The Thinking Meat Project

You do lots of things without being aware of them. You breathe, for example, and you digest your food. If your conscious mind had to concern itself with every breath or every chemical reaction in your gut, you’d have no time to do the important things, like check the baseball scores or work a sudoku. But it’s unsettling to see evidence that you make some decisions before you are consciously aware of having made them, and furthermore that with the right equipment, others can extract information about your decisions from your brain before you yourself learn what’s going on in there. This article from the Wall Street Journal describes some recent work involving fMRI scans of the brains of fourteen young adults while they decided, totally at their own discretion, when to press a button and which button to press. Relevant brain areas showed activity up to ten seconds before the subjects themselves announced that they had made their choice. This study builds on a classic 1983 paper by Benjamin Libet and his co-authors in which they also discovered signs of brain activity before people consciously announced the results of an unforced decision.

The sidebars and graphics are nice, but I’m a bit troubled by the statement in one sidebar about how “Your brain knows what you’re going to do 10 seconds before you are aware of it.” My brain is me, so if my brain knows it, then it would seem that I know it, in some sense. But it’s obviously not the sense in which people normally mean they know something. I guess this kind of linguistic uncertainty is what you get sometimes when you lift up the hood and see what the brain is doing. In that sense, we live in fascinating times.

Languages order the basic elements of a sentence in different ways. In English, we’re used to the subject-verb-object order (SVO; in stripped-down form, this would be, for example, “blogger eats chocolate”). Other languages use subject-object-verb (SOV; e.g., “chocolate blogger eats”). Most languages use either SVO or SOV, with a small percentage using VSO; the other possibilities occur in very few languages. (Some languages don’t have a fixed word order but use inflected forms of words rather than word order to convey the role of words in a sentence.) A recent experiment, however, suggests that for nonverbal communication, people prefer SOV no matter what language they speak.

Forty adults (ten speakers each for four different languages) were asked to describe the action that occurred in brief video clips, first with speech and then with gestures. When speaking, people followed the word order of their language (three of the languages used SVO and one used SOV). But when gesturing, they all followed SOV order, no matter what language they spoke. It’s a small study but an intriguing result. The idea that the way a language is structured significantly shapes the way that those who use the language think and even behave has a long and somewhat checkered history. This result indicates that there may be some influence going the other way as well (or instead?), perhaps some fundamental aspect of nonverbal or preverbal thought that then shapes language (although obviously the whole story must be very complicated).

At any rate, it’s something to think about. Meanwhile, this blogger is going to go eat some chocolate.

P.S. I was so eager to get to my chocolate that I forgot to include a link to this press release from EurekAlert, where I learned about this research. –July 2, 2008

Humankind’s urge to seek patterns and ability to recognize them—or even to find them where they don’t exist— is well known and is arguably one of our prime survival skills. When faced with floods of information, be it sensory data, impressions of the personalities of those around us, or facts and figures, it’s easier to recall and use the information if we can fit it into some kind of pattern. A new theory of humor makes what strikes me as a surprising but fascinating connection between our pattern-recognition skills and our capacity for humor.

Science writer Alastair Clarke has come up with a pattern recognition theory of humor that in itself illustrates the ability to look beyond superficial differences in the content of humor to identify an underlying pattern for the phenomenon. The idea appears to be that pattern recognition is such an essential cognitive skill that our brains are wired to reward us for recognizing an unexpected pattern, and the response to such recognition is laughter. By looking beyond the content, which can vary from culture to culture and person to person, the theory applies broadly across the species while still offering a way to explain individual variation. And because pattern recognition is an important aspect of cognition, the theory is linked to other areas of study involving human evolution and cognitive science. You can read more in this article from PhysOrg.com. Thanks to Keith for passing this one along.

The perennially popular topic of what the Neanderthals were like and how they lived is in the news this week. This article from the Discovery Channel describes some work at an archaeological site in southern England that has been a treasure trove of Neanderthal stone tools. The picture that is evidently emerging through research at the site is of a canny Neanderthal population that was technologically sophisticated (for its day). The site appears to have been occupied just before the disappearance of the Neanderthals, and the new view of how they lived may make their demise a bit more mysterious.

So what is information technology doing to our brains? Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has written a book about the upside and the downside of a world full of email and other instant electronic communication, video and online games, and the vast, beckoning, vital but sometimes time-wasting web of information at our fingertips. This article from The Australian describes some of her concerns. The article also includes some quotes from nay-sayers as well, so it’s an interesting look at her arguments.

Certainly we’re exposing our brains to things that brains have never had to deal with before. The pace of life and the flow of information can seem overwhelming, and immersing ourselves in the new world created by technology is bound to have an effect on us. The plastic human brain, resilient, adaptive, and often cited as a cause for hope, is also apt to be shaped by whatever environment we provide for it, whether we plan carefully to provide an optimum environment or just go with whatever the latest gadget is. So Greenfield has some legitimate concerns, and the question of how our technology is changing our minds is a good question to be asking. However, some of the concerns mentioned in the article sound more like basic human nature rather than anything caused by technology. For example, take her description of the next generation of young people:

“They will be people who are more hedonistic and tend to live for the moment, a life that is more sensory and less cognitive. People who have a less robust sense of their own identity and are therefore more easily persuaded or swayed by the wrong kind of things, as we see already in the way people are easily persuaded into movements nowadays.

“People with less meaning to their lives, possibly, and less of a strong life narrative, so they may be happy rather than fulfilled: there is a difference.”

Maybe in the book there is some evidence to back up the implicit claim that people are more easily persuaded into movements today, but I’m skeptical. (And even if you could pin down that fact, I’m not sure how you’d tie it to computer use.) People have always gone chasing after things that promise an answer to life, the universe, and everything. Fads and mass movements of all kinds have periodically swept through humankind, or those parts of it in communication with each other, for hundreds of years.

In fact the entire quote seems to me to describe an essential aspect of the human condition. It’s often hard to think rationally, to pursue long-term goals rather than short-term rewards, to establish your own identity and maintain it in the face of societal pressure and the crush of day-to-day responsibilities. Collectively we’ve always been tempted, to one degree or another, towards the herd mind, the short-term, the hedonistic. Maybe information technology does push some of our buttons fairly hard, but I’m not convinced that that’s the whole story. I do believe that we should be cautious about which technologies we adopt and which we decide to leave alone, and it would be good to know as much as possible about how IT affects our ability to do the hard things humans have always had trouble with. But every time I hear someone warning of how the human race is heading into trouble and the young folks these days are just not getting it, I hear in my mind a chorus of voices raised in similar laments going back hundreds of years. By all means, we should examine the effect of our tools on our brains, but let’s not get too wound up about the dire possibilities until we know more of the story.

This spring I had a three-month leave from my day job, and one of the things I liked the most about it was that I was freer to follow the schedule my body wanted to follow. In particular, when I got sleepy in the late afternoon, I was often able to take a nap. In the end, that made me more productive and certainly happier than trying to soldier on through intense drowsiness. I’m a big believer in the mental and physical benefits of napping, so I was delighted to find this guide to napping from the Boston Globe. In a poster-like format, it summarizes some recent research into how naps improve mental performance and reduce stress, and provides concrete and useful tips for napping intelligently, taking into account the brain’s sleep cycles and your own circadian rhythms. If I print this out and post it outside my cube at work, do you think I could get away with an afternoon siesta now and then?

As Charles Darwin suggested and Paul Ekman helped verify, facial expressions for some of the more basic human emotions are universal and universally recognized. This indicates a biological rather than a cultural basis for the faces we make to express happiness, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise. Some recent research, reported in this New Scientist article, examined the possible physiological benefits that might underlie the expressions of fear and disgust. It turns out that the wide-open eyes of fear allow for faster tracking and quicker detection of objects, and the open mouth lets in more air–all of which sound like useful things in scary situations (future research will check to see how much use the brain appears to be making of this added sensory capacity). Disgust, on the other hand, scrunches up the face and allows in less air. This sounds like the start of some interesting work.

This article from the Boston Globe isn’t about brain science, exactly, but it’s an interesting take on how we find meaning in the results of scientific research. Everyone knows about the butterfly effect, which has to do with very minor changes in initial conditions having profound but essentially unpredictable consequences on later events. The point of the butterfly effect, described by Edward Lorenz, is that the subtle interactions of the natural world confound our efforts to pin down the cause of any particular event. However, the pop culture take on it frequently has it the other way around, focusing on a supposed ability to identify key turning points or critical moments that determine the future. The article is about how we try to wring certainty out of an uncertain world, and about how scientific research is sometimes misunderstood.

The noted futurist Ray Kurzweil was at the first annual World Science Festival in New York last week, and speculated about the possible timeline for artificial intelligence, as reported in the New York Times. He has bet that a machine will pass the Turing test by 2029 (i.e., engage in conversation indistinguishably from a human). Kurzweil has always seemed over-optimistic to my mind, but on the other hand, he has data of a sort to back up his predictions: graphs showing the “amazingly predictable trajectories” of past progress in various technologies. Will neuroscience, computer science, etc., also show exponential progress in the near future? Time will tell.

The argument over whether or not a human-like brain can be artificially created hinges in part on the idea that the brain is a kludge–and kludges are harder to re-create than intelligently put-together objects. Having participated in the creation of many a programming kludge at work, I can vouch for the fact that they can be difficult to unravel later, even if you watched them being made. Now that I think about it, though, at work we typically untangle a kludge as part of the process of replacing it with something more rationally designed. Do AI researchers need to re-create the exact mechanisms of the human brain, with its idiosyncratic history, or do they need to see what it does and figure out a logical way to mimic that? Not that the latter is easy by any means, but it might at least be easier than re-inventing that flawed but fantastic wheel that is the human brain.

Based on how people behave, it would appear that we have two ways of solving problems or making decisions. The quick and dirty way comes up with an automatic, instinctive answer, and the slow, careful way thinks a situation through carefully. It’s easy to see the survival value, and the possible shortcomings, of each. Sometimes it’s essential to size up a situation roughly but quickly and take decisive action, but because we don’t always size up a situation correctly, we can get ourselves into trouble. (Actually maybe it would be better to describe them as complementary than as dueling.) This article from Scientific American Mind discusses the psychological studies that have revealed what we know so far about these two mechanisms. The article also talks about the next step: figuring out how the observed behavioral patterns correlate to what is going on in the brain. There probably aren’t two totally independent little circuits or systems in there for each kind of thought, but what is going on when we engage in each type of mental activity?

Somewhere in the last few years I ran across the concept of satisficing, which involves choosing something or solving a problem based on what works, not necessarily on what is the optimum choice or solution. I think I read about this in the context of the overabundance of things and choices we have these days (three different flavors of vanilla ice cream, multiple cell phone plans, four different styles when you buy blue jeans, etc.). Life is often easier for those who satisfice–look around a bit, find something that works, make a decision, and move on, rather than examine every last possibility before being willing to finally make a purchase. Anyway, one of the things I realized about evolution is that nature is a satisficer: things have to be only good enough to allow an organism to survive and somehow get its genes into the next generation. Evolution doesn’t have the luxury of considering all the possible options for some biological function and choose the best one; it goes with what works well enough out of what is already there. (How anybody can believe that the process of human birth, for example, was intelligently designed is beyond me.) As it goes with the rest of the body, so it goes with the brain. Gary Marcus, a scientist who studies language acquisition in children, has written a book called Kluge: The haphazard construction of the human mind. The New Scientist recently posted this interview with Marcus in which he talks about some of our inherent limitations and biases and how to live with them. I haven’t read the book yet–in fact these days I barely have time to read my email–but it looks like a good one.

I’m as happy as the next person (maybe happier, even) to read about the things that researchers see when they look at functional brain scans like fMRI–tools for seeing where the action is when the brain is performing a particular task. However, these tools are probably best described as exploratory and not yet suited for diagnosis. This article from Wired describes some of the efforts at using functional brain scans for diagnosing specific conditions like depression; most of them are still in their infancy. The exception is some fairly reliable software for detecting when people are lying, and even that is not reliable enough to be marketed and widely used. The article provides an educational and cautionary tale about the ways people are trying to use (and make money from) our current knowledge of brain scans to make diagnoses and recommendations. I guess the thought that our best, shiniest, coolest new gadgets will probably look like stone knives and bear skins to future generations is comforting, because it requires a belief in progress.

A TOT (tip-of-the-tongue) state is what happens when you grope around in the dimmer recesses of your brain for awhile trying to come up with a word that you know but have temporarily lost track of. (I don’t know whether it’s more difficult to undergo a TOT state yourself, or to have a conversation disrupted by the laments of someone else who is in the middle of one and has not provided enough context for you to be able to help.) This article from American Scientist goes into some interesting detail about how people resolve TOT states (or not), and what that tells us about the mental machinery that (usually) produces just the words we need, just when we need them.

This article from the New York Times goes into some recent research into the mental advantages of possessing an older brain. What some lament as a loss of focus and keen, quick recall is perhaps but the flip side of a broadened field of attention that soaks up more information, and a greater ability to adapt that information for use in different situations. Something to look forward to as I forge on through middle age…

And this press release from the University of Texas describes a study that looked at emotions and aging. It appears that overall, people’s emotions tend to be both more positive and more passive (as opposed to active) as they age, with people over 60 describing themselves as more contented.

When I think of psychoactive substances associated with religious rituals, I think of things like mushrooms and peyote and ayahuasca (which I associate with fairly dramatic alterations of consciousness). However, it now appears that incense also has psychoactive properties–specifically, it has antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects (in mice, anyway, and it interacts with a protein that occurs in mammalian brains). A new study looked at frankincense, a resin from the Boswellia plant, and in particular at the compound incensole acetate. In mice,

“…the compound significantly affected areas in brain areas known to be involved in emotions as well as in nerve circuits that are affected by current anxiety and depression drugs.”

Incensole acetate also appeared to lower anxiety and reduce depressed behavior in the mice. (I hate to think what they did to those animals to depress them.) The press release from EurekAlert leaves me with some questions. It says the compound was “administered” to the mice, but it doesn’t say exactly how, and how the results they found might be expected to apply to people inhaling the incense. Also, I don’t know much about how incense is made and whether frankincense is used in the incense sticks or cones you buy in the store, and if so, how much. I’m sure the point is not self-therapy (I wonder if Nag Champa contains the same stuff?) but rather that this brain/chemical interaction tells us interesting things about how depression and anxiety work, and about possible therapies for the future. Still, I’m curious.

The New Yorker had a good article this week about the work of Irene Pepperberg, the researcher who worked with the African gray parrot Alex until his death last fall. I always enjoy learning more about avian intelligence, and this article does a good job of describing Pepperberg’s work in the context of other studies, historical and current, of animal cognition. And there are some nice stories about the birds, Alex and two others, Griffin and Arthur, that Pepperberg continues to work with. This one made me laugh:

[Pepperberg] told a story about the time an accountant was working on some tax forms near Alex’s cage, and was more or less ignoring him. Peering down at the visitor, he asked her, “Wanna nut?” No, she said, not looking up. Want some water? No. A banana? No. And so on, through his repertoire of nameable desires. At last, Alex asked, in a tone in which it was hard not to detect a note of impatience, “What do you want?”

My brother Vinny has been keeping birds, mostly parrots, for years, and he has told me lots of stories about his birds. (My favorite involves a time when Vinny was working at home, sitting at the computer with a bird on each shoulder, hanging out with him and watching what he was doing. One of the birds, Otis, said, “We are all buddies!” They’re social animals, part of a flock, just like each of us.) The most fascinating thing about my brother’s birds, or the research I’ve read about crows and other corvids, parrots like Alex, or other birds, is the sense that there’s somebody in there. Pepperberg’s work with Alex was motivated by the desire to learn what is going on in his mind, and who it was in there. Alex demonstrated impressive communication skills, but the point was not to teach him language; it was to communicate with him and learn about how his mind works. As exciting as it would be to discover extraterrestrial intelligence, I think we share this planet with other intelligences that we’ve only begun to understand.

The current issue of Indiana University’s Research & Creative Activity magazine is about the mind/brain. I’ve had time to look at only a couple of the articles, but they seem to cover some more or less uncommon (and interesting) topics in brain science. E.g., the article “Coming to our senses” is about embodied cognition (the ways our physical bodies influence thought)—a current topic in cognitive science that was also addressed, as the article describes, by writers back in the Enlightenment. Another article delves into what mental activity is involved in the act of praying, and another offers excerpts from Douglas Hofstadter’s latest book, I am a strange loop. All in all, it’s worth checking out. Thanks to Tom for telling me about this issue.

Mirror neurons are brain cells that fire when you see someone else performing a physical action, in the same way they would if your own body were performing the action. They might be linked to sensitivity to other people’s emotions as well. Some new research demonstrates a correlation between the ability to sense the emotions of others and the strength of mirror neuron response. People were given pairs of photos of faces and had to decide either whether the photos showed the same person or whether the faces were showing the same emotion. Those who were better at identifying emotions showed more activity in the primary motor cortex when they watched video of various hand movements; there are mirror neurons in the primary motor cortex, and the measurement of activity there is considered to be a proxy for mirror neuron activity. There was no relationship between mirror neuron activity and the ability to identify whether the photos showed the same person. This article from New Scientist has more information.

Based on my previous experience with the term psychogeography, I gathered that it had to do with people’s emotional and mental response to various landscapes, urban and otherwise. However, the term psychogeography is also used in quite a different way in this article from the Boston Globe. Here psychogeography has to do with the mapping of personality traits, particularly in the US. Researchers are evidently looking at the Big Five personality traits and discovering geographic patterns to such things as neuroticism, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. The article describes the psychological landscape of the US and speculates about how it got to be that way: birds of a feather flock together? People who flock together, for whatever reason, come to resemble one another? However it works, it’s fascinating to look at the US in terms of the personality types prevalent in different regions. I hope there’s more of this research to come. I’d like to see an analysis of places like Bloomington (and Madison and Ann Arbor) that constitute islands of social and political openness in a sea of conservatism. It would also be interesting to know if there are links between the physical and psychological landscapes.

This article from Technology Review presents an interesting twist on the question of whether we’re alone in the universe. The author hopes that we are alone, mainly because, as he explains, if the road to the emergence life is easy, then the fact that we’re unable to find any other intelligent life to talk to is likely to result from stumbling blocks on the road to space-faring life. In other words, there’s likely some kind of bottleneck that lowers the likelihood of space-faring civilizations. If the bottleneck lies in the long process that results in the emergence and evolution of living things, then that bottleneck is in the past for our species; we somehow dodged all the hazards and here we are, alive and intelligent. There may be other hazards in our future, but at least we’ve evidently surmounted obstacles that have prevented life from even getting this far on other worlds. On the other hand, if simpler life forms are common, then we can assume that life arises with relative ease, and the reason that we find the universe devoid of other intelligent life is that living things generally do not negotiate some existential crisis on the road to advanced technology and space colonization. It’s an interesting argument, and it may make you think twice about whether you dream of or dread the day we learn of fossil bacteria on Mars or the spectral signature of life in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet.