Suppressing memory of trauma causes forgetting of other memories.

An interesting article from Hulbert et.al. on how suppressing memory of a trauma also causes forgetting of unrelated experiences in the period surrounding the trauma.:

Hippocampal damage profoundly disrupts the ability to store new memories of life events. Amnesic windows might also occur in healthy people due to disturbed hippocampal function arising during mental processes that systemically reduce hippocampal activity. Intentionally suppressing memory retrieval (retrieval stopping) reduces hippocampal activity via control mechanisms mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex. Here we show that when people suppress retrieval given a reminder of an unwanted memory, they are considerably more likely to forget unrelated experiences from periods surrounding suppression. This amnesic shadow follows a dose-response function, becomes more pronounced after practice suppressing retrieval, exhibits characteristics indicating disturbed hippocampal function, and is predicted by reduced hippocampal activity. These findings indicate that stopping retrieval engages a suppression mechanism that broadly compromises hippocampal processes and that hippocampal stabilization processes can be interrupted strategically. Cognitively triggered amnesia constitutes an unrecognized forgetting process that may account for otherwise unexplained memory lapses following trauma.

Vasopressin increases human risky cooperative behavior

From Brunnlieb et al.:

Significance

Most forms of cooperative behavior take place in a mutually beneficial context where cooperation is risky as its success depends on unknown actions of others. In two pharmacological experiments, we show that intranasal administration of arginine vasopressin (AVP), a hormone that regulates mammalian social behaviors such as monogamy and aggression, increases humans’ tendency to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation. Several control tasks ruled out that AVP’s effects were driven by increased willingness to bare risks in the absence of social context, beliefs about the actions of one’s partner, or altruistic concerns. Our findings provide novel causal evidence for a biological factor underlying cooperation and are in accord with previous findings that cooperation is intrinsically rewarding for humans.

Abstract

The history of humankind is an epic of cooperation, which is ubiquitous across societies and increasing in scale. Much human cooperation occurs where it is risky to cooperate for mutual benefit because successful cooperation depends on a sufficient level of cooperation by others. Here we show that arginine vasopressin (AVP), a neuropeptide that mediates complex mammalian social behaviors such as pair bonding, social recognition and aggression causally increases humans’ willingness to engage in risky, mutually beneficial cooperation. In two double-blind experiments, male participants received either AVP or placebo intranasally and made decisions with financial consequences in the “Stag hunt” cooperation game. AVP increases humans’ willingness to cooperate. That increase is not due to an increase in the general willingness to bear risks or to altruistically help others. Using functional brain imaging, we show that, when subjects make the risky Stag choice, AVP down-regulates the BOLD signal in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a risk-integration region, and increases the left dlPFC functional connectivity with the ventral pallidum, an AVP receptor-rich region previously associated with AVP-mediated social reward processing in mammals. These findings show a previously unidentified causal role for AVP in social approach behavior in humans, as established by animal research.

Pictures of green spaces make you happier.

Reynolds points to work by van den Berg et al. showing that viewing pictures of green versus built urban areas enhances parasympathetic nervous system activity that is calming and restorative. This results are consonant with those obtained by a Stanford study on the effects of a brief nature experience on rumination, and also with discussions of "blue mind" (cf. calming effect of blue water) versus "red mind."

This laboratory study explored buffering and recovery effects of viewing urban green and built spaces on autonomic nervous system activity. Forty-six students viewed photos of green and built spaces immediately following, and preceding acute stress induction. Simultaneously recorded electrocardiogram and impedance cardiogram signal was used to derive respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP), indicators of respectively parasympathetic and sympathetic activity. The findings provide support for greater recovery after viewing green scenes, as marked by a stronger increase in RSA as a marker of parasympathetic activity. There were no indications for greater recovery after viewing green scenes in PEP as a marker of sympathetic activity, and there were also no indications of greater buffering effects of green space in neither RSA nor PEP. Overall, our findings are consistent with a predominant role of the parasympathetic nervous system in restorative effects of viewing green space.

Rachmaninoff Morceaux de fantasie Op. 3, No. 4, Polichinelle

This is the last of the pieces from my recent recitals that I want to pass on to readers - a robust beginning for a Monday morning!

Anxiety suppresses prefrontal cortex decision ability.

Interesting work from Park et al.:

A debilitating aspect of anxiety is its impact on decision making and flexible control of behavior. These cognitive constructs depend on proper functioning of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Understanding how anxiety affects PFC encoding of cognitive events is of great clinical and evolutionary significance. Using a clinically valid experimental model, we find that, under anxiety, decision making may be skewed by salient and conflicting environmental stimuli at the expense of flexible top-down guided choices. We also find that anxiety suppresses spontaneous activity of PFC neurons, and weakens encoding of task rules by dorsomedial PFC neurons. These data provide a neuronal encoding scheme for how anxiety disengages PFC during decision making.

Impatience, aging, and leukocyte telomere length.

Yim et al. note in young college volunteers a correlation between a chemical marker of biological aging (leukocyte telomere length, abbr. LTL) and impatience (delay discounting). The wording of the abstract flirts with conflating correlations with causes, and directions of implied causes is not clear - does impatience causes cellular aging or does cellular aging cause impatience?  People with shorter telomeres might be more impatient because they are not going to be around as long?   (Or, do we have  a correlation as spurious as that noted between mortgage loan rates and sunspot frequency in the 1950's? Let the reader decide... ).

Significance

This paper makes a singular contribution to understanding the association between biological aging indexed by leukocyte telomeres length (LTL) and delay discounting measured in an incentivized behavioral economic task. In a large group of young, healthy undergraduates, steeper delay discounting is significantly associated with shorter LTL, while controlling for risk attitude and health-related behaviors. Notably, we found that delay discounting and risk attitude—two fundamental determinants of economic preferences—are independently associated with LTL. Moreover, for the first time to our knowledge, the effects of well-studied oxytocin and estrogen receptor polymorphisms are shown to specifically moderate the impact of impatience on LTL. Our work suggests a path to integrate behavioral economic methodology to supposed biological mechanisms associated with health outcomes. 

Abstract 

In a graying world, there is an increasing interest in correlates of aging, especially those found in early life. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level, but little is known regarding its link with poor decision making that often entails being overly impatient. Here we investigate the relationship between LTL and the degree of impatience, which is measured in the laboratory using an incentivized delay discounting task. In a sample of 1,158 Han Chinese undergraduates, we observe that steeper delay discounting, indexing higher degree of impatience, is negatively associated with LTL. The relationship is robust after controlling for health-related variables, as well as risk attitude—another important determinant of decision making. LTL in females is more sensitive to impatience than in males. We then asked if genes possibly modulate the effect of impatient behavior on LTL. The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphism rs53576, which has figured prominently in investigations of social cognition and psychological resources, and the estrogen receptor β gene (ESR2) polymorphism rs2978381, one of two gonadal sex hormone genes, significantly mitigate the negative effect of impatience on cellular aging in females. The current results contribute to understanding the relationship between preferences in decision making, particularly impatience, and cellular aging, for the first time to our knowledge. Notably, oxytocin and estrogen receptor polymorphisms temper accelerated cellular aging in young females who tend to make impatient choices.

Political Substance Abuse: Donald Trump in Florida

I have to pass this on.

Seasonality in human cognitive brain responses

A brief review in PNAS points to an article by Meyer et.al.:

Mood changes have been linked to seasonality, but little is known about how other human brain functions may vary according to the seasons. Christelle Meyer et al. measured the cognitive brain function of 28 volunteers at different times of the year. For each testing period, each participant spent 5 days in the laboratory, devoid of seasonal cues, such as daylight, and without access to the external world. At the end of the 5-day period, the authors used functional MRI to assess sustained attention and higher executive function in two separate tasks. Performance on both tasks remained constant, but the brain resources used to complete each task changed with the seasons. Brain activity related to sustained attention peaked in June near the summer solstice and was lowest near the winter solstice. In contrast, working memory-related brain activity, a higher-order task, peaked in fall and was lower near the spring equinox. The authors report that these results did not correlate with endocrine measures, such as melatonin, or neurophysiological measures of alertness and sleep. According to the authors, in addition to daily circadian rhythms, certain brain functions may be more seasonal than previously appreciated and that seasonal rhythmicity may be specific to the cognitive process.

Seasonal variations in brain responses to two cognitive tasks, where the black lines represent the mean values.

Rachmaninoff Morceaux de fantasie Op. 3 No. 1 Elegie

I continue to pass on a few of the pieces done at my recent piano recitals.

 

Our brains remember the good stuff.

Anderson et al. show how our brains are attracted to items that have pleased us in the past, even if they are no longer relevant. People in a study were asked to look at a computer screen filled with colored objects and find the red and green ones, They received a small amount of money for each red or green object found. On the next day, the subjects were asked to find certain shapes on the screen, the color being irrelevant. Even so, when a red object appeared it captured attention, and PET brain imaging showed dopamine release in the ventral striatum, which plays a role in reward learning. Here is their technical abstract:

Highlights
•We examined the neural correlates of value-based attention using PET
•Previously reward-associated stimuli involuntary captured attention as distractors
•Such attentional capture was predicted by dopamine release in the dorsal striatum
•Our findings elucidate the neurochemical basis of value-based distraction

Summary
Reward learning gives rise to strong attentional biases. Stimuli previously associated with reward automatically capture visual attention regardless of intention. Dopamine signaling within the ventral striatum plays an important role in reward learning, representing the expected reward initiated by a cue. How dopamine and the striatum may be involved in maintaining behaviors that have been shaped by reward learning, even after reward expectancies have changed, is less well understood. Nonspecific measures of brain activity have implicated the striatum in value-based attention. However, the neurochemical mechanisms underlying the attentional priority of learned reward cues remain unexplored. Here, we investigated the contribution of dopamine to value-based attention using positron emission tomography (PET) with [11C]raclopride. We show that, in the explicit absence of reward, the magnitude of attentional capture by previously reward-associated but currently task-irrelevant distractors is correlated across individuals with changes in available D2/D3 dopamine receptors (presumably due to intrasynaptic dopamine) linked to distractor processing within the right caudate and posterior putamen. Our findings provide direct evidence linking dopamine signaling within the striatum to the involuntary orienting of attention, and specifically to the attention-grabbing quality of learned reward cues. These findings also shed light on the neurochemical basis of individual susceptibility to value-driven attentional capture, which is known to play a role in addiction. More broadly, the present study highlights the value and feasibility of using PET to relate changes in the release of a neurotransmitter to learning-dependent changes in healthy adults.

Brain games and driving safely.

I've done a number of posts on brain games (cf. here, here, and here) and their critics. When I overcome my lassitude and occasionally return to dink with one of the BrainHQ games, I am struck by at least temporary improvements in the cognitive activity being refined, particularly with the vision exercises dealing with useful field of view, contrast sensitivity, etc. The exercise called Double Decision seems to me especially effective. I notice an effect on my driving after playing it. I thought I would pass on this BrainHQ web page on research on BrainHQ exercises. Their claim is that the studies have shown that after training, drivers on average:

-Make 38% fewer dangerous driving maneuvers
-Can stop 22 feet sooner when driving 55 miles per hour
-Feel more confident driving in difficult conditions (such as at night, in bad weather, or in new places)
-Cut their at-fault crash risk by 48%
-Keep their license later in life

Wearing a bike helmet increases risk taking.

From Gamble and Walker:

Humans adapt their risk-taking behavior on the basis of perceptions of safety; this risk-compensation phenomenon is typified by people taking increased risks when using protective equipment. Existing studies have looked at people who know they are using safety equipment and have specifically focused on changes in behaviors for which that equipment might reduce risk. Here, we demonstrated that risk taking increases in people who are not explicitly aware they are wearing protective equipment; furthermore, this happens for behaviors that could not be made safer by that equipment. In a controlled study in which a helmet, compared with a baseball cap, was used as the head mount for an eye tracker, participants scored significantly higher on laboratory measures of both risk taking and sensation seeking. This happened despite there being no risk for the helmet to ameliorate and despite it being introduced purely as an eye tracker. The results suggest that unconscious activation of safety-related concepts primes globally increased risk propensity.

Brahms Waltzes Op. 39, Nos. 1,13,14

Recorded on my Steinway B, now in my Fort Lauderdale condo. I did this piece in recitals in Madison WI and Fort Lauderdale in the past 6 months, and now have made a good quality video recording for my youtube channel. I plan to do this with several of the pieces played at the recitals.


The first of the waltzes has a very robust opening that always brings back memories of my listening to a Saturday morning radio program produced by KTBC in Austin Texas, that invited students taking music lessons to perform a piece, which I dutifully did when I was 12. The program’s opening music was the first of these Brahms waltzes, and I couldn’t imagine ever being able to play something that sounded so difficult.

Stephen Wolfram on A.I. and the future of civilization

Some clips from a Wolfram discussion (well worth reading) that notes the limits of doing things with machines...

The machine is able to execute things, but something or someone has to define what its goals should be and what it's trying to execute.

What makes us different from all these things? What makes us different is the particulars of our history, which gives us our notions of purpose and goals. That's a long way of saying when we have the box on the desk that thinks as well as any brain does, the thing it doesn't have, intrinsically, is the goals and purposes that we have. Those are defined by our particulars—our particular biology, our particular psychology, our particular cultural history.

The thing we have to think about as we think about the future of these things is the goals. That's what humans contribute, that's what our civilization contributes—execution of those goals; that's what we can increasingly automate. We've been automating it for thousands of years. We will succeed in having very good automation of those goals. I've spent some significant part of my life building technology to essentially go from a human concept of a goal to something that gets done in the world.

Repeated social defeat causes neuroinflammation and memory impairment.

I pass on the significance statement from McKim et al., the link gives the more technical abstract.

Repeated exposure to stress alters the homeostatic environment of the brain, giving rise to various cognitive and mood disorders that impair everyday functioning and overall quality of life. The brain, previously thought of as an immune-privileged organ, is now known to communicate extensively with the peripheral immune system. This brain–body communication plays a significant role in various stress-induced inflammatory conditions, also characterized by psychological impairments. Findings from this study implicate neuroimmune activation rather than impaired neurogenesis in stress-induced cognitive deficits. This idea opens up possibilities for novel immune interventions in the treatment of cognitive and mood disturbances, while also adding to the complexity surrounding the functional implications of adult neurogenesis.

Punishment of others: decreased by status in the West, increased in the East

An interesting commentary from Kuwabara et al.:

In the experiments reported here, we integrated work on hierarchy, culture, and the enforcement of group cooperation by examining patterns of punishment. Studies in Western contexts have shown that having high status can temper acts of dominance, suggesting that high status may decrease punishment by the powerful. We predicted that high status would have the opposite effect in Asian cultures because vertical collectivism permits the use of dominance to reinforce the existing hierarchical order. Across two experiments, having high status decreased punishment by American participants but increased punishment by Chinese and Indian participants. Moreover, within each culture, the effect of status on punishment was mediated by feelings of being respected. A final experiment found differential effects of status on punishment imposed by Asian Americans depending on whether their Asian or American identity was activated. Analyzing enforcement through the lens of hierarchy and culture adds insight into the vexing puzzle of when and why people engage in punishment.

More on clever crows - they learn shell games.

Chopin Trois Eccossaises

Recorded on my Steinway B, now in my Fort Lauderdale condo. I did this piece in recitals in Madison WI and Fort Lauderdale in the past 6 months, and now have made a good quality video recording for my youtube channel. I plan to do this with several of the pieces played at the recitals.

New nerve cells in the brain generated best by sustained aerobic exercise

Nokia et al. show, in rats, that aerobic exercise is much more effective than high-intensity interval training or resistance training in enhancing generation of new nerve cells in the hippocampus of the brain.

Key points

Aerobic exercise such as running enhances adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN) in rodents. 

Little is known about the effects of high-intensity interval training (HIT) or of purely anaerobic resistance training on AHN. 

Here, compared to a sedentary lifestyle, we report a very modest effect of HIT and no effect of resistance training on AHN in adult male rats. 

We find most AHN in rats that were selectively bred for an innately high response to aerobic exercise that also run voluntarily and - increase maximum running capacity. 

Our results confirm that sustained aerobic exercise is key in improving AHN.

Abstract

Aerobic exercise, such as running, has positive effects on brain structure and function, for example, adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN) and learning. Whether high-intensity interval training (HIT), referring to alternating short bouts of very intense anaerobic exercise with recovery periods, or anaerobic resistance training (RT) has similar effects on AHN is unclear. In addition, individual genetic variation in the overall response to physical exercise likely plays a part in the effects of exercise on AHN but is less studied. Recently, we developed polygenic rat models that gain differentially for running capacity in response to aerobic treadmill training. Here we subjected these Low Response Trainer (LRT) and High Response Trainer (HRT) adult male rats to various forms of physical exercise for 6 to 8 weeks and examined its effects on AHN. Compared to sedentary animals, the highest number of doublecortin-positive hippocampal cells was observed in HRT rats that ran voluntarily on a running wheel while HIT on the treadmill had a smaller, statistically non-significant effect on AHN. AHN was elevated in both LRT and HRT rats that endurance trained on a treadmill compared to those that performed RT by climbing a vertical ladder with weights, despite their significant gain in strength. Furthermore, RT had no effect on proliferation (Ki67), maturation (doublecortin) or survival (BrdU) of new adult-born hippocampal neurons in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. Our results suggest physical exercise promotes AHN most if it is aerobic and sustained, and especially when accompanied by a heightened genetic predisposition for response to physical exercise.

This is too good not to pass on.....

If all the world's a stage, do we have a true self?

My reading of Irving Goffman's classic "The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life" in the early 1970's was the beginning of my going beyond my laboratory research on the molecules of vision to start a parallel line of study and reading on how our minds work (see dericbownds.net). I recently came across this engaging very brief video on Goffman's ideas, narrated by Stephen Fry, and thought I would pass it on. (This is one of the items from the BBC's excellent "A History of Ideas" series.)

"Well-being" as a practiced skill

I thought I would pass on from the mindful.org website yet another piece featuring my Wisconsin colleague Richie Davidson, noting his presentation on "Four Constituents of Well-Being," namely:

Resilience - rapid recovery from shit happening
Outlook -savoring positive, seeing good in people
Attention - a wandering mind is an unhappy mind
Generosity - kindness to oneself and others

The article has numerous links to research on good stuff which offers a temporary relief from the dystopian input of our entertainment and news overlords.

Getting rid of old cells extends lifespan of mice and ameliorates age-related diseases.

Baker et al. show that getting rid of cells that have entered an irreversible senescent state expands the lifespan of mice and ameliorates some age-related disease processes. Clips from the Gil and Withers summary of the work:

More than 50 years ago, it was suggested that ageing is linked to a state of arrested cell growth known as senescence, but this link has remained unproven, and the molecular basis for organismal ageing has been elusive...Senescence is a cellular state in which cells permanently stop dividing. It is mediated by two signalling pathways — the p53 pathway and the p16Ink4a–Rb pathway. Senescent cells secrete a complex cocktail of factors called the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), which includes matrix metalloproteinases (enzymes that break down the extracellular matrix) and pro-inflammatory signalling molecules. Such cells have been shown to accumulate during ageing, and their presence has been associated with a broad range of diseases, including diabetes, kidney disease and many cancers.

Baker et al. demonstrate that the removal of senescent cells does indeed delay ageing and increase healthy lifespan (healthspan)...using a genetically engineered mouse model that they had developed previously4, called INK–ATTAC. These mice produce a caspase enzyme specifically in cells that express the p16Ink4a gene. The caspase can be activated by the injection of a drug; the activated caspase then triggers cell death, eliminating senescent cells in which it is expressed...[They] found that the elimination of p16Ink4a-expressing cells increased lifespan, regardless of the sex or strain of mouse examined, and ameliorated a range of age-dependent, disease-related abnormalities, including kidney dysfunction and abnormalities in heart and fat tissue.

A brain circuit for loneliness.

Tye and colleagues find a neural circuit at the base of mouse brains that drives loneliness-like behaviors and drives the animals to seek company. From a review:

...connections between neurons in the circuit were stronger in mice that were separated from their cage mates than in those that were grouped together. Those neurons then fired more frequently when isolated mice were put in a cage with an unfamiliar mouse, compared with animals that had not been isolated. When the scientists inhibited the neurons with light, the isolated mice showed less interest in the stranger. Activating those neurons caused the animals to actively seek other mice.

Here is the abstract for the work:

Highlights

•Dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) dopamine neurons are sensitive to acute social isolation 

•DRN dopamine neurons release dopamine and glutamate in downstream structures 

•Optical activation induces, whereas inhibition suppresses, a “loneliness-like” state 

•Social rank predicts the behavioral effect induced by optical manipulations

Summary

The motivation to seek social contact may arise from either positive or negative emotional states, as social interaction can be rewarding and social isolation can be aversive. While ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons may mediate social reward, a cellular substrate for the negative affective state of loneliness has remained elusive. Here, we identify a functional role for DA neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), in which we observe synaptic changes following acute social isolation. DRN DA neurons show increased activity upon social contact following isolation, revealed by in vivo calcium imaging. Optogenetic activation of DRN DA neurons increases social preference but causes place avoidance. Furthermore, these neurons are necessary for promoting rebound sociability following an acute period of isolation. Finally, the degree to which these neurons modulate behavior is predicted by social rank, together supporting a role for DRN dopamine neurons in mediating a loneliness-like state.

Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior.

Interesting observations from Schurr and Ritov:

Significance

Competition is prevalent. People often resort to unethical means to win (e.g., the recent Volkswagen scandal). Not surprisingly, competition is central to the study of economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and more. Although we know much about contestants’ behavior before and during competitions, we know little about contestants’ behavior after the competition has ended. Connecting postcompetition behaviors with preceding competition experience, we find that after a competition is over winners behave more dishonestly than losers in an unrelated subsequent task. Furthermore, the subsequent unethical behavior effect seems to depend on winning, rather than on mere success. Providing insight into the issue is important in gaining understanding of how unethical behavior may cascade from exposure to competitive settings.

Abstract

Winning a competition engenders subsequent unrelated unethical behavior. Five studies reveal that after a competition has taken place winners behave more dishonestly than competition losers. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that winning a competition increases the likelihood of winners to steal money from their counterparts in a subsequent unrelated task. Studies 3a and 3b demonstrate that the effect holds only when winning means performing better than others (i.e., determined in reference to others) but not when success is determined by chance or in reference to a personal goal. Finally, study 4 demonstrates that a possible mechanism underlying the effect is an enhanced sense of entitlement among competition winners.

Abnormal cortical folding correlates with trait anxiety.

From Miskovich et al. at the Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee :

Dispositional anxiety is a stable personality trait that is a key risk factor for internalizing disorders, and understanding the neural correlates of trait anxiety may help us better understand the development of these disorders. Abnormal cortical folding is thought to reflect differences in cortical connectivity occurring during brain development. Therefore, assessing gyrification may advance understanding of cortical development and organization associated with trait anxiety. Previous literature has revealed structural abnormalities in trait anxiety and related disorders, but no study to our knowledge has examined gyrification in trait anxiety. We utilized a relatively novel measure, the local gyrification index (LGI), to explore differences in gyrification as a function of trait anxiety. We obtained structural MRI scans using a 3T magnetic resonance scanner on 113 young adults. Results indicated a negative correlation between trait anxiety and LGI in the left superior parietal cortex, specifically the precuneus, reflecting less cortical complexity among those high on trait anxiety. Our findings suggest that aberrations in cortical gyrification in a key region of the default mode network is a correlate of trait anxiety and may reflect disrupted local parietal connectivity.

Inflated and pial surface maps of the left hemisphere demonstrating decreased gyrification in the precuneus as a function of trait anxiety.There was no relationship between anxiety and gyrification in the right hemisphere. Images on the left depict the medial view of the left hemisphere. Images on the right are a view from the top of the right hemisphere and are tilted 30 degrees to provide a better angle for viewing the cluster extent.

Moralistic gods enhance sociality.

Purzycki et al. combine laboratory experiments, cross-cultural fieldwork, and analysis of the historical record to propose that belief in judgmental deities was key to the cooperation needed to build and sustain large, complex societies.

Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has dramatically expanded. This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of prosociality because well-studied mechanisms of cooperation based on genetic relatedness, reciprocity and partner choice falter as people increasingly engage in fleeting transactions with genetically unrelated strangers in large anonymous groups. To explain this rapid expansion of prosociality, researchers have proposed several mechanisms. Here we focus on one key hypothesis: cognitive representations of gods as increasingly knowledgeable and punitive, and who sanction violators of interpersonal social norms, foster and sustain the expansion of cooperation, trust and fairness towards co-religionist strangers. We tested this hypothesis using extensive ethnographic interviews and two behavioural games designed to measure impartial rule-following among people (n = 591, observations = 35,400) from eight diverse communities from around the world: (1) inland Tanna, Vanuatu; (2) coastal Tanna, Vanuatu; (3) Yasawa, Fiji; (4) Lovu, Fiji; (5) Pesqueiro, Brazil; (6) Pointe aux Piments, Mauritius; (7) the Tyva Republic (Siberia), Russia; and (8) Hadzaland, Tanzania. Participants reported adherence to a wide array of world religious traditions including Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as notably diverse local traditions, including animism and ancestor worship. Holding a range of relevant variables constant, the higher participants rated their moralistic gods as punitive and knowledgeable about human thoughts and actions, the more coins they allocated to geographically distant co-religionist strangers relative to both themselves and local co-religionists. Our results support the hypothesis that beliefs in moralistic, punitive and knowing gods increase impartial behaviour towards distant co-religionists, and therefore can contribute to the expansion of prosociality.

Creative cognition and brain network dynamics.

Beaty et al. do a review that notes trends in recent neuroimaging studies suggesting that creative cognition involves increased cooperation of the default and executive control networks of our brain (Motivated readers can obtain the article from me.)

Several recent neuroimaging studies have found that creative cognition involves increased cooperation of the default and executive control networks, brain systems linked to self-generated thought and cognitive control.

Default–control network interactions occur during cognitive tasks that involve the generation and evaluation of creative ideas. This pattern of brain network connectivity has been reported across domain-general creative problem solving (e.g., divergent thinking) and domain-specific artistic performance (e.g., poetry composition, musical improvisation, and visual art production).

Default network activity during creative cognition appears to reflect the spontaneous generation of candidate ideas, or potentially useful information derived from long-term memory.

The control network may couple with the default network during idea generation or evaluation to constrain cognition to meet specific task goals.

Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Connectivity During Musical Improvisation. The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC; green) shows differential connectivity as a function of task goals during musical improvisation in professional pianists. (A) Functional connectivity associated with the goal of using specific sets of piano keys; brain maps show increased coupling between the right DLPFC and motor regions (yellow, e.g., dorsal pre-motor area and the pre-supplementary motor area). (B) Functional connectivity associated with the goal of expressing specific emotions; brain maps show increased coupling between the right DLPFC and default network regions [blue, e.g., medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL)].

A mindfulness meditation intervention enhances connectivity of brain executive and default modes and lowers inflammation markers.

Creswell et al. recruited 35 stressed-out adult job-seekers, getting half to participate in an intensive three-day mindfulness meditation retreat while the other half completed a three day relaxation retreat program without the mindfulness component. Brain scans and blood samples were obtained before and four months after the program. The result was that mindfulness meditation correlated with reduced blood levels of interleukin-6, a marker of stress and inflammation, and increased functional connectivity between the participants’ resting default mode network and areas in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex important to attention and executive control. Neither of these changes were seen in participants who received only the relaxation training. The suggestion is that the brain changes cause the decrease in inflammatory markers. Here are some clips of context from their introduction:

Mindfulness meditation training programs, which train receptive attention and awareness to one’s present moment experience, have been shown to improve a broad range of stress-related psychiatric and physical health outcomes in initial randomized controlled trials...recent well-controlled studies indicate that mindfulness meditation training may reduce markers of inflammation (C Reactive Protein, Interleukin-6 (IL-6), neurogenic inflammation) in stressed individuals.

One possibility is that mindfulness meditation training alters resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of brain networks implicated in mind wandering (the Default Mode Network, DMN) and executive control (the Executive Control Network, EC), which in turn improves emotion regulation, stress resilience, and stress-related health outcomes in at-risk patient populations.... a cross-sectional study (N=25) showed that advanced mindfulness meditation practitioners had increased functional connectivity of a key hub in the default mode network (DMN) (i.e., posterior cingulate cortex) with regions considered to be important in top down executive control (EC) (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal ACC), both at rest and during a guided mindfulness meditation practice. This coupling of one’s DMN at rest with regions of the EC network may be important for emotion regulation and stress resilience effects, as greater activation and functional connectivity of EC regions, such as the dlPFC, is associated with reduced pain, negative affect, and stress.

Here we provide the first experimental test of whether an intensive 3-day mindfulness meditation training intervention (relative to a relaxation training intervention) alters DMN connectivity and circulating IL-6 in a high stress unemployed job-seeking community sample. IL-6 is an established clinical health biomarker that is elevated in high stress populations and is associated with elevated cardiovascular disease and mortality risk... unemployment is a well-known chronic stressor that can foster a loss of control, helplessness, and financial setbacks, and unemployment is associated with elevated inflammation. Building on initial cross-sectional evidence (17), we hypothesized that mindfulness meditation training would increase rsFC between the DMN and regions implicated in attention and executive control (dlPFC and dACC). Moreover, we tested whether mindfulness meditation training (relative to relaxation training) decreased circulating IL-6 at 4-month follow up, and whether pre-post intervention increases in DMN-dlPFC rsFC mediated IL-6 improvements at 4-month follow-up.

Forming Beliefs: Why Valence Matters.

Sharot and Garrett do a review article that puts their work on how we see through rose colored glasses, mentioned in a previous MindBlog post, in perspective (Motivated readers can obtain a copy from me).

One of the most salient attributes of information is valence: whether a piece of news is good or bad. Contrary to classic learning theories, which implicitly assume beliefs are adjusted similarly regardless of valence, we review evidence suggesting that different rules and mechanisms underlie learning from desirable and undesirable information. For self-relevant beliefs this asymmetry generates a positive bias, with significant implications for individuals and society. We discuss the boundaries of this asymmetry, characterize the neural system supporting it, and describe how changes in this circuit are related to individual differences in behavior.

A neural crossroads of psychiatric illnesses as a target for therapeutic brain stimulation

I want pass on this open source article by Downar et al. which contains some useful graphics for illustrating their point about a central role for anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula in most psychiatric disorders. Here is their abstract:

Recent meta-analyses of structural and functional neuroimaging studies are converging on a collective core of brain regions affected across most psychiatric disorders, centered on the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula. These nodes correspond well to an anterior cingulo-insular (aCIN) or ‘salience’ network, and stand at a crossroads within the functional architecture of the brain, acting as a switch to deploy other major functional networks according to motivational demands and environmental constraints. Therefore, disruption of these ‘linchpin’ areas may be disproportionately disabling, even when other networks remain intact. These regions may represent promising targets for a new generation of anatomically directed brain stimulation treatments. Here, we review the potential of the psychiatric core areas as targets for therapeutic brain stimulation in psychiatric disease.

Finally...a brain area specialized for music has been found.

Norman-Haignere, Kanwisher, and McDermott have devised a new method to computationally dissect scans from functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain to reveal an area within the major crevice, or sulcus, of the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe just above the ears that responds to music (any kind of music, drumming, whistling, pop songs, rap, anything melodic or rhythmic) independent of general properties of sound like pitch, spectrotemporal modulation, and frequency. They also found an area for speech not explainable by standard acoustic features.

It is possible that music sensitivity is more ancient and fundamental to the human brain than speech perception, with speech having evolved from music.

The organization of human auditory cortex remains unresolved, due in part to the small stimulus sets common to fMRI studies and the overlap of neural populations within voxels. To address these challenges, we measured fMRI responses to 165 natural sounds and inferred canonical response profiles (“components”) whose weighted combinations explained voxel responses throughout auditory cortex. This analysis revealed six components, each with interpretable response characteristics despite being unconstrained by prior functional hypotheses. Four components embodied selectivity for particular acoustic features (frequency, spectrotemporal modulation, pitch). Two others exhibited pronounced selectivity for music and speech, respectively, and were not explainable by standard acoustic features. Anatomically, music and speech selectivity concentrated in distinct regions of non-primary auditory cortex. However, music selectivity was weak in raw voxel responses, and its detection required a decomposition method. Voxel decomposition identifies primary dimensions of response variation across natural sounds, revealing distinct cortical pathways for music and speech.

A 50 year misunderstanding of how we decide to initiate action - our intuition is valid

A commonly accepted assumption (that underlies all of the essays at dericbownds.net and many mindblog posts) is that a line of experiments starting in the early 1980s with Benjamin Libet’s work has demonstrated that our brains initiate an action 300 sec or more before our conscious ‘urge’ to move. It is as if we are ‘late’ to action because separate pathways are initiating the actual movement and our delayed ‘intention’ to move. This counterintuitive paradox has generated vigorous controversy for many years, debate of its implications regarding ‘free will’, etc.

Schurger et al. point out that the ‘readiness potential’ (RP, a slow build-up of scalp electrical potential preceding the onset of subjectively spontaneous voluntary movements ) discovered 50 years ago was presumed to reflect the consequence of decision process in the brain (‘the electro-physiological sign of planning, preparation, and initiation of volitional acts’). A new generation of experiments is now suggesting that brain activity preceding spontaneous voluntary movements (SVMs) "may reflect the ebb and flow of background neuronal noise, rather than the outcome of a specific neural event corresponding to a ‘decision’ to initiate movement... [Several studies] have converged in showing that bounded-integration processes, which involve the accumulation of noisy evidence until a decision threshold is reached, offer a coherent and plausible explanation for the apparent pre-movement build-up of neuronal activity."

SVMs rely on the same neural decision mechanism used for perceptual decisions – integration to bound – except that in this case there is no specific external sensory evidence to integrate. In particular, when actions are initiated spontaneously rather than in response to a sensory cue, the process of integration to bound is dominated by ongoing stochastic fluctuations in neural activity that influence the precise moment at which the decision threshold is reached. In this context, time locking to movement onset means time locking to crests in these temporally autocorrelated background fluctuations, which results in the appearance of a slow, nonlinear build-up in the average. This in turn gives the natural but erroneous impression of a goal-directed brain process corresponding to the ‘cerebral initiation of a spontaneous voluntary act’

The Philosophical Implications:

Many have found Libet et al.’s results so striking because they appear to clash with our commonsense view of action initiation. However, the novel interpretation of the RP that the stochastic decision model provides actually suggests a close correspondence between the two. When one forms an intention to act, one is significantly disposed to act but not yet fully committed. The commitment comes when one finally decides to act. The stochastic decision model reveals a remarkably similar picture on the neuronal level, with the decision to act being a threshold-crossing neural event that is preceded by a neural tendency toward this event.

In addition, dropping the problematic theoretical assumption that a decision to act cannot occur without being conscious also helps to dispel the apparent air of ‘paradox’ surrounding these findings. As with other types of mental occurrence, the decision to initiate an action can occur before one is aware of it. So we can identify the neural initiating event with a decision that we may become aware of only a brief instant later. All this leaves our commonsense picture largely intact.

Finally, distinguishing between the decision to act and the earlier forming of an intention fits well with the distinction between a prediction and a forecast. If our concern is merely forecasting, what is relevant is the less-committed event of an intention's forming, which we identify with the neural tendency. If our concern is prediction, we should focus on the later event of deciding, which we identify with the crossing of the threshold.

Added Note: Those interested in this vein of work might check Schultze-Kraft et al.:

In humans, spontaneous movements are often preceded by early brain signals. One such signal is the readiness potential (RP) that gradually arises within the last second preceding a movement. An important question is whether people are able to cancel movements after the elicitation of such RPs, and if so until which point in time. Here, subjects played a game where they tried to press a button to earn points in a challenge with a brain–computer interface (BCI) that had been trained to detect their RPs in real time and to emit stop signals. Our data suggest that subjects can still veto a movement even after the onset of the RP. Cancellation of movements was possible if stop signals occurred earlier than 200 ms before movement onset, thus constituting a point of no return.

Our eye movements are coupled to our heartbeats.

A fascinating finding by Ohl et al. that the darting about of our eyes (saccades) during visual search is coupled to our heart rate (the R-R interval), proving a powerful influence of body on visuomotor functioning.

ABSTRACT

During visual fixation, the eye generates microsaccades and slower components of fixational eye movements that are part of the visual processing strategy in humans. Here, we show that ongoing heartbeat is coupled to temporal rate variations in the generation of microsaccades. Using coregistration of eye recording and ECG in humans, we tested the hypothesis that microsaccade onsets are coupled to the relative phase of the R-R intervals in heartbeats. We observed significantly more microsaccades during the early phase after the R peak in the ECG. This form of coupling between heartbeat and eye movements was substantiated by the additional finding of a coupling between heart phase and motion activity in slow fixational eye movements; i.e., retinal image slip caused by physiological drift. Our findings therefore demonstrate a coupling of the oculomotor system and ongoing heartbeat, which provides further evidence for bodily influences on visuomotor functioning. 

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT

In the present study, we show that microsaccades are coupled to heartbeat. Moreover, we revealed a strong modulation of slow eye movements around the R peak in the ECG. These results suggest that heartbeat as a basic physiological signal is related to statistical modulations of fixational eye movements, in particular, the generation of microsaccades. Therefore, our findings add a new perspective on the principles underlying the generation of fixational eye movements. Importantly, our study highlights the need to record eye movements when studying the influence of heartbeat in neuroscience to avoid misinterpretation of eye-movement-related artifacts as heart-evoked modulations of neural processing.

What makes political leaders influential?

Brinke et al. examine whether politicians who ascend to influence have been driven by Aristotelian or Machiavellian values (i.e., virtue versus vice). Is political influence was to be found in virtuous practices such as temperance, courage, kindness, and humility; or, does it require force, fraud, manipulation, and strategic violence? Hmmmm....where would we place Ted Cruz and Donald Trump with regard to these qualities?

What qualities make a political leader more influential or less influential? Philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists have puzzled over this question, positing two opposing routes to political power—one driven by human virtues, such as courage and wisdom, and the other driven by vices, such as Machiavellianism and psychopathy. By coding nonverbal behaviors displayed in political speeches, we assessed the virtues and vices of 151 U.S. senators. We found that virtuous senators became more influential after they assumed leadership roles, whereas senators who displayed behaviors consistent with vices—particularly psychopathy—became no more influential or even less influential after they assumed leadership roles. Our results inform a long-standing debate about the role of morality and ethics in leadership and have important implications for electing effective government officials. Citizens would be wise to consider a candidate’s virtue in casting their votes, which might increase the likelihood that elected officials will have genuine concern for their constituents and simultaneously promote cooperation and progress in government.

Linking sustained attention to brain connectivity.

Rosenberg et al. find that strengths of a specific set of brain connections - even when estimated from resting state data collected when subjects are not carrying out any explicit task - can be used to predict a subject's attention ability with high accuracy. A large set of connections is involved during successful attention, and a different large set correlates with lack of attention.

Although attention plays a ubiquitous role in perception and cognition, researchers lack a simple way to measure a person's overall attentional abilities. Because behavioral measures are diverse and difficult to standardize, we pursued a neuromarker of an important aspect of attention, sustained attention, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. To this end, we identified functional brain networks whose strength during a sustained attention task predicted individual differences in performance. Models based on these networks generalized to previously unseen individuals, even predicting performance from resting-state connectivity alone. Furthermore, these same models predicted a clinical measure of attention—symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—from resting-state connectivity in an independent sample of children and adolescents. These results demonstrate that whole-brain functional network strength provides a broadly applicable neuromarker of sustained attention.

Functional connections predicting gradCPT performance and ADHD-RS scores. (gradCPT is a test of sustained attention and inhibition that produces a range of behavior across healthy participants, ADHD-RS is a clinical measure of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.)

Everybody's a critic. And that's how it should be.

An article with the title of this post by NYTimes movie critic A.O. Scott is well worth a read. Here are his noble closing sentiments:

...criticism remains an indispensable activity. The making of art — popular or fine, abstruse or accessible, sacred or profane — is one of the glories of our species. We are uniquely endowed with the capacity to fashion representations of the world and our experience in it, to tell stories and draw pictures, to organize sound into music and movement into dance. Just as miraculously, we have the ability, even the obligation, to judge what we have made, to argue about why we are moved, mystified, delighted or bored by any of it. At least potentially, we are all artists. And because we have the ability to recognize and respond to the creativity of others, we are all, at least potentially, critics, too.

...It’s the mission of art to free our minds, and the task of criticism to figure out what to do with that freedom. That everyone is a critic means that we are each capable of thinking against our own prejudices, of balancing skepticism with open-mindedness, of sharpening our dulled and glutted senses and battling the intellectual inertia that surrounds us. We need to put our remarkable minds to use and to pay our own experience the honor of taking it seriously.

The real culture war (the one that never ends) is between the human intellect and its equally human enemies: sloth, cliché, pretension, cant. Between creativity and conformity, between the comforts of the familiar and the shock of the new. To be a critic is to be a soldier in this fight, a defender of the life of art and a champion of the art of living.

It’s not just a job, in other words.

Fantasies of the Future

Following up on my Jan. 28 post on Schwab's book "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" I thought I would pass on some speculations in the appendix of the book on the technology shifts enabled by digital connectivity and software technologies that might "fundamentally change society by 2025" (Really? Gimme a break...).

Wearable internet

Examples: A baby tech-enabled onesie which tracks babies' breathing, body movements, sleep patterns and quality and transmits that information in real time to a smartphone app. A Ralph Lauren PoloTech shirt with silver fibers woven directly into the fabric that read heart rate and breathing depth and balance, as well as other key metrics, which are streamed to computer or smartphone via a detachable, Bluetooth-enabled black box. A sensor that collects data about multiple chemicals in body sweat. 

Implantable Technologies - Pacemakers and cochlear implants represent a beginning.

Smart tattoos and other unique chips could help with identification and location. Implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a “built-in” smart phone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brainwaves and other signals. (See "Top ten wearables soon to be in your body.")

Vision as the New Interface

Glasses are already on the market today (not just produced by Google) that can: – Allow you to freely manipulate a 3D object, enabling it to be moulded like clay – Provide all the extended live information you need when you see something, in the same way the brain functions – Prompt you with an overlay menu of the restaurant you pass by – Project picture or video on any piece of paper. (see 10 Forthcoming Augmented Reality & Smart Glasses You Can Buy.)

The internet of and for Things

It is economically feasible to connect literally anything to the internet. Intelligent sensors are already available at very competitive prices. All things will be smart and connected to the internet, enabling greater communication and new data-driven services based on increased analytics capabilities...The Ford GT has 10 million lines of computer code in it. And, see The connected home.

I am fatiguing,...the list continues with mention of smart cities, driverless cars, big data for decisions, artificial intelligence for decision making (and the decimation of current white-collar jobs), the sharing economy, 3D printing for manufacturing and health,  personalized medicine, designer humans, neurotechnologies, brain technologies.....etc.

Our digital presence.

Here is an interesting tally: Active users of social media sites compared with the populations of the world's largest countries. if social media sites were countries, Facebook would be the world’s largest country with more active accounts than there are people in China. Twitter would rank 4th with twice the “population” of the USA and Instagram would round out the Top 10.

There are ~7.4 billion people in the world,  ~43% are connected to the internet; ~4 billion, mostly in the developing world, lack internet access. Most pundits expect that by 2025, digital access will have spread to 80% of all people.

Consciousness as the product of carefully balanced chaos.

Tagliafuochi and collaborators have provided more evidence that our experience of consciousness and reality might result from a delicate balance or critical level of connectivity between brain networks in which the brain explores the maximum number of unique pathways to generate meaning. Consciousness slips away if there is too much or too little connectivity. Their abstract:

Loss of cortical integration and changes in the dynamics of electrophysiological brain signals characterize the transition from wakefulness towards unconsciousness. In this study, we arrive at a basic model explaining these observations based on the theory of phase transitions in complex systems. We studied the link between spatial and temporal correlations of large-scale brain activity recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging during wakefulness, propofol-induced sedation and loss of consciousness and during the subsequent recovery. We observed that during unconsciousness activity in frontothalamic regions exhibited a reduction of long-range temporal correlations and a departure of functional connectivity from anatomical constraints. A model of a system exhibiting a phase transition reproduced our findings, as well as the diminished sensitivity of the cortex to external perturbations during unconsciousness. This framework unifies different observations about brain activity during unconsciousness and predicts that the principles we identified are universal and independent from its causes.

Inequality and facing the future.

A recent piece by Arianna Huffington (The fourth industrial revolution meets the sleep revolution) suggests to me one aspect of yet another driver of future inequality beyond the declining share of income going to labor compared with capital. Two clear castes of people are emerging, those who can adapt psychologically to the mind-numbing complexity of the emerging digital environment by optimizing their minds and bodies (meditation, sleep, exercise, diet, etc.) and those of lower socioeconomic status who start off disadvantaged (see yesterday’s post) and find that their only mental refuge is some form of fundamentalism, a closing rather than opening of their minds (cf. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz supporters.) Given the chaos and disruption being visited on traditional political and economic arrangements by the fusion of digital, biological, and physical advances - the internet of things meeting the smart factory meeting synthetic biology - how are all humans going to be able share in an understanding and shaping of these changes in a way that keeps human beings at the center?

The neuroscience of poverty.

This open source review article by Alla Katsnelson is sobering, and worth a read. The major foci in the brain that appear to show disparities in poor children are the hippocampus and frontal lobe. I pass on this graphic illustrating the decline in total brain gray matter (nerve cell) volume in young children of middle and low socioeconomic status individuals.

The burden of obesity revisited.

A previous mindblog post has noted the obesity paradox, generated by data suggesting that fat people may live longer. Stokes and Preston,however, note an important distinction that may evaporate the apparent paradox:

Analyses of the relation between obesity and mortality typically evaluate risk with respect to weight recorded at a single point in time. As a consequence, there is generally no distinction made between nonobese individuals who were never obese and nonobese individuals who were formerly obese and lost weight. We introduce additional data on an individual’s maximum attained weight and investigate four models that represent different combinations of weight at survey and maximum weight. We use data from the 1988–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, linked to death records through 2011, to estimate parameters of these models. We find that the most successful models use data on maximum weight, and the worst-performing model uses only data on weight at survey. We show that the disparity in predictive power between these models is related to exceptionally high mortality among those who have lost weight, with the normal-weight category being particularly susceptible to distortions arising from weight loss. These distortions make overweight and obesity appear less harmful by obscuring the benefits of remaining never obese. Because most previous studies are based on body mass index at survey, it is likely that the effects of excess weight on US mortality have been consistently underestimated.

The 8 second attention span.

Wow, Egan notes that our average attention span has fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. (That makes it gratifying that the average amount of time spent by someone on this website is over 4 minutes.)

...a quote from Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft... “The true scarce commodity of the near future will be human attention.”...Putting aside Microsoft’s self-interest in promoting quick-flash digital ads with what may be junk science, there seems little doubt that our devices have rewired our brains. We think in McNugget time. The trash flows, unfiltered, along with the relevant stuff, in an eternal stream. And the last hit of dopamine only accelerates the need for another one.

You see it in the press, the obsession with mindless listicles that have all the staying power of a Popsicle. You see it in our politics, with fear-mongering slogans replacing anything that requires sustained thought. And the collapse of a fact-based democracy, where, for example, 60 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama was born in another country, has to be a byproduct of the pick-and-choose news from the buffet line of our screens.

Egan suggests that gardening and deep reading of biographies are useful antidotes.

Fourth Industrial Revolution?? Maybe not.....

Just after starting my second slog through Schwab's 'the fourth industrial revolution' noted in yesterday's post, I see Paul Krugman's review of 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth' by Robert Gordon. Gordon's magnum opus suggests that Schwab's futurism is overblown. (see also Thomas Edsall's excellent piece on the divide and debate between optimistic and pessimistic economists. Also, see this Slate article that chronicles how many times over the past 75 years the term "fourth industrial revolution" has been fetched up to describe a recent or coming advance.) Some clips from Klugman's review:

...[Gordon] has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication.

What happened between 1870 and 1940, he argues, and I would agree, is what real transformation looks like. Any claims about current progress need to be compared with that baseline to see how they measure up.

And it’s hard not to agree with him that nothing that has happened since is remotely comparable. Urban life in America on the eve of World War II was already recognizably modern; you or I could walk into a 1940s apartment, with its indoor plumbing, gas range, electric lights, refrigerator and telephone, and we’d find it basically functional. We’d be annoyed at the lack of television and Internet — but not horrified or disgusted.

By contrast, urban Americans from 1940 walking into 1870-style accommodations — which they could still do in the rural South — were indeed horrified and disgusted. Life fundamentally improved between 1870 and 1940 in a way it hasn’t since.

One of Gordon's arguments against the techno-optimists is that:

...genuinely major innovations normally bring about big changes in business practices, in what workplaces look like and how they function. And there were some changes along those lines between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s — but not much since, which is evidence for Gordon’s claim that the main impact of the I.T. revolution has already happened.

Techno-futurists would argue strongly against this, citing the rise of the sharing economy, entities like Airbnb and Uber, and changes in the workplace from hierarchical to distributed organization.

Gordon suggests that the future is all too likely to be marked by stagnant living standards for most Americans, because the effects of slowing technological progress will be reinforced by a set of “headwinds”: rising inequality, a plateau in education levels, an aging population and more.

It’s a shocking prediction for a society whose self-image, arguably its very identity, is bound up with the expectation of constant progress. And you have to wonder about the social and political consequences of another generation of stagnation or decline in working-class incomes.

Of course, Gordon could be wrong: Maybe we’re on the cusp of truly transformative change, say from artificial intelligence or radical progress in biology (which would bring their own risks). But he makes a powerful case. Perhaps the future isn’t what it used to be.

Predicting the Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Klaus Schwab, the guy who runs the annual Davos Switzerland World Economic Forum of “very important people” in the world, has generated a book with the title of this year's meeting, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution,” about a future that is both terrifying and optimistic.  Despite its gobbledegook, committee-speak, and bullet points, it provides a lot of fascinating information and is well worth a look. After doing a quick read-through, I’m starting a second more careful read and clicking through to many of the references (the kindle version is handy for this.)

The first industrial revolution spanned from about 1760 to around 1840. Triggered by the construction of railroads and the invention of the steam engine, it ushered in mechanical production. The second industrial revolution, which started in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, made mass production possible, fostered by the advent of electricity and the assembly line. The third industrial revolution began in the 1960s. It is usually called the computer or digital revolution because it was catalysed by the development of semiconductors, mainframe computing (1960s), personal computing (1970s and 80s) and the internet (1990s). Mindful of the various definitions and academic arguments used to describe the first three industrial revolutions, I believe that today we are at the beginning of a fourth industrial revolution. It began at the turn of this century and builds on the digital revolution. It is characterized by a much more ubiquitous and mobile internet, by smaller and more powerful sensors that have become cheaper, and by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

I am well aware that some academics and professionals consider the developments that I am looking at as simply a part of the third industrial revolution. Three reasons, however, underpin my conviction that a fourth and distinct revolution is underway:

Velocity: Contrary to the previous industrial revolutions, this one is evolving at an exponential rather than linear pace. This is the result of the multifaceted, deeply interconnected world we live in and the fact that new technology begets newer and ever more capable technology.

Breadth and depth: It builds on the digital revolution and combines multiple technologies that are leading to unprecedented paradigm shifts in the economy, business, society, and individually. It is not only changing the “what” and the “how” of doing things but also “who” we are.

Systems Impact: It involves the transformation of entire systems, across (and within) countries, companies, industries and society as a whole.

The ascendant candidacy of Donald J. Trump

You should check Steven Rattner's interesting commentary asking what we owe to those on the losing end of globalization:

Percent change in number of US employees in each industry, 2000 to 2015


Percent change in wages for each industry, 2009 to 2015:


Not surprisingly, the shifts shown in these graphs are ending badly politically. The 'losers' form a core of support for both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Axelrod notes:

Mr. Trump has found an audience with Americans disgruntled by the rapid, disorderly change they associate with national decline and their own uncertain prospects. Policies be damned, who better to set things right than the defiant strong man who promises by sheer force of will to make America great again?

Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent. Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive...who among the Republicans is more the antithesis of Mr. Obama than the trash-talking, authoritarian, give-no-quarter Mr. Trump?

Social relationships and biomarkers of longevity across our life span.

Yang et al. aggregate a massive amount of data from four large longitudinal surveys to show associations between social relationships physiological markers of health:

Two decades of research indicate causal associations between social relationships and mortality, but important questions remain as to how social relationships affect health, when effects emerge, and how long they last. Drawing on data from four nationally representative longitudinal samples of the US population, we implemented an innovative life course design to assess the prospective association of both structural and functional dimensions of social relationships (social integration, social support, and social strain) with objectively measured biomarkers of physical health (C-reactive protein, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index) within each life stage, including adolescence and young, middle, and late adulthood, and compare such associations across life stages. We found that a higher degree of social integration was associated with lower risk of physiological dysregulation in a dose–response manner in both early and later life. Conversely, lack of social connections was associated with vastly elevated risk in specific life stages. For example, social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same magnitude as physical inactivity in adolescence, and the effect of social isolation on hypertension exceeded that of clinical risk factors such as diabetes in old age. Analyses of multiple dimensions of social relationships within multiple samples across the life course produced consistent and robust associations with health. Physiological impacts of structural and functional dimensions of social relationships emerge uniquely in adolescence and midlife and persist into old age.

The evolution of dance

From Laland et al.:

Evidence from multiple sources reveals a surprising link between imitation and dance. As in the classical correspondence problem central to imitation research, dance requires mapping across sensory modalities and the integration of visual and auditory inputs with motor outputs. Recent research in comparative psychology supports this association, in that entrainment to a musical beat is almost exclusively observed in animals capable of vocal or motor imitation. Dance has representational properties that rely on the dancers’ ability to imitate particular people, animals or events, as well as the audience’s ability to recognize these correspondences. Imitation also plays a central role in learning to dance and the acquisition of the long sequences of choreographed movements are dependent on social learning. These and other lines of evidence suggest that dancing may only be possible for humans because its performance exploits existing neural circuitry employed in imitation.

This painting by Edgar Degas not only depicts a ballet rehearsal but also illustrates the roles of imitation and synchrony

Clips from the body of the article, with another figure:

...there can be no doubt that, compared to other animals, humans are exceptional imitators. It may be no coincidence that a recent PET scan analysis of the neural basis of dance found that foot movement to music excited regions of neural circuitry (e.g. the right frontal operculum) previously associated with imitation. Dancing may only be possible because its performance exploits the neural circuitry employed in imitation. Such reasoning applies equally where individuals dance alone; unlike much human behavior, dancing inherently seems to require a brain capable of solving the correspondence problem.

Dance often tells a story, and this representational quality provides another link with imitation. For instance, in the astronomical dances of ancient Egypt, priests and priestesses, accompanied by harps and pipes, mimed significant events in the story of a god or imitated cosmic patterns, such as the rhythm of night and day. Africa, Asia, Australasia and Europe all possess long-standing traditions for masked dances, in which the performers portray the character associated with the mask and enact religious stories. Native Americans have many animal dances, such as the Buffalo dance, which was thought to lure buffalo herds close to the village, and the eagle dance, which is a tribute to these revered birds. This tradition continues to the present. In 2009, Rambert (formerly the Rambert Dance Company), a world leader in contemporary dance, marked the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of his seminal work On the Origin of Species by collaborating with one of us (N.C.) to produce Comedy of Change (Figure above), which evoked animal behaviour on stage with spellbinding accuracy. In all such instances, the creation and performance of the dance requires an ability on the part of the dancer to imitate the movements and sounds of particular people, animals, or events. Such dances re-introduce the correspondence problem, as the dancer, choreographer and audience must be able to connect the dancers’ movements to the target phenomenon they represent.

On teaching old dogs new tricks.

Metcalfe et al. find that older healthy adults not only are better than young adults at answering general-information questions in the first place, but also, when they do make a mistake, they are more likely than young adults to correct those errors. Correcting errors is, of course, the quintessential new-learning task: To correct mistakes, one needs to supplant entrenched responses with new ones. The fact that older adults display greater facility at error correction than young adults contravenes the view that aging necessarily produces cognitive rigidity and an inability to learn. Here is their abstract:

Although older adults rarely outperform young adults on learning tasks, in the study reported here they surpassed their younger counterparts not only by answering more semantic-memory general-information questions correctly, but also by better correcting their mistakes. While both young and older adults exhibited a hypercorrection effect, correcting their high-confidence errors more than their low-confidence errors, the effect was larger for young adults. Whereas older adults corrected high-confidence errors to the same extent as did young adults, they outdid the young in also correcting their low-confidence errors. Their event-related potentials point to an attentional explanation: Both groups showed a strong attention-related P3a in conjunction with high-confidence-error feedback, but the older adults also showed strong P3as to low-confidence-error feedback. Indeed, the older adults were able to rally their attentional resources to learn the true answers regardless of their original confidence in the errors and regardless of their familiarity with the answers.