Mind Hacks

New Scientist review

Which is nice. I’m pleased they picked up on all the links and references we give if you want to explore the phenomena further. Like another (very favourable) review said:

“Mind Hacks” is helpfully structured to take you just as deep as you want to go.

From bookzen.blogspot.com which also contains this interesting suggestion:

[Mind Hacks] is totally overflowing with examples and simple exercises — the “hacks” — that you can do by yourself or with friends. Better yet, buy the book and give a “Mind Hacks” party! Ask your guests to open the book randomly, exclaim on the particular mental characteristic explained on that page, and then put everyone through the exercise or group discussion implied.

If you do have a Mind Hacks party and manage to get a group of people all doing one of the demos (I think some of the mood induction ones like “Make Yourself Happy” [Hack #95] would serve well for this) then make sure you take pictures and let us know how it goes!

Alan Turing and the lusty robots

A news story in the online edition of the Guardian is reporting that a Korean professor has developed ‘artificial chromosomes’ that will allow robots to fell ‘lusty’ and have their own emotions and personality.

It sounds like some good PR for what seems to be nothing more than a genetic algorithm approach to artificial intelligence. Certainly interesting, but not new and hardly likely to lead to machine lust or emotion.

Nevertheless, Professor Kim Jong-Hwan would not be the first computer scientist to get a little overexecited about the possibilities of AI.

A certain Alan Turing suggested his ‘mechanical brain’ might eventually produce some fairly unusual things way back in 1949…

Continue reading “Alan Turing and the lusty robots”

Vive la difference

A news story about a recent meeting on bioethics in neuroscience reports that brain abnormalities are, well, not that abnormal:

Judy Illes, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, said that she and others have found that 18 percent of healthy volunteers had some kind of brain anamoly. While only 2 percent to 8 percent have required clinical follow-up, these incidental findings have raised concerns among scientists who are using the newest technology to unravel the mysteries of the brain.

Ethical issues in neuroscience and neuroimaging research (often called ‘neuroethics’) are becoming increasingly important as previously expensive and exclusive scientific tools (such as fMRI) are becoming widely used.

One important issue of debate is the ethics of informing someone if a brain abnormality is detected, when they have volunteered to take part in a research study as a healthy participant.

Link to story from newsday.com
Link to recent article on neuroethics from Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Ivan Noble, dies at 37

BBC science writer Ivan Noble, who has been charting his battle with neurological illness since being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in 2002, died yesterday.

His online diary gathered thousands of readers as he recorded an ongoing and moving account of the personal, medical and emotional aspects of living with brain cancer.

The diary documented a personal journey not often reflected in the scientific and medical literature.

Thanks Ivan.

Link to announcement on BBC News.
Link to tribute and interview from BBC News.

Chimps fair or foul

I went to a conference a few years ago at the LSE; if you look at the speakers you’ll see why. Although it proved to be patchier than I’d hoped, I was captivated by Frans de Waal’s contribution, outlining some wonderful research on the social behaviour of apes. One highlight, which is now finally coming to publication, was the finding that chimpanzees judge reward not just on its instrumental value, but whether it is even-handed or otherwise. They reject a moderate reward if they see an unfamiliar ape get a better one. Good to know that apes throw their toys out of the pram as well.

The explanatory gloss on this is that apes have a ‘sense of fair play’. Another angle that comes to mind is that preferential reward may be seen as the forming of a dominance hierarchy, and the smart ape should make it clear that it’s not going to acquiesce -a nuclear threat to dissuade a minor loss.

Possibly this is merely talking at different levels of causation – the monkeys may have such a sense due to the need to hold their own in a fluctuating dominance hierarchy. It’s also very possible that my thought doesn’t fit with chimpanzee social structure at all. Regardless, it keeps the mind sharp to explore the gloss at least as much as the nuts and bolts of a study. Simian Cold War, or chimp village cricket: can you find a better tack?

People hacking for women

A research team led by Simon Chu from the University of Central Lancashire have found that a woman’s height can significantly effect how they are perceived by others.

The researchers found that taller women are perceived by both men and women as more intelligent, assertive, independent, ambitious, richer and more successful, regardless of how the person really is.

In contrast, shorter women are perceived as more considerate and nurturing, but only by men.

Unfortunately, the scientific paper isn’t out yet, as it would be interesting to calculate the strength of the effect per inch or centimetre lost or gained.

However, women should be able to encourage people to form particular first impressions by influencing the height they are perceived to be, either by the use of heels, meeting on uneven surfaces, or even carefully selecting the surrounding environment to fool our brain’s size-estimation process.

This process is known as size constancy and allows us to understand that objects tend not to expand when they come towards us, even though they take up more room on our retina.

Size constancy can be easily fooled though, as the Ames room demonstrates, although standing next to shorter people (to seem taller) or taller people (to seem shorter) is likely to have some effect, as the system partly works by relative comparisons.

Link to summary of research via independent.co.uk

Liecatching

Since we’ve been hitting lie detection recently, I thought I’d point out that according to a brief communication in a 2000 volume of Nature (May, vol 405, abstract here, full text here if you can access it), people who have acquired aphasia (an impairment in the processing of others speech, leading to difficulties in comprehending spoken language) are better at detecting lies. The case the authors make is that the brain redresses damage to the circuitry that underpins language ability by boosting the recognition of non-verbal behaviour. This more sensitive detection (which isn’t merely better processing of the information in the voice, but depends on using facial cue information) allows a superior level of ‘lie-detection’ – which in this study was confined to recognising emotions that models (the people being viewed – effectively the stimuli for this kind of study) are trying to conceal.

Using patients as some kind of high-falutin sniffer dog isn’t particularly appealing. But the finding lends itself to some great hard-boiled noir…

“I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But this guy’s a liar.”

It’s also a fun conundrum for philosophers of semantics, no? An entity that can evaluate whether something is true or false without accessing its content. And they’re a bit more real than zombies.

The Noonday Demon

Andrew Solomon, author of the award winning book on depression, ‘The Noonday Demon‘, is interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Taking A Stand‘.

Solomon wrote the book after suffering from an intense clinical depression and managed to convey not only his own personal experiences, but much of the science and history of the disorder as well.

Approaches to depression vary, but Solomon believes that both medication and psychotherapy are worthwhile approaches.

He occupies the middle ground between Lewis Wolpert, the Nobel Prize winning biologist who wrote of his own depression in the book Malignant Sadness, and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist William Styron who recounted his experiences in Darkness Visible.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wolpert tends towards an almost exclusively biological view of depression and treatment with anti-depressants, whereas Styron is less convinced by the physical explanations and medical treatments. Solomon however, maintains a strong belief in the biological reality of depression, but does not suggest that life events and emotional turmoil are unimportant either as a cause or a focus for treatment.

Either way, it’s an important debate which is shaping both how society understands depression and the most appropriate forms of care for people with mental illness.

All three books come highly recommended and Solomon is always worth listening to, as he is an articulate and knowledgable part of an ongoing discussion.

Link to ‘Taking a Stand’ webpage and audio archive (looks like the audio will be available until Tue 1st Feb)

2005-01-28 Spike activity

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

A study finds significant differences in the structure of male and female brains related to IQ. However, an insightful article from the NYT seems to cut through a lot of the crap and looks at the implications and (mis)interpretation of such findings in the age old debate about male-female psychological differences.

‘Bad driving’ may be related to hormones. Best read with the previous link in mind.

Developments in ‘gene chip‘ technology look likely to push forward the understanding of genetic influences on brain development.

Recent brain scanning work has examined the brain functions responsible for looking someone in the eye. Studying this simple action may result in a better understanding of how volutary actions are controlled by the brain.

More research on the contentious area of the genetic contribution to homosexuality has just been published. Don’t be fooled by the title of the article though. Anything which claims that the “gene(s) for x have been identified”, where x is a complex behaviour, is almost certainly marketing or bad journalism rather than informed scientific conclusion.

New Scientist on sensation

The 29th September issue of New Scientist is a particularly good one if you’re interested in the mind and brain.

It has a number of articles on sensation and the senses, and particularly challenges the idea that there are five ‘classical’ senses. Recent research suggests this may be a fairly artificial division, and more subtle distinctions, as well as cross-overs are common.

Unfortunately, New Scientist have been steadily making less and less of their content freely accessible, but there is an outline of the issue at the link below.

Nevertheless, it’s well worth a read, either if you grab a copy at the newsagents or pop into your local library for a browse.

Link to contents for 29th September issue of New Scientist.

UPDATE: One of the articles from the current edition (“The art of seeing without sight”) has appeared online.

Blind people can use the visual cortex to locate sounds

A study just published in the open access journal PLoS Biology has reported that blind people might be able to use parts of the brain for locating sounds that sighted people normally use for vision.

Fr√©d√©ric Gougoux and colleagues asked participants who had been blind from early life and who had previously demonstrated superior listening skills to try and judge the source of certain sounds while they were being brain scanned.

Unlike the normally-sighted participants, they showed activity in the occipital lobe, an area of the brain usually dedicated to processing visual information.

This suggests the brain of the blind participants had reorganised, or had organised differently, demonstrating how the brain can alter its structure depending on the demands placed on it.

This is a process known as neural plasticity and is known to be important in both early brain development and ongoing adult learning.

In fact, this isn’t the first study to show that the brain of blind people might be organised differently. Research published in 1993 showed that braile reading abilities can be impaired by using magnetic stimulation to disrupt the activity of the occipital lobe.

The researchers suggested that this area had been recruited for touch and language skills, rather than vision.

Synopsis or full text from PLoS Biology.
Link to story on nature.com.

On orgasms, epilepsy and the lack of sexual neuroscience

Recently published results report the first reliable link between brain activity and levels of sexual desire. Yoram Vardi from Rambam Hospital in Israel has reported an association between an electrical brain signal (known as P300) and libido.

The fact that such a straightforward link is both important and newsworthy may be surprising for people who aren’t aware of the state of scientific research into the neuroscience of sex.

Considering that sex is one of the most important human activities, and the current findings have been thrilling to say the least, why is it that we know so little about how the brain handles sex ?

Continue reading “On orgasms, epilepsy and the lack of sexual neuroscience”

Morph your personality

I recently attended the annual meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society in London and equipped with my PAA (personal analogue assistant, i.e. paper + pencil) got busy sucking up what was said. This is the first of a few posts looking at some of the new research presented there. Since much of this is genuinely new, it won’t have jumped through all the hoops normally traversed by science printed in a journal or re-reported in the media. But it’s sound stuff from respected researchers, and I figure all of you are as eager as me to get the news before it’s news. Right? Today I’ll be working from a talk given by Ian Penton-Voak called “Personality dimensions in the social face”. I hope you’ll understand the title I’ve given presently.

Continue reading “Morph your personality”

Alex

Summary details for Alex Fradera, author on mindhacks

Hello to Tom, Matt, Vaughan and the Mind Hacks viewing community. I’m Alex Fradera, and you may remember me from such hacks as Fake Familiarity, Make Yourself Happy and other fond favorites. If not, we can get acquainted, as I’ll be posting here for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading “Alex”

2005-01-21 Spike activity

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

More news on developments in ‘lie detector’ technology – a mix of informed journalism and wild speculation.

A journalist’s personal experience of synaesthesia, the experience of having information in one sense, cross over to another (tasting words, for example).

A recent study suggests a drink a day seems to be protective against mental decline in older women.

Howard Rheingold on the psychology of texting.

Polygraph hacking

A report on the deception of polygraph tests (commonly called “lie detector tests”) has just been released by the British Psychological Society.

The section that most caught my eye was the discussion of polygraph countermeasures, and particularly a section on a fellow, who after being wrongly convicted for murder on polygraph evidence, took it on himself to hack the polygraph test to help prove his innocence, all while being wrongly imprisoned.

The most famous countermeasures test was probably conducted by Floyd ‘Buzz’ Fay, a man who was falsely convicted of murder in the USA on the basis of a failed polygraph examination. He took it on himself to become a polygraph expert during his two-and-half years of wrongful imprisonment. He coached 27 inmates, who all freely confessed to him that they were guilty, in how to beat the control question polygraph test. After only 20 minutes of instruction, 23 of the 27 inmates were successful in defeating the polygraph examination.

The report discusses empirical evidence on how well these tests detect potential mistruths (not brilliantly it seems) and contains summaries of research which shows the percentages of hits and misses each sort of test is likely to make.

For example, in a form of polygraph test known as the Control Question Test (where responses to direct questions about the crime are compared to responses to indirect questions) over 26% of innocent suspects were scored as lying, although in the Guilty Knowledge Test (where responses to items of information only a guilty person would know are compared to responses to other information) only 4% of innocent suspects were wrongly scored as lying, but guilty suspects were correctly identified only 59% of the time.

Link to BPS report on ‘Polygraphic Deception Detection’.