Personality and immune system reactivity.

Vedhara et al. have examined the expression of inflammatory genes in 121 people who also took personality tests that rated the generally identified five major dimensions of human personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). From the author's introduction:

...we hypothesized that pro-inflammatory gene expression would be up-regulated in extraverts and people with high levels of openness to experience (both of whom would be expected to experience elevated risk of injury/infection) and down-regulated in conscientious individuals with comparatively strong behavioural immune responses.

This is in fact what they found. From their discussion:

The present results identified systematic differences in leukocyte gene expression that correlate with individual differences on two major dimensions of human personality: Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Consistent with predictions from behavioural immune response theory, Extraversion was associated with up-regulated expression of pro-inflammatory genes, whereas Conscientiousness was associated with down-regulated expression of pro-inflammatory genes. These effects were independent of major health behavioural factors (BMI, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity); independent of variations in leukocyte subset prevalence; independent of negative affect; independent of minor physical symptoms and related medications; and independent of demographic characteristics as well as other major dimensions of human personality. In contrast, none of the major personality dimensions was significantly associated with differential expression of the other primary gene module involved in the CTRA profile – antiviral and antibody-related transcripts. In the context of previous data linking Extraversion and Conscientiousness to health and longevity, the present functional genomics findings may provide new insights into the molecular basis for such relationships.

Their results do not support the model of neuroticism and negative affect generating a 'disease-prone personality.' Numerous other studies have correlated the trait of conscientiousness with longevity.

The unforeseen costs of extraordinary experiences.

Daniel Gilbert and his collaborators at Harvard have come up with yet another fascinating nugget on our human behaviors:

People seek extraordinary experiences—from drinking rare wines and taking exotic vacations to jumping from airplanes and shaking hands with celebrities. But are such experiences worth having? We found that participants thoroughly enjoyed having experiences that were superior to those had by their peers, but that having had such experiences spoiled their subsequent social interactions and ultimately left them feeling worse than they would have felt if they had had an ordinary experience instead. Participants were able to predict the benefits of having an extraordinary experience but were unable to predict the costs. These studies suggest that people may pay a surprising price for the experiences they covet most.

A bit from the introduction:

More than 600 people have paid a minimum of $250,000 for a seat on the world’s first commercial spacecraft, soon to be launched by Virgin Galactic. Their journey will last a few hours, but they will talk about it for years to come...Floating weightless for several minutes while gazing down at Earth is an experience that falls somewhere between delightful and dazzling, which is why so many people are willing to pay so much money to have it. The less obvious consequence is that such experiences can make the people who have them strangers to everyone else on earth—and, as a rule, earthlings do not always treat strangers so nicely. At worst, people may be envious and resentful of those who have had an extraordinary experience, and at best, they may find themselves with little to talk about. Indeed, when people interact, they typically discuss the things they have in common and an afternoon in orbit typically is not one of them. Extraordinary experiences are both different from and better than the experiences that most other people have, and being both alien and enviable is an unlikely recipe for popularity.

In one experiment subjects in groups watched a video (17 groups of 4 participants, each watching in their own cubicle - afterwards they were escorted to a room for 5 min of unstructured conversation. One of the participants in each group watched a video that was superior to the video watched by the others. Participants who had watched the superior movie felt more enjoyment just after the film, but felt excluded during a subsequent social interaction, and this left them feeling worse than participants who had had an ordinary experience instead. A second experiment showed that participants correctly predicted that the extraordinary experience would leave them feeling better than the ordinary experience would before the interaction, but failed to realize that it would leave them feeling worse after the interaction. In a final study participants were asked to estimate how the actual participants in Study 1 felt. The result found was that they did not expect the extraordinary experiencer to be excluded from the interaction, and they expected the extraordinary experiencer to feel better—not worse—than the ordinary experiencers.

From the summary:

Pleasures come in two varieties: the social and the nonsocial. A hallmark of the nonsocial pleasures—whether the cool tingle of Dom Pérignon or the hot snarl of a new Maserati—is that people adapt to them quickly, which is why such experiences are typically best when they are novel or rare. The social pleasures have a different appeal. People crave acceptance, belonging, and camaraderie, and the hallmark of these pleasures is that they come more readily to those who fit in than to those who stand out. The two varieties of pleasure give rise to a pair of incompatible desires: to do what other people have not yet done and to be just like everyone else. Satisfying the first of these desires can frustrate the second. When extraordinary experiences separate a person from others, these experiences may ultimately reclaim more joy than they provide.

Invunerablism

Todd May does a brief essay (coining the world “invulnerabilism”) that is yet another interesting take on an issue central to all our lives: Do what degree is it useful to psychologically armor ourselves from the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ - to have a strong psychological immune system, or an emotionally invulnerable self construal? The meditative practices of several traditions offer us a route into our brain’s ‘basement’, a closer approach to and experience of the machinery that generates all the stuff upstairs, our emotionally reactive immersed selves and personas (Buddhism, for example, offering us an end to suffering if we abandon our desires.) May suggests:

..the way to think about these things has less to do with the invulnerability promoted by the official doctrines, and more to do with, one might say, using these doctrines to take the edge off of vulnerability, to allow one to experience life without becoming overwhelmed or depressed or resentful or bitter, except perhaps at the extremity of loss. There is some combination of embedding oneself in the world in a vulnerable way and not being completely undone by that vulnerability that is pointed at, if not directly endorsed, by the official doctrines.

It seems to me that Taoism, Buddhism, Stoicism, etc. work not by making one invulnerable but rather by allowing one to step back from the immediacy of the situation so that the experience of pain or suffering is seen for what it is, precisely as part of a contingent process, a process that could have yielded a very different present but just happened to yield this one.

Another point would be the evolution of our social brain has resulted in a built in bias towards feeling the sort of vulnerability and bonding that sustains and defends social group identity. A group of floating detached Taoists isn't all that useful in intergroup conflicts. Finally, disciplines that result in maintaining emotional distance from others can also let atrophy the evolved neuroendocrine chemistries that can vitalize our physiology and longevity.

Is there a reason for everything? - Teleological reasoning about life events

Banerjee and Bloom  explore the view that the tendency to develop teleological beliefs about life events is a byproduct of certain universal social-cognitive biases, a cognitive byproduct of humans’ natural tendency to view the world in terms of agency, purpose, and design. Their detailed descriptions of the three studies noted in the abstract below (in the journal "Cognition") are difficult to summarize in this brief post, so I pass on just the highlights and abstract. Motivated readers can request a copy of the article from me.

Highlights

• We examine religious believers’ and non-believers’ belief in purpose in life events. 

• Mentalizing ability predicts the tendency to hold teleological beliefs about events. 

• Adults’ teleological beliefs about life events do not depend upon a belief in God. 

• The perception of purpose in events is rooted in universal social-cognitive biases.

Abstract

People often believe that significant life events happen for a reason. In three studies, we examined evidence for the view that teleological beliefs reflect a general cognitive bias to view the world in terms of agency, purpose, and design. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that individual differences in mentalizing ability predicted both the tendency to believe in fate (Study 1) and to infer purposeful causes of one’s own life events (Study 2). In addition, people’s perception of purpose in life events was correlated with their teleological beliefs about nature, but this relationship was driven primarily by individuals’ explicit religious and paranormal beliefs (Study 3). Across all three studies, we found that while people who believe in God hold stronger teleological beliefs than those who do not, there is nonetheless evidence of teleological beliefs among non-believers, confirming that the perception of purpose in life events does not rely on theistic belief. These findings suggest that the tendency to perceive design and purpose in life events—while moderated by theistic belief—is not solely a consequence of culturally transmitted religious ideas. Rather, this teleological bias has its roots in certain more general social propensities.

Biological explanations for psychopathology decrease clinician empathy.

Lebowitz and Ahn find that clinicians become less, not more, empathetic with patients whose mental disorder is known to have a biological basis:

Mental disorders are increasingly understood in terms of biological mechanisms. We examined how such biological explanations of patients’ symptoms would affect mental health clinicians’ empathy—a crucial component of the relationship between treatment-providers and patients—as well as their clinical judgments and recommendations. In a series of studies, US clinicians read descriptions of potential patients whose symptoms were explained using either biological or psychosocial information. Biological explanations have been thought to make patients appear less accountable for their disorders, which could increase clinicians’ empathy. To the contrary, biological explanations evoked significantly less empathy. These results are consistent with other research and theory that has suggested that biological accounts of psychopathology can exacerbate perceptions of patients as abnormal, distinct from the rest of the population, meriting social exclusion, and even less than fully human. Although the ongoing shift toward biomedical conceptualizations has many benefits, our results reveal unintended negative consequences.

Cerebral coherence between communicators.

Stolk et al. have searched across the whole brain for a cerebral dynamics matching the behavioral dynamics of mutual understanding and note that brain activities in the right temporal lobes of individuals synchronize during communication in a way that reflects conceptualization of a signal's use apart from specific experiences of the signal:

How can we understand each other during communicative interactions? An influential suggestion holds that communicators are primed by each other’s behaviors, with associative mechanisms automatically coordinating the production of communicative signals and the comprehension of their meanings. An alternative suggestion posits that mutual understanding requires shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use, i.e., “conceptual pacts” that are abstracted away from specific experiences. Both accounts predict coherent neural dynamics across communicators, aligned either to the occurrence of a signal or to the dynamics of conceptual pacts. Using coherence spectral-density analysis of cerebral activity simultaneously measured in pairs of communicators, this study shows that establishing mutual understanding of novel signals synchronizes cerebral dynamics across communicators’ right temporal lobes. This interpersonal cerebral coherence occurred only within pairs with a shared communicative history, and at temporal scales independent from signals’ occurrences. These findings favor the notion that meaning emerges from shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use.

Neurobiology and the Humanities

I want to point to this open access article in Neuron by Semir Zeki, a well known visual neuroanatomist who has addressed in particular visual artists - who, in engaging representations of form and color, explore the brain with techniques that are unique to them. Here is an early clip from the relatively brief article, which I think you might enjoy reading, that proceeds to consider the experience, significance, and uses of beauty.:

Paul Cézanne’s preoccupation, and artistic experimentation, with how color modulates form is but a variant of the neurobiological question of how the separate representations of form and color are integrated in the brain to give us a unitary percept of both. The experiments of Picasso and Braque in the early, analytic, phase of cubism—of how a form maintains its identity in spite of wide variations in the context in which it is viewed—resolves itself scientifically into the neurobiological problem of form constancy. The quest of Piet Mondrian for the “constant truths concerning forms” is an artistic version of the question of what the neural building blocks of all forms are (often presumed to be the orientation-selective cells of the visual cortex), while kinetic art, which sought to represent motion artistically, reached conclusions that are consistent with conclusions reached later by neurobiology.

Origins of human altruism.

A number of studies in recent years have shown that 1- and 2-year-olds often provide help to novel individuals, and have generally been interpreted as suggesting that this tendency is innate, and unlikely to result from social interactions. Barragan and Dweck offer observations to the contrary, finding that very simple reciprocal social activities at these ages can elicit high degrees of altruism. The experiments involved reciprocal play (two individuals playing with one set of toys from a bag) or parallel play (two individuals playing separately with identical sets of toys taken from two bags.) Here is their abstract:

A very simple reciprocal activity elicited high degrees of altruism in 1- and 2-y-old children, whereas friendly but nonreciprocal activity yielded little subsequent altruism. In a second study, reciprocity with one adult led 1- and 2-y-olds to provide help to a new person. These results question the current dominant claim that social experiences cannot account for early occurring altruistic behavior. A third study, with preschool-age children, showed that subtle reciprocal cues remain potent elicitors of altruism, whereas a fourth study with preschoolers showed that even a brief reciprocal experience fostered children’s expectation of altruism from others. Collectively, the studies suggest that simple reciprocal interactions are a potent trigger of altruism for young children, and that these interactions lead children to believe that their relationships are characterized by mutual care and commitment.

Exercise and intermittent fasting improve brain plasticity and health

I thought it might be useful to point to this brief review by Praag et al. that references several recent pieces of work presented at a recent Soc. for Neuroscience Meeting symposium. The experiments indicate that exercise and intermittent energy restriction/fasting may optimize brain function and forestall metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases by enhancing neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity and neuronal stress robustness.  (Motivated readers can obtain the article from me.) Here is their central summary figure:

Exercise and IER/fasting exert complex integrated adaptive responses in the brain and peripheral tissues involved in energy metabolism. As described in the text, both exercise and IER enhance neuroplasticity and resistance of the brain to injury and disease. Some of the effects of exercise and IER on peripheral organs are mediated by the brain, including increased parasympathetic regulation of heart rate and increased insulin sensitivity of liver and muscle cells. In turn, peripheral tissues may respond to exercise and IER by producing factors that bolster neuronal bioenergetics and brain function. Examples include the following: mobilization of fatty acids in adipose cells and production of ketone bodies in the liver; production of muscle-derived neuroactive factors, such as irisin; and production of as yet unidentified neuroprotective “preconditioning factors.” Suppression of local inflammation in tissues throughout the body and the nervous system likely contributes to prevention and reversal of many different chronic disease processes.

Several articles on aging brains.

Talking about aging brains is sort of a downer, but it's something I feel like I want to do as I trek onward with open eyes from my current age of 72 years. So, pointers to three recent articles on brain changes in aging:

Douaud et al. characterize a common brain network linking development, aging, and vulnerability to disease. They show that the idea of brain decline mirroring brain development is correct. Analysis of structural brain images reveals that a network of mainly higher-order regions that develop relatively late during adolescence demonstrate accelerated degeneration in old age.

And, from Salami et al.:

Aging is accompanied by disruptive alterations in large-scale brain systems, such as the default mode network (DMN) and the associated hippocampus (HC) subsystem, which support higher cognitive functions. However, the exact form of DMN–HC alterations and concomitant memory deficits is largely unknown. We identified age-related decrements in resting-state functional connectivity of the cortical DMN, whereas elevated connectivity between the bilateral HC was found along with attenuated HC–cortical connectivity. Critically, elevated HC at rest restricts the degree to which HC interacts with other brain regions during memory tasks, and thus results in memory deficits. This study provides empirical evidence of how the relationship between the DMN and HC breaks down in aging and how such alterations underlie deficient mnemonic processing.

Finally, Yotsumoto et al. find white matter in the older brain is more plastic than in the younger brain. Its changes during learning a visual perceptual task are not observed when younger subjects learn the same task.

Exercise changes our muscle DNA

Following yesterday's post on changing gene expression with brain waves, I'll point to another bit of work on gene changing. Chemical changes to DNA, mainly methylation, can alter gene expression in response a number of environmental changes such as stress, diet, and pollutants. Reynolds points to work by Lindholm et al. now showing that exercise activates health enhancing genes by this epigenetic mechanism. They use the simple trick of measuring and comparing methylation of DNA in exercised and unexercised legs of single individuals (twentythree young subjects bicycled using only one leg, leaving the other unexercised, for three months. The pedaling was at a moderate pace for 45 min, four times per week for three months.) Not surprisingly, the exercised leg was more powerful, but in addition more than 5,000 sites on the genome of muscle cells from the exercised leg now featured new methylation patterns.

This work makes me wish I had a home kit for detecting methylation change in the DNA of my thumb muscles, which show dramatic changes in strength and size depending on how often and energetically I practice the piano.

A bit of science fiction...a brain implant that allows mind-controlled gene expression.

The experiments by Folcher et al. are done with optogenetic implants in mouse brains that are wirelessly controlled by human brain waves. This is the proof of concept step, preliminary to trying the implants in humans to control the expression of engineered light sensitive regulators of genes for therapeutic proteins. Here is their cartoon summary of the procedure:

The mind-controlled transgene expression device consisted of (a) an EEG headset that captured brain-wave activities (the encephalogram), identified mental state-specific electrical patterns (biofeedback, concentration, meditation) and processed discrete meditation-meter values (0–100; meditation-meter value plot), which were transmitted via Bluetooth to (b) the Arduino single-board microcontroller with a time-relay device and switching the (c) field generator ON and OFF. This BCI (a–c) controlled (d) the TC (c,d) of the field generator, which inductively coupled with the (d,e) receiver coil (RC) of the (e) wireless-powered optogenetic implant. (e) The NIR light LED illuminated the culture chamber of the wireless-powered optogenetic implant and programmed the designer cells to produce ​SEAP, which diffused through the semi-permeable membrane. The blood ​SEAP (human ​secreted alkaline phosphatase) levels of mice with subcutaneous wireless-powered optogenetic implants containing designer cells that were freely moving on the field generator could be modulated by the human subject’s mindset in a wireless, remote-controlled manner.

Impact of literacy on visual processing

From Pegado et al., a clear demonstration of how learning the act of reading enhances our visual processing:

How does learning to read affect visual processing? We addressed this issue by scanning adults who could not attend school during childhood and either remained illiterate or acquired partial literacy during adulthood (ex-illiterates). By recording event-related brain responses, we obtained a high-temporal resolution description of how illiterate and literate adults differ in terms of early visual responses. The results show that learning to read dramatically enhances the magnitude, precision, and invariance of early visual coding, within 200 ms of stimulus onset, and also enhances later neural activity. Literacy effects were found not only for the expected category of expertise (letter strings), but also extended to other visual stimuli, confirming the benefits of literacy on early visual processing.

Cross-species evidence that adaptive training diminishes distractibility in Aging.

Another fascinating study from Gazzaley's productive research group. A video clip is offered in the abstract. Here are the highlights and summary:

Highlights

•Adaptive distractor training selectively suppresses sensory distractor responses 

•Training enhances spectral and spatial tuning of sensory receptive fields in older rats 

•Top-down frontal theta is selectively restrained for distractors in trained humans 

•Training in older humans generalizes to enhanced aspects of cognitive control

Summary

Aging is associated with deficits in the ability to ignore distractions, which has not yet been remediated by any neurotherapeutic approach. Here, in parallel auditory experiments with older rats and humans, we evaluated a targeted cognitive training approach that adaptively manipulated distractor challenge. Training resulted in enhanced discrimination abilities in the setting of irrelevant information in both species that was driven by selectively diminished distraction-related errors. Neural responses to distractors in auditory cortex were selectively reduced in both species, mimicking the behavioral effects. Sensory receptive fields in trained rats exhibited improved spectral and spatial selectivity. Frontal theta measures of top-down engagement with distractors were selectively restrained in trained humans. Finally, training gains generalized to group and individual level benefits in aspects of working memory and sustained attention. Thus, we demonstrate converging cross-species evidence for training-induced selective plasticity of distractor processing at multiple neural scales, benefitting distractor suppression and cognitive control.

How to bridge the respective bubbles of our ideological tribes?

A number of recent mindblog posts have engaged the issue of the individual versus the collective good (for example, here, here, and here), a creative tension that has been central in human evolution. This has led me to mull a bit about the current apparent drift in the direction of more extreme individualism and rejection of the state’s concern for common interests.

I sometimes feel guilty for not being more evangelistic about promoting a rational scientific ideology that encompasses creationists, conservatives, and libertarians in a more broad evolutionary view, I wonder how it might be possible to induce these groups to admit a broader swath of reality than they currently seem willing to engage.

Concrete personal steps I might take? The expression of my ideas or those of others in writing is relatively easy, that is what this blog is about.

The problem is that MindBlog exists as one instance in the array of similarly minded sites that largely mirror each other’s views. I suspect that it is quite invisible to those following websites that deal with Creationism , conservatism, the libertarian or tea party movements that extoll individualism, etc. Those sites, in turn, are unlikely to be viewed by followers of atheist, agnostic, skeptic, or humanist sites more sympathetic to collective views of the individual in society.

I am a person who is timid about robust personal visceral engagement with those of opposing religious or political views, so I quail at the prospect of showing up at meetings of evangelical or ultra-conservative groups to ask questions like “you say you want the government off our backs...do you accept your social security or medicare payments? If so, do you see any inconsistency in your beliefs and actual practices?” Or, “You indicate you believe the biblical account that earth was created about 6,000 years ago. Do you accept the validity of the physical laws that permit your computer and iPhone to function? If so, how do you account for the fact that these same laws governing the physical properties of atoms prove that life on this planet began 3-4 billion years ago?”

I do hope that the a devout creationist or extreme individualist who occasionally stumbles on to a MindBlog post has his or her mental horizons slightly expanded.

Critique of the Nature paper on dishonest bankers,

I wanted to pass on to MindBlog readers this item analyzing the paper noted in my recent post "Banking - a culture of dishonesty", Statistician Salil Mehta argues that the article is misleading, missing data, and mathematically inaccurate.

Several nuggets on the individual vs. the collective.

Following yesterday's post on the evolution of prosocial religions, I pass on a random set of links to articles also relevant to the individual and the collective.

Terrell notes that the current political schism between Republicans and Democrats has a foundation in different views about the whether an individual's primary purpose is to look out for communal or self interests.

...modern evolutionary research, anthropology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience have come down on the side of the philosophers who have argued that the basic unit of human social life is not and never has been the selfish, self-serving individual. Contrary to libertarian and Tea Party rhetoric, evolution has made us a powerfully social species, so much so that the essential precondition of human survival is and always has been the individual plus his or her relationships with others.

Luhrman does a piece "Wheat people versus rice people" which references the same work mentioned in MindBlog's May 21st post, and notes several other studies on individualistic versus collective cultures.

Rand et al. offer economic game experiments to illustrate how static network structure stabilizes human cooperation

Finally Crockett et al. do an experiment relevant to social cohesion, showing that harm to others outweighs harm to self in moral decision making - most people sacrifice more money to reduce a stranger’s pain than their own pain (the pain being delivered by electric shocks).

The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions

Having been an author in an issue of "Behavioral and Brain Biology" published by Cambridge University Press, I receive notice of forthcoming articles inviting reviewers comments. The articles are then published with the reviewer's comments and authors' responses to the comments.

As a followup to my recent MindBlog post on E.O. Wilson's new book, I am passing on this interesting abstract of such a forthcoming article by Norenzayan et al.  (Motivated readers can email me if they wish to obtain a PDF of this article.)

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions, and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: 1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers in the last twelve millennia, and 2) the spread of prosocial religions during the same period. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted internal harmony, large-scale cooperation, and high fertility, often leading to success in intergroup competition. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as non-adaptive byproducts of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and byproduct approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate.

The new surveillance state and our robotic future.

Isreal et al. examine one of the many uses to which individual credit scores are being put - to determine our cardiovascular risk (useful information for health insurance companies). They also note that credit scores are also used by employers, utility companies, and automobile insurers to index high-risk behavior; and by life insurance companies that incorporate credit scores into actuarial models.) Here is the abstract:

Credit scores are the most widely used instruments to assess whether or not a person is a financial risk. Credit scoring has been so successful that it has expanded beyond lending and into our everyday lives, even to inform how insurers evaluate our health. The pervasive application of credit scoring has outpaced knowledge about why credit scores are such useful indicators of individual behavior. Here we test if the same factors that lead to poor credit scores also lead to poor health. Following the Dunedin (New Zealand) Longitudinal Study cohort of 1,037 study members, we examined the association between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk and the underlying factors that account for this association. We find that credit scores are negatively correlated with cardiovascular disease risk. Variation in household income was not sufficient to account for this association. Rather, individual differences in human capital factors—educational attainment, cognitive ability, and self-control—predicted both credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk and accounted for ∼45% of the correlation between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk. Tracing human capital factors back to their childhood antecedents revealed that the characteristic attitudes, behaviors, and competencies children develop in their first decade of life account for a significant portion (∼22%) of the link between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk at midlife. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy debates about data privacy, financial literacy, and early childhood interventions.

Also, the well known futuristic author Margaret Atwood offers an essay, well worth giving a read, on our growing efforts to craft a robotic future. One clip:

Why do we dream up such things? Because, deep down, we desire them...If we were technologically capable mice, we’d be perfecting deadly cat harpoons, or bird-exploding rockets, or cheese-on-demand molecular assemblers...To understand Homo sapiens’ primary wish list, go back to mythology. We endowed the gods with the abilities we wished we had ourselves: immortality and eternal youth, flight, resplendent beauty, total power, climate control, ultimate weapons, delicious banquets minus the cooking and washing up — and artificial creatures at our beck and call.

And just one more:

...people are dreaming up robotic prostitutes, complete with sanitary self-flushing features. Will there be a voice feature, and, if so, what will it say?...If the prospect of getting painfully stuck due to a malfunction keeps you from test-driving a full-body prostibot, you may soon be able to avail yourself of a remote kissing device that transmits the sensation of your sweetie’s kiss to your lips via haptic feedback and an apparatus that resembles a Silly Putty egg. (Just close your eyes.) Or you could venture all the way into the emerging world of “teledildonics” — essentially, remote-controlled vibrators. Push the game-controller levers, watch the effect on screen. Germ-free! Wait for Google or Skype to snatch this up.

Why elders smile, and wisdom in social signals.

Two articles relevant to becoming a senior person:
From Rijsbergen et al. (open access), a piece of work that reminds me of the book recently read by my book group here in Fort Lauderdale, the classic John Rechy novel about male hustlers, "City of Night", in which two age classes existed - 'young man' and 'old man.' Their abstract:

In an increasingly aging society, age has become a foundational dimension of social grouping broadly targeted by advertising and governmental policies. However, perception of old age induces mainly strong negative social biases. To characterize their cognitive and perceptual foundations, we modeled the mental representations of faces associated with three age groups (young age, middle age, and old age), in younger and older participants. We then validated the accuracy of each mental representation of age with independent validators. Using statistical image processing, we identified the features of mental representations that predict perceived age. Here, we show that whereas younger people mentally dichotomize aging into two groups, themselves (younger) and others (older), older participants faithfully represent the features of young age, middle age, and old age, with richer representations of all considered ages. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to popular public belief, older minds depict socially relevant information more accurately than their younger counterparts.

Also, David Brooks cites several books on the practical wisdom that comes with aging, and notes on the famous U-curve experiments in which people generally assess their own well being as high in their 20's and decreasing until about age 50 and then rising again until people rate themselve most happy at ages 82 to 85. A sample clip:

...experienced heads have intuitive awareness of the landscape of reality, a feel for what other people are thinking and feeling, an instinct for how events will flow. In “The Wisdom Paradox,” Elkhonon Goldberg details the many ways the brain deteriorates with age: brain cells die, mental operations slow. But a lifetime of intellectual effort can lead to empathy and pattern awareness. “What I have lost with age in my capacity for hard mental work,” Goldberg writes, “I seem to have gained in my capacity for instantaneous, almost unfairly easy insight.”