December 31, 2005
an appropriate error:
Anna Airoldi, the translator of Mind Hacks into Italian has noticed a fantastic error in the published book. She writes
(170) 1st paragraph of "How it works";
I'm not entirely sure this is a real typo, considering the topic discussed in the paragraph, but "conservations" shouldn't just be "conversations"?
She's absolutely right - it should be 'conversations' not 'conservations'. But although it is an error, in this case it is an appropriate error, because it appears in Hack #52 'Robust Processing Using Parallelism' which discusses how we can read errorful or ambiguous sentences using multiple interacting levels of information to construct meaning. Normally this is a good thing, but it appears that in this particular instance the meaning was so obvious that our normally diligent editing process didn't spot the mistake (my mistake in origin, incidentally)!
—tom.
December 30, 2005
2005-12-30 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Slate asks the question "Is Anorexia Genetic?: What the newest theory leaves out". A commentary on a recent Newsweek article discussed previously on Mind Hacks.
"Language affects 'half of vision'" says somewhat misleading title that belies some interesting research in colour perception and categorisation.
Scientific American considers recent research on the psychology of suicide bombers and discounts popular myths about the perpetrators.
People consistently pour larger measures of alcohol into short wide glasses than tall thin ones.
Language Log investigates the science behind recent media claims that Agatha Christie novels are 'good for the brain'.
—Vaughan.
The Distorted Tune Test:
Ever wondered if you are tone-deaf? The Distorted Tune Test page can help. You listen to 25 simple tunes and judge whether they are played correctly or not (it takes about five or six minutes). Based on your responses, you'll be told how well you can judge pitch. If the results suggest you are tone-deaf then you are eligable to take part in a US National Institute of Health study into the conditions, so that's some compensation.
—tom.
Handbags at 40 paces:
"Clinical syndromes are not God's gift to cognitive neuropsychology: a reply to a rebuttal to an answer to a response to the case against syndrome-based research."
Caramazza and Badecker get their slap-down in early during a heated 1991 debate on whether it is best to study the symptoms or syndromes of brain injury when attempting to theorise about normal cognitive function.
Link to PubMed entry for Caramazza and Badecker paper.
—Vaughan.
December 29, 2005
Hack #104: Change the length of your arms!:
Here's a fantastic party-trick, if it works as reported in the Journal of Vision - make your arms feel like they are different lengths using a simple cut out piece of card.
Now, we talked about perception of depth in the book (Hack #22) and about how the senses interact (Chapter 5). One common theme was how visual information often tended influence our perception of information in the other modalities (at least for spatially organisation information, see Hack #53). What Nicola Bruno from the University of Trieste, and colleagues, seem to have found is an instance where a classic illusion of visual depth can distort your perception of your own body.
Ames' trapaziodal window works by virtue of the assumption that things which appear larger are often just closer by. The Window (see a demo here) is a trapazoid, so that it gives the same appearence as a square with one side further away than the other. Like this:
Just like this the retinal-image is ambiguous between a trapazoid viewed flat on, and a square viewed with one side closer than the other. Normally you can use other information, like comparing the image between your two eyes, to deduce the correct perception of depth, but if you close one eye your brain has to fall back on just the ambiguous image information. And it seems your brain thinks squares are more likely and will deliver to your consciousness the perception of a slanted object, rather than a correct, flat-on, impression.
What Bruno et al did was have participants hold versions of the trapazoidal window illusion and judge the level of slant. Not only did they systemmatically mis-judge the slant of the object (despite getting clear information on how far away both sides were via the proprioception of their hands), but some participants reported 'a stiking prioprioceptive distortion' - namely that one hand appeared to be further away than the other, or one arm appeared longer than the other!
Unfortunately the research is only reported in abstract form (here) so I can't get any more details of how exactly they built the illusionary trapazoid, but you can bet that I'll be trying it out in the next few days. I suspect that, like the body schema illusions (Hack #64), this effect will work strongly on only a few people, so I'll have to try it on a bunch of people before getting anything. I'll let you know the results of my experiments, and I'd love to hear from anyone else who trys it.
—tom.
December 28, 2005
The Mind-Body Problem - Who Cares?:
Guy Claxton said this a few years ago in the Journal of Consciousness Studies:
Any discussion of the causal status of conscious experience has to start, therefore, with the recognition that what appears to be a dispassionate enquiry is actually a question of life and death importance to which there is only one permissible answer.
The preceeding context is given below the fold...
(quoting Claxton)
Just so with myself. There is abundant evidence that I impute causal relationships between bits of my experience — my imagining a calm meadow and a physical feeling of relaxation; the thought ‘I’d better get up now’ and the act of getting out of bed — on the basis of a sufficient tightness of coupling between the events, and whether their conjunction makes sense in terms of the causal narratives through which I habitually interpret my experience. I ask myself, preconsciously for the most part, a number of questions, and on the basis of the answers, I either do or do not make that causal attribution. Is A reliably followed by B? Do
the delays between A and B fall within a range that I can interpret causally, given the kinds of folk psychological stories with which my culture has equipped me?
...
And especially: what key aspects of those stories might be jeopardised if I were to withdraw the imputation that A is the cause of B?
The answer to the last question, for many people much of the time, is: ‘my sense of self’. The existence of a causal relationship between conscious states, especially thoughts and intentions, and physical states or actions — taking the cello out of its case and beginning to practise; refraining from taking the last piece of cake—is one of the axioms of the garden-variety self. If I acknowledge that this causal relationship does not obtain, or not enough, then I have to conclude that I am ‘broken’: mad, out of control, or the plaything of impersonal forces. While the axiom remains unchallenged, the mind–body causal relationship is not neutrally discovered; it is mandatorily imposed. I am obliged to find it whether it is there or not. I will rig the evidence if I have to, and shamelessly deny that I have done so. Any discussion of the causal status of conscious experience has to start, therefore, with the recognition that what appears to be a dispassionate enquiry is actually a question of life and death importance to which there is only one permissible answer.
Source: Claxton, G. (2003). The mind-body problem: who cares? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 35-8. PDF here
—tom.
Variable man:
The Economist reports that in Japan, increasing importance is being placed on robots that look and act like humans. The article further argues that the focus on humanoid robots is driven, at least in part, by a desire to avoid the culture's strong social conventions.
Karl MacDorman, another researcher at Osaka, sees similar social forces at work. Interacting with other people can be difficult for the Japanese, he says, "because they always have to think about what the other person is feeling, and how what they say will affect the other person." But it is impossible to embarrass a robot, or be embarrassed, by saying the wrong thing.
Meanwhile, Wired offer their list of the '50 Best Robots Ever'.
Is this robot week or something?
Link to Economist article 'Better than people'.
Link to Wired article 'The 50 Best Robots Ever'.
Link to previous post on the 'Uncanny Valley' in robot design.
—Vaughan.
December 27, 2005
Positron annihilation:
Borag Thungg Earthlets!
I have just found the webpage of Professor Yasuharu Shirai from Osaka University in Japan.
He is currently involved in researching the "Development of Artificial Skin for Humanoid Robot and Body Image Acquisition Learning" and "Mechanism Behavior Generation by Imitation Learning of Humanoid Robot".
Prof. Shirai also supervises an investigation into the "Positron Annihilation Study of Defects in Advanced Materials" and belongs to the mysterious "Society for Discrete Variational Xa".
Is this the most sci-fi sounding scientist on the planet? Answers on a ram card please...
Link to Yasuharu Shirai's webpage.
—Vaughan.
In Our Time analyses artificial intelligence:
BBC Radio 4's programme on the history of ideas discussed artificial intelligence recently, with some of the leading researchers in the field.
The programme slipped past my attention when it was first on a couple of weeks ago, but the full audio archive is available online to listen to at your leisure.
"Can machines think?" It was the question posed by the mathematician and Bletchley Park code breaker Alan Turing and it is a question still being asked today. What is the difference between men and machines and what does it mean to be human? And if we can answer that question, is it possible to build a computer that can imitate the human mind?
Interestingly, Turing was quite bullish about the prospect, as shown in an excerpt from the 1950 edition of Whitakers Almanack.
I've yet to find out what the '300 year old sum' is, that is mentioned as solved by the 'mechanical brain' from the article at the link above. Answers on a postcard please...
Link to In Our Time webpage on AI programme.
Realaudio archive of programme.
—Vaughan.
December 24, 2005
Christmas update:
Hello Mind Hacks readers. Just a note to say that updates to the site might be a bit sporadic over the Christmas period as we're likely to be enjoying the time to kick back and read all the neuroscience books that Santa brings.
Hopefully, the updates should be more or less daily, but please excuse the occasional brandy-fuelled omission. Here are some brief Christmas links to tide you over, though...
Christmas gingerbread could lift mood as spices contain amphetamine precursors! - This might need to be taken with a pinch of ginger I fear.
Mental health charity Mind has a guide to beating Christmas stress.
A light-hearted article from Psychology Today on the 12 neuroses of Christmas.
And, as it's Christmas, indulge yourself in some untestable, unscientific pop-psychology: The psychology of Christmas shopping.
Roll on 2006!
—Vaughan.
December 23, 2005
2005-12-23 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Chronobiology site Circadiana recommends books about clocks and sleep.
Brain Waves previews the upcoming '5th International Neuroesthetics Conference' which focuses on how the brain responds to gourmet food, fine wine and aromatic perfumes.
Feeling good is the 'cause, not effect' of achievement according to researchers.
David Letterman's lawyers fight an odd restraining order imposed by a judge who is perhaps suffering from folie à deux? :/
Robot demonstrates 'self awareness' (i.e. can distinguish itself in a mirror) (via /.)
Wired on watching your own real-time brain scan to 'think away the pain'.
The 'quality' of your dancing could advertse your 'sexual quality' to others as measured by body symmetry.
New Scientist on the desperate need for adequate mental health care after the trauma of the Asian tsunami.
Trial of implanted stem cells to treat brain injury in children starts.
—Vaughan.
December 22, 2005
BBC All in the Mind returns:
BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind (not to be confused with the Australian radio show of the same name) has returned to the airwaves with a fascinating section on Anarchic Hand syndrome:
The idea of a hand with its own will has been used as a comic device by many movie makers and writers...including in "Dr Strangelove". But a little known fact is that there is a rare and fascinating neurological phenomena which can cause this Strangelove-type behaviour to happen - called alien, or anarchic, hand syndrome, a condition which means that people cannot control the actions of one of their hands. This month an intriguing new case history of alien hand syndrome has just been reported by a Japanese group in the journal Surgical Neurology, and Raj discusses the syndrome with expert Sergio Della Sala, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh.
Link to website and audio archive of BBC All in the Mind.
—Vaughan.
December 21, 2005
Theatre festival on brain injury:
BrainBlog has picked up on an upcoming theatre festival based around the unusual consequences of brain injury and neurological disease.
NEUROfest will run from January 6th to the 29th in New York City, and includes:
* Multimedia by real-life neurologist James Jordan in CJD; to
* A family musical with Welcome to Tourettaville! (co-written by a 7 year-old with Tourette’s Syndrome); to
* A short monologue in The Taste of Blue, set in the realm of the senses; to
* A full-length opera/theater piece in Tabula Rasa; to
* An examination of communication in Linguish, when language isn't an option; to
* A love story about two men, music, and vertigo in Vestibular; to
* A family drama about delusion and doppelgangers in Impostors
* and much more...
Impostors is about Capgras syndrome, the delusional belief that a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an idenical looking impostor.
Interestingly, the science-fiction author Philip K. Dick wrote a short story entitled 'Impostor', which has a Capgras-like plot. It eventually got turned into a low budget movie of the same name.
Link to BrainBlog on NEUROfest.
Link to NEUROfest homepage.
—Vaughan.
December 20, 2005
Depression and heart disease:
The journal Psychosomatic Medicine has a new free online supplement all about the link between depression and heart disease. There's evidence that even mild depression can put people at increased risk of heart disease, and depression is three to four times more prevalent among cardiac patients than among the general population.
Link to free online supplement.
—christian.
December 19, 2005
Sport psychology:
The Lancet medical journal has published a special sports supplement that for one month is available to view free as an e-magazine.
The 76 page publication includes features on aggression in sport (p.35); depression in sport (p.41), including comment on double Olympic gold medallist Dame Kelly Holmes' admission earlier this year that she deliberately cut her arms with scissors during a frustrating period in her career when she was unable to train because of injury; and risk taking in sport (p.38) - with discussion of the idea that extreme sports enthusiasts may use danger to kick-start their lower-than-average dopamine levels.
"The risk inherent in climbing such mountains carries its own reward, deep and abiding, because it provides as profound a sense of self-knowledge as anything else on earth. A mountain is perilous, true; but it is also redemptive". David Breashears, mountaineer and creator of IMAX film Everest, speaking about mountain climbing. From the article by Matt Pain and Matthew A Pain on risk taking.
Link to the supplement.
Link to high wire walker Philippe Petit talking to Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs.
Link to editor Pia Pini talking about her favourite highlights from the supplement.
—christian.
Research and remote peoples:
The New York Times reports on the interaction between isolated communities and the researchers which visit them. Remote peoples are often involved in psychology, anthropology and medical science research, although the NYT article focuses on how the researchers are regarded by their participants.
Another member of the tiny and reclusive Ariaal tribe, Leketon Lenarendile, scanned a handful of pictures laid before him by a researcher whose unstated goal was to gauge whether his body image had been influenced by outside media. "The girls like the ones like this," he said, repeating the exercise later and pointing to a rather slender man much like himself. "I don't know why they were asking me that," he said.
Link to article 'Remote and Poked, Anthropology's Dream Tribe'.
—Vaughan.
December 18, 2005
Shadows, agency and action:
"We know that we are agents and that we are successfully causing the world to change. But as actors we move through the world like shadows glimpsed only occasionally from the corner of an eye."
From a recently published paper by neuropsychologist Chris Frith on the links between the neuroscience of action and delusions of control.
Link to abstract of Frith paper.
—Vaughan.
December 16, 2005
2005-12-16 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
British and American smiles may be different, claims book author (thanks David!).
Cognitive Daily on the neglected area of self-discipline and its importance in acheivement.
Author Jay Ingram on the evidence that subliminal ads influence behaviour.
URB597, an antidepressant drug in development, increases brain levels of chemicals found in cannabis.
The Huge Entity discusess 'Sex, emotion and the female amygdala'.
Face to Face: The Science of Reading Faces: Transcript and video of an interview with psychologist Paul Ekman.
NASA works with Kim Peek, inspiration for movie Rain Main to better understand Peek's remarkable talents.
Monitoring real-time activation of pain centres in a brain-scanner can help control pain.
The State has an account of a woman who developed 'foreign accent syndrome' after a stroke.
—Vaughan.
December 15, 2005
Is George Bush a secret neuroscientist?:
Although the president of the USA is frequently villified for being a bit dim, I recently found a paper on "Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex: A role in reward-based decision making" authored by George Bush and colleagues.
The paper claims that George Bush, the first author, is a researcher from Harvard Medical School, rather than the Oval Office.
You never see them both in the same place together, so it's possible that they are the same person, although I suspect it's actually George W's dad putting his retirement to good use.
Maybe he's curious about what drives his son's own decision making style?
—Vaughan.
December 14, 2005
Racism, mental illness and the limits of diagnosis:
The Washington Post reports that a group led by psychologist Edward Dunbar are pushing to get extreme prejudice, such as intense racism or homophobia, diagnosable as a mental illness.
It may seem a little ridiculous to medicalise what are essentially extreme opinions, but the move is interesting for what it says about psychiatric diagnosis in general. In particular, it cuts to the very idea of what defines a mental disorder.
For example, the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia are based around two ideas:
The first is that there are behaviours and experiences present that are atypical or culturally anomalous (e.g. 'hearing voices' or delusions), the second is that the disorder involves some form of disability - in the case of schizophrenia, the criteria specify social or occupational dysfunction.
It could be argued that extreme racism could involve both. Extreme racism is indeed uncommon, and in today's multicultural society, might involve a significant social deficit if contact with other races or cultures is consistently avoided or becomes distressing.
In fact, considering that about 11% of healthy adults score above the average of delusional inpatients on measures of delusional thinking, it could be argued that extreme racism (at least in some countries) might be more atypical than the sort of beliefs that are typically diagnosed as signs of mental disorder.
In other words, it's quite hard to refute the idea that extreme racism isn't a mental disorder within the general philosophy of the current diagnostic system.
This highlights the social relativity of the diagnostic system, which you might either use to argue for the inclusion of a new diagnosis of 'racist disorder', or, perhaps, more realistically, to draw attention to the fact that the current system does not adequately define mental pathology in all cases.
Link to article 'Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness'.
—Vaughan.
December 13, 2005
Do americans have a propensity for hypomania?:
The New York Times has a short piece on Peter Whybrow's and John Gartner's theory that Americans have a greater genetic propensity for hypomania, the elevated mood state sometimes found in bipolar disorder.
This, they suggest, explains aspects of American culture such as focus on energetic enthusiasm and respect for new ideas.
Interestingly, recent genetic evidence is now pointing to the fact that genes likely to be present in people diagnosed with schizophrenia overlap with those found in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, suggesting that these may not be distinct disorders, but exist on a continuum.
If Whybrow and Gartner are right, therefore, might Americans be more likely to show traits of psychosis and schizotypy as well?
This may not necessarily be a bad thing, as high levels of these traits have been linked to greater mathematical ability and creativity.
Link to article 'The Hypomanic American'.
—Vaughan.
December 12, 2005
Diabolical cunning in the brain:
There's no credible motive but in 1903 that doesn't matter, the prosecuting barrister can always blind the jury with a little bit of brain:
Like you, members of the jury, I have at different moments of the trial, convinced as I am and as you will be of the prisoner's guilt, I have found myself asking, but why, but why? And this is what I would say to that question. It really does seem to point to a person who did these outrages from some diabolical cunning in the corner of his brain.
From Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. Jonathan Cape: London, 2005.
—christian.
Clinical neuropsychology takes to the stage:
Neuropsychologist Paul Broks' exploration of how brain injury affects selfhood, Into The Silent Land, has been made into a play that is currently showing in the Soho Theatre in London's West End.
The production is entitled On Ego and asks the question:
"What are we? Skin, bone and a hundred billion brain cells? Or is there something more? How does the conscious "you" clamber from the numb darkness of the brain box out into a world of people and places, pleasure and pain, love and loss?"
Interestingly, this isn't the first time that a book of case studies of brain injured patients has been turned into a theatre production, as Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was turned into an opera.
On Ego finishes on the 7th January.
Link to information on play.
Link to Observer article about On Ego
Link to American Scientist interview with Broks.
—Vaughan.
December 11, 2005
What lurks inside the teenage brain?:
Author Nicola Morgan has written a book on neuroscience for teenagers, that explains why teenage experience and behaviour seems so intensely different during adolescence.
The book, Blame My Brain, manages to accurately present scientific research, without presenting any 'just so' stories. Various theories and approaches are given where a strong conclusion is not widely accepted.
It also manages to explain neuroscience in a straightforward yet engaging way:
For a long time, people have assumed that this inability to get out of bed is just teenagers being lazy. We have blamed it on the fact that they choose to stay up too late and therefore can't get up in the morning. But new research shows that laziness and deliberately late nights are not entirely to blame.
...
When the body clock switches off, it tells our bodies to start feeling sleepy, and the brain produces a hormone called melatonin. This chemical prepares our brains to be sleepy. Tests have shown that in adolescence, melatonin is produced much later in the evening than in younger children. About the same as adults in fact. This is why you don't often feel sleepy until late in the evening.
It also includes plenty of tests and demonstrations that the reader can try out on themselves or their friends and family!
Link to details of Blame My Brain: The amazing teenage brain revealed.
—Vaughan.
December 09, 2005
NewSci online brain channel:
I'm not sure whether this is a new section to the website, or whether I've been asleep since it started, but I've just discovered the New Scientist brain channel that collects all their brain-related stories and articles in one place.
It includes an archive of their news stories, feature articles and additional web only neuroscience resources. There's even a spiffy interactive map of the brain for those needing a brief guide to the space between the ears.
Free access as well as protected content is included, so non-subscribers can pick out the wheat from the chaff.
Link to New Scientist brain channel.
—Vaughan.
2005-12-09 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest launched!
Arguments between couples slow wound healing (presumably suffered during previous arguments).
Mirror neurons work differently in people with autism.
Colour blindness may have hidden advantages (the ability to better discriminate shades of khaki!)
Cycle helmet shaped like a brain (via BoingBoing)
Large head size linked to later development of brain cancer.
Interview with procrastination researcher and his classification of different procrastination types ('habitual lollygagger' anyone?).
Cognitive Daily tackles 'Internet addiction: Anatomy of a problem'.
Photographer Chris Combs presents a series of photos entitled 'Inside the Spectrum, focusing on autism (via MeFi).
—Vaughan.
December 08, 2005
A problem with placebo-controlled trials?:
Following advice from the Committee on Safety of Medicines, the only SSRI-type anti-depressant that UK clinicians can prescribe to children and teenagers is fluoxetine. The risk of suicide and self-harm associated with the use of the other drugs in the SSRI family has been judged to outweigh their benefit.
But speaking at a conference at the Institute of Psychiatry recently, Dr. Paramala Santosh, Consultant in Developmental Neuropsychiatry and Neuropharmacology at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said that the absolute size of the benefit of the banned drugs was often no less, and sometimes more than the effect size found for fluoxetine - it's just that in the trials for the banned drugs, the size of the placebo effect had been so much larger.
Could this be a fundamental flaw in placebo-controlled trials? The effectiveness of drugs is measured against a placebo effect, but the size of that placebo effect isn't constant and varies from one trial to another. So potentially, an inferior drug could be deemed effective in a trial where the placebo effect was weak.
Of course NICE guidelines state psychotherapy should be the first line treatment for depressed children, but with too few therapists available, it's vital that effective drugs aren't banned unnecessarily.
A few more details:
Santosh said that SSRIs were associated with suicide in adults too, it's just that their effectiveness had been demonstrated (in placebo-controlled trials) and so benefit was seen to outweigh risk.
Another problem with this issue is that clinicians often prescribe SSRIs to clients they believe may be at risk of suicide because an SSRI overdose is not lethal. Cases such as these could skew trials examining the risk of SSRIs.
A new paper in Drug Safety shows that following the Committee on Safety of Medicines advice, children are being prescribed fewer SSRIs but that prescription rates for fluoxetine and other non-SSRI antidepressants haven't risen: the implication being that children aren't being given the alternative treatments they need.
—christian.
Rumi on science and madness:
An untitled poem on transformation, science and insanity by the 13th century Persian poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi:
I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking on the inside!
Real value comes with madness
matzub below, scientist above.
Whoever finds love
beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises.
Apparently, matzub is the name for people who become ecstatic with holy enlightenment. From Rumi: Selected Poems (p281, ISBN 0140449531).
Link to wikipedia article on Rumi.
—Vaughan.
December 07, 2005
Do gay parents have happy children?:
The American Psychological Association's flagship publication Monitor on Psychology summarises the research on gay parents and finds their children are generally healthy, happy and well adjusted, despite occasional homophobic teasing.
Patterson's and others' findings that good parenting, not a parent's sexual orientation, leads to mentally healthy children may not surprise many psychologists. What may be more surprising is the finding that children of same-sex couples seem to be thriving, though they live in a world that is often unaccepting of their parents.
In fact, an as-yet-unpublished study by Nanette Gartrell, MD, found that by age 10, about half of children with lesbian mothers have been targeted for homophobic teasing by their peers. Those children tended to report more psychological distress than those untouched by homophobia.
But as a group, the children of lesbian moms are just as well-adjusted as children from more traditional families, according to the data from Gartrell's National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study.
Link to article in APA monitor.
Link to Patterson's full report "Lesbian and Gay Parenting" from the APA.
—Vaughan.
December 06, 2005
Smell:
Research on smell - what scientists call olfaction - is discussed in the December issue of the Reader's Digest magazine in an article by Paula Dranov. She explains how smells are composed of molecules that bind to our smell receptors located at the top of the nasal cavity. According to Nobel Prize-winner Linda Buck "A slight change in the chemistry of an orange scent and you get something that smells like sweaty socks".
Linda Buck and Richard Axel won the 2004 Nobel Prize for medicine for identifying the approximately 1000 genes (3 per cent of the human genome) that code for the hundreds of smell receptors.
The article also mentions research looking at how smells could be used to help obese people eat less, based on the idea that satiety has less to do with feeling full and more to do with our senses of smell and taste feeling satisfied.
Brain damage can affect our sense of smell with unwelcome consequences. Dranov describes the case of Melissa Wittenborn who lost her sense of smell after an ice skating accident. A hit on her head caused her brain to shudder inside the skull, severing a nerve in the olfactory area. Wittenborn said "I'm missing out on so much, such as smelling my kids and husband when they get out of the shower".
Losing one's sense of smell can also be a sign of neurological illnesses like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or Multiple Sclerosis.
Of course, smell is intimately related to memory. There's a wealth of research showing that smell can aid recall, but there's also more recent research showing that irrelevant smells can hinder memory.
Link to research on smell and dieting (and lots of other smell research)
Link to research on human pheromones
Link to research on irrelevant smells
Link to research suggesting smelling nice could help in interviews
Link to research on whether humans can sense the direction of smell
Link (item 2) to the vibration theory of smell
—christian.
Almost human:
The International Robot Exhibition concluded recently in Japan, where the world's robot manufacturers displayed their most advanced and, in some cases, human-like creations.
The emotional response to robots was discussed by roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, who created the theory of the Uncanny Valley.
He argued that that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response of humans will become increasingly positive and empathic.
This is until a point at which the response suddenly becomes strongly repulsive, owing to the uncanny 'not quite human' aspect of the robot's behaviour. This is the point known as the Uncanny Valley (see graph as pop-up).
However, as the appearance and motion are made to be indistinguishable to that of human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
Mori's theory is controversial, with some researchers rejecting it out of hand. Nevertheless, it seems intuitively plausible, and still influences robot design and engineering.
Link to excellent Wikipedia article on the 'Uncanny Valley'.
Link to 2005 International Robot Exhibition.
Link to Coriolinus' photos of the exhibition (via BoingBoing).
—Vaughan.
December 05, 2005
New look 'Science and Consciousness Review':
A long running web journal, the Science and Consciousness Review, has relaunched with a new look and growing content.
The journal is run by three academic scientists who want to open up consciousness research and discussion to the internet. The journal contains book reviews, summaries of new papers and internet resources.
One of the most interesting recent posts is about the increasingly comprehensive Consciousness Studies Wikibook, which is a becoming a dynamic textbook on consciousness science.
Link to Science and Consciousness Review.
Link to Consciousness Studies Wikibook.
—Vaughan.
December 04, 2005
Psychology, the soul and the immaterial:
Carl Zimmer considers the tension between biological and psychological explanations of the mind (and, perhaps, the soul) in the conclusion to his history of early brain science Soul Made Flesh (ISBN 0099441659, p296):
Our souls are material and yet immaterial: a product of chemistry but also a pulsating network of information - a network that reaches beyond the individual brain to other brains, linked by words, glances, gestures, and other equally immaterial signals, which can leave a mark as indelible on a scan as a stroke or a swig of barium, and yet never become merely physical themselves.
Link to excerpt from Soul Made Flesh.
—Vaughan.
December 02, 2005
Study probes coffee's effect on the brain:
New Scientist reports on a recent study that examines the effect of coffee on the brain. The good news is that it seems to do the frontal lobes, and the executive system, the world of good.
"The group all showed activation of the working memory part of the brain," Koppelstätter explains. "But those who received caffeine had significantly greater activation in parts of the prefrontal lobe, known as the anterior cingulate and the anterior cingulate gyrus. These areas are involved in 'executive memory', attention, concentration, planning and monitoring."
Just don't mention the withdrawal headaches...
Link to article 'Coffee's effects revealed in brain scans'.
—Vaughan.
2005-12-02 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
The New York Times disusses the trials discusses the psychology of child prodigies.
A study finds that the chemical high from new romantic love fades after a year.
Blog 'The Huge Entity' presents some choice Shakespearean quotes on psychological themes.
Computer scientists create a model of 'surprise'
The more creative / schizotypal a person is, the more sexual partners they are likely to have (or, perhaps, report?)
New theory links Alzheimer's disease to diabetes.
Wired report on the Dalai Lama's recent meetings with neuroscientsts studying meditation
The New York Times discusses the debates over internet addiction and newly offered treatments (via Slashdot).
A new blog highlights the latests in neuroimaging and brain scanning research. Enter Brainscan.
—Vaughan.
December 01, 2005
How to read a paper:
Via Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre (here) comes this hot tip: Trisha Greenhalgh's How to read a paper. Although it focusses on medical research, many of the principles apply to all scientific papers. Although it's great when science can be expressed in everyday language, the ability to go direct to the original research, as reported by the researcher themselves, is an invaluable skill (and one hopefully this link, and the Mind Hacks book, can give you some handles on).
—tom.
I can't get no sleep...:
Poor sleep is the common result of stress or illness, but sleep researchers are increasingly coming to believe that insomnia itself is a separate disorder. Science News discusses the science of insomnia, and new developments in the neuroscience of 'sleeping pills'.
One problem with previous types of sleeping pill (particularly the benzodiazepines) is that they become quickly addictive and so are indicated for short-term use only. The holy grail of sleep medication research is to find a compound which is non-addictive and not 'fun' enough to be abused.
Science News reviews various compounds that are new or currently in development, and their aim to safely mimic earlier medications, or hormones in the body that promote sleep.
For people who are having trouble sleeping, however, there are simple techniques which can significantly improve sleep time and quality.
The Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center has some online advice to help people manage their sleeping environment and habits to get the maximum benefit out of sleep.
Link to Science News article 'Staring into the dark'.
Link to 'Helpful Hints to Help You Sleep'.
—Vaughan.
