Category: News

Well, okay, not really a serenade but the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, which kicks off in San Diego next week, on 6 March. I (Matt) will be there, speaking about my new project, playsh, the Playful Shell. And since the conference organisers also published Mind Hacks, I figure a few readers of this blog may be going along too. If you are, please do hunt me down and say hello! It’s always fun to meet new folks.

Wikipedia now has both a mind and brain portal and a psychology portal which promise not only to keep you up-to-date with the latest encyclopaedic happenings, but also to broadcast news and messages for the psychology and neuroscience community.

The mind and brain portal seems to have been kicked-off by Italian philosopher Francesco Franco (username Lacatosias) while the psychology portal was the brain-child of Zeligf.

Both have been launched in the last few weeks and like everything on Wikipedia, the quality improves as more people pitch in.

So if you’ve never thought of contributing to the world’s best and most dynamic online encyclopaedia, now’s your chance.

Link to Wikipedia Mind and Brain Portal.
Link to Wikipedia Psychology Portal.

Link to what you get when you mix a choreographer, six cognitive scientists, ten dancers and an anthropologist. Via The Quarter, where art, science and politics meet.

Philosopher and neo-Darwinian Daniel Dennett has a new book out that attempts to explain the human penchant for religiosity in terms of memes. Guardian review here.

Quick on the heels of research showing how sex the old-fashioned way (but not other forms of sexual gratification) can protect against upcoming stressful events, a new study in the same journal shows sex with a partner is 400 per cent more satisfying than a self-loving session, as measured by levels of prolactin – a hormone associated with satiety. Both studies by Stuart Brody.

Update: Daniel Dennett will be in conversation with psychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore, philosopher and theologian Richard Swinborne and sociologist Tariq Modood at the Imax theatre in Bristol, March 15. Click here and scroll down.

Controversial artificial intelligence researcher and maverick cognitive science visionary Chris McKinstry took his own life last month.

Chris founded Mindpixel, a collaborative AI project which aimed to collate a mass of machine-usable human knowledge online. He also ran the now offline Mindpixel blog, where he posted AI news and opinions.

His ideas were often highly speculative, but always demonstrated a keen passion for understanding the mind and brain. A recent story for kuro5hin.org was an example of this, where he discussed his entry for the AI chatbot competition the Loebner Prize in terms of a seven dimensional hyper-surface.

Chris posted his intentions to end his life online, and, cognitive scientist to the end, finished it thus:

Oh and BTW, the mind is a maximum hypersurface and thought a trajectory on it and the amygdala and hippocampus are Hopf maps of it. No one knew this before me, and it seems no one cares. So be it. My time will come in a hundred or a thousand years when the idea again returns.

Link to Wikipedia entry for Chris McKinstry.
Link to obituary from KBand.

Sunday’s Observer featured an in-depth profile by Rachel Donadio of Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink.

“With a writerly verve and strong narrative powers, he leavens serious social science research with zany characters and pithy, easily digestible anecdotes.”

Gladwell’s publishing success – Tipping Point has sold 1.7 million copies in N. America and Blink has sold 1.3 million – has led to a lucrative career as a public speaker for which he is apparently now paid about $40,000 per lecture. On top of that he’s also a columnist at the New Yorker.

“Gladwell’s dazzling arguments ultimately offer reassurance. Indeed he seems a contemporary incarnation of a recurring figure in the American experience, one who comes with encouraging news: you can make a difference, you have the capacity to change.”

Update: Malcolm Gladwell has a blog; via Marginal Revolution.

Link to book tickets to see Malcolm Gladwell in conversation with Robert McCrum, The Observer’s literary editor, on Weds 15 March at the South Bank Centre in London.
Link to profile as it appeared in the NY Times before the Observer.
Link to first audio clip from the interview.
Link to 2nd audio clip.
Link to 3rd audio.

The story in Prospect magazine about Nia – “…too beautiful to be in a psychiatric ward” [see post here] caused quite a furore in the blogosphere. Now the authors have given their response here.

I notice that the award winning BBC documentary series Century of the Self is available on certain bittorrent trackers (for example, here).

The series, made by producer Adam Curtis, follows the development of the concept of the self from the ideas of Freud, to the massively influential but largely unknown role of his nephew Edward Bernays.

Bernays is considered the ‘father of public relations’ as he virtually invented the practice in its current form by applying his uncle’s theories.

Crucially, instead of selling products on the basis that they were better products, he revolutionised advertising by marketing them to appeal to the sense of self – i.e. the product would make you a better person (more attractive, more independent or whatever).

He was later involved in applying the same techniques to excert political influence on behalf of the US government and later wrote Propaganda, one of the most influential books on the subject.

The documentary tracks how the psychology of the ‘self’ evolved and was used by marketeers and politicians throughout the 20th century.

It gets a little political towards the end, but otherwise strikes me as a groundbreaking analysis of a neglected topic. Highly recommended.

Link to torrent for ‘Century of the Self’.
Link to Wikipedia entry on Edward Bernays.
Link to Wikipedia entry on ‘Century of the Self’.
Link to BBC information on ‘Century of the Self’.

An interesting update on Peter Lawrence’s PLoS Biology article that discussed the role of social and biological differences between males and females, and the under-representation of women in science (see previously on Mind Hacks)…

According to an article in The Telegraph, Lawrence’s article was accepted for publication in the journal Science but they bottled it and pulled out at the eleventh hour, presumably fearing the controversy that has surrounded the debate so far.

Link to Telegraph article ‘Scientists are split on the different ways men and women think’.

Now here’s an achievement that definitely deserves recognition, I’d say. Robert Jervis, the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, is set to be awarded $20,000 by the National Academy of Sciences in America for carrying out psychological research that has helped prevent nuclear war.

There must be a few people working towards such ends because apparently this award is made every three years! A press release says Jervis earned this year’s prize “for showing, scientifically and in policy terms, how cognitive psychology, politically contextualized, can illuminate strategies for the avoidance of nuclear war”. He’ll receive the award at a ceremony in Washington on April 23rd.

Link to the National Academy of Sciences.
Link to interview with Jervis.

Just a quick note to say thanks very much to Mark Brown who got sick of mindhacks.com not having a favicon… and made us one. You can see it up there in the address bar, or – possibly – by the title for your RSS feed. Much appreciated, cheers!

Today’s Times has two short but interesting articles in its ‘body and soul’ section, both of which are available online: one on the neuroscience of art and another on self-harm.

Mark Lythgoe is a neuroscientist at University College London who has been involved in art / science projects for over a decade. He discusses the possible neural basis for why Dan Flavin’s minimalist light-based artwork has such appeal.

The article on self-harm is inspired by a new book by Carolyn Smith, based on her own experiences of self-harm and recovery. It discusses the phenomenon, its emotional impact, and includes advice if you find out someone you know has self-harmed.

Link to article ‘The light fantastic’.
Link to article ‘Unkindest cut of all’.

A new online service called ‘PsychPop‘ has been launched by the Institute of Psychiatry in London. It allows members of the public to volunteer to help in research that aims to combat brain injury, neurological disease and mental illness.

Often, one of the difficulties in conducting research is not recruiting people affected by medical conditions, but members of the public.

General public participants are essential allies in research, needed to determine which aspects of mind and brain functioning might be different when compared to people with a specific condition.

The service at the Institute of Psychiatry has been set up by neuropsychologist and wikipedian Paul Wicks, initially out of frustration when trying to recruit members of the public in his own research on motor neurone disease.

Taking part in research can also be a fascinating experience. If you don’t live in London, most universities will conduct research into the mind and brain so it’s worth getting in touch and asking how to volunteer.

Crucially, find out exactly what’s involved, make sure the study has ethical approval (it has been judged by an ethics committee to be safe and well conducted) and ask any questions you have before starting.

Other than that, enjoy the experience! You usually get your travel expenses reimbursed and can often get a copy of the results – including a picture of your brain if you take part in a neuroimaging study.

Cognitive scientists: If your department has an online sign-up form for participants, why not add a link in the comments page of this entry?

Link to PsychPop.

Today’s New Scientist is a special on robots, particularly focusing on robots that mimic or model certain aspects of human behaviour.

The issue also has an additional article on whether it is possible to regulate the brain’s ‘time keeper’ to change the conscious perception of time – a skill which could be used to allow for more conscious control of difficult tasks.

The article does suffer from a few points of frank weirdness (e.g. “Schizophrenics have too much dopamine activity in the brain so their clock is so fast that it feels like the whole world is crazy” – wtf?) but is otherwise an interesting look at chronobiology – the science of biological time perception.

For those wanting to know more about the area, you could do far worse than go to the insightful and informative blog Circadiana, for which chronobiology is a focus of interest.

Otherwise, your local library should have a copy of New Scientist if your newsagent doesn’t, as unfortunately, the main feature articles aren’t available online.

Link to table of contents for this week’s New Scientist.
Link to Circadiana.

Does advertising work? If it does work, how does it work? And given this, should we be worried about what advertisers do? These are, broadly, the questions I’m interested in and the topics I am going to be posting about for the next month. Aside from sheer curiousity, I’m chairing a discussion on the topic of advertising and psychology on March 6th at Cafe Scientifique, Sheffield.

Here’s the blurb:

Do adverts work? How do they work? And is it a problem?

Most of us don’t think we’re particularly affected by adverts, but it can’t be for nothing that the advertising industry in the UK spent ¬£13 billion last year trying to change our buying habits, and another couple of billion pounds researching in which are the most effective ways of doing this. Psychologists have spent years trying to predict what makes people behave in certain ways and we’re not that close to an answer – perhaps the advertisers, with their massive budget, have cracked it? And if they have, should we be worried?

This talk will invite the audience to consider what kind of effect advertising has, and how most adverts work. Although ‘subliminal advertising’ is a myth, some recent research does suggests that there are ways our behaviour can be influenced without our full awarenessus of it. What these experiments mean for the freedom of the individual is an open question which hopefully we can consider together.

I genuinely haven’t reached any conclusions on this yet, so I’m looking forward to the discussion, especially as it touches on such tangled issues as freewill and experimental evidence on how our behaviour can be unconsciously affected (Hacks #98, #99 and #100 for those of you with copies of Mind Hacks). And hopefully too, there’ll be an opportunity for some blog-discussion as well. I’m going to cross-post things at both mindhacks.com and at idiolect, although I’ll reserve the more speculative and/or sociological stuff for idiolect. If you’ve anything to say, please chip in, and if you’ve got anything you think I should know about, read or listen to please email me tom [at] mindhacks [dot] com

An article in The Guardian discusses the possibilities of using new developments in biotechnology to enhance the human mind and brain.

The article is somewhat breathless to say the least, but does contain an interesting overview of the current schools of thought on the possible impact of the technology on society.

The author also notes that there are a number of upcoming events which will discuss the implications of a world where cognitive enhancement technology is widely available.

One such event, entitled ‘Better Humans?‘, is being run by the London-based think-tank Demos in Feburary and aims to mark the launch of a series of essays on the topic.

A further event, entitled ‘Tomorrow’s People‘, is being run by Oxford University in March and aims “to explore the promises of technology for life enhancement and extension in different parts of the world”.

Link to ‘There is no stop button in the race for human re-engineering’.

Mind Hacks has been published in Polish as 100 sposobów na zgłębienie tajemnic umysłu. You can order it here, and at kognitywistyka.net, the polish cognitive science website, you can read an interview Matt and I did. The interview is available in English and in Polish and is part of a series of three (the next two will shortly be available in the same place).

And so, to any polish readers – welcome to mindhacks.com!

The details of the new translation, in Polish, below the fold

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