Guest Post: Matters of the Monkey Mind

I was recently contacted by a reader of this blog, who wanted to do a guest post on The Mouse Trap, and I thought why not! Guest posts allow those who might not have their own blog to start getting familiar with the Media and for those who already have their blogs, an exposure to a new audience. As long as science blogging wins I don't mind publishing posts on my blog, which are not authored by me, though I'll typically like to restrict the Mouse Trap to my own musings. So if you want to do a guest post on the Mouse Trap, you are welcome, but the theme has to fit in with the overall theme of the mouse trap.

Without much ado, I'll now publish the first guest post on Mouse Trap. Do send me in your feedback, as to whether it is worth doing guest posts here , and whether you liked this one.

What follows is a guest post by Sarah Scrafford.

The human mind is extremely complicated – we can never say for certain why people act the way they do. Some of us are even confused about our own actions, and there are times when we don’t know why we did certain things and other times when we regret the things we do the moment they’re done. And there are times when the mind is like a monkey, jumping randomly from one thought to another till you don’t know where one begins and the other ends. While some people emphasize the importance of a steady mind that’s able to focus, there are times when monkey minds are ok and even desirable, and that’s when:

• Emotions rule: When you’re upset and tend to think with your heart rather than your head, you’re bound to do something stupid if you’re not careful. But when your mind jumps from one thought to another with not much time to dwell on one emotion alone, it’s kind of therapeutic and prevents you from acting blindly upon your emotions.
• You need to forget: In my book, the greatest ability of the human mind is the one to forget – hurts, disappointments and failures. Without this ability, we would all be nervous wrecks without an ounce of positivity in our blood. Love affairs gone sour, the death of a loved one, or a humiliation that we’d rather not think about – these are all things that we want to leave behind in our past as we move into the future. When the mind is capable of moving rapidly from one emotion to another, one thought to another, it’s easy enough to forget these negative things.
• You’re bored and need mental stimulation: An active mind allows you to live out fantasies, in your imagination, of course. So if you’re bored and need to entertain yourself but are stuck without a laptop, phone or even a book, daydreaming is the next best thing to do. Thinking of positive make-believe scenarios has an uplifting effect on your mood, and you feel good about yourself.
• You need to multitask: Not many people are able to multitask efficiently without any major mistakes being made. And the ones that do are the ones who are able to change thought processes very quickly or even run thought processes that are parallel. Being able to control your thoughts, even though there are a large number jostling for attention in your mind, is a good thing when you’re trying to handle more than one job at the same time. Of course, efficiency increases with the mundane nature of the jobs, but some people are able to process both simple and complicated tasks simultaneously.

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of Radiology Technician Training. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

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Get Enchanted with the Enecpehalon # 59

Ionian Enchantment has published the 59th edition  of the brain carnival Encephalon and it contains some of the best blogging from the usual suspects.

I found the new technique of cooling a brain region to slow the neural activity (spike rate I believe) and thus to deduce as to which particular brain region in songbirds is associated with Rhythm very fascinating. Girrlscientists at Living the Scientific Life does a great job of describing the study.  Greg at Neuroanthropology discuses the work of Andy Clark with reference to massive modularity and innate/learned controversy and concludes that a middle-of-the-road neuroconstructivist approach is the best.

Other cool stuff includes new findings that some cognitive auditory abilities may be enhanced in late Huntington disorder and a writeup of the hallucinatory states induced by Ganzfiled procedure.  There is more cool stuff, so go and have a look!

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Primate evolutionary tree: a case of eight stage evolution leading to humans?

I have been looking at primate evolution and taxonomic tress for quite some time and am aware that different scholars parse the same tree in different ways, specifically people try to avoid being anthropocentric. I , on the other hand , will focus exclusively on the primate tree as it relates to humans and try to to show that it might be a living proof of the eight stage theory of evolution/ development.

First let me show you a popular way of portraying the primate tree from Philadelphia Inquirer's Going Ape website.

Now, let me show you an alternative classification (just slightly different from this, but based on cladistics) . It is hard to see the figure (I've lost the original full -kleght versions), but the idea is that the first level branching happens at the level of suborder, then infraorder, then family etc within the order of primates.

Here is a similar diagram from the The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond.

It is instructive to note that here barnching within primate tree is as follows:

1. Suborder branching: Prosimians: I hypothesize that prosimian evolution be driven by first adaptive problem that of hiding from / avoiding predators. (lemurs etc)
   
2. Infraorder branching: Platyrrhine (flatnosed) or New World Monkeys: I hypothesize that these would be most adventurous of all and would be focussed on finding food and resources, having mastered the predation problem. Maybe the main factor here would be their range size etc. This family is as opposed to Catarrhine (down-nosed) or Old World primate to which humans belong.
3. Superfamily branching: Cercopithecoidea: Old World Monkeys. Lets say we focus on old world monkeys here. The hypothesis is that they would be specialized for forming alliances and territorial hierarchical behaviors. This superfmaily is as opposed to hominoidea superfamily.
4. Family branching: Hylobatidae or Gibbons: the hypothesis is that Gibbon evolution may be driven by parental investment conflicts. this family is as opposed to Hominidae to which humans belong.
5.  Subfamily branching: Ponginae or Orangutans :  Orangutan evolution may be driven by kin selection concerns.
6. Tribe branching: Panini or gorillas: Gorilla evolution may be driven by theory of mind considerations. Maybe the driving force behind gorilla evolution is reading others mind and we would find good evidence for the same in gorillas. 
7. Species branching: pan of chimpanzees and bonobos and humans: may be driven by communication or language concerns. Of course language or communication in Humans is phenomenal; but may be of equal importance for the other two also.
8.   This species may be a branching of humans later on along sexual selection lines or assortative mating considerations along the lines of Elois and Morlocks.

I am not a primatologists and the above appears too simplistic and fishy to me; but is there evidence for any of the  hypothesis presented above; if so do let me know! Meanwhile I will be on the lookout for any confirmatory evidence!!

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Intentionality: autism research and implications for schizophrenia

Edouard Machery at the Experiments in Philosophy blog writes about a study he conducted with Zalla that found that people with Aspergers syndrome were deficient when it came to identifying purely instrumental desires and the actions resulting from them as intentional actions.  but to understand all that we have to understand the concept of purely instrumental desire. This is best done with the free-cup and extra-dollar cases that Machery has constructed to illustrate this phenomenon:

The Free-Cup Case

Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that if he bought a Mega-Sized Smoothie he would get it in a special commemorative cup. Joe replied, ‘I don't care about a commemorative cup, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.' Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie in a commemorative cup. Did Joe intentionally obtain the commemorative cup?

The Extra-Dollar Case

Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that the Mega-Sized Smoothies were now one dollar more than they used to be. Joe replied, ‘I don't care if I have to pay one dollar more, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.' Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie and paid one dollar more for it. Did Joe intentionally pay one dollar more?

You surely think that paying an extra dollar was intentional, while getting the commemorative cup was not. So do most people.

Machery likes to analyze the different actions involved in getting a smoothie in terms of their causal structure as well as their valence for the subject (positive valence means actively desired; while negatively or neutrally valanced meaning that one would not like that action to take place normally, but might indulge in if it is instrumental and an intermediate step towards archiving of an ultimate desire.

Thus, in the extra dollar case  quenching thirst is the ultimate desire, buying a smoothie an instrumental desire, while shelling an extra dollar though negatively valued is still a purely instrumental desire as it is requisite for fulfilling the ultimate desire. Thus, normal people would consider paying the extra-dollar as intentional as it was due to an action due to a (purely) instrumental desire.

In the free-cup case, again the ultimate desire is to quench the thirst, the instrumental desire is to buy a smoothie, and the free cup that one gets is neither desired ultimately or as (purely) instrumentally as a menas towards an end. In simple words it is not desired at all and I would like to name it as co-incidental desire as opposed to instrumental desire (because having a special edition cup may still have some valence for joe, though he doesn't actively desire it. Normal as well as Aspergers people deemed getting the free cup as non-intentional.

Where the Aspergics differed was in the extra dollar case. They still thought that paying the extra dollar was non-intentional and Eduoard theorizes that this may be due to inability of those with ASD to consider acts which are merely means towards an end  as having an intentional quality.

I might not agree with the specific theorizing of Machery, but I agree that people with ASD have deficits in intentionality and I have been shouting this from rooftops for quite some time now. I also assert that Schizophrenics have too much concept of intentionality. I would not be surprised if a schizotypal, schizophrenic population was given these above two scenarios and it was found that a co-incidental desire like getting a free-cup was also deemed to be an intentional actions. One could come up with strange rationalizations and explanations and believe that though he just wanted to quench his thirst he went to this vendor only because he also wanted a free cup.  This would be an extreme case of Magical Thinking, but I wont be surprised to see schizophrenics attributing more intentionality than is done by normal people.  I hope someone does the experiment and lets me know! Edouard are you listening?



EDOUARD MACHERY (2008). The Folk Concept of Intentional Action: Philosophical and Experimental Issues Mind & Language, 23 (2), 165-189 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00336.x

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Badcock on Edge: the imprinted gene theory of ASD/ PSD

This edition of Edge features an article by Christopher Badcock, about the imprinted gene theory of Autism Spectrum disorders and the psychotic spectrum disorders that he has been developing with Crespi.  It is a must read and has been very nicely done.

He goes on to list the differences between autism and psychosis in a tabular form and then extends this to list the differences between mentalistic and mechansitic cognitions.

Autism/Asperger's syndrome	Psychosis/Paranoid schizophrenia
gaze-monitoring deficits	delusions of being watched/spied on
apparent deafness/insensitivity to voices	hallucination of and hyper-sensitivity to voices
deficits in interpreting others' intentions	erotomania/delusions of persecution
deficits in appreciating shared-attention/groups	delusions of conspiracy
theory of mind deficits	magical ideation/delusions of reference
deficit in sense of personal agency/episodic memory	megalomania/delusions of grandeur
literalness/inability to deceive	delusional self-deception
pathological single-mindedness	pathological ambivalence
early onset	late onset

Mentalistic Cognition	Mechanistic Cognition
psychological interaction with self and others	physical interaction with nature and objects
uses social, psychological, and political skills	uses mechanical, spatial, and engineering skills
deficits in autism, augmented in women	accentuated in autism, augmented in men
voluntaristic, subjective, particularistic	deterministic, objective, universal
abstract, general, ambivalent	concrete, specific, single-minded
verbal, metaphoric, conformist	visual, literal, eccentric
top-down, holistic, centrally-coherent	bottom-up, reductionistic, field-independent
epitomized in literature, politics, and religion	epitomized in science, engineering, and technology
‘pseudo-science': astrology, alchemy, creationism	‘hard science': astronomy, chemistry, Darwinism
nurtured: culturally- and personally-determined	natural: factually- and genetically-determined
belief-based therapies: placebos, faith-healing, psychotherapy etc.	physical effect-based therapies: drugs, surgery, physiotherapy, etc.

He lists down some of the other arguments that I have made viz the fact that Valproic acid exposure in childhood/ pregnancy causes Autism, while valproic acid is used for treating psychosis. Overall it is a very interesting read and a must read.

He also tries to address the mCDD (or simultaneous occurence of Autism and Schizophrenia) in his article, though I find that part the least convincing. Here is what he has to say:

The model appears to rule out anyone suffering from an ASD and a PSD simultaneously, and such co-morbidity does appear to be rare—but is not unknown. However, I know of cases of individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder who also show unmistakable signs of ASD during their non-manic phases. Indeed, I have research on one individual who suffers from severe gaze-aversion, autistic deficits in a sense of self and social anxiety most of the time, but who becomes comfortable with other people during manic episodes when his sense of self hypertrophies into megalomania with the feeling that he is the returned Jesus Christ! Furthermore, there is evidence of both ASD and PSD in Newton and Beethoven, and incontrovertibly so in the Nobel-prize winning mathematician John Nash. Here the theory predicts that the ASD must come first (typically in childhood) and leave a permanent savant-like basis later built on by hyper-mentalistic tendencies to produce an unusually broadened and dynamically-balanced cognitive configuration: that of true genius.

I find this fascinating and agree with Badcock that the theory leads to many predictions and all these are testable; so we are witnessing a new paradigmatic shift in our understanding of these neurodevelopmental disorders and further experiments would definitely lend more credence to this theory in my view.

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The eight major evolutionary transitions

Regular readers of this blog can vouch for my fascination with the eight stage  theories and would no doubt be sympathetic when I report my exhilaration of finding that none other than Maynard Smith himself has proposed that there are eight major evolutionary transitions till date in the evolution of life. Maynard Smith and  Szathmary in their book The Major Transitions in Evolution had proposed for the following eight transitions :

More details are available at this wikipedia page . now I , independent of any knowledge that this has already been proposed by Maynard Smith as back as in 1995, a few days ago had come up with similar eight transitions in evolution of life forms . Of course there are some differences, but the important thing to note is the similarities(great minds think alike) and of course my model is far more accurate and realistic than Maynard smiths who I believe leap from multi-cellular organisms to humans quite arbitrarily leaving all the phylum in between un addressed.

I'll now briefly note the similarities and also highlight the dissimilarities in our approaches:

The first three stages are identical (first description of Maynard Smith stage and that is followed by my description in a few days ago post) :

1. Transition from Replicating molecules to "Populations" of molecules in compartments
1. Co-Evolution of genes and proteins/ amino-acids

2. Transition from Independent replicators (probably RNA) to Chromosomes
2. Evolution of the chromosome or two strands of DNA

3. Transitions from RNA as both genes and enzymes to DNA as genes; proteins as enzymes (Prokaryotes)
3. Evolution of a simple unicellular prokaryotic-bacteria-like cells

In the fourth stage I differ a bit from Maynard Smith, in that I propose for an intermediate archea type life-feom evolution while they jump straight to prokaroyotes)
4. Trasition from Prokaryotes to Eaukaryotes
4. Evolution of simple unicellular Archea-like cells

In the fifth stage they stress the importance of sex. I stress the importance of organalles, mitochondria and nucleus (specialized cell structures) instead.
5.Transition from Asexual clones to Sexual populations
5.Evolution of simple uni-cellular Eukaryotic like cells

In the sixth stage they move directly to multi-cellular organisms while I introduce intermediate colonies. I believe their fifth stage sexual populations are a substitute for my colonies (both map to protists)
6. Transition from Protists to Multicellular organisms — animals, plants, fungi
6.Evolution of simple colonies of cells (first animal phylum: the porifera or sponges)

In the seventh stage they make a leap and go directly to full-fledged solitary individuals (animals, plants fungi) while I take a more conservative approach and introduce multi-cellular organisms now from colonies.
7. Transition from Solitary individuals to Colonies with non-reproductive castes
7. Evolution of multi-cellular organisms with digestive tracts (second animal phyla coelenterate)

In the eighth and final stage they leap from primates to humans while I stay with multi-cellular organisms but introduce a CNS for the first time.
8.Transition from Primate societies to Human societies with language, enabling memes
8. Evolution of multi-cellular organisms moving towards a CNS( bilaterality) (third animal phyla :Ctenophora (Comb Jellies)):

I believe that after multi-cellular organisms they have made big leaps (which may be justified in some contexts), but I have worked more on micro level and believe that we can gain much more by studying the intermediate phyla too. The important thing to note is the common evolutionary and taxonomic approach and the guiding principles as outlined below for each transition:

Maynard Smith and Szathmary identified several properties common to the transitions:

1. Smaller entities have often come about together to form larger entities. e.g. Chromosomes, eukaryotes, sex multicellular colonies.
   
2. Smaller entities often become differentiated as part of a larger entity. e.g. DNA & protein, organelles, anisogamy, tissues, castes
   
3. The smaller entities are often unable to replicate in the absence of the larger entity. e.g. Organelles, tissues, castes
   
4. The smaller entities can sometimes disrupt the development of the larger entity e.g. Meiotic drive (selfish non-Mendelian genes), parthenogenesis, cancers, coup d’état
   
5. New ways of transmitting information have arisen.e.g. DNA-protein, cell heredity, epigenesis, universal grammar.
   

Hat Tip: Shared Symbolic Storage blog

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Support for the Broken Window

Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science has an important post  on research by Keizer and colleagues, which found support for the broken windows theory of crime spread. He dos a very good job of describing the broken window theory, the experiments of Keizer et al and how they show that disorder spreads like a virus, so I won't repeat all that here but urge you to go to his blog to get the complete lowdown.  

What I would like to highlight instead is that fact that this Broken window theory was brought to public focus by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point and subsequently the same theory was thrashed in Frekonomics by Dunbar and surprisingly Malcolm Gladwell had promoted and written an encouraging blurb for Freakonomics. You can read more on the controversy here . I obviously had disliked almost all the explanations in Freakonomics and believe that the book was more on trying to be controversial rather than offering new insights. I , on the other hand, have been sympathetic to Gladwell's writings and it is heartening to note that new research supports the old position that lawlessness spreads via small acts and it may be more important to take care of small, everyday acts of lawlessness than to focus on a few big problems like the cocaine addicts. I would just end with a brief note on Gladwell's new book Outliers, which is on my immediate reading list and I am pleased that he shares some of my thoughts about how SES affects outcomes in life (like IQ) and how we are creatures of circumstances.

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The Science Blog Meme

A meme, that started in Nature Networks  , has slowly gained momentum and as many science bloggers have participated, I think I might as well jump in.

1. What is your blog about?
It is definitely not about catching mice, though I sometimes regret why I chose this particular name from the available zillions. My blog is solely focussed and devoted to psychology and neurosceince; within them some pet themes keep emerging; it started with a focus on cognitive maps; another is the focus on stage theories; then still another is focus on Autism and Schizophrenia as diametrically opposed on a continuum.but I take pride in the fact that most reviewers of this blog have determined this blog to be focussed diffusely on disparate subjects.

2. What will you never write about?
about my day-to-day humdrum existence as I lack the capacity to make that sound interesting. Also I like to keep the personal separate from professional as far as possible.

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
The question is a bit odd, as I am not a working scientist and my science focus is part-time; but leaving science as a hobby/ part-time vocation seems unthinkable - perhaps if all the applied uses of science have been exhausted I may think of leaving sceince; but till the time there is much to be discovered and applied in the real world; there is no parting company.

4. What would you do instead?
Social Work (though for some reasons I don't like the word..juts like the concept of working for the disadvantaged)/ Education and guidance---of course the assumption is that I have all the resources to enjoy my present lifestyle and only then in my free time instead of science do these things.

5. What do you think will science blogging be like in 5 years?
It should replace scince journalism even before that and might perhaps be replaced by somemore disruptive technologies. It would be more actual science and less reporting. The science would be prominent over the blogging part and both will happen collaboratively.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
In the real world, not much! In the online world, I met and befreinded many interesting, prominent and like-minded people. Overall, blogging provided me a much needed outlet for sharing all the knowledge/information that I was accumulating but finding no outlet for.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
Yes, one or two blog posts I regret to have written. even today, I feel embarrassed when someone comments on them.


8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
I believe it must have been 3 years back; as soon as I learnt about that I started my own blog!!


9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
Not many at my work place read my blog or are aware of its existence; for those who are aware its more of a personal eccentricity and a freaky thing - though I have received some very positive feedback too from some; but most say it is incomprehensible and too technical for them (my workplace is not in a scientific setting/ concerned with psychology/ neuroscience)

10.Extra credit: are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?
I believe I am able, for I pride myself as the next big thing- an undiscovered poet/ creative writer that is just waiting for the right break; the bad part is that I maintain a dedicated creative writing blog , that is separate from my scientific blog, so have never mixed the too, so am not quite sure!!

Thats it folks! I love these memes, especially those that come without any tagging requirements!!

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