Author: vaughanbell

Art and the New Biology of the Mind video online

statue_smile.jpgBrainEthics has just posted up a couple of news items of interest to those keeping track of developments in neuroaesthetics – the neuroscience of art and creativity.

The first is that video from the recent conference on Art and the New Biology of the Mind is now online. Speakers include David Freedberg, Eric R. Kandel, Antonio Damasio, Ray Dolan, Vittorio Gallese, Joseph LeDoux, Margaret Livingstone, V.S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki.

The speakers variously discuss ’emotion and consciousness’ and ‘vision and aesthetics’.

Secondly, Martin Skov writes about the launch of the new Institute for the Study of the Brain and Creativity at the University of Southern California. It will be led by Professors Antonio and Hanna Damasio.

Link to video archive from Art and the New Biology of the Mind conference.
Link to info on Institute for the Study of the Brain and Creativity.
Link to Washington Post on neuroaesthetics.

Time Magazine on the autistic mind

Time_magazine_autism.jpgTime Magazine has a cover story entitled “Inside the Autistic Mind” from its upcoming May 15th edition. It is available online (after viewing an ad) and discusses the recent developments in the psychology and neuroscience of autism.

“In the meantime, 300,000 school-age American children and many adults are attempting to get through daily life with autism. The world has tended to hear from those who are highest functioning, like Temple Grandin, the author and Colorado State University professor of livestock behavior known for designing humane slaughterhouses. But the voices of those more severely affected are beginning to be heard as well. Such was the case with Sue Rubin, 27, a college student from Whittier, Calif., who has no functional speech and matches most people’s stereotyped image of a retarded person; yet she was able to write the narration for the Oscar-nominated documentary about her life, Autism Is a World.”

The article contains material that some people will baulk at (e.g. the suggestion that cases of autism are vastly increasing) and is quite medical in its approach, although does contain some interesting accounts of ongoing research projects.

Link to Time article ‘Inside the Autistic Mind’.

Dana neuroscience radio

dana_monitor.jpgWhile browsing the ever-vigilant (and mildly addictive) Neurofuture blog I was alerted to the fact that the Dana Foundation have an archive of podcasts online, including their Gray Matters radio series and other in-depth neuroscience discussions.

They include a conversation with Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, Nancy Andreasen on the creative brain and a number of other wide-ranging programmes on everything from neuroethics to mental illness.

Also available is a page with all the programmes as realaudio files.

Link to Dana Foundation podcasts directory.
Link to Dana Foundation realaudio archive.

Online communities in the 1800s

joinson_internet.jpgAdam Joinson discusses the process of community building via technology in his book Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour (p11, ISBN 0333984684), noting that there is nothing new under the sun:

The cost and lack of privacy tended to inhibit personal communication between members of the general public using the telegraph. However, for the telegraph operators the network provided an ‘online community encompassing thousands of people, very few of whom met face-to-face’ (Standage, 1999, p122-3). The sense of community among telegraph operators was heightended by their own norms and customs, vocabulary, the use of short (usually two or three letters) signatures or ‘sigs’ and the sense of ownership of a particular line. According to Standage, experienced operators could even recognise their on-line friends simply from their style of morse code.

pdf of Joinson’s chapter on the history of tech-mediated communities.
Link to Adam Joinson’s homepage.
Link to Tom Standage’s homepage.

Freud birthday roundup

Sigmund_Freud.jpgToday is the 150th birthday of the late Sigmund Freud, controversial granddaddy of psychoanalysis who sparked off the modern interest in the unconscious and the use of ‘talk therapies’ in treating mental distress.

The Times has a critical article examining his legacy and finishing with a tongue-in-cheek quiz to test your knowledge of the great man and his theories.

Alternatively, The Calcutta Telegraph has a piece on Freud’s last surviving patient, Margarethe Walter, who spoke at an event to celebrate the anniversary.

The National Ledger starts an article by looking at the amount of kitsch freud merchandise available, and goes on to examine the relationship between Sigmund Freud, and his daughter Anna Freud, in a remarkably well-informed article that muses on the possible impact of this on Freudian theories.

And now’s probably a good time to revisit the five-part BBC Radio 4 series Freudian Slips – a series of 15 minute programmes each dedicated to one of Freud’s key works. The series is archived online.

BBC All in the Mind on the impact of combat

kwame_mckenzie.jpgBBC All in the Mind has a special on the psychological impact of combat and military psychiatry.

New presenter and psychiatrist Dr Kwame McKenzie investigates the mental health provisions of the armed forces, and the new developments introduced to support the emotional well-being of soldiers operating under intensely stressful conditions.

Dr Kwame McKenzie takes a look at the mental health of the military. With nearly one in 5 US soldiers returning from Iraq with psychological problems there’s growing concern about the mental health of soldiers. Dr McKenzie attends a NATO conference in Brussels looking at psychological support, and talks to Major General Patrick Cammaert, a former Dutch Marine, who now leads 15,000 UN peace keepers in DR Congo. Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Castro and Dr Brenda Wiederhold explain how the US is using predeployment briefings and Virtual Reality to help soliders cope, and Professor Simon Wessely talks about the situation in Britain.

The Army is using the psychological model of Transformational Leadership to reform its training regime, and All in the Mind visits the Infant Training Centre at Catterick to see if it’s making any difference to new recruits.

And Dr McKenzie talks to two veterans being treated by Combat Stress about their psychological breakdowns following active service.

Presumably, they mean Infantary Training Centre rather than Infant Training Centre!

Link to All in the Mind webpage.
realaudio of programme.

Ripples of yawn

bw_yawn.jpgSeed Magazine has a short but thought-provoking article on the yawn and the mysterious way they are ‘transmitted’ around a social group.

Scientists maintain that yawning has both social and physiological functions, and may even be useful clinically: Abnormal yawning can be symptomatic of pathology, such as tumors, hemorrhage or drug withdrawal. Researchers know that a system of several neurotransmitters and neuropeptides control yawning, but little is known about the exact mechanism underlying the action.

Until recently, it was thought that only humans and great apes were able to “catch” yawns. While humans yawn in the womb, they don’t fall prey to contagious yawning until about two years of age, which suggests a recent evolutionary origin.

The article also tackles the myth that yawns are brought on by lack of oxygen.

Link to ‘The Incredible, Communicable Yawn’ from Seed Magazine.

2006-05-05 Spike activity

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

spike.jpg

Mixing Memory examines evidence that craving a cigarette warps your sense of time.

Researchers have located a gene that they believe contributes towards overall mental performance.

New discoveries might lead to a ‘vaccine‘ for a certain type of brain tumour.

Popular Science looks at the use of beta-blocker drug propranolol in reducing the impact of traumatic memories.

Who’s afraid of the third culture? asks Gloria Origgi in boffin clubhouse Edge.

Bring on the replicants! Scientific American on android science.

Boys are being increasingly affected by body image pressure.

Do People Know When They’re Overweight? Science News examines the psychology of obesity and insight.

Drug companies accused of producing misleading adverts and advertsing watchdog accused of being inadequate.

Cognitive science video interviews on Slate

dennet_slate.jpgSlate has a collection of streamed video interviews with significant public figures online, including a couple of cognitive scientists.

A comprehensive interview with Daniel Dennett tackles his views on the supernatural, evolution, consciousness and free will.

Stephen Pinker is also interviewed and discuses evolutionary psychology, consciousness and the limits of science, although from quite a different angle.

Apparently, the interview with Francis Fukuyama also strays onto consciousness, although I haven’t listened far enough to discover for myself yet.

For a change, the interviews are in-depth and gives the speakers a chance to develop their ideas and really make their points.

Link to video interview with Daniel Dennett [transcript].
Link to video interview with Stephen Pinker [transcript].
Link to video interview with Francis Fukyama [transcript].

…via 3QuarksDaily.

NewSci on reading the mind by measuring the brain

ns_20060506.jpgThe cover story on today’s New Scientist is about recent efforts to determine what people are thinking by viewing their brain scans.

Although you may think this is what neuroscientists already do, in most brain-scanning experiments the researchers will know exactly what the participants are experiencing in the scanner, and they just link the measured brain activity to the known task.

Recently, researchers have been able to work out what the participants are viewing by only looking at their brain scans.

Although these experiments are quite simple so far – the researchers typically know that the participant is viewing one of several simple options and just have to work out which – the idea that mental states can be ‘read’ is causing some excitement. Not least because this has been the subject of many science-fiction novels and films.

The accuracy of these experiments is typically much better than chance, although it is far from perfect and so far has largely relied on very simple tasks (viewing lines and the like):

In published results, Tong and Kamitani were able to predict correctly 56 per cent of the time which of eight orientations of lines people were seeing, compared with 12.5 per cent for chance. When subjects were shown a grid of criss-crossing lines, the researchers predicted correctly 80 per cent of the time which lines were being attended to (Nature Neuroscience, vol 8, p679, pdf).

Unsurprisingly, this has sparked some neuroethical concerns. For example, the technology might advance to the stage where it could be used to narrow down what people were thinking regardless of whether they consented (e.g. in interrogations).

The article isn’t freely available online, but your local library or newsagent should have a copy.

Link to New Scientist table of contents.
pdf of Kamitani and Tong paper on ‘decoding the subjective contents of the brain’.

Serotonin charm

dopamine_earrings.jpgDr Raven Hanna is a biochemist-turned-artist who makes fantastic jewelry and clothing in the shape of neurotranmitters at Made with Molecules.

If you ever wanted a necklace adorned with dopamine and acetylcholine molecules, or just a simple serotonin charm around your neck, you could do far worse than check out Hanna’s online collection.

There’s also earrrings, keychains, cards and even clothes for kids appropriately adorned with oxytocin.

A witty and stylish way to display your love for all things brain-related.

Link to Made with Molecules (thanks Mel!).

The art and science of autism

wiltshire_frame.jpgABC Radio National has a Health Report special on the science, myths and realities of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The show talks to psychiatrists Dr John Constantino and Dr Eric Fombonne who discuss the features and attributes that a diagnosis of autism describes.

They also tackle the evidence for claims of an autism epidemic and the controversial link between autism and mercury-based vaccinations.

On an artistic note, the Wisconsin Medical Society has some online video of artist Stephen Wiltshire MBE who has autism and was featured in Oliver Sacks’ book An Anthropologist On Mars.

Wiltshire is taken for a helicopter ride to view Rome, and subsequently demonstrates his startling artistic talents by drawing an almost perfect, four metre long aerial panorama of the city.

mp3 or realaudio of Health Report on Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Link to page with transcript.
Link to page with video on Stephen Wiltshire.

Electricity, let it rain all over me

Robinson_Electricity.jpgI’m just reading Ray Robinson’s breathtaking debut novel Electricity (ISBN 0330444506) about Lily O’Connor – a young woman with epilepsy and a troubled past who’s trying to track down her lost brother.

Robinson wrote the novel as part of his PhD in creative writing and spent a considerable amount of time reading scientific literature on epilepsy and interviewing people with the condition.

Although the book doesn’t attempt to explain the science behind it, it does brilliantly capture the idiosyncratic experience of epilepsy in the sometimes wonderfully poetic language from the book’s protagonist – an otherwise plain speaking northern girl.

the room cracks and shatters, the colours wrapping their arms around me but I can’t hold them back, it’s like rain running down windows, the air’s melting in front of me, colours like feelings inside, suffocating but nice
   like storm clouds up there
   like bullies, black lightning off and on in their fat bellies and I need to pull at everything, need to touch and tug and twist and poke and push because it’s all slipping away from me
   and I know
   – Mel?
   I know she’s here in my room, but I can’t let go of the chair, my fingers crack-cracking the corners and I

   can’t catch my
   can’t catch my

Link to review from The Guardian.
Link to review by The Independent.
Link to information on the novel from Lancaster University.

Ethics of human enhancement

HETHRhead.jpgHuman Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights is a conference that kicks off next month to debate how the age-old practice of human modification should be handled in modern times and in the future.

Yet, what, if any, limits should be considered to human enhancement? On what grounds can citizens be prevented from modifying their own genes or brains? How far should reproductive rights be extended? Might enhancement reduce the diversity of humanity in the name of optimal health? Or, conversely, might enhancements inspire such an unprecedented diversity of human beings that they strain the limits of liberal tolerance and social solidarity? Can we exercise full freedom of thought if we can’t exercise control over our own brains using safe, available technologies? Can we ensure that enhancement technologies are safe and equitably distributed? When are regulatory efforts simply covert, illiberal value judgments?

The conference is being hosted at Stanford University Law School and runs from May 26-28.

Link to HETHR conference info (via BoingBoing).