The Master and His Emissary

February 23, 2013 – 7:54 am

I’ve been struggling to understand Iain McGilchrist’s argument about the two hemispheres of the brain, as presented in his book “The Master and His Emissary” [1]. It’s an argument that takes you from neuroanatomy, through behavioural science to cultural studies [2]. The book is crammed with fascinating evidential trees, but I left it without a clear understanding of the overall wood. Watching this RSA Animate helped.

Basically, I think McGilchrist is attempting a neuroscientific rehabilitation of an essentially mystical idea: the map is not the territory, of the important of ends rather than just means [3]. Here’s a tabulation of functions and areas of focus that McGilchrist claims for the two hemispheres:

Left Right
Representation Perception
The Abstract The Concrete
Narrow focus Broad focus
Language Embodiment
Manipulation Experience (?)
Parts Wholes
Machines Life
The Static The Changing
Focus on the known Alertness for the novel
Consistency, familiarity, prediction Contradiction, novelty, surprise
A closed knowledge system An open knowledge system
(Urge after) Consistency (Urge after) Completeness
The Known The Unknown, The ineffable
The explicit The implicit
Generalisation Individuality/uniqueness
Particulars Context

A key idea – which is in the RSA Animate – is the idea of a ‘necessary distance’ from the world. By experiencing yourself as separate (but not totally detached) you are able to empathise with people, manipulate tools, reason on symbols etc. But, of course, there’s always the risk that you end up valuing the tools for their own sake, or believing in the symbol system you have created to understand the world.

From a cognitive neuroscience point of view, this is fair enough, by which I mean that if you are going to look into the (vast) literature on hemispheric specialisation and make some summary claims, as McGilchrist does, then these sort of claims are reasonable. You can enjoy one of the grand-daddies of split brain studies, Michael Gazzaniga, summarise his perspective, which isn’t that discordant, here [4].

From this foundation, McGilchrist goes on to diagnose a historical movement in our culture away from a balanced way of thinking and towards a ‘left brain’ dominated way of thinking. This, to me, also seems fair enough. Modernity does seem characterised by the ascendance of both instrumentalism and bureaucracy, both ‘leftish’ values in the McGilchristian framework.

It is worth noting that dual-systems theories, of which this is one, are perennially popular. McGilchrist is careful and explicit in rejecting the popular Reason vs Emotion distinction that has come to be associated with the two hemispheres. In this RSA report Divided Brain, Divided World, he briefly discusses how his theory relates to the automatic-deliberative distinction, as (for example) set out by Daniel Kahneman in his Thinking Fast and Slow. He says, briefly, that that distinction is orthogonal to the one he’s making; i.e. both hemispheres do automatic and controlled processing.

I was turned on to the book by Helen Mort, who writes a great blog about neuroscience and poetry which you can check out here: poetryonthebrain.blogspot.ca/. If you’re interested in reading more about psychology, divided selves and cultural shifts I recommend Timothy Wilson’s “Strangers to Ourselves” and Walter Ong’s “Orality and Literacy”.

Footnotes

[1] If you buy the paperback they’ve slimmed it down, at least in some editions, by leaving out the reference list at the end. Very frustrating.

[2] Fans of grand theories of hemispheric functioning and the relation to cultural evolution, make sure you check out Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind . Weirdly McGilchrist hardly references this book (noting merely that he is saying something completely different).

[3] And when I use the term ‘mystical’, that is a good thing, not a denigration.

[4] Gazzaniga, M. (2002). The split brain revisited. Scientific American, Special Editions: The Hidden Mind.

By tomstafford | Posted in Integrating, Theory | Comments (7)

The blossoms are beautiful on their own

February 22, 2013 – 10:36 pm

Listen. I totally respect your new neuroscience discovery. Really, my balls are jazzed. But quit with the ‘may lead to a cure for epilepsy, autism and schizophrenia’ thing you always put in your press releases.

Your new neuroscience discovery is genuinely cool, but, let’s face it, no more likely to lead to a cure for schizophrenia than my new garden equipment is likely to end world hunger.

My new garden equipment, by the way, is an equally ball-tingling innovation, but you can see how you’d never get away with the world hunger thing when announcing it to the press.

A lot of neuroscience discoveries are similar in a way. They’re the scientific equivalent of inventing a solar powered bird-scarer.

You read that right. A solar-powered bird scarer.

Kinda clicks into place, doesn’t it? You think to yourself ‘that’s cool’ and you silently nod your head to whoever came up with that agricultural gem.

But the UN aren’t busting their onions to integrate it into their agricultural policy. Monsanto aren’t scratching their nuts over how to cash in.

This doesn’t make it less cool. It still makes a genuine contribution and may even make things easier for the bird-troubled farmer. But it’s unlikely to herald the end of famine.

So, neuroscience press release writers of the world – no need to promise me the world.

The blossoms are really quite beautiful on their own.

By vaughanbell | Posted in News | Comments (12)

Point me to a brain area

February 20, 2013 – 9:09 pm

I’ve just found an incredibly use brain anatomy atlas that when you point at any part of an MRI scan it tells you which part of the brain you’re looking at in all three planes.

It seems to be part of a very useful website called HeadNeckBrainSpine that is full of handy neuroanatomy tools, tutorials and toys.

If nothing else, do check out the MRI atlas as it will give you a feel for how clearly different brain structures appear on a common type of medical scan.

As some folks on the Twitter arguing service have noted, its only slight drawback is the brain’s biggest structure (the frontal lobes) are not perfectly outlined, but they’re marked adequately and it’s still a massively useful tool that I’ve been referring to ever since I found it.

 
Link to MRI neuroanatomy atlas.
Link to HeadNeckBrainSpine.

By vaughanbell | Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (1)

BBC Column: Why cyclists enrage car drivers

February 18, 2013 – 1:58 pm

Here is my latest BBC Future column. The original is here. This one proved to be more than usually controversial, not least because of some poorly chosen phrasing from yours truly. This is an updated version which makes what I’m trying to say clearer. If you think that I hate cyclists, or my argument relies on the facts of actual law breaking (by cyclists or drivers), or that I am making a claim about the way the world ought to be (rather than how people see it), then please check out this clarification I published on my personal blog after a few days of feedback from the column. One thing the experience has convinced me of is that cycling is a very emotional issue, and one people often interpret in very moral terms.

It’s not simply because they are annoying, argues Tom Stafford, it’s because they trigger a deep-seated rage within us by breaking the moral order of the road.

 

Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word “cyclist” on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: “Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car.” This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethnic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people’s minds, when directed against cyclists. Why all the rage?

I’ve got a theory, of course. It’s not because cyclists are annoying. It isn’t even because we have a selective memory for that one stand-out annoying cyclist over the hundreds of boring, non-annoying ones (although that probably is a factor). No, my theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they offend the moral order.

Driving is a very moral activity – there are rules of the road, both legal and informal, and there are good and bad drivers. The whole intricate dance of the rush-hour junction only works because everybody knows the rules and follows them: keeping in lane; indicating properly; first her turn, now mine, now yours. Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see as the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren’t allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.

You could argue that driving is like so much of social life, it’s a game of coordination where we have to rely on each other to do the right thing. And like all games, there’s an incentive to cheat. If everyone else is taking their turn, you can jump the queue. If everyone else is paying their taxes you can dodge them, and you’ll still get all the benefits of roads and police.

In economics and evolution this is known as the “free rider problem”; if you create a common benefit  – like taxes or orderly roads – what’s to stop some people reaping the benefit without paying their dues? The free rider problem creates a paradox for those who study evolution, because in a world of selfish genes it appears to make cooperation unlikely. Even if a bunch of selfish individuals (or genes) recognise the benefit of coming together to co-operate with each other, once the collective good has been created it is rational, in a sense, for everyone to start trying to freeload off the collective. This makes any cooperation prone to collapse. In small societies you can rely on cooperating with your friends, or kin, but as a society grows the problem of free-riding looms larger and larger.

Social collapse

Humans seem to have evolved one way of enforcing order onto potentially chaotic social arrangements. This is known as “altruistic punishment”, a term used by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter in a landmark paper published in 2002 [4]. An altruistic punishment is a punishment that costs you as an individual, but doesn’t bring any direct benefit. As an example, imagine I’m at a football match and I see someone climb in without buying a ticket. I could sit and enjoy the game (at no cost to myself), or I could try to find security to have the guy thrown out (at the cost of missing some of the game). That would be altruistic punishment.

Altruistic punishment, Fehr and Gachter reasoned, might just be the spark that makes groups of unrelated strangers co-operate. To test this they created a co-operation game played by constantly shifting groups of volunteers, who never meet – they played the game from a computer in a private booth. The volunteers played for real money, which they knew they would take away at the end of the experiment. On each round of the game each player received 20 credits, and could choose to contribute up to this amount to a group project. After everyone had chipped in (or not), everybody (regardless of investment) got 40% of the collective pot.

Under the rules of the game, the best collective outcome would be if everyone put in all their credits, and then each player would get back more than they put in. But the best outcome for each individual was to free ride – to keep their original 20 credits, and also get the 40% of what everybody else put in. Of course, if everybody did this then that would be 40% of nothing.

In this scenario what happened looked like a textbook case of the kind of social collapse the free rider problem warns of. On each successive turn of the game, the average amount contributed by players went down and down. Everybody realised that they could get the benefit of the collective pot without the cost of contributing. Even those who started out contributing a large proportion of their credits soon found out that not everybody else was doing the same. And once you see this it’s easy to stop chipping in yourself – nobody wants to be the sucker.

Rage against the machine

A simple addition to the rules reversed this collapse of co-operation, and that was the introduction of altruistic punishment. Fehr and Gachter allowed players to fine other players credits, at a cost to themselves. This is true altruistic punishment because the groups change after each round, and the players are anonymous. There may have been no direct benefit to fining other players, but players fined often and they fined hard – and, as you’d expect, they chose to fine other players who hadn’t chipped in on that round. The effect on cooperation was electric. With altruistic punishment, the average amount each player contributed rose and rose, instead of declining. The fine system allowed cooperation between groups of strangers who wouldn’t meet again, overcoming the challenge of the free rider problem.

How does this relate to why motorists hate cyclists? The key is in a detail from that classic 2002 paper. Did the players in this game sit there calmly calculating the odds, running game theory scenarios in their heads and reasoning about cost/benefit ratios? No, that wasn’t the immediate reason people fined players. They dished out fines because they were mad as hell. Fehr and Gachter, like the good behavioural experimenters they are, made sure to measure exactly how mad that was, by asking players to rate their anger on a scale of one to seven in reaction to various scenarios. When players were confronted with a free-rider, almost everyone put themselves at the upper end of the anger scale. Fehr and Gachter describe these emotions as a “proximate mechanism”. This means that evolution has built into the human mind a hatred of free-riders and cheaters, which activates anger when we confront people acting like this – and it is this anger which prompts altruistic punishment. In this way, the emotion is evolution’s way of getting us to overcome our short-term self-interest and encourage collective social life.

So now we can see why there is an evolutionary pressure pushing motorists towards hatred of cyclists. Deep within the human psyche, fostered there because it helps us co-ordinate with strangers and so build the global society that is a hallmark of our species, is an anger at people who break the rules, who take the benefits without contributing to the cost. And cyclists trigger this anger when they use the roads but don’t follow the same rules as cars.

Now cyclists reading this might think “but the rules aren’t made for us – we’re more vulnerable, discriminated against, we shouldn’t have to follow the rules.” Perhaps true, but irrelevant when other road-users see you breaking rules they have to keep. Maybe the solution is to educate drivers that cyclists are playing an important role in a wider game of reducing traffic and pollution. Or maybe we should just all take it out on a more important class of free-riders, the tax-dodgers.

By tomstafford | Posted in Other People, Reasoning | Comments (68)

Khat out of the bag

February 17, 2013 – 10:49 am

Finding myself at a loose end yesterday I decided I’d try and track down one of London’s mafrishes – a type of cafe where people from the capital’s Ethiopian, Somali and Yemeni community chew the psychoactive plant khat.

I’d heard about a Somali cafe on Lewisham Way and thought that was as good a place as any to try. The cafe owner first looked a bit baffled when I walked in and asked about khat but he sat me down, gave me tea, and went out back to ask his associates.

“Sorry, there’s no khat in Lewishman. We have internet?” he suggested while gesturing towards the empty computers at the back. I kindly declined but in reply he suggested I go to Streatham. “There are lots of restaurants there”, he assured me.

Streatham is huge, so I arrived at one of the rail stations and just decided to walk south. Slowly I became aware that there were more Somali-looking faces around but there were no cafes to be seen.

Just through chance I noticed some Somali cafes off a side street and walked into the first one I saw. “There’s none here, but next door”, I was told. The people in the next cafe said the same, as did the next, and the next, until I came to an unmarked door.

“Just go in” a cafe owner called to me from across the street, so I walked in.

The place was little dark but quite spacious. My fantasies of an East African cafe translocated to London quickly faded as my eyes adjusted to the trucker’s cafe decor. Inside, there were four guys watching the news on a wall-mounted TV.

The cafe owner greeted me as I entered. I asked my usual question about khat and he looked at me, a little puzzled.

“You know, khat, to chew?” I ventured. A furrowed brow. Thinking. “Oh, chat. Yes, we have bundles for three pounds and bundles for seven. Which do you want?”

“Give me one for seven” I said. “No problem” he replied cheerily. “Have a seat”.

This wasn’t the first time I had tried khat. Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate in the Midlands, I discovered khat in an alternative shop. It was sold as a natural curative soul lifting wonder plant from the fields of Africa.

I bought some, didn’t really know what to do with it, and just began to ‘gently chew’, as the leaflet advised, while walking through the streets of Nottingham.

So when my bundle of khat arrived, I just picked out some stems and began chomping on one end. “Wait, wait, stop!” they shouted in unison. “We’ll help you” said one and I was joined by the cafe owner and a friend. “Anyway, he said”, “you’re not allowed chew alone, it’s a social thing.”

I was given a bin to put beside my table, was shown how to strip off the stems and pick out the soft parts, and how to chew slowly. I was provided tea and water on the house and told to keep drinking fluids. Apparently, it can be a little strong on the stomach and the plant makes you go to the toilet a lot as, I was told, ‘it speeds up the body’.

I had the company of the cafe owner, a Somali Muslim, and his friend, an Ethiopian Christian.

Over the next two hours we chewed and talked. Ethiopian politics, football, living in another country, khat in Somalia, Haile Selassie, religion, languages, Mo Farah, stereotypes of Africa and family life in London.

People strolled in an out of the cafe. Some in jeans and t-shirt, others looking like they’d just walked in from the Somali desert. Everyone shook my hand. Some bought khat and left, others joined us, all the while chewing gently and drinking sweet tea. At one point I asked the Christian guy why he wore an Islamic cap. He whipped off his hat. “I’m bald” he said “and it’s the only cap you can wear inside” which sent me into fits of laughter.

Khat itself has a very tannin taste and it is exactly like you’d imagine how chewing on an indigestible bush would be. It’s bitty and it fills your mouth with green gunk. The sweet tea is there for a reason.

The effect of the khat came on gently but slowly intensified. It’s stimulating like coffee but is slightly more pleasurable. There’s no jitteriness.

It reminded me of the coca plant from South America both in its ‘mouth full of tree’ chewing experience and its persistent background stimulation. But while coca gave me caffeine-like focus that always turned into a feeling of anxiety, khat was gently euphoric.

My companions told me that it lifts the spirits and makes you talkative. They had a word, which for the life of me I can’t remember, which describes the point at which it ‘opens your mind’ to new ideas and debate.

The active ingredient in khat is cathinone which has become infamous as the basis of ‘bath salts’ legal highs which chemists have learnt to create synthetically and modify. But like coca, from which cocaine is made, the plant is not mental nitroglycerine. It has noticeable effects but they don’t dominate the psyche. It’s a lift rather than a launch.

The guys in the cafe were not unaware of its downsides though. “Don’t chew too often” they told me “it can become a habit for some”. I was also told it can have idiosyncratic effects on sexual performance. Some find it helps, others not so much.

Not everyone was there for khat. Some guys chewed regularly, some not at all, some had given up, some only on special occasions. Some just came to hang out, drink tea and watch the box.

Towards the end when I felt we had got to know each other a bit better I asked why the cafe was unmarked. The owner told me that while khat is legal they were aware of the scare stories and were worried about the backlash from less enlightened members of the community. ‘Immigrants sell foreign drug’ shifts more papers, it seems, than ‘guys chew leaves and watch football’.

Eventually, I said my goodbyes and decided I could use my buzz to go for a walk. I made London Bridge in a couple of hours. But I think my newfound energy came as much from the welcome as it did from the khat.
 

Link to Wikipedia entry on khat.

By vaughanbell | Posted in Togetherness | Comments (12)

2013-02-14 Spike activity

February 15, 2013 – 4:34 pm

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

“Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I’ve started seeing it everywhere”. Genius line from a Jon Ronson blog post.

The Dana Foundation research showing the genetic risk for psychiatric conditions can be seen early in development.

The fantastic Neuroskeptic blog has moved to Discover Magazine. Update your bookmarks!

Kurzweil AI reports on the latest generation of AI robots with intelligence developed by genetics algorithms. Check the creepy video. To the bunkers!

The Independent has a piece on why our memories are not always our own.

Micro hallucinations in the film Black Swan discovered by Cinematic Corner. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

The New York Times has an obituary for a little known industrial psychologist who has had a massive impact on our lives – he designed the telephone dialler.

New study finds that violence on YouTube is less common and less glamorised than on TV. Kittens also cuter, bases belong more to us.

The Atlantic covers the possibility of deep brain stimulation for Alzheimer’s disease.

“Embodied cognition is not what you think it is” An article in Frontiers in Cognitive Science on radical embodied cognition.

The Atlantic argues that economists need a council of psychological advisers to help with the ‘human being’ thing.

Will We Ever… Simulate the Brain? Not Exactly Rocket Science covers the billion euro attempt to not quite simulate the brain.

The Times Literary Supplement has a review of Oliver Sacks’ new book ‘Hallucinations’ by street-fighting Ray Tallis.

By vaughanbell | Posted in Linkage | Comments (4)

An online sickness

February 14, 2013 – 10:32 pm

The first academic review article on ‘Munchausen by Internet‘ – where people fake the identity of an ill person online – has just been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Munchausen syndrome is a common name for facticious disorder where people consciously fake illnesses for their own gain.

This is distinguished from malingering – where the gain would be something obvious like money, drugs or missing military service – and instead the gain from factitious illness typically includes the indirect benefits of faking – like being cared for, avoiding family conflict and so on.

The person is deliberately faking but they may not be fully conscious of all the emotional benefits – they might just say ‘it feels right’ or ‘it helps me’.

Obviously, this has been a problem for millennia but there has been an increasing recognition that the phenomenon happens online. People take up the identity of someone with an illness that gives them a special place in an online community.

This could be a standard online community where their ‘illness’ becomes a point of social concern, or their pretence could allow them to participate in an online community for people with certain disorders or conditions.

The article gives lots of example and some ways of spotting Munchausen fakers that also gives an insight into their thinking:

  • Posts consistently duplicating material in other posts, books, or health-related websites.
  • Characteristics of the supposed illness emerging as caricatures.
  • Near-fatal bouts of illness alternating with miraculous recoveries.
  • Fantastical claims, contradicted by subsequent posts, or flatly disproved.
  • Continual dramatic events in the person’s life, especially when other group members have become the focus of attention.
  • Feigned blitheness about crises that will predictably attract immediate attention.
  • Others apparently posting on behalf of the individual having identical patterns of writing.

    • The piece gets quite wordy at times (well, it is an academic article) but it’s an interesting insight into a motivations of people who ‘fake sick’ on the internet.
     

    Link to full text of article.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Togetherness | Comments (5)

    Synthetic highs are mutating

    February 12, 2013 – 9:51 pm

    A new study on the chemicals in the latest batch of legally sold ‘synthetic highs’ has found what looks like an unintended hybrid drug.

    As regular Mind Hacks readers will know, I’m a keen watcher of the murky ‘legal high’ market.

    We seem to be in the unprecedented position where sophisticated grey-market pharmacologists are rapidly inventing completely new-to-science drugs in underground labs for thrill-seeking punters.

    These synthetic drugs have typically come in two types: ‘fake pot’ – made from synthetic cannabinoids and stimulants, usually derived from cathinone.

    A study just published in Forensic Science International looked at the chemicals in a new wave of ‘fake pot’ herbal highs sold over the internet.

    Firstly, the research identified 12 new synthetic cannabinoids. That’s twelve completely new untested cannabis-like drugs. The turnover in the market is both stunning and scary.

    Curiously though, one ‘legal pot’ sample contained both a new synthetic cannabinoid (identified as URB-754) and a cathinone (4-Me-MABP) in it.

    What was most surprising though, was that these substances had chemically reacted with one another to create a completely new combination drug. It has the chemical name (N,5-dimethyl-N-(1-oxo-1-(p-tolyl)butan-2-yl)-2-(N′-(p-tolyl)ureido)benzamide) if you want to sound sexy.

    In other words, while the makers intended to put both a cannabinoid and a stimulant in the same product, they probably never knew that the substances had chemically combined to produce a hybrid compound with completely unknown properties.

    The legal high market is becoming an informal opt-in drug-testing experiment with paying subjects.
     

    Link to locked study.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in News | Comments (10)

    Hallucinations of the inner body

    February 10, 2013 – 10:00 am

    One of the least understood symptoms in psychosis are hallucinations called cenesthesias. These are ‘inner body’ feelings that often don’t correspond to any known or even possible bodily experiences.

    A team from Japan has just published a study of patients who experience cenesthesias in the mouth. Here are a selection of the hallucinations:

    “Feels like gas is blowing up in his mouth”, “feels like something is struggling, as if there is an animal in his mouth”

    “Feels the presence of wires in the mandibular incisors [front teeth in the jaw] when removing dentures”

    “Feels something sticky coming up rapidly in her mouth”, “feels like a membrane is covering and squeezing her incisors”

    “Feels like trash is coming up behind her dentures”, “feels sliminess in her mouth”

    “Feels slimy saliva”, “feels like her teeth are made of iron and is sore from chewing”

    The study used a type of brain scanning called SPECT (essentially, injecting your brain with radioactive glucose, seeing where it ends up with a gamma camera) to look at the balance of activity over the two hemispheres when the patients were just resting.

    They found that activity was relatively greater in the right hemisphere, which is a common, but not very reliable finding in psychosis research.
     

    Link to locked study.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Togetherness | Comments (11)

    Unpretentiousil: stops douchebaggery at its root

    February 9, 2013 – 5:22 pm

    A revolutionary new medication for Hyper Involuntary Panic Stress Tension Elevation Response (HIPSTER Disorder) has become available.

    Now available from all good lo-fi dubstep jazz lounges (via BoingBoing)

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Nonsense | Leave a Comment

    2013-02-08 Spike activity

    February 9, 2013 – 11:07 am

    Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

    The New York Times covers the recent upsurge of robots-taking-over-the-world anxiety. To the bunkers!

    The dodgy practice of psychologists trying to patent therapeutic techniques is covered by Neuroskeptic.

    The Humanist discusses the explosion of the unhelpful concept of sex addition.

    Forensic psychology nerds: In The News covers the latest in the debate on the accuracy of violence risk assessments.

    The Bangkok Post on the bizarre Thai government announcement that calculators, phones “and even karaoke machines” could damage memory, lead to Alzheimer’s disease. Bryan Adams covers, screaming fits. 80s hair metal, unfortunately lycra incidents.

    People without an amygdala can experience fear. Neurophilosophy covers an intriguing new study.

    Wired Danger Room on the cost of war to the US: currently, at least 253,330 brain injuries, 129,731 cases of PTSD – and counting.

    Missouri Public Radio on how ex- Abu Ghraib chief psychologist Larry James wants to launch a national gun violence prevention center. Presumably, by waterboarding assault rifle owners.

    Short-term exercise boosts body image without making any physical difference. The BPS Research Digest on the short-term psychological effects of exercise.

    Scientific American has an important piece on the science of what life events can trigger depression.

    After a nonsense article on ‘girls and the science gap’ two neuroscientists write a stirling reply on why pseudoscience and stereotyping won’t solve the problem in Notes and Queries.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Linkage | Comments (6)

    A memory of shifting sands

    February 9, 2013 – 10:19 am

    The New York Review of Books has a reflective piece by Oliver Sacks on the swirling mists of memory and how false recall has affected authors and artists throughout history.

    [Science] is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened—or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely my own, have arisen from others’ suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten.

    Similarly, while I often give lectures on similar topics, I can never remember, for better or worse, exactly what I said on previous occasions; nor can I bear to look through my earlier notes. Losing conscious memory of what I have said before, and having no text, I discover my themes afresh each time, and they often seem to me brand-new. This type of forgetting may be necessary for a creative or healthy cryptomnesia, one that allows old thoughts to be reassembled, retranscribed, recategorized, given new and fresh implications.

    Sacks reflects on some of his own shift sans of memory and the thin line between ‘literary borrowing’ and unrecognised remembering.
     

    Link to ‘Speak, Memory’ in The NYRB (via @mocost)

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Remembering | Comments (1)

    Hallucinema Paradiso

    February 7, 2013 – 8:49 pm

    The Barbican Centre in London has a Cinema and Psychosis event on the 17th March where we’ll discuss how the silver screen can represent the altered states of psychosis.

    Rather than focus on ‘how films depict mad people’, which usually just involves appalling stereotypes, we’re interested in how cinema can depict delusions and hallucinations.

    The event will include presentations by film folks, psychologists and people who have experienced psychosis – including the brilliant artist Dolly Sen.

    I’ll be talking with psychologist and novelist Charles Fernyhough on how the psychology of psychosis is reflected on screen.

    The full programme is here where you can also book a ticket. Otherwise, £5 on the door or free for the unwaged.

    It’s part of The Barbican’s Wonder neuroscience season so if you don’t catch us there’s plenty of other great events in March and April.

     

    Link to Cinema and Psychosis at The Barbican.
    Link to more details of the Wonder neuroscience season.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in News | Comments (1)

    The dark patch of death

    February 5, 2013 – 10:17 pm

    We’ve covered some dodgy neuroscience journalism in our time but The Daily Mail has such as amazing piece of tosh, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be serious or the result of huffing bathroom cleaner.

    Now I try and avoid writing about The Daily Mail because it’s so science impaired it’s a bit like complaining that your pantomime horse won’t gallop properly.

    But this is just amazing.

    Where evil lurks: Neurologist discovers ‘dark patch’ inside the brains of killers and rapists

    Hmmm, this sounds like it’s going to be a sensational piece of nonsense. I wonder what the ‘dark patch’ refers to?

    A German neurologist claims to have found the area of the brain where evil lurks in killers, rapists and robbers.

    It’s not looking good. Evil doesn’t ‘lurk’ in any part of the brain.

    Bremen scientist Dr Gerhard Roth says the ‘evil patch’ lies in the brain’s central lobe and shows up as a dark mass on X-rays.

    Evil patch? X-rays? Dark mass? But sweet Jesus in heaven. WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CENTRAL LOBE?

    Screw the ‘dark patch’ these evil-doers have grown another lobe. The man has discovered mutant three-lobe killer rapists.

    Believe it or not, it actually gets worse.

    I could explain where the article has gone wrong but I’m too busy pushing furniture up against the windows. You won’t take me alive creatures of darkness!
     

    Link to it’s not satire if written while high on cleaning products.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Nonsense | Comments (19)

    BBC Column: The psychology of the to-do list

    February 5, 2013 – 2:30 pm

    My latest column for BBC Future. The original is here.

    Your mind loves it when a plan comes together – the mere act of planning how to do something frees us from the burden of unfinished tasks.

    If your daily schedule and email inbox are anything like mine, you’re often left a state of paralysis by the sheer bulk of outstanding tasks weighing on your mind. In this respect, David Allen’s book Getting Things Done is a phenomenon. An international best-seller and a personal productivity system known merely as GTD, it’s been hailed as being a “new cult for the info age”. The heart of the system is a way of organising the things you have to do, based on Allen’s experience of working with busy people and helping them to make time for the stuff they really want to do.

    Ten years after the book was first published in 2001, scientific research caught up with the productivity guru, and it revealed exactly why his system is so popular – and so effective.

    The key principle behind GTD is writing down everything that you need to remember, and filing it effectively. This seemingly simple point is based around far more than a simple filing cabinet and a to-do list. Allen’s system is like a to-do list in the same way a kitten is like a Bengal Tiger.

    “Filing effectively”, in Allen’s sense, means a system with three parts: an archive, where you store stuff you might need one day (and can forget until then), a current task list in which everything is stored as an action, and a “tickler file” of 43 folders in which you organise reminders of things to do (43 folders because that’s one for the next thirty-one days plus the next 12 months).

    The current task list is a special kind of to-do list because all the tasks are defined by the next action you need to take to progress them. This simple idea is remarkably effective in helping resolving the kind of inertia that stops us resolving items on our lists. As an example, try picking a stubborn item from your own to-do list and redefining it until it becomes something that actually involves moving one of your limbs. Something necessary but unexciting like “Organise a new fence for the garden” becomes “ring Marcus and ask who fixed his fence”. Or, even better with further specifics on how to move your fingers, “dial 2 626 81 19 and ask Marcus who fixed his fence”.

    Breaking each task down into its individual actions allows you to convert your work into things you can either physically do, or forget about, happy in the knowledge that it is in the system. Each day you pick up the folder for that day and either action the item, or defer it to another folder for a future day or month. Allen is fanatical on this – he wants people to make a complete system for self-management, something that will do the remembering and monitoring for you, so your mind is freed up.

    So what’s the psychology that backs this up? Roy Baumeister and EJ Masicampo at Florida State University were interested in an old phenomenon called the Zeigarnik Effect, which is what psychologists call our mind’s tendency to get fixated on unfinished tasks and forget those we’ve completed. You can see the effect in action in a restaurant or bar – you can easily remember a drinks order, but then instantly forget it as soon as you’ve put the drinks down. I’ve mentioned this effect before when it comes to explaining the psychology behind Tetris.

    A typical way to test for the Zeigarnik Effect is to measure if an unfulfilled goal interferes with the ability to carry out a subsequent task. Baumeister and Masicampo discovered that people did worse on a brainstorming task when they were prevented from finishing a simple warm-up task – because the warm-up task was stuck in their active memory. What Baumeister and Masicampo did next is the interesting thing; they allowed some people to make plans to finish the warm-up task. They weren’t allowed to finish it, just to make plans on how they’d finish it. Sure enough, those people allowed to make plans were freed from the distracting effect of leaving the warm-up task unfinished.

    Back to the GTD system, its key insight is that your attention has a limited capacity – you can only fit so much in your mind at any one time. The GTD archive and reminder system acts as a plan for how you’ll do things, releasing the part of your attention that it struggling to hold each item on your to-do list in mind. Rather than remove things from our sight by doing them, Allen, and the research, suggest we merely need to have a good plan of when and how to do them. The mere act of planning how to finish something satisfies the itch that keeps uncompleted tasks in our memory.

    By tomstafford | Posted in Reasoning | Comments (3)

    Death of a booty chemical

    February 3, 2013 – 10:09 am

    I’ve got a piece in The Observer about why dopamine isn’t a ‘pleasure chemical’ but how this idea is likely to stay because it’s too useful for the media.

    It provides a simplified explanation for a whole range of behaviours and sexes-up science stories, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

    If there were a celebrity among brain chemicals, it would be dopamine. Supposedly released whenever we experience something pleasurable, it’s forever linked to salacious stories of sex, drugs and wild partying in the popular press. The Kim Kardashian of neurotransmitters, it gives instant appeal to listless reporting and gives editors an excuse to drop some booty on the science pages.

    There are too many bad examples to mention in detail, but I have some favourites. The Sun declared that “cupcakes could be as addictive as cocaine” because they apparently cause “a surge of the reward chemical dopamine to hit the decision-making area of the brain”. The article was topped off with a picture of Katy Perry, apparently a “cupcake fan” and, presumably, dangerously close to spiralling into a life of frosted-sponge addiction.

    The piece goes on to mention another particularly bad example of dopamine reporting among many and explains why the ‘pleasure chemical’ cliché just doesn’t fit the science.

    Unfortunately, one of my best lines (definition: I laughed at my own joke) got edited out.

    The original line was “It was clearly just a smokescreen for the views of gun and, er, cupcake hating liberals” which has just been edited down to “gun hating liberals”.

    It’ll make sense when you read it.
     

    Link to ‘The unsexy truth about dopamine’ in The Observer.

    By vaughanbell | Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (1)
    Follow

    Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

    Join 1,703 other followers