Our evolving human nature as primary cause of the industrial age?

It has been commonly assumed that technology and institutional changes were much more important than changes in basic human nature in triggering the sudden escape from subsistence poverty towards personal wealth and production that occurred at the end of the 18th century. The Aug. 7 issue of the NYTimes has a review of the work of Gregory Clark, who argues that the Industrial Revolution occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. Through analysis of ancient wills, Clark found that:

Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor... there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations...The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages...As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society...the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them...several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped....Another significant change in behavior, Dr. Clark argues, was an increase in people’s preference for saving over instant consumption, which he sees reflected in the steady decline in interest rates from 1200 to 1800.

I knew I had read, and written, about this sort of idea. After thrashing about looking for it, I was embarrassed to simply find it in my Biology of Mind book, in the chapter on Hominid Mind:

Students of animal behavior use the term "phenotypic cloning" to describe the process by which parents can so firmly impress behaviors on their offspring that the behaviors (phenotypes) seem to be inherited. (In spite of what we like to think, we all act remarkably like our parents as we grow older.) A core point is the argument that differences in behavioral styles between one family line and another provide a context for natural selection. The behaviors that work best are passed on because of differential reproductive success, and less adaptive behaviors are lost from the "phenotypic pool" analogous to the gene pool of genetics. This mechanism acts also at the level of cultures of humans and animals, and in this context it is termed group selection. Over longer periods of time, genetic changes in individuals that facilitate the adaptive behaviors adopted by a group might then be selected for. This is the Baldwin effect mentioned in the section "Co-evolution of Humans and Their Tools" and is a scenario offered by some evolutionary psychologists.

A main point of this post is to pass on the elegant graphic in the NYTimes article, which summarizes Clark's ideas:

The male promiscuity myth

Perhaps the most common evidence offered in support of males and females having evolved different sexual psychologies is from numerous surveys that show, across cultures, that men report having many more sexual partners than women. This is argued to reflect a basic underlying genetic fact: the best investment for a male to generate the maximum number of offspring with his genes is to impregnate as many females as possible. A woman has to invest much more in her offspring and is better served by selected fewer male partners who are more likely to provide support for her and her children.

Gina Kolata, in the Aug. 12 N.Y. Times, reports an interesting slant on this story. Simple math shows that the numbers don't add up... she quotes David Gale of U.C. Berkeley:

Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true for purely logical reasons...By way of dramatization, we change the context slightly and will prove what will be called the High School Prom Theorem. We suppose that on the day after the prom, each girl is asked to give the number of boys she danced with. These numbers are then added up giving a number G. The same information is then obtained from the boys, giving a number B...Theorem: G=B...Proof: Both G and B are equal to C, the number of couples who danced together at the prom. Q.E.D.

Sex researchers know that this is correct. Men and women in a population must have roughly equal number of partners. So why do men report many more than women? They exaggerate? They go to prostitutes who don't appear in the survey? (The latter would not explain the huge difference in reporting.) The most likely explanation:

...the survey data themselves may be part of the problem. If asked, a man, believing that he should have a lot of partners, may feel compelled to exaggerate, and a woman, believing that she should have few partners, may minimize her past...In this way the false conclusions people draw from these surveys may have a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oscar, the cat of doom

I'm a cat person, so was attracted to this crazy story in the July 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine: "A day in the life of Oscar the cat." It describes the cat's daily rounds in a New England rest home.

Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves.

A new compendium on mind and brain

The Dana Press (see www.dana.org) has published a volume of articles on mind and brain from The Scientific American, edited by Floyd Bloom (check out the table of contents on the Dana website). It contains a number of interesting articles that I am surprised that I missed at the time. (By the way, the Dana website is a good source of information on recent research on mind and brain, and has special sections devoted to kids and to seniors.)

Yet another anti-aging approach?

Yan et al. have shown that getting rid of a protein involved in adrenaline's control of heart rate reduces heart rate increase during stress and allows mice to live longer and have healthier hearts. Here is their abstract:

Mammalian models of longevity are related primarily to caloric restriction and alterations in metabolism. We examined mice in which type 5 adenylyl cyclase (AC5) is knocked out (AC5 KO) and which are resistant to cardiac stress and have increased median lifespan of ∼30%. AC5 KO mice are protected from reduced bone density and susceptibility to fractures of aging. Old AC5 KO mice are also protected from aging-induced cardiomyopathy, e.g., hypertrophy, apoptosis, fibrosis, and reduced cardiac function. Using a proteomic-based approach, we demonstrate a significant activation of the Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway and upregulation of cell protective molecules, including superoxide dismutase. Fibroblasts isolated from AC5 KO mice exhibited ERK-dependent resistance to oxidative stress. These results suggest that AC is a fundamentally important mechanism regulating lifespan and stress resistance.

Flash Earth

A bit outside our normal subject area, but a visually amazing compendium and demonstration of how publicly available geographic and atmospheric data can be organized and presented...It made me a bit queasy to zoom from the whole earth view to my Twin Valley home in Middleton Wisconsin.

Conscious awareness not required for planning and execution of actions

Damage to parts of the visual cortex can cause blindsight or agnosia, in which conscious awareness of an object is absent but subject can still make accurate judgements about it. Binsted et al al offer an interesting demonstration that this phenomenon is is part of the normal functioning of the visual system. They used the masking paradigm shown in the figure below to abolish conscious perception of an object, and found that subjects could point to that object as easily as to one that was perceived. Here is their abstract, followed by the central figure.

After lesions to primary visual cortex, patients lack conscious awareness of visual stimuli. Interestingly, however, some retain the ability to make accurate judgments about the visual world (i.e., so-called blindsight). Similarly, damage to inferior occipitotemporal regions of cortex (e.g., lateral occipital cortex) can result in an inability to perceive object properties while retaining the ability to act on them (i.e., visual form agnosia). In the present work, we demonstrate that the ability to interact with objects in the absence of conscious awareness is not isolated to those with restricted neuropathologic conditions. Specifically, neurologically intact individuals are able to program and execute goal-directed reaching movements to a target object without awareness of extrinsic target properties; they accurately tune the dynamics of their movement and modulate it online without conscious access to features of the goal object. Thus, the planning and execution of actions are not dependent on conscious awareness of the environment, suggesting that the phenomenon of blindsight (and agnosia) reflect normal conditions of the visual system.

Fig. 1. Display sequence for experiment. Participants initially observed a fixation cross and home position. After a variable foreperiod (1–3 s), an array of circles appeared; one circle was identified as the target by 4 red cue circles. In all cases the participant was asked to point to the middle of the target as quickly and accurately as possible. (a) Unconscious condition. The red cue circles remained present after removal of the array. This results in object substitution masking (4, 14), where participants have no conscious access to target properties (e.g., size). (b) Conscious condition. The red cue circles were removed concurrently with the array. In this condition, participants could consciously report the target properties.

237 reasons to have sex....

These evolutionary psychology entrepreneurs know how to get their press: John Tierney describes a study from David Buss and collaborators asking 2,000 people why they'd had sex. You can see some of the answers, which includes "to get rid of a headache," here.

Cooperation: a third basic principle of evolution.

Carl Zimmer writes an interesting profile of the work and ideas of Marin Nowak at Harvard in the July 31 NY Times Science section (PDF here). Here are some edited clips:

Nowak argues that cooperation is one of the three basic principles of evolution. The other two are mutation and selection. On their own, mutation and selection can transform a species, giving rise to new traits like limbs and eyes. But cooperation is essential for life to evolve to a new level of organization. Single-celled protozoa had to cooperate to give rise to the first multicellular animals. Humans had to cooperate for complex societies to emerge.

The article describes Nowak's work with models that are intellectual descendants of the Prisoner's Dilemma puzzle.

These models incorporate neighborhoods of players in which tight clusters of cooperators emerge, and defectors elsewhere in the network are not able to undermine their altruism. The emergence of cooperation is described with a simple equation: B/C>K. That is, cooperation will emerge if the benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio of cooperation is greater than the average number of neighbors (K)...Nowak and his colleagues also pioneered a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in which players acquire reputations. They found that if reputations spread quickly enough, they could increase the chances of cooperation taking hold. Players were less likely to be fooled by defectors and more likely to benefit from cooperation.

Evolution of spying on others.

Milinski and Rockenbach write an interesting perspectives article in the 27 July issue of Science which I pass on in its entirety (PDF containing the numbered references is here).

When reputation is at stake, animals as well as humans switch from selfish to altruistic behavior, because only the latter is socially rewarded (1, 2). But how do they assess whether their actions are observed? Recent investigations into human behavior have shown that subtle cues of being watched such as two stylized eye-like shapes on a computer screen background suffice to change behavior (3). A picture showing a pair of eyes attached to a cafeteria collection box significantly raises the donated amount compared to a flower symbol; in fact, the eyes were most effective when looking directly at the observer (4).

Although just ink on paper, these eye-shaped cues seem to elicit unconscious hard-wired reactions. Indeed, electrophysiological responses recorded from the scalp of normal subjects showed responses to isolated eyes that are even larger than the responses to full faces (5). Brain imaging studies in humans have also highlighted a role for the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and amygdala in gaze processing; the STS is likely to be essential for recognizing the eyes, head, and body as stimuli used in social communication, whereas the amygdala is likely to be essential for attaching social and emotional significance to these stimuli (6). Interestingly, even birds respond strongly to eye-like shapes, especially when two eyes are staring at them (7).

What is the benefit of watching someone? Spying on others seems widespread in animals and humans (8). By snooping on one another's social life, animals and humans can work out how to behave when they meet in the future. Recent experiments showed that even fish gain sophisticated information from watching members of the same species (9). Some fish can infer the social rank of others by observation alone and use this information to their own advantage in future encounters (10). So it comes as no surprise that both humans and animals try to deceive observers by behaving as they want to be seen by others to secure future gains.

For example, the cleaning wrasse fish grooms its client fish in the friendliest way when other clients watch, but without an audience it prefers to bite off pieces of its client's skin (11). In a dictator game experiment, only one player (the dictator) is endowed with money and may share it with a second player. Although unidentifiable human "dictators" share almost nothing (12), face-to-face identification increases the share rate to 50% (13). Consequently, in order to gain accurate information, observers should avoid being recognized: Indeed, some social birds have eyes concealed in dark areas or stripes, ensuring that the observed individual cannot detect being the target (14).

This is where humans differ from most animals. We have large white sclera on either side of the dark central iris when looking directly at the observer. This seems to be an honest signal of where we watch (6). Obviously there has been a net selective advantage of signaling the direction of our gaze in social interactions. However, having such eyes should be disadvantageous when trying to observe others' "unobserved" behavior, because we should take into account that the observed person turns altruistic as soon as our observing gaze is recognized.

Can we escape being watched? Whenever a person can be recognized by any cue, bad conduct may incur costs. Instead of behaving altruistically, people sometimes avoid having to justify their behavior by masking their faces, for example, at a masked ball, when robbing a bank, etc. Interestingly, the usual way to remove the identity of people on photos is to cover their eyes by a black stripe. Visual cues of faces seem to be of prime importance. Thus, either masking such cues or paying attention to being watched may be socially selected.

Are you being naughty or nice? Totem poles put up in villages in North America several hundred years ago standing vigilant at attention, with ever-watchful eyes. Unlike natural goats, the stylized goat has "human eyes" with white sclera stressing the direction of his gaze. (CREDIT: TONY J. PITCHER/UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA)

Thus, a new dimension arises when issues of reputation are present in human social dilemmas. An "arms race" of hiding signals between observers and observed may result: Observer Alice should take into account that the behavior of Bob (the observed) changes and therefore should conceal her watching; Bob should be very alert to faint signals of being watched by Alice, but he should avoid any sign of having recognized Alice's watching when switching from selfish to altruistic behavior. He should avoid turning his gaze in the direction of the recognized observer. On the other hand, as soon as Alice sees that Bob has recognized that he is being observed, she should eventually not reward the observed altruistic behavior.

An arms race between observing and being observed has implications for the large body of recent research on human altruism. Observed altruistic behavior may often be less the expression of a personal trait than an optimal response to the faint feeling of being observed. Would altruism then function as a potential deceit? For example, what we expect for the efficient interaction between reputation and costly punishment in social dilemmas--where individual and social interests are at odds--might depend on the recognized state of the signaling arms race (15). When cues revealing that the observed person has discovered the observation are indeed so subtle that altruism is a successful deceit, the positive effects of reputation can be expected to be present to a much greater extent. However, when the observer can conceal his spying, reputation is subjectively not at stake and thus will not induce altruism.

Does the observer thus really want to see "unobserved" behavior? Yes, but only if the social partner interacts with the observer mostly anonymously and she profits from seeing his "normal" behavior and reacts accordingly. Otherwise she should try her best to generate the impression that her social partners always feel observed so that their "normal" behavior is altruistic. Perhaps this is achieved in some societies by the ever-present watchful eyes of totem poles (see the figure) or a god that "sees through everything." Even actors on billboards, a modern form of ink on paper, may elicit unconscious social reactions in our amygdala and thus influence our behavior.

Scientific research potential of virtual worlds...

Bainbridge offers a review in the 27 July issue of Science (PDF here) on the scientific research potential of virtual worlds. I wonder if this kind of work would face the same criticism as studies of animal behavior in zoos rather than in the wild (a issue revisited in my recent posting on the bonobo ape). Here is the abstract:

Online virtual worlds, electronic environments where people can work and interact in a somewhat realistic manner, have great potential as sites for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as in human-centered computer science. This article uses Second Life and World of Warcraft as two very different examples of current virtual worlds that foreshadow future developments, introducing a number of research methodologies that scientists are now exploring, including formal experimentation, observational ethnography, and quantitative analysis of economic markets or social networks.

Figure: Three avatars in SL making a door. In a virtual design studio, two scientists are admiring the work of a student intern (center) who is creating a set of displays demonstrating human-centered computing. After the combination lock has been set and made smaller, the door can readily be moved to its final location. Similar methods can be used to construct laboratory facilities and experimental equipment.

From his conclusion, "Human Challenges"

Many virtual worlds may foster scientific habits of mind better than traditional schools can, because they constantly require inhabitants to experiment with unfamiliar alternatives, rationally calculate probable outcomes, and develop complex theoretical structures to understand their environment (60–62). Probably for better, but conceivably for worse, virtual worlds are creating a very new context in which young people are socialized to group norms, learn intellectual skills, and express their individuality (63). The "graduates" of SL and WoW may include many future engineers, natural scientists, and social scientists ready to remake the real world in the image of the virtual worlds.

An awakening - recovery from coma by deep brain stimulation

You may well have seen accounts on this work in the press, but I thought I would excerpt from a description by Shadlen and Kiani that discusses possible underlying mechanisms of the case - in which stimulation of the thalamus of a man in a coma for six years after an accident restored consciousness.

A key component is the thalamus, which lies between the brainstem and the cerebral hemispheres, and forms the gateway to the brain's cortex. The thalamus is organized as a set of nuclei. The best understood of these nuclei are those containing the neurons that relay information from the eyes, ears and skin to the appropriate sensory cortex. But much of the thalamus is poorly understood. Anatomical studies in non-human primates have identified a class of thalamic neuron that might operate more generally in activating cortical networks6. These neurons, which stain positively for the calcium-binding protein calbindin, are found in all thalamic nuclei. Although we know little about the physiological properties of these calbindin-positive cells, they tend to exhibit a different pattern of connections with the cortex compared with the relay cells. Their axons terminate more broadly both across cortical areas and in layers that the relay cells miss. These calbindin-positive cells comprise a large percentage of the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus — nuclei that have long been thought to have a role in arousal.

Schiff et al. hypothesized that their patient might express a minimal level of consciousness because of a primary impairment of the arousal system itself. The patient had suffered irreparable damage to much of the cerebral cortex, but many essential areas were preserved. By stimulating the intralaminar nuclei, the authors hoped to switch on the undamaged areas of cortex...The results were dramatic. Within 48 hours of the surgery to place the electrodes, the patient, who had remained in a minimally conscious state for 6 years, demonstrated increased arousal and sustained eye-opening, as well as rapid bilateral head-turning to voices.

The original article and the review then describe further recovery during a regime of varying patterns of brain stimulation. And here is an interesting summary of possible implications of this work:

...the observations ... may provide clues about the neurobiological underpinnings of consciousness. Cognitive neuroscience is beginning to expose the architecture of information processing that is directed towards goals and actions; we refer to this as an 'intentional framework', but it flies under various banners, including 'affordances' and 'embodied cognition...In essence, the brain does not process information in the abstract but instead consults information acquired through the senses and in memory insofar as it bears on the decisions made about potential actions and strategies. Our brains allow us to decide among possible options — that is, how and in what context to engage with the world around us. The brain makes many such decisions unconsciously. Indeed, the decision to engage at all is, in effect, an unconscious decision to be conscious. Thus, the brain of the sleeping mother queries the environment for the cry of her newborn. We suspect that the normal unconscious brain monitors the environment for cues that prompt it to decide whether to awaken and engage. This mechanism may be disrupted in various disorders of consciousness, including the minimally conscious state, hypersomnolence, concussion, abulia (lack of will) and possibly severe depression.

Previous theories of consciousness have relied on a central executive and magical physiological phenomena (for example, synchronized reverberations) to elevate the subconscious functions of the brain to consciousness. However, viewed as a decision to engage, consciousness can instead be studied in the same framework as other types of decision and the allocation of attention11. Rather than a central executive, there seems to be a network of brain regions that organize the resting state and maintain overall orientation towards context. It is quite possible that they make decisions about whether or not to engage and in what way. They do what Sartre considered impossible: they choose whether to choose or not.

How these networks relate to intralaminar nuclei or the matrix of calbindin-positive thalamic neurons is another question. However, the idea that these areas need to be turned on for consciousness leads us to wonder whether stimulation of the intralaminar thalamus in this patient worked through the activation of calbindin-positive neurons and these circuits.

Bonobo apes - human precursors as swingers?

The July 30 issue of "The New Yorker" has an engaging article by Ian Parker on bonobo apes, meant to be much nicer than chimpanzees, and perhaps the modern species most close to the evolutionary precursor of humans. Here are some clips from that article (PDF here).

In recent years, the bonobo has found a strange niche in the popular imagination, based largely on its reputation for peacefulness and promiscuity...This pop image of the bonobo—equal parts dolphin, Dalai Lama, and Warren Beatty—has flourished largely in the absence of the animal itself, which was recognized as a species less than a century ago. Two hundred or so bonobos are kept in captivity around the world.. It is one of the oddities of the bonobo world—and a source of frustration to some—that Frans de Waal, of Emory University, the high-profile Dutch primatologist and writer, who is the most frequently quoted authority on the species, has never seen a wild bonobo.

The article describes the field work of Gottfried Hohmann and his assistants, studying bonobo behavior in the wild. It turns out that a less flattering description of the species emerges. Aggression and infanticide have been observed, although not as prominently displayed as in Chimpanzees.

“It was so easy for Frans to charm everyone,” Hohmann said of de Waal one afternoon. “He had the big stories. We don’t have the big stories. Often, we have to say, ‘No, bonobos can be terribly boring. Watch a bonobo and there are days when you don’t see anything—just sleeping and eating and defecating. There’s no sex, there’s no food-sharing.’ ” During our first days in camp, the bonobos had been elusive. “Right now, bonobos are not vocalizing,” Hohmann said. “They’re just there. And if you go to a zoo, if you give them some food, there’s a frenzy. It’s so different.”...Captivity can have a striking impact on animal behavior. As Craig Stanford, a primatologist at the University of Southern California, recently put it, “Stuck together, bored out of their minds—what is there to do except eat and have sex?”

The media still regularly ask Frans de Waal about bonobos; and he still uses the species as a stick to beat what he scorns as “veneer theory”—the thought that human morality is no more than a veneer of restraint laid over a vicious, animal core. Some of his colleagues in primatology admit to impatience with his position—and with the broader bonobo cult that flattens a complex animal into a caricature of Edenic good humor. “Frans has got all the best intentions, in all sorts of ways, but there is this sense in which this polarizing of chimps and bonobos can be taken too far,” Richard Wrangham said. Hohmann concurred: “There are certainly some points where we are in agreement; and there are other points where I say, ‘No, Frans, you should go to Lomako or Lui Kotal, and watch bonobos, and then you’d know better.’ ” He went on, “Frans enjoyed the luxury of being able to say field work is senseless. When you see wild bonobos, some things that he has emphasized and stretched are much more modest; the sex stuff, for example. But other things are even more spectacular. He hasn’t seen meat-sharing, he has never seen hunting.”

Because of Hohmann’s disdain for premature theories, and his data-collecting earnestness, it had sometimes been possible to forget that he is still driving toward an eventual glimpse of the big picture—and that this picture includes human beings. Humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos share a common ancestor. Was this creature bonobo-like, as Hohmann suspects? Did the ancestral forest environment select for male docility, and did Homo and the chimpanzee then both dump that behavior, independently, as they evolved in less bountiful environments? The modern bonobo holds the answer, Hohmann said; in time, its behavior will start to illuminate such characteristics as relationships between men and women, the purpose of aggression, and the costs and benefits of male bonding.

Mind Control

I thought readers might get a chuckle from what the press is telling us about neuro-technology.

Cognitive scientists learn from magicians...

At the recent meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness that I attended in Las Vegas, one of most interesting sessions featured well known magicians. I was going to write this up, but here is a better job than I would do in a description of the session written by Martinez-Conde and Macknik (co-chairs of the meeting) in the July 26 issue of Nature Magazine:

Cognitive scientists take a lesson from magicians.

Teller, the mute half of the magician duo Penn & Teller, apparently pulls a coin out of thin air for the umpteenth time. The audience breaks into applause. It's another great performance in Las Vegas, Nevada — only tonight, Teller is part of a special symposium hosted by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, bringing together magicians and cognitive scientists.

Vision scientists have often turned to the visual arts to rediscover the principles underlying visual perception, such as how to convey the illusion of depth on a flat canvas. Similarly, cognitive scientists have much to learn from magicians, who have developed cognitive principles and illusions that trick audiences.

The Magic of Consciousness Symposium on 24 June attempted to plumb directly the depths of the intuition of world-class magicians. Magicians are behaviour experts who artfully manipulate attention and awareness. Their wealth of knowledge on cognition and behaviour is now ripe for picking.

James Randi — aka The Amaz!ng Randi — explained that spectators will easily accept unspoken assumptions. He made his point by fooling more than 200 consciousness researchers into thinking that his voice was being amplified by a dummy microphone, and by pretending to read with glasses that were merely empty frames.

Teller pulled coins out of thin air, conference bags and spectacles. He used water from his drinking glass to make a ball disappear. Shedding his normally silent stage persona, he described with eloquence how magicians make their audiences incorrectly link cause and effect. We all infer cause and effect in everyday life. When A precedes B, we conclude that A causes B. The skilled magician takes advantage of this inference by making sure that A (pouring water on a ball) always precedes B (the ball disappearing). However, A does not really cause B. The magician only makes it look so. Audiences assume that each repetition of a trick is done by the same method. "When a good magician repeats an effect, he varies the method in an unpredictable rhythm," said Teller. "That way, each time observers suspect one method, they find their suspicion disproven by the subsequent repetition." For instance, the disappearing ball is first secretly palmed by the other hand, but in the next repetition it is instead dropped on the magician's lap (allowing the magician to show that the other hand is empty).

Johnny Thompson — aka The Great Tomsoni — refers to this principle as "closing all the doors". That is, a good trick will appear to rule out all possible explanations, except for magic. Mac King illustrated these points by impossibly pulling a melon-sized rock out of his shoe — three times. The first two times he purposely used the same method, making it easier to see the trick the second time around. The third time he changed the method, deceiving the audience once again. "Much of our lives is devoted to understanding cause and effect," Teller said. "Magic provides a playground for those rational skills."

He also explained that "action is motion with a purpose". In normal social interactions, we constantly search for the purpose motivating other people's actions. An action with no obvious purpose raises questions. However, when the purpose seems crystal clear, we look no further. "Skilled magicians inform every necessary maneuver (motion) with a convincing intention," said Teller. Thus, the real purpose of the motion (hiding the ball) is hidden by the apparent purpose of the action (pouring the water).

Apollo Robbins, a professional thief who once pickpocketed Jimmy Carter's secret service detail, demonstrated the use of interpersonal distance and eye contact to control a target's gaze and attention. In doing so, he looted, undetected, every single pocket of a journalist from the audience.

James Randi tied the evening together by effortlessly escaping ropes knotted by philosopher Dan Dennett. The intuitive insights offered by magicians will frame future cognitive experiments, from measuring the dynamics of attentional blindness to determining the neural correlates of causal inference. Where in the brain is motion perceived as action? Does this same brain area encode the purpose of the action? For cognitive scientists, the second act of the show will take place in the lab.

Brain correlates of peer influence in adolescents

Grosbras et al. have explored neural correlates of inter-individual differences in the probability of resisting peer influence in early adolescence. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they found differences between 10-year-old children with high and low resistance to peer influence in brain activity during observation of angry hand movements and angry facial expressions. Compared with subjects with low resistance to peer influence, individuals with high resistance showed a highly coordinated brain activity in neural systems underlying perception of action and decision making: the right dorsal premotor cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This suggests that resisting peer influence depends activities in these areas during observation of emotion-laden actions.

Release from helplessness and stress

A possible therapy from over-expressing a gene? From 'research highlights' in a recent issue of Nature, edited:

When mice experience recurrent, inescapable stress, some simply stop trying to get away. This behaviour, called 'learned helplessness', is relieved by antidepressants and is used to model depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It now appears that a protein called ΔFosB (a transcription factor that down regulates the substance P gene) may help mice to cope with repeated stress.

Eric Nestler of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and his colleagues (Berton et al. in Neuron) have found that ΔFosB is expressed by neurons that contain a pain-signalling peptide called substance P, in a brain region called the periaqueductal gray. Over-expressing ΔFosB in stressed mice diminishes stress-induced release of substance P, and reduces learned helplessness.

Effect of physical activity on cortical plasticity and brain function

I've done a number of posts relevant to the aging brain (effects of physical activity, etc., also see the blog category 'aging' in the left column). Kramer and Erickson offer a review "Capitalizing on cortical plasticity: influence of physical activity on cognition and brain function." (PDF here).

Given the aging populations in many countries throughout the world, there is an increasing interest in lifestyle factors and interventions that will enhance the cognitive vitality of older adults and reduce the risk for age-related neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. In this review, we evaluate the hypothesis that physical activity and exercise might serve to protect, and also enhance, cognitive and brain function across the adult lifespan. To this end, we critically review three separate literatures that have examined the influence of physical activity and exercise on cognition, brain function and brain structure of adults, including epidemiological or prospective observational studies, randomized human clinical interventions and non-human animal studies. We suggest that this literature supports the claim that physical activity enhances cognitive and brain function, and protects against the development of neurodegenerative diseases. We discuss future directions to address currently unresolved questions, such as interactions between multiple lifestyle factors on offsetting or protecting against cognitive and neural decline, and conclude that physical activity is an inexpensive treatment that could have substantial preventative and restorative properties for cognitive and brain function.

Who's Minding the Mind?

There is a great article with the title of this post by Benedict Carey in the July 31 NYTimes Science section (PDF here). It deals with a topics touched on by many posts in this blog: how our unconscious mind nudges our actions and decisions. The process is usually refered to as "priming." Here are a few clips from the article:

...study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup....That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

...people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

The article mentions a study cited in a previous post here:

... a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep...As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded...This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain...The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all.

Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain. But there’s little doubt it involves the prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of the last neural areas to know when a decision is made...This bottom-up order makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The subcortical areas of the brain evolved first and would have had to help individuals fight, flee and scavenge well before conscious, distinctly human layers were added later in evolutionary history. In this sense, unconscious goals can be seen as open-ended, adaptive agents acting on behalf of the broad, genetically encoded aims — automatic survival systems.

...the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.

Brain damage and moral decision making

Moll and Oliveira-Souza (PDF here) do a nice review and discussion of experiments of a sort I have mentioned in an earlier post, that show that patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions are more likely to base moral decisions on utilitarian rather than emotional grounds. (The most extreme example comes from high conflict emotional scenarios such as the one in which one has to decide whether to push a bulky stranger onto the track of a runaway trolley to save the lives of five workmen, thus killing the stranger.)