Out-of-Body Experiences Aren't as Far Out as You Think.

Hey All! I've been neglecting my blog for the sake of science, but never fear, I've found loads of really intriguing things to share with you!

Today's tasty tidbit comes to us from radio WNYC's podcast show "Radio Lab", a show that investigates a wide assortment of cutting-edge and curious topics in science. Their podcast is available in iTunes.

During their "Where Am I?" issue on body image, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich explore the relationship between brains and bodies and how they can get way out of synch. Here's just one item from their show.

In the summer of 1952 the pilots-in-training at Luke Airforce Base suffered 9 fatal accidents during routine training exercises. Another pilot from the same training group reported that once, during a training exercise he felt as though he was sitting on the wing of his plane watching someone (actually himself) fly the plane. Eventually he realized that he was watching himself and resumed conscious control of the plane.

They called in Jim Whinnery, Chief Flight Surgeon and Chief Aeromedical Scientist at the Naval Air Warfare Center. He decided to put volunteer pilots in a centrifuge (the whirling mechanisms used to train astronauts) that had been set up to feel and work like a cockpit and see if OOBs can be induced. The body goes through a specific sequence as the centrifuge gains speed: first the blood is pulled from the brain, and you experience 'gray-out' vision, followed by tunnel vision, black-out, and, if you take it far enough, you lose consciousness. When the pilots come to they are very disoriented, they don't know who or where they are or what they're supposed to be doing. Then it all comes back to them in a rush.

Whinnery tested around 500 pilots in 15 years and recorded their experiences. He noted that the average black-out lasted 12-24 seconds. During black-outs pilots experienced strange visions, so of which included OOBs. Whinnery thinks that the visions happen when the brain loses communication with the body. The visions are the brains way of explaining its sensory experience to itself.

Of the 500, 40 had OOBs. Of that 40, a small subgroup had visions of a tunnel with white light. They were the ones with the most intense black-outs.

As far as I'm concerned, this discovery poses way more questions than it answers. Any thoughts?

Brains, Computing and Computers

This an amazing talk about brains and brain theory from the guy who invented the PalmPilot. Totally worth 20 minutes of your life.

Myspace, Myworld, Myself

I found a really interesting snippet in the latest issue of The Atlantic about some of the social implications of the Myspace generation. Some psychologists have used a"Narcissistic Personality Inventory" test to measure how 16,475 college kids (starting in 1982 and continuing through 2006) view themselves. The results? "Overall, almost two-thirds of the most recent sample display a higher level of narcissism than the 1982 average." They further noted that students born after the invention/spread of the internet (i.e. the demographic most likely to use sites like Myspace and YouTube) are especially prone to narcissism.

Myspace aside, increasing narcissism is a source of concern because independent studies have showed that "narcissists have trouble forming meaningful relationships, tend to be materialistic, and are prone to higher levels of infidelity, substance abuse, and violence." I find it ironic that the same system that makes it amazingly easy to connect with people may be a reason that young people are becoming more self-involved.

Introductory Neuroanatomy

Turning Our Words into Actions.

Linguists have been trying to map language (and all it's cognitive aspects) in the brain. We now know (generally) where speech is produced, where grammar comes into the picture, where written language is decoded, etc.

Recently, linguists have been looking for meaning in the brain. For example, you just heard the word 'cat', but is your concept of 'cat' stored in the same place as your perception of someone saying the word 'cat'? The short answer is 'no'. Most studies of this nature (trying to localize word meaning in the brain) have focused on concrete, visual nouns. In a study by Hauk, Johnsrude, and Pavermuller (2004), the question of word localization is applied to action words with very interesting results.

Their experiment was elegant. They chose three categories of action words, each related to a different region of the body (specifically face/tongue words like "lick", arm words, "throw", and leg words, "kick"). They selected 50 words for each category and then had their subjects read them (silently), all while in an fMRI brain scanning machine. Turns out that the (non-language-specific) areas of the brain that are activated by DOING the physical action (of the word) overlap significantly with the brain areas activated be just READING the word. Let me run that by you again. Reading an action word like "throw" activates the arm-related area of the motor cortex as well as normal language areas.

Now, no experiment should be taken too seriously, but this data implies that the meaning of a word (at least the meaning of an action word) lies somewhere between understanding the word and doing the action.

In My Mind's Ear

I was talking with a friend today who told me to "listen to something with my mind's eye." This made me wonder whether or not there is such a thing as a 'mind's ear'. Upon further discussion an reflection, we concluded that there must be a 'mind's ear', at least metaphorically, because otherwise it could never get too loud to hear yourself think. Now, I like working out kinks in common metaphors as much as the next person, but this conclusion of ours lead to another, more complicated question: How can there be a listener (the mind's ear) and a speaker (the self) within a single (sane) mind, what areas of the self/cognition are responsible for hearing and speaking, and how is all this synthesized into a cohesive whole? These are essentially questions that lie at the heart of Cognitive Science. Any thoughts on the subject?

Dreaming = Normal?

Department of Redundancy Department

Science asks questions. When science gets an answer it's easy, for the media especially, though scientists have been guilty as well, to think that it is the answer. More and more evidence indicates that many biological systems, especially the human nervous system, are naturally and necessarily redundant. We can regulate our body temperature by storing fat or sweating, we can write a letter with a pencil or a computer, etc. Though redundancy seems to be an inefficient use of energy, it makes a system much more stable and durable.

When a person is forming complex words, for example, "walked", there are two language mechanisms available; you can simply memorize the world "walked" as a single unit, or you can consciously construct it from "walk" and "-ed." Recent studies show that rather than using one mechanism all the time, people tend to use a specific mechanism depending on the situation. People tend to memorize high frequency words like "walked" and construct rare words, like "balked." An interesting side note, estrogen is a memory aid, so women use the memorization method for more words (on average) than men.

Many of the new findings in neuroscience may make more sense if we try to see how they might fit in a redundant system, rather than what they do on their own.

This portion of CogSigh brought to you, in part, by Michael Ullman, a Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University in his article "More is Sometimes More."

Boss vs. Backseat Driver

When BMW was first introducing cars with voice-automation into their German market they decided to use a female voice. As these cars made their way onto the streets, German drivers began to complain to BMW they did not want to be given instructions from a woman. Their response was so strong and so negative that BMW did a full product recall and substituted in a male voice. There were no further complaints.

This nugget was mined from the KPBS film "Do You Speak American?"

Ridiculously Interesting Neuromarketing Post Alert!

I just read a recent post on one of my favorite blogs (see Neuromarketing on the sidebar) about how the order in which information is presented dramatically changes its reception. He mentions a study conducted by Frank Luntz in which focus groups watched three video clips related to Ross Perot (a biography, a third party recommendation and a speech). The groups who saw the speech first, followed by positive background information, responded overwhelmingly more negatively to Perot than the groups who first saw the clips describing his impressive and successful business history. People respond positively when they are given subtle, even subconscious, promptings. Bottom line: read the full post for a more detailed explanation.

The Language and the Land

A great linguist once said that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." The distinction between a language and a dialect (or between different languages) is hard to make independent of politics and a populations' identity. In fact, linguistically, from a structural level, there is no distinction to be made.

The linguistic differences between dialects within the 'Chinese" language are much greater (structurally) than those between the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian), however, they aren't recognized independently as different languages. The key to understanding this odd phenomenon is to look at where (linguistically) a people identify themselves. The people of China are united linguistically through a shared script (uniform written word), so the significant structural differences between their dialects aren't as significant. It is very important for the Spanish, French and Italian peoples that their spoken languages be viewed as significantly distinct, in spite of their structural linguistic similarities, because their cultural identity is rooted in their language (among other things).

Language marinates our experience of the world so fully that it is easy to forget that we (social beings that we are) have made it and that it is an organic and dynamic social force, rather than a social tool.

Baby Steps

These days parents will do anything to give their kids an advantage. Whether it's prenatal Mozart or pre-pre-school, the business of gr owning up and getting out into the "real world" has gotten a lot more involved. News for the homefront: sometimes it's better to just let them go at their own pace. One piece of evidence on this topic comes from a study concluding that children who spend more time crawling (read: take longer to learn how to walk) have better hand-eye coordination AND are much better and deeper readers.

Kids Really Are Monkeys, Just Ask a Linguist

In my linguistics class we've been learning about hominid (pre-human and human) evolution, specifically the evolution of the vocal apparatus. In our last lecture my professor, Meiko Ueno, brought us back to the present and showed us a slide comparing the vocal apparatus of a chimpanzee, an adult, and a child. Interestingly enough, the child has much more in common with the chimp than the adult.

Now this might not seem right, kids are technically human (homo sapiens) not chimpanzee (homo troglodytes), no matter how much monkeying around you have to put up with, so what gives?

Here's the thing; the (adult) human vocal apparatus is a choking hazard. Yup. You heard me right, from an evolutionary perspective humans would rather risk a gruesome death (choking) than put down their cell phones. Our species has survived long enough to invent and use cell phones because human infants are born with the ability to eat without choking to death. As infants develop more muscle control, their vocal tract shifts into an adult human (talking) configuration (between ages 3 and 4).

If you think about it, evolution can be seen in the life of an individual (from monkey to man in five years) as well as the species.

How to be a Superfan

If you pay any attention to sports, you will know that the Superbowl is tomorrow. More Americans watch the Superbowl than vote, and there is rarely any doubt about which team to back (unlike elections).

If you're a well-informed fan, according to Psychology Today, you would gather a group of like minded friends and wave pennants (or foam hands or whatever) in sync. A group of amateur psychologists did this as an informal experiment at a series of Dallas Mavericks games. At the games they attended, the Mavericks opponents shot 8% below the league average on free-throws. This may not seem like a tremendously significant effect, but it could make the difference for the home team.

Also of note, the same article points out that "emergency room visits drop during big games and spike after they're over." A new criterion for die-hard sports fans: if your own personal risk of injury is at least as great as a professional athlete in a contact sport.

Conmen and Conversation

At one time or other we've all been cornered by a conman. Some friendly stranger on the street strikes up a conversation at the stoplight and next thing you know he's asking for $50 to help an impoverished architect and his family flee from some underdeveloped African nation. You and I both know that there is no real African family in the picture, but it is still hard for us to get away.

How can a stranger engage our time and sympathies so quickly? It all starts with a simple question. According to the 'rules' of conversation that we all follow, when someone asks a question like "Do you have the time?" or "Do you speak English?" and we respond appropriately, we have just committed to a conversation (however brief). At this point, once he's engaged our time and attention, a conman can begin to engage our sympathies.

Similar implicit conversational rules apply to telephone calls, as the simple act of answering the phone commits the receiver to some sort of conversation with the caller. Intriguingly enough, the general conversational 'rule' for telephone conversations is that the caller ends the exchange. If you wish to end your exchange with a telemarketer, you must 'violate' a conversational 'rule' making exchanges with telemarketers are both awkward and entangling.

This information has been extracted from studies of the structure and rules that govern conversation conducted separately by Erving Goffman and Harvey Sacks during the 1980's.

Here's Looking At You, Kid

Have you ever seen the man in the moon? How about faces in rocks and trees? The brain is wired to find and focus on faces.

In a study lead by neurobiologists from Harvard Medical Center (published in Science) titled, "A Cortical Region Consisting Entirely of Face-Selective Cells," it was observed that;
"Face perception is a skill crucial to primates. In both humans and macaque monkeys, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals a system of cortical regions that show increased blood flow when the subject views images of faces, compared with images of objects. However, the stimulus selectivity of single neurons within these fMRI-identified regions has not been studied. We used fMRI to identify and target the largest face-selective region in two macaques for single-unit recording. Almost all (97%) of the visually responsive neurons in this region were strongly face selective, indicating that a dedicated cortical area exists to support face processing in the macaque."

So what we're looking at is a whole chunk of your brain that only lights up in response to a face. Now, if you think about it, looking at a picture of a face isn't tremendously different from looking at one of an apple; in both cases your visual centers perceive shape and colour/texture. That said, anyone can tell you that a face has much more (and more important) information than an apple. The brain has developed this face-sensitive area to a) make it harder for us to confuse faces for things, and b) to recognize when someone is looking at you.

Both of these functions make sense. You won't survive for long of you can't recognize the tigers face through the bushes or tell if he is, in fact, looking at you. In my "Minds and Brains" class we looked at other studies that have observed a related area of the brain in chimpanzees during facial recognition tasks, and they found that there are neurons that are specifically sensitive to recognizing faces at different angles (a neuron per degree from center, or something along those lines). Also, yet further studies indicate that the biggest keys to recognizing a face are the eyes. In this study they observed a dramatic increase in brain activity (in this area of interest) when eyes were added to an otherwise complete face.

http://anthropology.net/user/kambiz_kamrani/blog/2006/02/07/face_recognition_brain_maturation_and_mirror_neurons
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990624080203.htm

The Serious Side of Laughter

Why do we laugh? When you consider the many different varieties of laughter we encounter every day, not just in response to an episode of The Daily Show, but in humor-free situations as well (like nervous or contemptuous laughter, etc), it becomes clear that there is no simple answer to this question.

Theories abound on the subject. Robert Provine claims that laughter merely a conversational attention grabber used to make sure that others know we're paying attention. Charles Darwin thought that laughter was an extension of smiling, and therefore simply associated with pleasure. He also called attention to the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon of excessive laughter impairing muscle coordination (have you ever fallen off a chair from laughing too hard?). Maybe instead laughter is a standard exhalation pattern signifying relief. Still others class laughter as a cooperative signal. JoAnne Bachorowski, a professor at Vanderbilt University, has studied a particular kind of voice-laughter which she considers to be a cooperative signal. Voice laughter is characterized by a melodious and gentle quality and occurs most frequently between good friends or romantic couples.

My own theory is that laughter and gesture may have similar functions in conversation and social interaction (especially when considering interactions that aren't face-to-face). Both gesture and laughter are used to provide emphasis or clarify an implicit point in conversation; you point to clarify where 'there' is, you laugh to let your listener know that you are joking (or uncomfortable, or contemptuous, or playful, etc. depending on the nature of the laughter and context).

Much of this post is based off of a lecture given by Dacher Keltner, PhD. in his class on the Psychology of Emotion at the University of California at Berkeley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacher_Keltner

Nature vs. Nurture: Language Edition

Noam Chomsky says that language is a uniquely human phenomenon. Even without this challenging and controversial claim, linguists have been trying to teach language to non-human species for the past century.

One of the most notable attempts of this sort was made in the 1930's by Winthrop and Luella Kellogg. Just three months after their son was born, the Kellogg family welcomed Gua the chimpanzee into their home. Their mission was to raise Gua alongside their son to scientifically compare the rate and extent of language acquisition between the two species. By the time Gua turned three the Kelloggs observed that she had not acquired much, if any, language. However, their son had developed a very, very convincing imitation of a chimpanzee. At this point the Kelloggs aborted their experiment.

Many other experiments (albeit more conventional and less personally risky) of this sort have been completed, with some success, however, thus far all of these experiments have more or less reached the conclusion that non-human species can acquire a complex system of signs, but their communication lacks several crucial elements of genuine language.

Emotion and Evolution

Humans have somewhere between 30-40 facial muscles, which are manipulated to display different emotions. For example, the display of embarrassment is characterized by a tight-lipped/ puckering smile, touching one’s face, and turning ones head to reveal the neck. This display is both systematic and coordinated, and there is evidence that it is not culture-specific, as members of various non-Western cultures recognize this display as embarrassment. In fact, a similar behavior has been observed in non-human species in the form of appeasement displays. Non-human species (primarily mammals, especially the great apes) produce these displays when apologizing for mistakes, seeking reconciliation, or backing down from a confrontation with a more dominant member of the group. The appeasement display is indicated by an odd little smile, face-touching, exposing vulnerable areas (wolves show their necks), and shrinking their posture. This study is compelling evidence in the argument for the evolutionary (rather than social) origin of emotion and emotional displays.

A Thought Experiment

Do you know that one square centimeter of brain tissue holds roughly one gigabyte of computing power and we don't really know what all is on the hard drive? Scientists of all sorts and sizes have their search engines running full blast, looking for structures and patterns in the system of mind and brain that connect us with everything we know and experience. Join me as I pick my way through the science of the mind.