VS Ramachandran at the TED

I was recently given a heads up, by Natasha of the TED conference, about a recent video of VS Ramachandran, as he delivers a TED talk .

As expected, the video is a treat for anyone interested in the human brain. Ramachandran touches on his pet topics like the explanations for Capgras delusion ( a disconnect between the regions that recognize a face visually, and that endow that face with emotional significance) , the cure for phantom limbs (including not only making the phantom disappear using a 6 $ mirror box, but also making the phantom pain disappear (for whihc I hope he does get a Noble prize!!)) and synaesthesia (which he relates to creativity). As usual, an excellent talk and definitely worth watching. Thanks, Natasha!!

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The eight-fold devlopmental model stretched to cover evolutionary ground

Regular readers of my blog will know how I am memserised by the eight-fold developmental model . I have applied that model to Cognitive Maps, linked it to Moral Development, development of perspective-taking, to language and universal moral grammar development, to language and stages of pretend play, to evolution of languages (color terms), evolution of language faculty (general), to personality and the BIG FIVE, and to evolution of color vision.

Just to recap, I believe in a 5 +3 = 8 step development/ evolutionary model, wherein the first 5 stages are qualitatively different from the last 3 ; but the stages of development / evolution are analogous in widely different faculties.

thus, I was quite surprised to discover a model of Consciousness, as proposed by Timothy Leary, that I was till now not aware of . Thanks to Mind Hacks, I spent a better part of my day on the net reading about Leary's and RAW, eight circuit theory and I find it quite plausible and fascinating. Some links worth checking.

Although I do not buy the left-brain/ right-brain distinction in totality, I do find the fact that the first five stages are related to embodied consciousness, while the last three mark a departure and closely parallel other higher level stages quite interesting.

The evolutionary and developmental stages of Leary are :

I. THE BIO-SURVIVAL CIRCUIT

The imprinting of this circuit sets up the basic attitude of trust or suspicion which will ever after trigger approach or avoidance

This is clearly the trust vs distrust development task identified by Erikson for infants. Leary though applies it to the living race (invertebrates ) on an evolutionary scale.

II. THE EMOTIONAL CIRCUIT

Again the first imprint on this circuit remains constant for life (unless brainwashed) and identifies the stimuli which will automatically trigger dominant, aggressive behavior or submissive, cooperative behavior.

This maps closely to Erikson's second toddler stage, whereby the toddler has to master Autonomy (a sense of power) vs Shame and Doubt

III. THE DEXTERITY-SYMBOLISM CIRCUIT

It is no accident, then, that our logic (and our computer-design) follows either-or, binary structure of these circuits

Here the preschooler of Erikson, starts taking initiative. related to Initiative vs Guilt developmental task.
IV. THE SOCIAL-SEXUAL CIRCUIT

The fourth brain, dealing with the transmission of tribal or ethnic culture across generations, introduces the fourth dimension, time.

This is the traditional Social background process, stretched over the whole school life of the child, wherein he develops a sense of industry and a sense of skills that can be refined with hard work over time. Time if of essence here.

V. THE NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT

When this fifth "body-brain" is activated, flat Euclidean figure-ground configurations explode multi-dimensionally. Gestalts shift, in McLuhan's terms, from linear VISUAL SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits.

The fifth stage is a transforming stage that enables a rite of passage. In Erikson.s model it is transcendence of adolescence and taking on an adult role. One solves the problem of Identity vs Role Confusion. In my view this stage is also linked to Schizophrenia , which may result from role confusions and results in hallucinations. It is orthwhile to note here that many hallucinogens, as per Leary, lead to this stage.

VI. THE NEUROELECTRIC CIRCUIT

The sixth brain consists of the nervous system becoming aware of itself apart from imprinted gravitational reality-maps (circuits I-IV) and even apart from body-rapture (circuit V).The evolutionary function of the sixth circuit is to enable us to communicate at Einsteinian relativities and neuro-electric accelerations, not using third circuit laryngeal-manual symbols but directly via feedback, telepathy and computer link-up. Neuro-electric signals will increasingly replace "speech" (hominid grunts) after space migration.

This meeting and communication between inter-stellar civilizations, bodes well on a human level with Erikson's marriage as the sixth developmental milestone with Intimacy vs Isolation as a core developmental task

VII. THE NEUROGENETIC CIRCUIT

The seventh brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL NEURON, from the DNA-RNA dialogue. The first to achieve this mutation spoke of "memories of past lives," "reincarnation," "immortality," etc. The "akashic records" of Theosophy, the "collective unconscious" of Jung, the "phylogenetic unconscious" of Grof and Ring, are three modern metaphors for this circuit.

this also bodes well with the collectivist nature of Erikson's seventh developmental task, wherein , as a group of individual (member of society) one feels Generativity vs Stagnation.

VIII. THE NEURO-ATOMIC CIRCUIT

When the nervous system is turned on to this quantum-level circuit, space-time is obliterated. Einstein's speed-of-light barrier is transcended; in Dr. Sarfatti's metaphor, we escape "electromagnetic chauvinism." The contelligence within the quantum projection booth IS the entire cosmic "brain," just as the micro-miniaturized DNA helix IS the local brain guiding planetary evolution. As Lao-tse said from his own Circuit VIII perspective, "The greatest is within the smallest."

This too bodes well as the eights stage again being the ultimate stage of transcendence, coming to terms with one's inevitable (human) death and either having Integrity vs Despair as one reflects on life and prepares to transcend it

I know that a lot of the above my sound nonsensical to the regular readers of this blog, but we know so little about consciousness, that it may be best to keep an open mind about it and about evolution and our fate as human race.

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Launching WikiQuest:: A Psychology and Neuroscience Question bank

For some time, I have been toying with the idea of having a one-stop online question bank for psychology and Neuroscience. I believe, that if one answers a few questions, after reading about the topic on the web, then the process of answering questions makes the learning more effective and the memory trace more permanent.

I, myself, have learned, much from the net and Wikiquest is my way of putting together a tool that may help generate a comprehensive question bank of topics related to psychology and Neuroscience. I have adopted a wiki model as it gives each of the participants equal opportunity to contribute , both towards questions, as well as towards rectifying errors or adding better explanations.

The way Wikiquest works is intuitive. I have put together a few questions there as a pilot test. These can be accessed via a tag cloud on the left hand side. Just click on the topic of your choice and that will take you to a page that contains links to the actual question pages. the actual question pages should not be scrolled down fast as they have the hints and answers too on the same page. You are encouraged to edit information , if you think it is misleading, incorrect. You are also encouraged to add questions, either original, or from some other non-licensed content on the web.

I do hope that like other Psychology based initiatives like PsychAntenna , this too catches up and we get a good online question bank, which proves to be a valuable learning resource based on the knowledge and wisdom of the masses.

For those of you who have blogs, a blog post regarding WikiQuest would be hugely appreciated.

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Fairness in your genes?

I recently came across an economist article that pointed to me three new studies regarding fairness, patience and their genetic and evolutionary footprints.

From one of the studies, conducted by Wallace it al, a counterintuitive result is obtained- that a sense of fairness (as measured by propensity to share and reject low offers in the ultimatum game) is very much heritable with Monozygotic twins showing a positive correlation between their propensities to respond in the ultimatum game as compared to Dizygotic twins, who show no such correlation. This seems to strongly support the view that our sense of Altruism (dependent on our willingness to punish free-loaders) and fairness is genetic to a large extent. with the evolutionary explanations of Altruism depending heavily on the punishment arguments, it is not so surprising to find that a sense of fairness is indeed genetic in nature; but for many culture enthusiasts, this would come as a blow to their view that Altruism did not evolve, but is a product of uniquely human endeavor called culture.

Another article looks at the sense of fairness itself , again using the ultimatum game, and compares between humans and chimps. while it is well-know that humans have a snese of fairness and thus make equitable offers and reject low offers, no data on chimps was available till now. It seems Chimps are more rational and unemotional than humans!

To find out if chimpanzees share this sense of fairness, Keith Jensen and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, designed a way for chimps to play the ultimatum game. Their version started with a pair of trays far from the players' cages. Each tray had ten raisins divided in different ways between two pots—say eight and two, or five and five. One chimp was allotted the role of proposer. He could choose one of the trays, pulling it by way of a rope just halfway to the cage. The other, the responder, could then choose to pull on a rod, bringing the tray close enough for both to get the raisins, one pot for each. If the responder chose not to pull the tray closer within a minute, the offer was considered rejected, and the game concluded.

The result, which Dr Jensen reports in Science, is that chimps are simply rational maximisers—Pan economicus, if you like. Though proposers consistently chose the highest possible number of raisins for themselves, responders rarely rejected even the stingiest offers.

I would like to see the same replicated with bonobos. Do they too lack a sense of fairness and whatever co-operation has been observed in them simply a result of free-sex-trade?

The third article actually looked at difference between patience and fairness in chimps and humans and gain came to a very counter-intuitive results. Chimps can be more patient than humans and delay gratification at more occasions than humans. Clearly their sense of prospection is better developed than Humans (which I doubt) , or they are unemotional and hence lack the normal human dread of waiting for a result of something (even positive). In any case some really important results and papers.

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The 33rd edition of Encephelon online now!

the 33rd edition of neuroscience carnival encephalon is now online. A couple of my favorites include the review of "The Body has a Mind of its own" and a post on the lateral asymmetry in brains of nematode worm. Many other cool article like the articles on Psyblog regarding neuroscientists battling with stroke / bipolar disorder can be found there, so rush on to the encephalon.

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Inquisitive Mind

I was recently contacted by Hans IJzerman, Editor-in-cheif of in-mind.org, regarding their excellent online article repository. It is basically a social psychology site, containing articles from some of the stalwarts in social psychology like Phillip Zimbardo (BTW, the Phil Zimbardo article is also available on the excellent Situationist blog).

The site, though, requires free registration for reading the articles. One of the articles I found interesting was on evolution of religion, and one of the co-authors was Hans himself. There are plenty of other interesting articles , so head over to have a look.

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Music and Language: dissociation between rule-crunching and memory-retrieval systems

I have previously written about how concepts are stored in the brain: they involve rule-based systems (A is bachelor if A is Single AND A is male) and memory based systems (prototypes and exemplars). I have also looked at how language involves both rules (the syntax of the language) as well as memory (semantics or word meanings) systems and our normal language comprehension as well as productions engages both types of systems.

It is a popular paradigm in cognitive linguistic research to present unexpected words in sentences (such as, “I’ll have my coffee with milk and concrete”), while monitoring brain activity using ERP, and find that the presentation of an unexpected word leads to a N400 peak in the temporal lobe areas. This violation of semantics is differentiated from when the syntax of the sentence is wrong, in which case we get changed activity in frontal lobes.

“Up until now, researchers had found that the processing of rules relies on an overlapping set of frontal lobe structures in music and language. However, in addition to rules, both language and music crucially require the memorization of arbitrary information such as words and melodies,” says the study’s principal investigator, Michael Ulmann, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience, psychology, neurology and linguistics.

For the first time , similar results have been obtained for music. If one assumes that changing an in-key note in a familiar melody is akin to an unexpected word in a sentence, then the same N400 peak is observed. Also , if a violation of harmonical rules , like an off-key note in an unfamiliar harmony, is akin to violations of linguistic syntax, then here too similar changes in frontal lobe activity were observed.

The subjects listened to 180 snippets of melodies. Half of the melodies were segments from tunes that most participants would know, such as “Three Blind Mice” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” The other half included novel tunes composed by Miranda. Three versions of each well-known and novel melody were created: melodies containing an in-key deviant note (which could only be detected if the melody was familiar, and therefore memorized); melodies that contained an out-of-key deviant note (which violated rules of harmony); and the original (control) melodies.

For listeners familiar with a melody, an in-key deviant note violated the listener’s memory of the melody − the song sounded musically “correct” and didn’t violate any rules of music, but it was different than what the listener had previously memorized. In contrast, in-key “deviant” notes in novel melodies did not violate memory (or rules) because the listeners did not know the tune.

Out-of-key deviant notes constituted violations of musical rules in both well-known and novel melodies. Additionally, out-of-key deviant notes violated memory in well-known melodies.

Miranda and Ullman examined the brain waves of the participants who listened to melodies in the different conditions, and found that violations of rules andmemory in music corresponded to the two patterns of brain waves seen in previous studies of rule and memory violations in language. That is, in-key violations of familiar (but not novel) melodies led to a brain-wave pattern similar to one called an “N400” that has previously been found with violations of words (such as, “I’ll have my coffee with milk and concrete”). Out-of-key violations of both familiar and novel melodies led to a brain-wave pattern over frontal lobe electrodes similar to patterns previously found for violations of rules in both language and music. Finally, out-of-key violations of familiar melodies also led to an N400-like pattern of brain activity, as expected because these are violations of memory as well as rules.

“This tells us that these two aspects of music, that is rules and memorized melodies, depend on two different brain systems – brain systems that also underlie rules and memorized information in language,” Ullman says. “The findings open up exciting new ways of thinking about and investigating the relationship between language and music, two fundamental human capacities.”

To me this seems exciting. My thesis has been that Men are better at rule-based things (syntax and harmony); while women are better at memory-based things (semantics and melody), so I'll like to know whether the authors observed any gender effects. If so, this would be further proof for abstract vs concrete gender difference theory.

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Schizophrenia fact sheet

This is just an FYI post regarding a great Schizophrenia fact sheet that is available on the net. do have a look and provide more facts as to what we know and what we do not know about this illness.

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