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by Vaughan

2009-03-06 Spike activity

March 6, 2009 in Blogs, Mind Hacks by Vaughan

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: The Economist discusses whether the famous Dunbar number, the maximum limit of human relationships , holds on Facebook. A person who experienced the identity loss memory disorder dissociative fugue is interviewed in The New York Times . BBC News reports that Malaysia is attempting to curb its suicide rate by planning to arrest those who attempt suicide. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel asks what is an illusion , exactly? Neuronarrative reports on a new study finding people tend to view leaders more favourably once they’ve died! Drug giant and makers of Seroquel (quetiapine) lied about their data showing that the antipsychotic drug isn’t as effective as its competitors, reports the Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry blog. The New York Times reports on research showing that interrupting an experience, whether dreary or pleasant, can make it significantly more intense. The US Army’s group of ‘weaponised anthropologists’, the Human Terrain System, get slammed by a Marine Corps major in a military publication. Wired has the story. The Onion , on news that a Lovecraftian school board member wants madness added to the curriculum. C’thulhu fhtagn! Science News reports on a new study that links the genetics of Autism and bellyaches. A long and confusing article on why minds are not like computers is published in The New Atlantis . Would greatly benefit from the insights from philosophy of mind. Nature has an excellent article on the sociology of science and why we need a third way after the extremes of hard scientific realism and social constructionism. By the always interesting Harry Collins. Gender effects in children’s play are seen in virtual worlds, reports Science News . Furious Seasons reports on a recent study looking at the (large) placebo effect in studies of antidepressant treatment for adolescent depression. Is patriotism a subconscious way for humans to avoid disease? asks the always engaging Carl Zimmer in Discover Magazine . The Guardian reports on research suggesting that some people who suffer stroke develop PTSD after their experience. Texting is associated with superior reading skills in children, reports the BPS Research Digest . The New York Times has an interesting article looking at the psychology of rewarding students for study or good performance in light of mixed evidence of how effective the practice is. ABC Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor has programme on how errors of grammar, punctuation and inaccurate scientific terminology can complicate important social issues. Dr Shock covers some interesting research on the pros and cons on using PowerPoint presentations in teaching for learning by students. Also from Dr Shock an awesome video showing how some stunning 3D illusion street art was created. The New York Times reports that skin cells from people with Parkinson’s disease have been converted in a test tube to dopamine neurons.

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2009-03-06 Spike activity

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by BrainAndBehaviour

How do we know we’re hungry? (Take two) [Cognitive Daily]

March 5, 2009 in Blogs, Brain & Behaviour by BrainAndBehaviour

A few years ago we discussed a fascinating study which appeared to show that the main reason we stop eating at the end of a meal isn’t because we “feel” full. Instead, we simply see that we’ve finished eating the food in front of us, so we stop. We don’t eat more an hour later because we remember we just ate. In that study, led by Paul Rozin, experimenters provided two amnesic patients with two meals separated by just 15 minutes. They both did not recall eating the previous meal due to their medical condition, and each of them ate both meals as if they hadn’t had anything to eat. But maybe amnesia has additional subtle effects. The condition is usually caused by severe brain trauma, so it’s possible that amnesics (or the particular amnesics in the study) have also lost their ability to detect fullness. Could that explain their seemingly bizarre behavior? A team led by Suzanne Higgs identified two new patients who had a similar type of amnesia: They could not form new long-term memories, although their old memories and short-term memory were intact. They repeated Rozin’s multiple-meal study and found the same result: while people with normal memory refused a second lunch, both amnesic patients ate two full meals, consuming nearly 2,000 calories while the others ate only about 700. But in a separate experiment, volunteers (including the two amnesics) were presented with small samples of four different foods (a cookie, potato chips, rice pudding, and sandwiches) for tasting. They were asked to rate each food for taste, texture, and desire to eat. Next they were given a meal-sized portion of the sandwiches and asked to eat as much as they liked. Finally, they rated each item once more on the same scale. Here are the results: Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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How do we know we’re hungry? (Take two) [Cognitive Daily]

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by Vaughan

The cognitive neuroscience of eye contact

March 5, 2009 in Blogs, Mind Hacks by Vaughan

The latest Trends in Cognitive Sciences has a fantastic review article on the cognitive neuroscience of eye contact, demonstrating how this fleeting social connection has a powerful impact on the mind and brain. Past research has shown that making eye contact has an impact on social perception and subsequent behaviour. The article notes that eye contact has been found to increase the likelihood of recognising someone and helps work out whether someone is male or female. It also seems to increase general arousal and fixes attention – we’re less likely to notice things happening on the periphery of our vision if we’re staring at a face with eye contact than at a face where the eyes are diverted to the side. In neuroimaging studies eye contact has been found to increase activity in a group of areas (medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus) that have often been associated with social interaction across a wide range of studies. Interestingly, the authors suggest that basic eye contact information might be detected by a specific subcortical mechanism that quickly detects simple light/dark differences, presumably to pick out the direction of the pupil, which then triggers more complex social processing to make sense of its social meaning. It’s an interesting field, not least because recognising eye contact and following the gaze direction of others are thought to be some of the most fundamental building blocks on which social communication develops in babies. Children with autism have been found to show radically different patterns of eye contact recognition and gaze direction, and the authors suggest that one cause could be a problem with the these eye contact neural circuits which leads to slow or impaired social understanding. Link to article on eye contact. Link to DOI entry for same.

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by Cognitive Daily

How do you react to an emotional face? Depends on how quickly you see it

March 4, 2009 in Blogs, Cognitive Daily by Cognitive Daily

What’s your first reaction on seeing this picture of Nora? Are you excited because she appears to be excited? Or do you react to her intent ? Perhaps you think she’s cute, or maybe even sarcastic. Ultimately you might have all of those reactions. There’s no doubt we’re exceptionally fast at responding to faces, and to the emotions they convey. But reacting appropriately, especially when a face signals danger, could be the difference between life and death. These two ways of reacting to a facial expression correspond to two possible intentions of an expression: to elicit an emotion in someone else, or to express your own emotional state. The result, for the other person, isn’t always the same. For example, if you simply mimick the emotion of an angry face, then you too would be angry. But if the angry person was stronger or better-armed than you, you might recognize their anger and become afraid, not angry. So which response comes first? Kirsten Ruys and Diderick Stapel believe they have devised a way to find out. They asked students to watch movies that quickly flashed emotional faces at them — so fast that the facial expressions couldn’t be consciouly judged. The faces were flashed at two different speeds, illustrated in this video: Click to watch video (QuickTime required) The students were instructed to focus on the cross in the center of the screen and react as quickly as possible, indicating when a picture flashed to the left or right of the cross. As you can see in the slowed-down version (which the students never saw), the face flashed very briefly before being masked by a black-and-white rectangle. (Yes, that’s me, doing my best to look “angry.”) In the “quick” version, the face stayed on-screen for 120 milliseconds. In the “super quick” version, it appeared for just 40 milliseconds. The students were divided into 8 groups, who saw one of four emotions (Anger, Fear, Disgust, or Neutral) at either quick or super quick speeds. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by BrainAndBehaviour

Why we’ll never be downloaded [Evolving Thoughts]

March 4, 2009 in Blogs, Brain & Behaviour by BrainAndBehaviour

An interesting article is up at the New Atlantis by Ari Schulman, arguing that we will never be able to replicate the mind on a digital computer. Here I want briefly to argue there are other reasons for this. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by BrainAndBehaviour

Anatomy of a 300 million year-old brain [Neurophilosophy]

March 3, 2009 in Blogs, Brain & Behaviour by BrainAndBehaviour

Nervous tissue is extremely fragile, and so is very well protected. The brain, which has a jelly-like consistency, is encased in the skull, and is surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, which acts to cushion it against blows that might cause it to come into contact with the inside of its bony case. Likewise, the spinal cord is surrounded by the vertebrae, the series of bones which runs down from the base of the skull.   Being so soft, the brain and spinal cord decompose quickly. When an animal dies, the nervous system begins to disintegrate immediately, until the armour in which it was enveloped is all that remains. Thus, the organ is rarely, if ever, preserved, and brain fossilization is considered to be impossible – or so it was thought. Now though, a team of French and American researchers report that they have found what appears to be an intact brain in a fossil specimen of Sibyrhynchus denisoni (above), a long extinct relative of the shark and ratfish which lived some 300 million years ago. Their findings are published online later this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by Cognitive Daily

How distractible are you? The answer may lie in your working memory capacity

March 2, 2009 in Blogs, Cognitive Daily by Cognitive Daily

When I’m writing a post for Cognitive Daily (or doing almost any kind of writing, for that matter), I try to keep outside distractions to an absolute minimum. I even have an application on my computer that shuts off all access to the internet for a specified period of time. I find most music distracting, but sometimes I’ll play a Mozart piano concerto, which seems to help focus my attention (see here for a possible explanation). Some people, however, seem to be able to be incredibly productive despite a huge number of distractions — Twitter status updates, email, crying babies, you name it. Indeed, some people can’t work well if things are too quiet. For them, uninterrupted silence is more distracting than cacophony. But whatever their working environment, it’s clear that some people are simply better at focusing on the task at hand. What makes people’s minds more or less likely to wander? Several studies point to working memory capacity as the key. While on average people can keep about 6 or 7 words or numbers in memory, capacity varies from individual to individual. People with higher working memory capacity tend to do better on tasks like the sustained attention to response task (SART) which demand focused attention to a task. We discuss the SART in more detail here , with a video example. Working memory might seem unrelated to such a simple task as SART: Usually you’re asked to do something like respond only to words NOT beginning with the letter “P”, while dozens of words flash by and only the occasional “P” word. You’ve only got to focus on one thought at a time — why should it matter whether your working memory capacity is 5 or 8? Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by ScienceBlog

Parasites can change the balance of entire communities [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

February 28, 2009 in Blogs, Developing Intelligence by ScienceBlog

Conspiracy theories, TV thrillers and airport novels are full of the idea that the world is secretly run by a hidden society. We have come up with many names for this shadowy cabal of puppet-masters – the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and more. But a better name would be ‘parasites’. Every animal and plant is afflicted by parasites. The vast majority are simple, degenerate creatures, small in size and limited in intelligence. They affect our health and development, and even our behaviour and culture . And by pulling the strings of key species, parasites can change the face of entire habitats.In a typical school textbook, an ecosystem consists of plants that feed plant-eaters, who in turn, line the bowels of predators. But parasites influence all of these levels, and as such, they can change the structures of entire communities. The idea that nature is secretly manipulated by these tiny, brainless creatures is unsettling but manipulate us, they do. And by changing the behaviour of their hosts, parasites can change the face of entire habitats. Chelsea Wood and colleagues from Dartmouth College have found compelling evidence for this, by showing that a tiny flatworm can alter the structure of a tidal habitat by infecting small marine snails. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by BrainAndBehaviour

A bad taste in your mouth – moral outrage has origins in physical disgust [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

February 27, 2009 in Blogs, Brain & Behaviour by BrainAndBehaviour

Both objects and behaviour can be described as disgusting. The term could equally apply to someone who cheats other people out of money as it could to the sight of rancid food or the taste of sour milk. That’s not just a linguistic quirk. Some scientists believe that the revulsion we feel towards immoral behaviour isn’t based on our vaunted mental abilities, but on ancient impulses that evolved to put us off toxic or infectious foods. It seems that your facial muscles agree. Hanah Chapman from the University of Toronto has found that both physical and moral disgust cause the levator labii muscles, which run from your eyes to your mouth, to contract. The result: you wrinkle your nose and you purse your lips. Nasty tastes, gross photos and foul play all cause the same physical reaction and the same subjective emotions. When people say that moral transgressions “leave a bad taste in your mouth”, it’s more than just a pretty metaphor. Chapman began by studying disgust in its more primitive forms – reactions to foul tastes. She recruited 27 volunteers and recorded the electrical activity in their levator labii muscles as they drank small vials of various liquids. If the concoctions were unpleasantly salty, sour or bitter, this group of muscles contracted more strongly than if the liquids were sweet or flavourless. These reactions were a good measure of their subjective opinions – the more distasteful they found the drinks, the more strongly their muscles contracted. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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by BrainAndBehaviour

What is a visual expert? [Cognitive Daily]

February 26, 2009 in Blogs, Brain & Behaviour by BrainAndBehaviour

Last week, we presented research by Miranda Scolari’s team about visual expertise and visual short-term memory. Their conclusion: “experts” don’t have a larger visual memory capacity than non-experts, they just have the ability to process more details. Scolari’s team was working under the assumption that all humans (or at least all the students in their experiment) are face-recognition experts. It’s true: we’re amazingly good at recognizing faces we’ve seen before. Think how much easier it is to remember a face you’ve seen than it is to remember the name that goes with the face. But surely we can be visual experts in other types of objects besides faces, right? Otherwise Scolari’s study would apply to faces and nothing else. To find out, a team led by Kim Curby did a similar study, using car experts instead of face experts. They tested 36 volunteers on their knowledge of cars by showing them photos of cars from two different years; they had to say whether the cars were they same or different model. The highest scorers were the experts, and the lowest scorers were “novices.” Curby’s memory-test was similar to the example I showed you last week: Take a look at this quick video. You’ll see a set of six small images, arranged in a circle, for 1 second. Then the screen will go blank for 1 second. Finally, one image will reappear in the place of one of the first six pictures. Your job: indicate whether the final image is the same or different as the image that originally appeared in that same spot. Click here to view the movie (QuickTime required) But there were a few differences. First, Curby’s team asked viewers to repeat a pair of numbers like “7 2″ while they watched the video. Second, half the time the viewers saw faces, and half the time they saw cars (both of which sometimes appeared upright, and sometimes upside-down). Finally, viewers saw the images for varying lengths of time: either 0.5 seconds, 2.5 seconds, or 4 seconds, instead of the 1-second viewing time in my example and the Scolari et al. study. Here are the results for faces: Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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What is a visual expert? [Cognitive Daily]

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