious, or graciously shrinking to accommodate old age. I can not enjoy my waywardness, nor see it as an intrinsic part of ME - (note: he gives Ramachandran's two foot nose pinocchio demonstration as evidence of plasticity of self image), and then says - The orthodox sense of self is thrown by such experiences, and tends to suffer a sense-of-humour failure. It sees all waywardness as an affront, and tends to become earnest or myopic in response. In a nutshell: it is bad enough to have a nightmare, without your rattled sense of self telling you that you are going mad. Weird experience can never be just funny (as the pinocchio effect can be) or matter-of fact (as possession is in Bali), or transiently inconvenvient (as a bad dream is), or wonderful (as a mystical experience can be), or just mysterious (as a premonition might be). For the locked-up self they have to be denied, explained or dealt with. All the evidence is that a more relaxed attitude toward the bounds of self makes for a richer, easier and more creative life. Perhaps, after all, waywardness in all its forms is in need not so much of explanation, but of a mystified but friendly welcome. We can explain it if we wish, and the brain is beginning to a reasonable job. But the need to explain, when not motivated by the dispassionate curiosity of the scientist, is surely a sign of anxiety: of the desire to tame with words that which is experienced as unsettling.
Blog Categories:
acting/choosing,
consciousness,
self,
self help,
unconscious
Sunday, March 05, 2006
No Two Alike - Why do even identical twins have different personalities?
No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality by Judith Rich Harris (Hardcover, W.W.Norton, 2006) ..... Harris argues that three brain systems contribute to making each individual unique: a socialization system figures out how to conform to (mirror) your group. A relationship system figures out how to get along with each different person. A status system figures out how to compete. These adaptable and plastic mental systems we all share also make each of us uniquely different from each other. They generate different behaviors in different contexts (home, school, work, etc.) in which our relationships and status are different.
The Folk Psychology of Souls
From the abstract of an article by J. M. Bering, currently under review and to be published in Behavioral and Brain Research (copyright Cambridge Univ. Press. PDF or WORD download here) : "the present article examines how ... belief in an afterlife, as well as closely related supernatural beliefs, may open an empirical backdoor to our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition. ......The central thesis of the present article is that an organized cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of (i) psychological immortality, (ii) the intelligent design of the self, and (iii) the symbolic meaning of natural events evolved in response to the unique selective pressures of the human social environment. "
Altruistic and cooperative behavior not unique to humans.
More behaviors proposed by some to be unique to humans prove not to be. Warkenin and Tomasello show altruistic cooperation in young chimpanzees and in prelinquistic children at 18 months. Melis et al. show that Chimps recruit the best collaborators.
Blog Categories:
animal behavior,
human evolution,
social cognition
Friday, March 03, 2006
More on how meditation may increase the thickness of some cortical areas
An interview with Sandra Lazar. in Science and Consciousness Review. "The most significant ... difference was in the right anterior insula. The right anterior insula has been identified in many studies of emotion processing, as well as in studies of attention and cognition. It has also been shown to be involved in modulating physiology, and has strong connections with other brain areas that are more centrally involved in these processes (for example the amygdala, brain stem and frontal cortex). It is thought to relay and integrate these signals between the various areas, in order to influence behavior (i.e., it connects emotional regions with the decision-making part of the brain, so that emotions can influence your decisions). It is not yet clear what increased thickness means; those experiments are just beginning. However we hypothesize that increased thickness will correlate with increased ability to perform certain tasks that require the integration of emotion and cognition --- for example, handling stressful situations.
Blog Categories:
acting/choosing,
emotion,
meditation
Friday, February 24, 2006
What makes young kids different from young chimps?
They are LESS critical in imitating the actions of others. Horner and Whiten trained young chimps to remove food from a black box (open the door on its left side) but added some extraneous steps (tap on top of box, pull back blot across top of box). When the box was made transparent, the chimps recognized the unnecessary steps and no longer performed them. Human children (3-4 years old) doing the same exercise did not delete the unnecessary steps!! (see Horner, V. & Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens). Animal Cognition, 8, 164-181.)
Blog Categories:
human development,
mirror neurons,
social cognition
Delete one gene, and turn from timid to daring, if you are a mouse
Can efforts to dial down overly fearful humans be far behind?
Shumyatsky et al. show that deleting a gene that is expressed in the amygdala (required for fear conditioning) generates mice that are less aversive to risk and less intimidated by dangerous sights and sounds. Curiously, the gene is for a protein, stathmin, that inhibits microtubule formation. With it gone, the electrical signals associated with fear conditioning are deficient.
Shumyatsky et al. show that deleting a gene that is expressed in the amygdala (required for fear conditioning) generates mice that are less aversive to risk and less intimidated by dangerous sights and sounds. Curiously, the gene is for a protein, stathmin, that inhibits microtubule formation. With it gone, the electrical signals associated with fear conditioning are deficient.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Complex decisions solved better by unconsious than by conscious thought
Ap Dijksterhuis et al. , Univ. of Amsterdam, had a group of students read a comparison of many different aspects of four different cars. They were told they had 4 minutes to choose the best deal and divided into two groups. One group was distracted by being given anagrams to solve during this period. It did better at the choice that the group that spent the 4 minutes consciously thinking about it.
Blog Categories:
acting/choosing,
attention/perception,
unconscious
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Trashing the God Genome
The following paragraphs are quotes from the harsh review of Dennett's new book (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) written by LEON WIESELTIER, literary editor of The New Republic, in the Feb. 19 New York Times Book Review. The text includes quotes from Dennett, but blogger isn't doing quote marks or dash marks for me at the moment.
It's certainly appropriate to point out that any proposed natural biological account of the origins of religion is a just-so story than can not be tested. Mr. Wieseltier might have pointed out, however, that the just-so stories of conventional religions have led to massive human suffering and chaos. Some of the evolutionary psychology fantasies (Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, for example) yield a more benign outcome.
Clips from the review:
What follows is, in brief, Dennett's natural history of religion. It begins with the elementary assertion that everything that moves needs something like a mind, to keep it out of harm's way and help it find the good things. To this end, there arose in very ancient times the evolutionary adaptation that one researcher has called a hyperactive agent detection device, or HADD. This cognitive skill taught us, or a very early version of us, that we live in a world of other minds, and taught us too well, because it instilled the urge to treat things, especially frustrating things , as agents with beliefs and desires. This urge is deeply rooted in human biology, and it results in a fantasy-generation process that left us finding agency wherever anything puzzles or frightens us......Eventually this animism issued in deities, who were simply the agents who had access to all the strategic information that we desperately lacked. But what good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? So eventually shamans arose who told us what we wanted to hear from the gods.....Folk religions became organized religions.
There are a number of things that must be said about this story. The first is that it is only a story. It is not based, in any strict sense, on empirical research. Dennett is extrapolating back to human prehistory with the aid of biological thinking, nothing more. Breaking the Spell is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology. There is no scientific foundation for its scientistic narrative. Even Dennett admits as much: I am not at all claiming that this is what science has established about religion. . . . We don't yet know. So all of Dennett's splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and generating further testable hypotheses notwithstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.
Like many biological reductionists, Dennett is sure that he is not a biological reductionist. But the charge is proved as early as the fourth page of his book. Watch closely. Like other animals, the confused passage begins, we have built-in desires to reproduce and to do pretty much whatever it takes to achieve this goal. No confusion there, and no offense. It is incontrovertible that we are animals. The sentence continues: But we also have creeds, and the ability to transcend our genetic imperatives. A sterling observation, and the beginning of humanism. And then more, in the same fine antideterministic vein: This fact does make us different.
Then suddenly there is this: But it is itself a biological fact, visible to natural science, and something that requires an explanation from natural science. As the ancient rabbis used to say, have your ears heard what your mouth has spoken? Dennett does not see that he has taken his humanism back. Why is our independence from biology a fact of biology? And if it is a fact of biology, then we are not independent of biology. If our creeds are an expression of our animality, if they require an explanation from natural science, then we have not transcended our genetic imperatives. The human difference, in Dennett's telling, is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind, a doctrine that may quite plausibly be called biological reductionism.
It's certainly appropriate to point out that any proposed natural biological account of the origins of religion is a just-so story than can not be tested. Mr. Wieseltier might have pointed out, however, that the just-so stories of conventional religions have led to massive human suffering and chaos. Some of the evolutionary psychology fantasies (Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, for example) yield a more benign outcome.
Clips from the review:
What follows is, in brief, Dennett's natural history of religion. It begins with the elementary assertion that everything that moves needs something like a mind, to keep it out of harm's way and help it find the good things. To this end, there arose in very ancient times the evolutionary adaptation that one researcher has called a hyperactive agent detection device, or HADD. This cognitive skill taught us, or a very early version of us, that we live in a world of other minds, and taught us too well, because it instilled the urge to treat things, especially frustrating things , as agents with beliefs and desires. This urge is deeply rooted in human biology, and it results in a fantasy-generation process that left us finding agency wherever anything puzzles or frightens us......Eventually this animism issued in deities, who were simply the agents who had access to all the strategic information that we desperately lacked. But what good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? So eventually shamans arose who told us what we wanted to hear from the gods.....Folk religions became organized religions.
There are a number of things that must be said about this story. The first is that it is only a story. It is not based, in any strict sense, on empirical research. Dennett is extrapolating back to human prehistory with the aid of biological thinking, nothing more. Breaking the Spell is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology. There is no scientific foundation for its scientistic narrative. Even Dennett admits as much: I am not at all claiming that this is what science has established about religion. . . . We don't yet know. So all of Dennett's splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and generating further testable hypotheses notwithstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.
Like many biological reductionists, Dennett is sure that he is not a biological reductionist. But the charge is proved as early as the fourth page of his book. Watch closely. Like other animals, the confused passage begins, we have built-in desires to reproduce and to do pretty much whatever it takes to achieve this goal. No confusion there, and no offense. It is incontrovertible that we are animals. The sentence continues: But we also have creeds, and the ability to transcend our genetic imperatives. A sterling observation, and the beginning of humanism. And then more, in the same fine antideterministic vein: This fact does make us different.
Then suddenly there is this: But it is itself a biological fact, visible to natural science, and something that requires an explanation from natural science. As the ancient rabbis used to say, have your ears heard what your mouth has spoken? Dennett does not see that he has taken his humanism back. Why is our independence from biology a fact of biology? And if it is a fact of biology, then we are not independent of biology. If our creeds are an expression of our animality, if they require an explanation from natural science, then we have not transcended our genetic imperatives. The human difference, in Dennett's telling, is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind, a doctrine that may quite plausibly be called biological reductionism.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Mindful awareness and my frontal lobes?
A note by Sara Lazar et al. in Neuroreport proposes that mindful awareness meditation causes increases in the thickness of areas of the frontal lobes associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing (the sample size is small). It is known that brain areas associated with other skilled activities such as juggling or playing the piano increase in size with practice.
I find it difficult to communicate my experience of mindful awareness. It seems like a contentless animal kind of openness that observes mind products such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions as they rise and decay, sensing itself as distinct from completely being them. This is very different from my usual more immersed self that feels itself to be completely defined by those thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This losing of a normal self, paradoxically, yields a platform for acting in the real world that others experience as a strong presence of self. One description would be that this platform is continually making such distinctions as that between being an angry person and noting the process of angry-ing as it appears and disappears. (I try to expand on this in Mindstuff: a guide for the curious user)
I find it difficult to communicate my experience of mindful awareness. It seems like a contentless animal kind of openness that observes mind products such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions as they rise and decay, sensing itself as distinct from completely being them. This is very different from my usual more immersed self that feels itself to be completely defined by those thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This losing of a normal self, paradoxically, yields a platform for acting in the real world that others experience as a strong presence of self. One description would be that this platform is continually making such distinctions as that between being an angry person and noting the process of angry-ing as it appears and disappears. (I try to expand on this in Mindstuff: a guide for the curious user)
So what use is knowing all this brain stuff??
Sure, the material I am posting in this blog is fascinating in its own right. Yet, I think all of us studying how the brain works have either an explicit or hidden agenda: We want understanding how the mind/body works to help with understanding not only our personal internal conflicts but also those of the cultural or political organisms of which we are cellular parts. Inappropriate conditioning - enabled by our ancient limbic repertoires (see The Beast Within essay on my website) - contribute to both personal and social conflicts. Wouldn't it be great if more fundamentalists of every stripe could be coaxed into examining the origins and mechanisms of how their minds work. The hope would be that insight into the nature of their anger at outsider infidels might soften their fanaticism...
Watching emotions interfere with goal attainment
Dorsolateral Prefrontal and lateral parietal cortex regions involved in working memory needed for task perseverance are de-activated by emotional arousal mediated by amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. See Dolcos and McCarthy
Detecting lying, and critical comments on the brain imaging enterprise
Lying can be detected by various imaging techniques as well as by trained human observers. There is an interesting review article in the Feb. 5, 2006 NYTimes magazine by Robin Marantz Henig "Looking for the Lie". Note these VERY IMPORTANT critical comments of Steve Kosslyn, who has distinguished imaging difference between spontaneous and rehearsed lies:
"Kosslyn remains skeptical about the brain-mapping enterprise as a whole. "If I'm right, and deception turns out to be not just one thing, we need to start pulling the bird apart by its joints and looking at the underlying systems involved," he said. A true understanding of deception requires a fuller knowledge of functions like memory, perception and visual imagery, he said, aspects of neuroscience investigations not directly related to deception at all. In Kosslyn's view, brain mapping and lie detection are two different things. The first is an academic exercise that might reveal some basic information about how the brain works, not only during lying but
also during other high-level tasks; it uses whatever technology is available in the sophisticated
neurophysiology lab. The second is a real-world enterprise, best accomplished not necessarily by using elaborate instruments but by encouraging people "to use their two eyes and brains." Searching for a "lie zone" of the brain as a counterterrorism strategy, he said, is like trying to get to the moon by climbing a tree. It feels as if you're getting somewhere because you're moving higher and higher. But then you get to the top of the tree, and there's nowhere else to go, and the moon is still hundreds of thousands of miles away. Better to have stayed on the ground and really figured out the problem before setting off on a path that looks like progress but is really nothing more than motion. Better, in this case, to discover what deception looks like in the brain by breaking it down into progressively smaller elements, no matter how artificial the setup and how tedious the process, before introducing a lie-detection device that doesn't really get you where you want to go."
"Kosslyn remains skeptical about the brain-mapping enterprise as a whole. "If I'm right, and deception turns out to be not just one thing, we need to start pulling the bird apart by its joints and looking at the underlying systems involved," he said. A true understanding of deception requires a fuller knowledge of functions like memory, perception and visual imagery, he said, aspects of neuroscience investigations not directly related to deception at all. In Kosslyn's view, brain mapping and lie detection are two different things. The first is an academic exercise that might reveal some basic information about how the brain works, not only during lying but
also during other high-level tasks; it uses whatever technology is available in the sophisticated
neurophysiology lab. The second is a real-world enterprise, best accomplished not necessarily by using elaborate instruments but by encouraging people "to use their two eyes and brains." Searching for a "lie zone" of the brain as a counterterrorism strategy, he said, is like trying to get to the moon by climbing a tree. It feels as if you're getting somewhere because you're moving higher and higher. But then you get to the top of the tree, and there's nowhere else to go, and the moon is still hundreds of thousands of miles away. Better to have stayed on the ground and really figured out the problem before setting off on a path that looks like progress but is really nothing more than motion. Better, in this case, to discover what deception looks like in the brain by breaking it down into progressively smaller elements, no matter how artificial the setup and how tedious the process, before introducing a lie-detection device that doesn't really get you where you want to go."
Blog Categories:
attention/perception,
morality,
psychology,
technology
Imaging the person in the brain....
A NYTimes article by Benedict Carey notes that the brain has become a pop star. Several major articles are appearing every month using brain imaging techniques to show changes in the activities of specific brain areas associated with such things as partisan thinking, schadenfreude, and what happens when a happily married woman's hand is held by her husband's. Here is a partial list of this and other articles I have come upon, with links to some original articles and reviews:
Holding hands calming jittery nerves
Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the brain, measured by the Stroop test, correlating with decreased anterior cingulate cortex activity.
Schadenfreude: Volunteers play an economic game with confederates who play fairly or unfairly. The same volunteers observed these confederates receiving pain. Empathy-related activation (i.e. mirroring the observed pain) in pain-related brain areas (fronto-ionsular and anterior cingulate cortices) was reduced in men but not women when the unfair confederate received pain!
Imagining the politically partisan brain as it unconsciously rejects unwanted input (example: a republicans hearing factual data on mistakes made by George Bush)
Brain activity associated with expectancy-enhanced placebo analgesia. (Journal of Neuroscience)
Holding hands calming jittery nerves
Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the brain, measured by the Stroop test, correlating with decreased anterior cingulate cortex activity.
Schadenfreude: Volunteers play an economic game with confederates who play fairly or unfairly. The same volunteers observed these confederates receiving pain. Empathy-related activation (i.e. mirroring the observed pain) in pain-related brain areas (fronto-ionsular and anterior cingulate cortices) was reduced in men but not women when the unfair confederate received pain!
Imagining the politically partisan brain as it unconsciously rejects unwanted input (example: a republicans hearing factual data on mistakes made by George Bush)
Brain activity associated with expectancy-enhanced placebo analgesia. (Journal of Neuroscience)
Blog Categories:
culture/politics,
psychology,
social cognition
Monday, February 13, 2006
The Trust and Caring Hormones
Oxytocin and vasopressin, made in the pituitary gland, turn out to be multi-purpose hormones, not just for giving milk and water balance. They are central in promoting social bonding behavior in rats and monkey, and now apparently also in humans. . Giving people a nasal spray of oxytocin raises their trust, as tested in a game devised by Kosfeld et al. They show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. Rather, it specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. The results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of prosocial approach behavior.
Oxytocin levels normally rise during physical interaction of children and their mothers. Seth Pollack has shown that this rise is not observed in children that have been neglected in Eastern European orphanages and then adopted by parents in the United States. These children have difficultly forming social relationships, even after being adopted into loving families, apparently because the oxytocin system has not developed to give a positive feeling about social interactions.
Oxytocin levels normally rise during physical interaction of children and their mothers. Seth Pollack has shown that this rise is not observed in children that have been neglected in Eastern European orphanages and then adopted by parents in the United States. These children have difficultly forming social relationships, even after being adopted into loving families, apparently because the oxytocin system has not developed to give a positive feeling about social interactions.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Language influences perception in left, but not right, hemisphere
See "Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left."
(note: right visual field is processed by left, i.e. language, hemisphere; left visual field projects to the right, i.e. whole gestalt and emotions, hemisphere.)
Abstract: The question of whether language affects perception has been debated largely on the basis of cross-language data, without considering the functional organization of the brain. The nature of this neural organization predicts that, if language affects perception, it should do so more in the right visual field than in the left visual field, an idea unexamined in the debate. Here, we find support for this proposal in lateralized color discrimination tasks. Reaction times to targets in the right visual field were faster when the target and distractor colors had different names; in contrast, reaction times to targets in the left visual field were not affected by the names of the target and distractor colors. Moreover, this pattern was disrupted when participants performed a secondary task that engaged verbal working memory but not a task making comparable demands on spatial working memory. It appears that people view the right (but not the left) half of their visual world through the lens of their native language, providing an unexpected resolution to the language-and-thought debate.
(note: right visual field is processed by left, i.e. language, hemisphere; left visual field projects to the right, i.e. whole gestalt and emotions, hemisphere.)
Abstract: The question of whether language affects perception has been debated largely on the basis of cross-language data, without considering the functional organization of the brain. The nature of this neural organization predicts that, if language affects perception, it should do so more in the right visual field than in the left visual field, an idea unexamined in the debate. Here, we find support for this proposal in lateralized color discrimination tasks. Reaction times to targets in the right visual field were faster when the target and distractor colors had different names; in contrast, reaction times to targets in the left visual field were not affected by the names of the target and distractor colors. Moreover, this pattern was disrupted when participants performed a secondary task that engaged verbal working memory but not a task making comparable demands on spatial working memory. It appears that people view the right (but not the left) half of their visual world through the lens of their native language, providing an unexpected resolution to the language-and-thought debate.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Replace religions with contemplative science?
From the Mind and Life Institute web site:
Huffington Post.com recently posted an article about a silent meditation retreat recently held in Barre, Massachusetts. The retreat, sponsored by the Insight Meditation Society and the Mind and Life Institute, was specifically designed for the scientific community: physicists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and clinicians. Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith", wrote the article, "A Contemplative Science," to chronicle his experience as a participant at the retreat.
Harris poses the premise that the retreat "could mark the beginning of a discourse on ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by dogma and cultural prejudice as the discourses of physics, biology, and chemistry." Since more retreats for scientists are planned, Harris further says, "we could be witnessing the birth of a contemplative science."
Huffington Post.com recently posted an article about a silent meditation retreat recently held in Barre, Massachusetts. The retreat, sponsored by the Insight Meditation Society and the Mind and Life Institute, was specifically designed for the scientific community: physicists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and clinicians. Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith", wrote the article, "A Contemplative Science," to chronicle his experience as a participant at the retreat.
Harris poses the premise that the retreat "could mark the beginning of a discourse on ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by dogma and cultural prejudice as the discourses of physics, biology, and chemistry." Since more retreats for scientists are planned, Harris further says, "we could be witnessing the birth of a contemplative science."
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