Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.
A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.
io9: A drug that could give you perfect visual memory
(via Edge of Tomorrow)
A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants.
Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks – increasing in voltage – upon their opponents.
Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever.
Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows.
They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme.
BBC: French TV contestants made to inflict ‘torture’
This is, of course, a replication of the Milgram experiment.
Glenn Greenwald notes the irony of Fox News’s moral outrage over the incident.
ResearchBlogging.orgEvolutionary psychology tends to receive harsh criticism, and often rightly so. One of the main reasons for this is the severe lack of evidence for many of it’s proposals given that the paucity of fossilised brains fails to bolster many a case. And it isn’t even anyone’s fault. That’s just the way it goes sometimes, that the brain is a jelly-like substance that is subject to decay after death, and there’s no way we can objectively analyse or verify any differences in brains of long ago with brains of today.
This isn’t set to change anytime soon, but the remarkable discovery of a medieval child’s brain was the subject of a Neuroimage paper published recently. This is extremely exciting on many counts: the brain has been so fantastically preserved that it is possible to identify the frontal, temporal and occipital lobes, and even the sulci and gyri, the grooves and furrows channeled into brains.
However it is only the left-hemisphere that survived and not the entire brain, which had also shrunk to about 80% of it’s original weight due to the (natural) mummification process.
Neurowhoa: 700-year-old Brain Found Preserved
The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.
“This study underscores the importance of neurological research as it relates to behavior,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. “The findings may help us find new ways to intervene before a personality trait becomes antisocial behavior.”
The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.
Science Daily: Psychopaths’ Brains Wired to Seek Rewards, No Matter the Consequences
The studies in Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation show that these two different ways of remembering things are initiated by entirely different signal paths in the brain. Efforts to retrieve a specific memory are dealt with by the upper part of the frontal lobe. This area of the brain is activated not only in connection with memory-related efforts but also in all types of mental efforts and intentions, according to the dissertation. This part of the brain is not involved in the beginning of the process of unintentionally remembering something as a response to external stimuli. Instead, such memories are activated by specific signals from other parts of the brain, namely those that deal with perceived stimuli like smells, pictures, and words. Sometimes such memories are thought to be more vivid and emotional; otherwise they would not be activated in this way. But Kristiina Kompus’s dissertation shows that this is not the case — memories do not need to be emotionally charged to be revived spontaneously, unintentionally. Nor do memories that are revived spontaneously activate the brain more than other memories.
Science Daily: Different Signal Paths for Spontaneous and Deliberate Activation of Memories
(Photo credit: Kevin Dooley / CC)
After analyzing tools used by Neanderthals, British and American archaeologists say they were just as well-crafted as those used by our ancestors.
Flakes — wide-bodied stones used for cutting by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens — are just as useful, if not moreso, than narrow stone blades later favored by modern humans, who charged out of Africa 50,000 years ago and soon replaced their larger, hairier European forerunners.
“It’s not a better technology, it’s just a different technology,” said Metin Eren, a University of Exeter experimental archaeology student. [...]
The superiority of blades has long been seen as evidence of human superiority. But according to Eren’s team, blades had only one advantage: they can be easily attached to shafts.
Wired Science: Neanderthals Not Dumb, but Made Dull Gadgets
The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.
“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”
Chemero’s experiment, published March 9 in Public Library of Science, was designed to test one of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts: that people don’t notice familiar, functional tools, but instead “see through” them to a task at hand, for precisely the same reasons that one doesn’t think of one’s fingers while tying shoelaces. The tools are us.
This idea, called “ready-to-hand,” has influenced artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, but without being directly tested.
Wired Science: Your Computer Really Is a Part of You
(via Cole Tucker)
HipGnosis is the recording name of the Des Moines based electronic musician Eric Young. In addition to producing, Eric also DJs the Glitch.fm online radio show Between Zero and One every Wednesday from 10PM-12AM (CST).
Klint Finley: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it?
HipGnosis: Wow. Hmm. Experimental, psychedelic, electronic dance music combined w/ elements of hip-hop, classical, and plain weirdness.
I was classically trained, though I don’t play any “traditional instruments” any longer. Now I play a computer.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cracked has a surprisingly interesting article on the psychology of rewards and how it’s applied to game design:
Do you like your job?
Considering half of you are reading this at work, I’m going to guess no. And that brings us to the one thing that makes gaming addiction–and addiction in general–so incredibly hard to beat.
As shocking as this sounds, a whole lot of the “guy who failed all of his classes because he was playing WoW all the time” horror stories are really just about a dude who simply didn’t like his classes very much. This was never some dystopian mind control scheme by Blizzard. The games just filled a void.
Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to everything expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don’t even have two of them:
Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
Complexity (so it’s not mind-numbing repetition);
Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).
Most people, particularly in the young gamer demographics, don’t have this in their jobs or in any aspect of their everyday lives. But the most addictive video games are specifically geared to give us all three… or at least the illusion of all three.
Cracked: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
(via Social Physicist)
(Image Credit: mike 23 / CC)
This is a guest post by Chris Arkenberg. Many readers wanted to know more about systems thinking after my interview with Chris, so he’s returned to provide us with some resources. – Klint
The term “systems thinking” has a few different connotations. Classically, non-linear dynamic systems represents a set of principles that describe the organization of energy as an extropic function of information, driven by power laws and bounded by limits. The formulas within this domain are often applied to natural systems such as populations, fluid dynamics, and so-called chaotic processes like dripping faucets and epileptic seizures. Some of the better-known ideas within dynamic systems are attractors, bifurcations, and the process of iteration.
Read the rest of this entry »
The world’s first patient-ready and commercially available brain computer interface just arrived at CeBIT 2010. The Intendix from Guger Technologies (g*tec) is a system that uses an EEG cap to measure brain activity in order to let you type with your thoughts. Meant to work with those with locked-in syndrome, or other disabilities, Intendix is simple enough to use after just 10 minutes of training. You simply focus on a grid of letters as they flash. When your desired letter lights up, brain activity spikes and Intendix types it. As users master the system, a few will be able to type as quickly as 1 letter a second. Besides typing, it can also trigger alarms, convert text to speech, print, copy, or email. Retailing for €9000 (~$12,250), Intendix isn’t cheap, but it’s the first thought to type system available that’s geared towards easy to setup personal use in the home. Brain computer interfaces just got more accessible, and that’s a step towards them becoming more common all over the world.
Singularity Hub: Intendix, The Brain Computer Interface Goes Commercial
(via Edge of Tomorrow)
See also:
Chris Arkenberg’s 3 Scenarios for Brain Computer Interface.
I had no idea the link between serotonin and depression was in doubt. Very interesting:
Via Dormivigilia, I came across a fascinating paper about a man who suffered from a severe lack of monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) as a result of a genetic mutation. [...]
Overall, though, the biggest finding here was a non-finding: this patient wasn’t depressed, despite having much reduced serotonin levels. This is further evidence that serotonin isn’t the “happy chemical” in any simple sense.
On the other hand, the similarities between his symptoms and some of the symptoms of depression suggest that serotonin is doing something in that disorder. This fits with existing evidence from tryptophan depletion studies showing that low serotonin doesn’t cause depression in most people, but does re-activate symptoms in people with a history of the disease. As I said, it’s complicated…
Neuroskeptic: Life Without Serotonin
See also:
Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature
Atheists may be smarter, but are we also disagreeable? (Well, this guy may be).
A new analysis comparing the personalities of religious and less religious people has found that religiosity is generally linked to agreeableness and conscientiousness. Well, that’s the headline. To understand why this might be, you need to dig into the details of the study. [...]
The five-factor model is the most widely used measure of personality. According to this model, individuals can be defined according to where they lie on one of five scales: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness.
One consistent finding stood out: across all measures of religion, cultural areas, and age groups, people who scored higher on agreeableness and conscientiousness also reported being more religious.
Epiphenom: Atheists are disagreeable and unconscientious
There’s also the whole problem relying on personality testing to begin with.
The project is in a very early alpha stage. Some of the current goals for the project include:
-Create a workable and easy to build hardware design to allow experimentation similar to that done by Dr. Persinger.
-Develop firmware for any integrated controllers
-Develop software that facilitates controlled application of TMS or rTMS utilizing the hardware
-Software integration with openEEG and Sbagen for a rich experimental environment
Open-rTMS Project
(via William Gibson)
(Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney’s / CC)
See also:
The God Experiments
Above: the apparatus used for this study.
Researchers have successfully reconstructed 3-D hand motions from brain signals recorded in a non-invasive way, according to a study in the March 3 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This finding uses a technique that may open new doors for portable brain-computer interface systems. Such a non-invasive system could potentially operate a robotic arm or motorized wheelchair — a huge advance for people with disabilities or paralysis. [...]
The reaching apparatus used to study the finger paths from a center button to eight other buttons in random order. While volunteers touched the buttons, researchers recorded their brain signals and hand motions. Afterward, the researchers attempted to decode the signals and reconstruct the 3-D hand movements.
Science Daily: 3-D Hand Movement Reconstructed Using Brain Signals: Future Portable Prosthetic Devices for Movement-Impaired
Kind of. The article, Neural evidence for inequality-averse social preferences, doesn’t mention the C word, but it does claim to have found evidence that people’s brains display more egalitarianism than people themselves admit to. [...]
When people received money for themselves, activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the ventral striatum correlated with the size of their gain.
However, when presented with a payment to the other person, these areas seemed to be rather egalitarian. Activity rose in rich people when their poor colleagues got money. In fact, it was greater in that case than when they got money themselves, which means the “rich” people’s neural activity was more egalitarian than their subjective ratings were. Whereas in “poor” people, the vmPFC and the ventral striatum only responded to getting money, not to seeing the rich getting even richer.
The authors of the study concluded that this is evidence of a neurobiological preference against inequality.
NeuroSkeptic: Is Your Brain A Communist?
Among all the participants, a longer duration since the first time they used cannabis was associated with multiple psychosis-related outcomes. “Compared with those who had never used cannabis, young adults who had six or more years since first use of cannabis (i.e., who commenced use when around 15 years or younger) were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis and were four times as likely to have high scores on the Peters et al Delusions Inventory [a measure of delusion],” the authors write. “There was a ‘dose-response’ relationship between the variables of interest: the longer the duration since first cannabis use, the higher the risk of psychosis-related outcomes.”
However:
“The nature of the relationship between psychosis and cannabis use is by no means simple,” they write. Individuals who had experienced hallucinations early in life were more likely to have used cannabis longer and to use it more frequently. “This demonstrates the complexity of the relationship: those individuals who were vulnerable to psychosis (i.e., those who had isolated psychotic symptoms) were more likely to commence cannabis use, which could then subsequently contribute to an increased risk of conversion to a non-affective psychotic disorder.”
Science Daily: Long-Time Cannabis Use Associated With Psychosis
Booze, for all its magical wonder, still has big drawbacks: You can’t sober up quickly, and you often get a hangover. Now Korean researchers have found a way of tweaking booze to limit the fallout — without cutting its strength.
Doctors Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University studied the properties of oxygenated alcohol – booze with oxygen bubbles added – which is a popular concoction in their country. In these drinks, oxygen is added the way carbonation is usually added to soda, and the scientists wanted to know if these oxygenated beverages affected people differently than non-oxygenated ones. The answer was a resounding yes.
i09: Scientists Have Discovered Booze That Won’t Give You A Hangover
(Thanks Blustr)
New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that darkness may also induce a psychological feeling of illusory anonymity, just as children playing “hide and seek” will close their eyes and believe that other cannot see them, the experience of darkness, even one as subtle as wearing a pair of sunglasses, triggers the belief that we are warded from others’ attention and inspections.
Psychological scientists Chen-Bo Zhong, Vanessa K. Bohns (both of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management), and Francesca Gino (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) conducted three experiments to test whether darkness can license dishonest and self-interested behaviors. In the first experiment, participants were placed in a dimly or well-lit room and received a brown envelope that contained $10 along with one empty white envelope. They were then asked to complete a worksheet with 20 matrices, each consisting of 12 three-digit numbers. The participants had five minutes to find two numbers in each matrix that added up to 10. The researchers left it up to the participants to score their own work and for each pair of numbers correctly indentified they could keep $0.50 from their supply of money. At the end of the experiment, the participants were asked to place the remainder of their money into the white envelope on their way out. While there was no difference in actual performance, participants in the slightly dim room cheated more and thus earned more undeserved money than those in a well-lit room.
Read More – Science Daily: Darkness Increases Dishonest Behavior, Study Shows
(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/childofwar/3905816711/ / CC)
Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”
Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.
Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that is better than everybody else.
Surprised? So were authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman when they started researching the issue of kids and race for their book NurtureShock. It turns out that a lot of our assumptions about raising our kids to appreciate diversity are entirely wrong.
Read More – Wired: How to Raise Racist Kids
(via Monstrrrous)
I think they probably mean zazen (or am I nitpicking here?)
People can reduce their sensitivity to pain by thickening their brain, according to a new study published in a special issue of the American Psychological Association journal, Emotion. Researchers from the Université de Montréal made their discovery by comparing the grey matter thickness of Zen meditators and non-meditators. They found evidence that practicing the centuries-old discipline of Zen can reinforce a central brain region (anterior cingulate) that regulates pain.
Science Daily: Zen Meditation: Thicker Brains Fend Off Pain
In recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words. [...]
The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship.
Read More – New York Times: Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much
(via Mind Hacks)
(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lintmachine/2489090110/ / CC 2.0)
As strange as the name sounds, exploding head syndrome is actually a rare and relatively undocumented sleep phenomenon. While sleeping or dozing, a person with the condition hears a terrifically loud sound in their head, such as a bomb exploding, a clash of cymbals or a gun going off.
“It’s usually described as a loud bang or pop that occurs in the first third of the night,” says Dr. Neil Kline, sleep physician and representative of the American Sleep Association in Wilmington, Del. “It’s a sensory phenomenon. The individual senses that some type of explosion has occurred nearby, but ultimately realizes it’s in their head. It’s not associated with pain or with any disorder that we know of and there are no physiological medical consequences that are associated with it.”
Read More: MSNBC: Loud crash at 3 a.m.? It may be your exploding head
(via William Gibson)
See also:
Wikipedia entry on Exploding Head Syndrome
Sleep paralysis
Universities must investigate measures, including random dope testing, to tackle the increasing use of cognitive enhancment drugs by students for exams, a leading behavioural neuroscientist warns.
Student use of drugs, such as Ritalin and modafinil, available over the internet and used to increase the brain’s alertness, had “enormous implications for universities”, said Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University’s psychiatry department.
Normally prescribed for neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, such drugs boost acetylcholine in the brain, improving alertness and attention. Their use has prompted concerns that they could give students an unfair advantage. “This is something that universities really have to discuss. They should have some strategy, some kind of active policy,” Sahakian said.
Guardian: Universities told to consider dope tests as student use of ’smart drugs’ soars
(via h+)
Previous look at smart drugs here at Technoccult
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