Category: News

Assuming all goes well, I should be on Radio 3’s Night Waves this evening talking about the neuropsychology behind the Gallery Space Recall project.

UPDATE: What an odd experience that was. I sounded like a robot and got vastly outclassed by a poet. Story of my life.

A new issue of Scientific American Mind has arrived on the shelves with a couple of freely accessible articles on microexpressions and communication through gestures available online.

Microexpressions are like any other facial expression, but they are very subtle and occur incredibly quickly, coming and going in several hundred milliseconds.

Paul Ekman, largely known for his discovery that many facial expressions of emotion were universal, has been particularly keen on researching microexpressions in recent years.

It is thought that these fleeting expressions give away the inner emotional state (and maybe whether someone is lying), because they are under less conscious control than more obvious facial expressions.

The other freely available article is on the gestures we make when talking, that potentially give an insight into the hidden psychology that belies our words.

Our body movements always convey something about us to other people. The body “speaks” whether we are sitting or standing, talking or just listening. On a blind date, how the two individuals position themselves tells a great deal about how the evening will unfold: Is she leaning in to him or away? Is his smile genuine or forced?

The same is true of gestures. Almost always involuntary, they tip us off to love, hate, humility and deceit. Yet for years, scientists spent surprisingly little time studying them, because the researchers presumed that hand and arm movements were mere by-products of verbal communication. That view changed during the 1990s, in part because of the influential work of psycholinguist David McNeill at the University of Chicago.

Link to contents of October 2006 SciAmMind.
Link to article ‘A Look Tells All’.
Link to artice ‘Gestures Offer Insight’.

Looks like the story about Gallery Space Recall has been picked up by a few places (see previous post on Mind Hacks).

Probably the best coverage is from The Independent which attempts to look at both the context and content of the work, while BBC News has a short piece, and The Mirror and The Daily Record have even shorter pieces.

I arrived in Cardiff on Friday to give a talk with artist Simon Pope on our art / science collaboration Walking Here and There to find the exhibition made the front page of the South Wales Echo with the headline “It’s an empty room… So why on earth do they think it is art?”.

The exhibition, entitled ‘Gallery Space Recall‘, is indeed an empty gallery, with nothing but the words ‘You are invited to recall from memory a walk through a gallery space’ written on the wall.

The only other component is that we’ve trained the gallery assistants to use a few psychological techniques to encourage people to expand on the impact and significance of their memories while they take visitors around the gallery. Vistors are encouraged to recall a previous gallery space they’ve visited, as if their remembered exhibition were in the space of Chapter Arts Centre.

With all credit to Simon, while the work is part of Walking Here and There, the wonderful idea for this part was all his.

The exhibition aims to highlight the role of memory and location in how we understand and appreciate art, and relate to our environment.

Artists aim to convey meaning with their work, communicating concepts and invoking ideas in new and challenging ways. However, psychology and neuroscience has known for over a century that meaning is something which is constructed and reconstructed by the mind and brain (Bartlett’s ‘War of the Ghosts‘ experiment is a famous example).

The perception of everything from the simple visual world to complexity of visual art is directly dependent on our past experience. This is known as ‘top-down’ processing [pdf], and is obvious in the brain where the visual system is massively connected to memory areas.

Also, the personal significance of art depends on your memories. A piece might invoke strong emotions because it connects with past experiences, in turn making it more memorable, as emotionally arousing events are recalled better than others.

So where does the meaning in art actually lie? In the object itself, or in your interpretation of it?

Gallery Space Recall removes the object and relies entirely on your memory. So where does the art exist here? In the visitor’s mind? In a past gallery recalled by the visitor? In the mind of the gallery assistant who is listening to the visitor reminisce? In Simon’s idea? Or, perhaps, all of them?

This is exactly where Simon’s work and my work overlap, as we’re both interested in how memory and its distortions affect our understanding of the world.

It’s interesting that none of the artists interviewed for the outraged South Wales Echo article actually objected to the idea (in fact, they seemed to quite like it), but just to the fact that an empty gallery got funded.

I think we can confidently say that this is the cheapest exhibition that the gallery has ever put on, actually leaving more money for other artists. Consequently, it’s probably the cheapest publicity they’ve ever had too.

Further stages of the collaboration look at how the breakdown of memory, in delusions and psychosis, highlight the importance of remembering in our perception of reality.

The slides from the talk are online [powerpoint format] if you want more information, or keep tabs on the Walking Here and There website to see how the project progresses.

We’ll also be discussing the project at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, this Wednesday at 4pm (details here) and the exhibition is on until November 5th.

Link to Walking Here and There website.
Link to description of Gallery Space Recall.
Link to photos of opening.
Link to ‘Art? Or just an empty room?’ from the South Wales Echo.
ppt file of powerpoint slides from gallery talk.

For those wanting to catch the vibe from the recently ended 2006 Society for Neuroscience annual conference in Atlanta, the latest edition of The Synpase psychology and neuroscience writing carnival is an SfN special.

There’s also been some good coverage on reanimated Nature Neuroscience blog Action Potential if you want an alternative slant on proceedings, and some photos of the event have been put online by Neurocontrarian.

The complete works of Charles Darwin are being published online, free for anyone to read and search. Among his many works, perhaps the one of most interest to Mind Hacks readers will be The expression of the emotions in man and animals, published in 1872.

Link to Charles Darwin online.

For those wanting their fortnightly hit of studies from the British Psychological Society Research Digest, a new edition has just been released and is welcoming eager readers…

During the coming week, artist Simon Pope and I will be giving a couple of talks on Walking Here and There – an art / science collaboration project that aims to investigate the interaction of place and memory in psychosis, and particularly reduplicative paramnesia, the delusional belief that a place exists in two or more locations simultaneously.

The first will be at 4pm this Friday (20th) at the Chapter Gallery in Cardiff, as part of Simon’s solo exhibition Gallery Space Recall. The discussion will be followed by a participation event in the gallery where you can experience a tour through a remembered exhibition.

The second will be at 4pm, on Wednesday 25th of October at Goldsmiths College, University of London, as part of the 2006 Whitehead Lectures on Cognition, Computation and Creativity. This talk will take place in the Pimlott Lecture Theatre, Ben Pimlott Building on Goldsmiths campus (location details).

I’ll be talking about the science and neuropsychology of reduplicative paramnesia and we’ll both be discussing how we’ve found trying to combine our disciplines to better understand space and location, as well as unusual states of mind.

Unfortunately we didn’t got much choice over timing, and we realise 4pm isn’t the most convenient time for most people to attend a talk, but we hope to do some more in the future during more accessible slots.

Plus, there’ll be a chance to participate in the experimental stage of the project for anyone who wishes to volunteer. More on this when the time comes!

Link to Walking Here and There website.
Link to details of Goldsmith’s talk.
Link to details of Gallery Space Recall at Chapter.

The Washington Post asked one of their journalists to test-drive several of the increasing number of ‘cognitive fitness’ websites that have online games and puzzles specifically designed to increase mental performance.

Although there isn’t a massive amount of research on the subject, the little research there is suggests that staying mentally active, particularly during later life, can increase or maintain mental abilities.

The success of Nintendo’s Brain Age cartridge has spawned an industry of ‘mental workout’ computer games, many of which are now available on pay-for-use websites.

The Washington Post article gives a brief run-down of some of the science that motivates these companies, and tries out several of the websites for size.

Interestingly, the Post also got research psychologists to comment on the sites to see if their tasks were likely to be doing what they claimed.

Link to Washington Post article ‘Pumping Neurons’.

An independently-funded study on the impact of older and newer antipsychotic drugs, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, has found that the older and cheaper drugs seem to lead to a better an equal quality of life.

Antipsychotics are generally used to treat delusions and hallucinations in a number of mental disorders, but are most used by people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The study has caused barely a whisper in the mainstream media but is interesting for a number of reasons.

The first is that it was not funded by a drug company. Studies funded by the pharmaceutical industray are more likely to report favourable results, so independent studies, although rare, are valued in the literature.

Also, it was a well-designed study, running as a randomised controlled trial – the ‘gold standard’ for evaluating treatment effects.

Finally, it produced some surprising findings.

Even psychiatrists who are typically suspicious of drug-company claims that the newer drugs have ‘less side-effects’ (the evidence suggests they just tend to have different ones) will admit that the older generation of antipsychotic drugs produced permanent and unpleasant undesired consequences, including uncontrollable facial contortions and movement problems (something called tardive dyskinesia).

The presence of these might be thought to lead to a worse quality of life than the side-effect of the newer antipsychotics, which, although serious (typically an increased risk of diabetes, heart problems and obesity) can be at least partly dealt with by diet and exercise changes.

There’s a ongoing discussion at the British Medical Journal website, with lots of ‘damn the data, I know my experience’ type comments, but what this study suggests is perhaps that we need a better understanding of what people value in their lives, the impact of these drugs on how people live, and how to most appropriately measure life ‘quality’.

It’s also worth noting that these older drugs are now barely-profitable compared to the newer ones. The fact that independently funded studies tend not to produce as much supporting evidence for the most marketed medications suggests that a healthy skepticism about drug company marketing is a must.

UPDATE: Neuroshrink has added a fantastic commentary on this post, including some clarifications on things I missed and misinterpreted from this study. See the comments for more.

Link to study abstract.
Link to BMJ discussion.

SfN 2006, the Society for Neuroscience’s yearly tribal gathering, has kicked off in Atlanta and several bloggers are keeping tabs on the proceedings.

Jake from Pure Pedantry, Shelley from Retrospectacle, the Neurocontrarian and Neurotopia are all bringing you some of the latest scientific developments from the floor.

They’re also bringing you some of the news that isn’t appearing in the mainstream news feeds:

…Jake and Shelley and I had dinner last night and went clubbing, and poor Neurocontrarian ended up crashing on our floor after making out with some hottie.

You may wish to compare with the recently risen-from-the-ashes Nature Neuroscience Action Potential blog:

Nature Publishing threw a very classy party at the Sundial Restaurant, slowly rotating high above downtown. I was astonished to hear Morgan Sheng, Moses Chao and Bartlett Mel all speak (some) German! Very good, guys, keep it up 🙂

I’ve not been able to find any relevant feeds on Flickr yet, so if anyone is uploading any photos, or is blogging the conference and hasn’t been mentioned, do get in touch.

Link to SfN 2006 website with searchable abstracts.

Edge reports that several cognitive scientists were at the recent Future of Science conference in Venice in Italy.

Some of the talks are available as online video for those wanting to catch up on what was discussed:

* Stephen Pinker on The Cognitive Niche [wmv]
* Marc Hauser on Evolution of a Universal Moral Grammar [wmv]
* Michael Gazzaniga on Are Human Brains Unique? [wmv]
* Antonio Damasio on The Emotions in Evolution: a Neurobiological Perspective [wmv]
* Daniel Dennett on The Domestication of the Wild Memes of Religion [wmv]

The New York Times has just published an article on the work on Prof Brian Wansink who investigates the psychology of snacking and eating behaviour.

Although, at first, this seems quite a mundane topic, his research team has produced some fascinating results that suggest that the amount we eat is governed as much by the perception of how much we should eat, rather than purely on how hungry we seem.

“We don’t have any idea what the normal amount to eat is, so we look around for clues or signals,” he said. “When all you see is that big portions of food cost less than small ones, it can be confusing.”

Although people think they make 15 food decisions a day on average, his research shows the number is well over 200. Some are obvious, some are subtle. The bigger the plate, the larger the spoon, the deeper the bag, the more we eat. But sometimes we decide how much to eat based on how much the person next to us is eating, sometimes moderating our intake by more than 20 percent up or down to match our dining companion.

His experiments even include a soup bowl that has been specially modified to slowly fill itself back up without the participants noticing. It seems the participants eat much more soup as a result, again without noticing.

This sort of research is used by food companies to try and get us to eat more, but could also be used by those concerned with healthy eating to promote certain sorts of foods and reduce the intake of others.

Link to NYT article ‘Seduced by Snacks? No, Not You’.

London’s Science Museum has just opened a new exhibition and website entitled NEURObotics that investigates how medical technology could boost our brains‚Äö read our thoughts or give us mind control over machines.

The exhibition tackles topics such as brain-scan lie detectors, enhancing brain function with TMS (magnetic pulses) and even has the Braingate ‘brain interface chip’ as one of the exhibits.

This sort of technology, sometimes called neuroprosthetics, was recently profiled in an open-access Nature special and has allowed people to operate simple computer controls via their thoughts in experimental set-ups.

The exhibition is free and runs until April 2007.

Link to Science Museum NEURObotics website.
Link to list of exhibits.
Link to BBC News story on the exhibition.

Today is World Mental Health Day, and what could be a better way to celebrate a day of mental calm and tranquility than to ignite a blazing row at the core of psychiatry?

A group of mental health activists are pushing for the diagnosis of schizophrenia to be abolished.

Actually, the idea that schizophrenia is a single separate disorder is in a pretty shoddy state, but the argument is a textbook example of mixed agendas as the people who want to reject the label also reject the use of biological explanations in theories of mental illness, and those who argue most forcefully for the diagnosis of schizophrenia are usually heavily committed to biological psychiatry.

What gets lost, is that the validity of schizophrenia as a concept, and whether biological theories are useful, are separate issues.

This is probably because both sides seem to spend so much time trying to make us think that they’re not.

To get a good idea of what the diagnosis of schizophrenia describes in terms of our scientific understanding, the entry for schizophrenia on the OMIM database of medical conditions with genetic influences really says it all:

Schizophrenia is a psychosis, a disorder of thought and sense of self. Although it affects emotions, it is distinguished from mood disorders in which such disturbances are primary. Similarly, there may be mild impairment of cognitive function, and it is distinguished from the dementias in which disturbed cognitive function is considered primary. There is no characteristic pathology, such as neurofibrillary tangles in Alzheimer disease. Schizophrenia is a common disorder with a lifetime prevalence of approximately 1%. It is highly heritable but the genetics are complex. This may not be a single entity.

In other words, very little can be said with certainty. Any definition that finishes with the ominous “This may not be a single entity” suggests we really don’t understand much about the associated experiences.

So why does the argument over schizophrenia persist?

Mainly because the medical and legal systems are far more comfortable with cut-and-dry “you have it or you don’t” conditions than ones in which you might have a bit of this and a bit of that.

This is often due to the fact that the medical and legal systems have to make cut and dry decisions. To treat or not to treat, to detain or not to detain, and so on. These decisions become a lot easier when the supporting information is as simple as possible.

It also becomes a lot easier to market treatments for specific disorders. In fact, in many countries, drugs can only be licensed for specific disorders.

So, no diagnosis means that there’s no way of getting drugs licensed. This is why pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in supporting the concept of schizophrenia.

In other words, the usefulness of the diagnosis of schizophrenia rests not only upon the supporting medical research, but also on its social function.

In fact, one of the ironies of the debate, is that the most recent research in molecular genetics (exactly the sort of biological approach that those against the diagnosis of schizophrenia are also opposed to) shows some of the best evidence that schizophrenia is not a discrete condition.

You can imagine that neither the drug companies nor the anti-schizophrenia-diagnosis mental health activists plaster these findings across their leaflets.

Link to article on molecular genetics of mental illness.
Link to Asylum Online on ‘Abolition of the Schizophrenia Label’.
Link to BBC News article on the debate.

Quality online cognitive science site Science and Consciousness Review has arisen phoenix-like from the ashes after a nasty database crash.

The outage removed it from the internet for several months, but it is now back in action, serving up the latest in news and views in consciousness and cognitive science research.

In fact, it’s just alerted me to the announcement of the 2007 visual illusion contest which also includes last year’s winners on their website.

Link to Science and Consciousness Review.