I remember the first time I realized just how easily false information gets spread about.
A terrifying starry night
I was in French class in high school. Our homework had been to find out 1 interesting fact about Van Gogh and tell it to the class. When it was my turn, I said some boring small fact that I no longer remember. My friend sitting behind me, however, had a fascinating fact: When Van Gogh was a young child, he was actually afraid of the moon.
The teacher and the class were all quite impressed and thought about how interesting that was and how that fact might be reflected in the way that he paints the Starry Night. Though this fact was new to everyone, including the teacher, no one even thought to question its truth.
In fact, the teacher was so enthralled by this idea that she passed the information on to all the other French classes that day.
When talking to my friend later that day, he admitted that he had not done the assignment, and just made the 'fact' up. I was completely surprised, not only that someone had not done their homework *gasp*, but that I hadn't even thought to question whether this was true or not.
Misinformation like this spreads like wildfire and is exceptionally difficult to undo. The more things you can link this piece of information to in your brain, the more true you might think it and even after your learn that it's not true, you still might inadvertently believe it or fit new ideas into the context it creates. Myths like the corpus callosum is bigger in women than in men is just one of those things that is easy to believe.
An interesting paper by Lewandowsky et al. (2012) explains how this kind of persistent misinformation is detrimental to individuals and to society with the example of vaccines causing autism. This particular piece of misinformation is widely believed to be true despite numerous attempts to publicize the correct information and the most recent scientific findings showing no evidence for a link between the two.
The authors of this paper give some recommendations for making the truth more vivid and effectively replacing the misinformation with new, true information. For example:
"Providing an alternative causal explanation of the event can fill the
gap left behind by retracting
misinformation. Studies have shown that the
continued influence of misinformation can be eliminated through the
provision
of an alternative account that explains why the information was incorrect." Lewandowsky et al. (2012)
Misinformation can be replaced with information, but it takes more work to replace a 'false fact' than to just have the truth out there in the first place. It is much better when misinformation is not spread around in the first place, than when it is retroactively corrected.
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U., Seifert, C., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13 (3), 106-131 DOI: 10.1177/1529100612451018
All these questions rise up in science blogs and on twitter and then fade back into the background. Then something happens and a flurry of posts about communicating science float to the surface again.
I have decided to join this party, and have written a Guest Editorial at the Biological Bulletin.
It's called "On Selling and Over-Selling Science" and is about trying to find that perfect balance between communicating a scientific finding accurately and accessibly.
I'd love to hear new opinions on this. So feel free to follow the link and leave a comment about it here.
We have reached the part of our program where I answer your important google questions. As always, these are real true questions that I found on my 'keyword search terms'. You can see all of these posts and the questions they answer here.
Today's theme: Relationships
1. "Is there a difference in dopamine level between men and women?"
No Difference in Male and Female Dopamine Transporter
This question is particularly interesting in light of the recent reactions to Naomi Wolf's new book: "Vagina: a New Biography" (See also Here and Here) In "Vagina", Naomi Wolf explains that "Dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female brain." ... Which is a a pretty ridiculous simplification of what dopamine is... in that it is completely untrue. First of all, men have dopamine too. And while their may be some differences in dopamine positive cells in the hypothalamus (Lansing and Lonstein 2006), the hypothalamus is not the brain's main source of dopamine. Basically, the death of the Substantia Nigra (which feeds tons of dopamine into the striatum), results in Parkinson's Disease for men just like it does for women.
Second of all, dopamine doesn't have anything to do with your worldview (except maybe to help color it rosy). Misogynists have dopamine just like feminists do, and there is no reason to think that the amounts differ between them.
Dopamine: the Love molecule... a grossly simplified necklace (source)
However, having not read the book, I am guessing that Naomi Wolf claims dopamine is a feminist chemical because it is released during sex. But guess what, it's released during sex for both males and females, and it's not ONLY released during sex, it is also released when you eat food, do cocaine, or talk about yourself. It is a very complex molecule, with many receptors (at least 5 different kinds). And dopamine literally does OPPOSITE things depending on whether it binds to the D1 type receptors or the D2 type receptors.
2. "Why are all women bitches?"
Look, you
sound like a "Nice Guy", so I'll give you a tip: Some women do bitchy
things sometimes, just like some guys do bitchy things sometimes, but
your attitude that all women are bitches is probably one of the main
reasons that most women are bitches to you. For a couple of reasons:
1.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: If you expect to be screwed over by every
woman you meet, you will see 'bitchiness' in their actions no matter
what, and will probably act preemptively defensive. This will result in women acting on average more bitchy to you.
2. You are an asshole.
3. "Do guys like cerebral women?"
Yes, guys like cerebral women. Do all guys like cerebral women? probably not, some might be threatened by a woman who is smart. But that's their loss. Those guys probably end up asking the Internet questions like "why are all women bitches?" But really, most guys I've met do not want vapid self-absorbed or shallow ladies in their lives.
One of my favorite fantasy authors, Robert Jordan has a moderately related quote:
"When I was a boy, just old enough to be starting to date in a fumbling way, I complained something about girls. And my father said to me, “Would you rather hunt leopards or would you rather hunt rabbits? Which is going to be more fun?” And I decided I’d rather hunt leopards." -Robert Jordan
Guys don't want wide eyed rabbit easy to get simple women, they want a challenge. If you are a cerebral woman, I am sure that you are smart enough to know that acting stupid to get a guy is basically the worst possible thing you could do to yourself. You don't want a guy who would fall for that crap.
But the real advice I want to give you is to stop caring what guys like. Do what you like, find yourself an awesome cause and fight for it, or an awesome project and do it. Check out cool things like Girls Who Code and play some Mass Effect. If you are really worried about 'having a partner' doing the things that you love to do will put you near other people who like doing those same things. In my opinion that is the best way to start a deep relationship anyway.
Lansing SW, & Lonstein JS (2006). Tyrosine hydroxylase-synthesizing cells in the hypothalamus of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster): sex differences in the anteroventral periventricular preoptic area and effects of adult gonadectomy or neonatal gonadal hormones. Journal of neurobiology, 66 (3), 197-204 PMID: 16329116
Di Liberto V, Mäkelä J, Korhonen L, Olivieri M, Tselykh T, Mälkiä A, Do Thi H, Belluardo N, Lindholm D, & Mudò G (2012). Involvement of estrogen receptors in the resveratrol-mediated increase in dopamine transporter in human dopaminergic neurons and in striatum of female mice. Neuropharmacology, 62 (2), 1011-8 PMID: 22041555
Endless research has been conducted on the neurological differences between women and men. However, a study out of the University of Florida explains that almost all of the anatomical differences previously reported can be accounted for simply by adjusting for total brain size.
(Lady Gaga is an excellent source of exaggerated imagery)
Leonard et al., (2008) recruited 100 men and 100 women and imaged their brains. They showed that men generally have larger brains that women (not surprising, men generally have larger bodies than women).
Leonard et al., 2008 Figure 2
But what is fascinating is that when comparing specific regions, the gender of the brain mattered less than the size of the whole brain.
In other words if you had a small male brain, it would look almost indistinguishable from a large female brain. (See their Figure 3)
What I find most interesting in this paper is that it refutes the much purported "Corpus Callosum Myth".
The Corpus Callosum is main white matter connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. The "Corpus Callosum Myth" is that female brains have larger corpus callosa than male brains.
I have to admit that I am not immune from gender bias. When I first heard that women had larger corpus callosa than men, my immediate thoughts were towards how that could make sense. I thought "ah, well then maybe that is why women are better at seeing the big picture or at multi-tasking" and other thoughts along those lines.
What I definitely did NOT think was "I bet that was a small, poorly controlled study which did not even reach statistical significance." Well as it turns out, I should have. DeLacoste-Utamsing and Holloway (1982) analyzed only 14 brains (9 male and 5 female), and found that
Leonard et al., 2008 also found some corpus callosum differences between the genders, but when they graphed the size of the corpus callosum against the size of the whole brain...
Figure 3B (female brains white circles, male brains filled squares)
They found a continuum. The difference in size between the female and male corpus callosum is entirely due to the difference in size of the female and male brain as a whole.
As with Von Economo neurons, maybe brains of different sizes work similarly, but have to be shaped differently to do so.
So rather than wildly speculating that women are better at this or that because they have stronger connections between their hemispheres, we should put our efforts into discovering evolutionary reasons why small men would be better multi-taskers that large men.
UPDATE (7/23/12): I just want to be perfectly clear. I don't actually think that small men think like women. The whole point of this post is to show that popular studies explaining that 'men and women's brains are different' may sound like they make sense, but there is often another explanation. In this case: if you are going to claim that the size of the corpus callosum means that women are better multi-taskers, then you have to ALSO claim that small men are better multi-taskers. And that large women are worse multi-taskers. (These seem like totally ridiculous claims to me, but feel free to construct an experiment to test these hypotheses).
For more on gender and gender differences (or lack thereof) in the brain, see my previous posts:
DeLacoste-Utamsing C, & Holloway RL (1982). Sexual dimorphism in the human corpus callosum. Science (New York, N.Y.), 216 (4553), 1431-2 PMID: 7089533
Leonard CM, Towler S, Welcome S, Halderman LK, Otto R, Eckert MA, & Chiarello C (2008). Size matters: cerebral volume influences sex differences in neuroanatomy. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 18 (12), 2920-31 PMID: 18440950
"It is in our brains that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings" -Oscar Wilde
(image source)
I am pretty into literature, and I am generally in favor of art + science collaborations. I recently gushed about how cool it wasthat Aldous Huxley (famous author) was the half brother of Andrew Huxley (Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist). But honestly, I cringe almost every time I read a paper with "Proust" in the title. This is most likely because psychologists and neuroscientists tend to pick Proust and his Madeleine scene when they want to misrepresent some literature in a scientific contextdescribe the idea that scent evokes memory.
In Swann's Way, Proust writes that as he savors the taste of the cookie dipped in tea, the memories of his childhood begin to take shape, like those little sponge things that are shaped like pills until you drop them in water and then they slowly morph into the shape of a triceratops. Or as he more elegantly states it:
"And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea."
-Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, In Search of Lost Time
While this is one beautiful passage among many in Swann's Way, it is not necessary for me to be a neuroscientist to enjoy it. Likewise, while it is a valid and interesting scientific question to ask "do odor and taste more strongly activate memories than vision, touch, or hearing?" It is not necessary to know that some guy wrote something about it sometime to understand the study or to understand why it is an interesting question.
Recently, scientists set out to study exactly this phenomenon. Toffolo et al. (2012) constructed a study where people were put in a room with visual, auditory, and olfactory cues and watched a film.
One week later (hardly Proust's lengthy 'lost time') the same people were put back in the room with only one of the three cues, either visual, auditory, or olfactory. They had the participants self report their memories of the film. They found that the type of cue didn't make an enormous difference, but that odor cues enhanced the memory more than auditory cues, and the same amount as visual cues.
Toffolo et al., 2012 Figure 2
Interesting. Inconclusive.
But it's not only Proust, any famous author who has made an observation about how people sense things, or how ideas are in the brain not the world, or that we remember things a certain way can be the "basis" for a scientific study. Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Dante and James Joyce and many other literary legends have made statements that could be used or misused in a scientific context. But should they?
Here's the real issue. Does a literary quote within a scientific paper add anything to it? Does it make the science more accessible?
I am tempted to say no. I have yet to see a scientific paper using a literary quote in an insightful or helpful way. At best it is cute or entertaining. But at worst, it can be annoying, distracting, and misleading.
Is it only about accuracy? I feel the same way when science mis-interprets literature as I do when someone yells "The LTP has potentiated!" or other such science-sounding nonsense in a TV show. If you are going to use science jargon in fiction, it's best to get it as close to correct as possible. (I give Dollhouse some points for effort for at least knowing that LTP is a thing, but minus points for not realizing that the "P" in "LTP" stands for potentiation)
And if you are going to use literary quotes in science, it's best if they actually have some relevance, and it's even better if you have actually read the book.
I truly love a good quote about human nature, or a beautiful poem about sensation vs. perception.
This poem certainly gives me a pulse of dopamine:
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
-Emily Dickinson
But, is it really better if we combine science and literature? They serve different purposes and I don't see the benefit of combining the two. Particularly I don't see how the addition of literary quotes aids my understanding or interpretation of a scientific paper.
You have probably heard about mirror neurons, but I bet you don't know what they look like. While we know exactly what Von Economo neurons look like, but know nothing about their activity patterns, the only thing we know about Mirror Neurons is their activity pattern.
Rene Magritte's Mirror (neuron)
Mirror neurons are the neurons in our brains that fire when we move a certain way and also fire when we see other peoplemove in that same way. Exciting studies have shown that some mirror neurons are modulated by the specific intent of the action. That is a particular mirror neuron will fire strongly when a monkey picks up a piece of food to eat it, but fired less strongly when the monkey picks up the food to move it. The same neuron fired with the same intensity difference when the monkey watched someone pick up the food to eat it or pick up the food to move it. (reviewed in Casile et al., 2011)
Pretty exciting stuff, really. But what does it mean? There is some speculation that these neurons are essential for empathy, and for theory of mind. But the real question is even deeper than that. What does it mean when a neuron fires in response to something (an animal, a motion). Does it mean that that particular neuron encodes that thing? Or does it just mean that that particular neuron is a part of a huge network in which gets activated in response to that thing?
If that single neuron were to die, would it affect your thoughts?
Forest for Trees
Or are there so many neurons activated in the network in response to something that one neuron dying would be like one tree falling in a forest?
Let's leave that question there for a moment.
Another, slightly more answerable question is: What do mirror neurons look like? They are often found in the motor cortex (area F5), but not all the neurons there have mirror properties. So which ones are mirror neurons? where do mirror neurons go? what is their chemical signature? Kraskov et al. (2009) have started to look at these qualities. They anti-dromically stimulated the neurons in F5 to determine if they went through the pyramidal tract or not (which would suggest that they lead to the spinal cord, though this is not certain). They found that about a quarter of the neurons which follow this tract have mirror properties, and a quarter have anti-mirror properties (meaning they are active during the motion, but are drastically quieted during observation of the motion). This in an interesting finding, and Kraskov et al. suggest that these anti-mirror neurons might serve to suppress actual motion while one is watching a motion.
Kraskov et al., figure 2 (mirror neuron activated on left, anti-mirror neuron suppressed on right)
In conclusion, some mirror neurons might send information to the spinal cord, but we still don't know how they are morphologically or chemically different from the (non-mirror) motor neurons right next to them.
I hope to soon see studies investigating the cellular, molecular, and physiological characteristics of mirror neurons.
Kraskov A, Dancause N, Quallo MM, Shepherd S, & Lemon RN (2009). Corticospinal neurons in macaque ventral premotor cortex with mirror properties: a potential mechanism for action suppression? Neuron, 64 (6), 922-30 PMID: 20064397
Casile A, Caggiano V, & Ferrari PF (2011). The mirror neuron system: a fresh view. The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry, 17 (5), 524-38 PMID: 21467305
What is a sociopath? A killer? A raging lunatic?
Martha Stout has written a relatively short book (though not as short as it could have been) defining the sociopath and arguing that sociopaths are surprisingly common, 4% of the population in fact.
There are two things I liked about this book and two things I really did not like about this book.
First the good:
1. Dr. Stout effectively argues against the stereotype that sociopath=serial killer. She defines a sociopath as someone without a 'conscience' who is incapable of real empathy. If this is combined with 'bloodlust' the person very well may turn out to be a serial killer. But if it is combined with 'preferring inertia', the person will manipulate their way into a situation where they are taken care of and don't have to do anything.
2. A very powerful insight that Dr. Stout has is that the very fact of having a 'conscience' is what keeps 'normal' people from identifying and stopping sociopaths. A person with a 'conscience' will easily take the point of view of the sociopath and try to justify or explain their actions in terms of 'having a conscience'. "they are just depressed", "they didn't know this or that", "there must have been a miscommunication". It is almost impossible for a person with a conscience to comprehend someone doing something manipulative or cruel for essentially no reason, so they try to invent a reason that would make the sociopath's actions comprehensible to them. The very thing that the sociopath is lacking: the ability to empathize and identify with the wants and needs of others, is the thing that prevents 'normal' people from identifying them.
Now the bad:
1. What the heck is a 'conscience' anyway? Dr. Stout talks about the conscience like it is some brain structure that you either have or don't have. I wasn't convinced that people are either complete sociopaths or completely normal. I assume there is a continuum, and Dr. Stout does nothing to convince be otherwise, while at the same time constantly implying that it is an either/or situation.
2. I would have been much more interested if this book had delved into the possible neural underpinnings of conscience. It is getting a reward signal from the 'happiness' of others? Getting a pain signal from the pain of others?
An example that came to mind is a scene from the movie Pan's Labyrinth that will probably haunt me forever. A man has had his mouth slit and there is a very painful-to-watch scene where he sews up his own cheek, bandages it, and then takes a shot of vodka. The vodka seeps out his cheek into the bandage. I remember having a very physical reaction to this part of the movie, literally cringing and grabbing my own cheek.
What I want to know is do sociopaths have this same physical reaction, or would the 'not having a conscience' or 'inability to empathize' prevent something so instinctual.
Well lucky for us, someone else is wondering this same thing something similar. A 2008 paper tested healthy individuals for degrees of 'psychopathy' with a self-report questionnaire, and then measured their responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the motor cortex during videos. They claim that this is somehow measuring mirror neuron activity, but I think that it going too far since they are not measuring individual neurons.
They used a nice set of controls to specifically isolate the effect of watching something potentially painful. The videos were of a qtip touching a hand, a needle touching a hand and a needle touching an apple. They also ran all the videos stopping them early (before the contact between the objects is made).
In 'normal' people, seeing a needle poking a hand causes a reduction in response to TMS stimulation. What this reduction in cortical excitability means is not clear, so any finding in this study will be hard to interpret. They found that the degree of response reduction was not correlated with the psychopathy index when taken as a whole, but when they isolate the 'coldheartedness' component, they find that the more cold-hearted a person reports they are, the stronger the signal reduction is during TMS. Despite the nice controls, this study leaves a lot to be desired. They have a small sample size (n=18), and even their relatively mined correlation is not very strong (R=-0.58). In addition, the increase in signal reduction is 'supposed' to indicate 'more empathy', so the meaning of this study is basically ripe for the cherry-picking. Fortunately they don't spend a ton of time speculating wildly about what this reduction might mean, they simply say that their study finds a 'link' between motor empathy and cold-heartedness and end with the classic 'more studies need to be done'.
Unfortunately the information that can be gleaned from this study is pretty limited, and the brain of the sociopath is still a mystery.
A caveat: I assume someone has studied whether the physical reaction that I describe above occurs in sociopaths or not, but I did not find a study testing it. If you know of one, please send it my way.
Fecteau S, Pascual-Leone A, & Théoret H (2008). Psychopathy and the mirror neuron system: preliminary findings from a non-psychiatric sample. Psychiatry research, 160 (2), 137-44 PMID: 18599127
Here is a worldview that I would advocate all smart women taking, if only for a little while.
It's not you, it's them.
Now this attitude can become problematic when taken to its extreme, but I have met sooooo many more women who would benefit from adopting this viewpoint than women who go too far in the egomaniac department.
Here are some test situations to see if you need this attitude adjustment.
Situation 1:
You are a post-doc and you are talking to a PI (not your own), and they say something like "well, how does that compare to So and So et al., 2005?"
You don't know that paper.
Do you
A. Think Oh my god, this PI is going to think I am an idiot for not knowing this paper.
or
B. Think What a dork for quoting the name and date of a paper rather than the main point, who does that?
(No matter what your internal dialogue, the correct out-loud response is "In what respect?" or "What did they say in that paper?")
So if you picked A, you would probably benefit from taking the "It's not you, it's them" viewpoint. If you picked B, good work, you already adhere to this worldview (But pay close attention in Situation 3).
Situation 2:
You are sitting in a talk given by Dr. Bigshot. You are paying attention to the talk, and you are unclear about a graph shown on the screen.
Do you
A. Think I must have missed something
or
B. Think The speaker really should have explained this graph better
(regardless of your internal dialogue, you should ask the question.)
I think you can see where this is going. Is it YOU or is it THEM? Unless you were sleeping during this talk, the answer is THEM.
Here's the final, slightly more tricky situation.
You are in a that same talk, you ask a question and Bigshot answers with "I showed that on slide 3" goes back to it and, sure enough, exactly what you just asked was on slide 3.
Do you:
A. Think oops, how embarrassing.
or
B. Think oh my god, I can't believe I just asked Bigshot such a stupid question. I don't belong here, I am too much of an idiot to be a scientist. Now everyone will see that I am an impostor.
or
C. Think Bigshot is an idiot.
In this situation the correct answer is A. If you ask something dumb, you ask something dumb and that's all there is to it. It doesn't mean you are completely stupid, it just means you dazed out for a minute. You should be embarrassed, but not crushed (B). Learn from the experience and pay more attention next time, but realize that everyone makes mistakes. In this situation answer C is an example of going too far with "It's not you it's them" mentality. You have to realize when you've genuinely made a mistake. (Note that not knowing a paper by the author and date, or not knowing what an unexplained or unlabeled graph means are not mistakes.)
This doesn't just apply to science either. If someone acts like you are stupid for not knowing the actor in a movie, or when such and such song came out, or anything like that. Just remember, THEY are the stupid ones for assuming you (or anyone) should know that.
The brain is misunderstood. The media and public generally do not understand even the very basics of neuroscience. Can your average person on the street tell you what a neuron is, draw one, explain how it is different from a blood cell? Perhaps more importantly, can the people who are prone to saying "slap to the cerebellum" and "men use different parts of their brains than women" actually tell you what the cerebellum does or what an fMRI actually measures?
I understand that you can lament anything as not being well enough understood by the public. The laws of physics, the rules of grammar, the history of ancient civilizations, and how to spell are all things that cause experts to sigh and shake their heads about the lack of knowledge in the general public. However, all these things are taught in school, while neuroscience is not.
Why Neuroscience should be Taught in School
Neuroscience is sort of where genetics was 20-30 years ago: The
scientific frontier, fascinating to the public, changing the general
worldview, raising ethical questions, science fiction's closest
reflection in reality. This has its benefits and its downfalls. There
is currently strong general enthusiasm for neuroscience for just these
reasons, but because everything 'neuro' is so exciting, the risk of
media misrepresentation is high and the misuse of neuroscience concepts
and terms by pseudo-science is common.
If basic neuroscience was taught in schools, and the general public understood how neurons use ions to send and receive information, they would not be (as) likely to buy crystals whose vibrations will 'resonate with your neurons'.
If basic neuroscience was taught in schools, and the general public understood how an fMRI scan measured the difference in blood-oxygen content throughout the brain, they would be less likely to take a cleaned up brain scan image at face value.
If basic neuroscience was taught in schools, and the general public understood the sensory inputs to the brain, they would be less taken in by products that promise to 'stimulate your auditory nerve*' or 'stimulate both brain hemispheres**'.
*Anything that makes noise stimulates your auditory nerve (Example from Cordelia Fine)
**If one eye is open, both sides of your brain are being stimulated
How Neuroscience should be Taught in School
One of the limitations to teaching neuroscience in schools is the cost. A set up for a neurophysiology experiment can cost thousands of dollars. Backyard Brains, a company which I have blogged about before,
has recently published an open access paper describing the use of their spikerbox in a high school environment.
The students assembled their own spikerboxes and conducted experiments to answer questions like:
How does your brain tell your muscles to move?
and
How do neurons generate electricity?
The students generated interesting questions themselves beyond the ones pre-determined for the experiments. In the discussion, Marzullo and Gage state "K-12 students are capable of not just following experimental protocols, but also participating in scientific discovery."
In conclusion, I hope that this investigative, experiment-based approach to teaching neuroscience in schools will take off and that the basic principles of neuroscience will become common knowledge. Will this stop people from believing in unrealistic miracle treatments? Of course not, but it may inhibit people from casually and incorrectly throwing around neurojargon to sell a product.
I am not going to lie, I recently got caught up in Hunger Games fever, tearing through all three books at a breakneck pace and staying up way too late doing so. While these books raise interesting questions on some of my favorite topics (like 'how much is too much to sacrifice for victory?'), one particular neuroethics issue jumped out and stung me.
Without divulging any plot points or spoilers, I will explain:
In the last book, Mockingjay, a good guy is taken hostage by the bad guys. Although you never see any actual scenes, it is clear that this person is being tortured for information. One particular form of torment used on this character is called Hijacking.
Injected with the hallucinogenic venom of the mutated wasp (the tracker jacker), this person is forced to recall memories and watch videos of people s/he loves. This disoriented and unquestionably negative emotional state then alters this person's memories such that when s/he finally sees the familiar faces, s/he distrusts them, hates them, and wants to kill them.
This portrayal of neurotorture (yes, you can put neuro in front of any word) brings up several questions:
1. Could this really work?
2. Has any one every tried it?
3. Is it wrong?
Let's take a deeper look:
1. Could this really work?
There is no such thing as a Tracker Jacker, but in principle, could a mood or perception altering drug be used on a person to change their memories?
A drug that depleted a person of dopamine or serotonin, or in contrast flooded them with dynorphin, could depress someones mood and possibly make them paranoid or distrustful. Could re-opening a memory during a suspicious, paranoid mood cause someone to re-encode that memory with doubt, distrust, misery, or hate? Or could the addition of a powerful hallucinogen, result in the person not being able to tell which memories were real and which were not? Kindt et al., in 2009 showed the opposite was true, that application of a beta-blocker (an anti-anxiety drug) during the recall of a fearful memory could dampen the fear response associated with that memory, while the drug alone (without the re-opening of the memory) had no effect.
So my answer: yes, to some extent. If you can open a memory and extinguish the fear, why couldn't you open a memory and instill the fear?
Could this method sow doubt and confusion in a prisoner's mind? yes.
But, could it make some one ready to kill their old allies? not too likely. I think it would take some seriously extensive and targeted hijacking to even come close to something like that.
In my opinion, the most likely outcome to any hijacking attempt with current known neurological targets would be to drive the prisoner into despair and madness. I doubt you could 'reprogram' a person to kill a specific target.
2. Has anyone tried this?
This is a pretty tough question. If a government has tried this, it is likely a secret, and all the sources I can find online explaining how governments weaponize LSD or whatnot appear about as reliable at The Men Who Stare at Goats. (so I am not adding links to them here, google it if you want some serious theorizing)
Answer: I really don't know, but I want to know.
3. Is it wrong?
In one sense, the answer seems an obvious yes, so I will re-phrase this question into a slightly more complex one: Is neurotorture worse than physical torture?
Is it a greater violation of human rights to take away their identity, their loyalty, and their ability to make rational decisions rather than hurting their physical body?
In a sense it seems much worse. It was certainly much more heart wrenching to read about hijacking and its repercussions than to read about physical torture. But why?
It could be argued that the whole point of the physical torture is to break a person's mind and take away their ability to make rational decisions. And if you have a physically non-painful neurochemical shortcut to do so, why shouldn't you use it? Maybe it would save every one's time, get that critical information soon enough to stop the terrorist attack, and even protect the prisoner's body from pain.
So why does it seem so distasteful? Is it important to give the person a chance to resist physical torture? Is that more fair?
My answer to is neurotorture wrong? yes, but not more wrong than physical torture.
Readers, I am sure you have opinions and I am curious to hear them. please express your opinion here or in the comments section.
neurotorture:
To make things even more complex, what if instead of neurotorture, the opposite tactic was used. what if a prisoner was given extensive repetitive doses of oxytocin to try to hijack their trust? Is it ok to purposefully induce a form of stockholm syndrome in your prisoners? This would be a physically or psychologically non-painful way to get a prisoner on your side.
Would it work? possibly.
Has it been tried? no idea.
Is it wrong? good question.
Kindt M, Soeter M, & Vervliet B (2009). Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses and preventing the return of fear. Nature neuroscience, 12 (3), 256-8 PMID: 19219038
Another adventure outside of the 'cellular neuroscience' walls for The Cellular Scale. Today we are traveling to the land of video games, video games and women.
Commander Shepard, the most badass woman in the galaxy
Mass Effect 3 is being released in a few days and I thought I would use this time (while my xbox is downloading the free demo) to write about why the world would be a better (or at least slightly more gender-neutral) place if all women played Mass Effect.
Update: Just beat Mass Effect 3, see my thoughts on the endings here.
There are four main reasons people (especially women) should play this video game.
4. it's fun.
This is reason enough to play the game. Mass Effect is a sci-fi video game with some of the best world-building in book, movie or game to date (I expect angry comments bringing up Star Wars, Star Trek or Dune below, but I'm standing by that statement). Mass Effect presents a rich world with a cohesive believable history. You can literally read volumes about each species, each planet, each mercenary group, and each weapon if you are so inclined. There are nuances and details hidden everywhere that subtlety but strongly enrich the game.
A quick summary **SPOILERS**
You play as Commander Shepard (you can choose to be male or female), who is a human in the Alliance military.
troubled, but handsome
In Mass Effect 1, you have to track down and defeat a rogue spectre, Saren. He is an obvious bad-guy (the first thing you see him do is shoot his 'friend' point blank), but he does the job. You have to deal with some anti-human speciesism from the alien council, but they are generally on your side. You recruit some companions: a badass soldier in pink, a troubled but handsome biotic, an engineer on her pilgrimage, an ex-cop, an archaeological scientist, and a merc-for-hire tough guy. Then you go save the galaxy. Upon saving the galaxy your realize that the threat was much bigger than just the one rogue spectre.... which brings us to Mass Effect 2 (in which the shooting-game play is much improved)
'being perfect is so difficult'
In Mass Effect 2, you have been dead for two years, but are being rebuilt by Cerberus, a company that you only heard about in passing in ME1, but what you heard was bad. Cerberus is a human-supremacist group and it rebuilt you to help humanity, not the galaxy. So under the Cerberus logo, you attempt to face the 'bigger threat' that you discovered at the end of ME1. Human colonies are being destroyed, but in a really weird way where everything is left perfectly intact but all the humans are gone. You investigate these colonies, discover the reason behind these weird disappearances. Of course, you recruit some companions: a woman who likes to complain about being genetically modified to be 'perfect', a troubled but handsome biotic (not the same one), the same engineer after her pilgrimage, the same ex-cop, a killing-addict tattooed biotic, a pod-grown tough-guy, a geneticist/doctor, a morally rigid monastic biotic (or her evil daughter), a negligent father/assassin, and a robot. In this game you spend most of your time recruiting these companions and doing 'loyalty' missions for them. Then you save the galaxy.... and in saving the galaxy, you realize the threat isn't over...which bring us to Mass Effect 3 (in which a cooperative multi-player aspect has been added)
So the game is fun. The graphics are good, the action play is fun, leveling up is fun, the characters are great, the story is entertaining, but what really brings this game up a notch from other is the:
3. Complex morality
Like a lot of modern video games, you can make decisions in Mass Effect that have short and long term consequences. In fact, the decisions you make in ME1 effects who you see in ME2 and how you interact with them. Like other games you can become 'good' or 'bad' (Fable and Knights of the Old Republic are some of the games which pioneered this morality system), but in Mass Effect it is called "Paragon" or "Renegade" and it is a little more complex than in the other games. Paragon isn't necessarily good and everyone likes you, and Renegade isn't necessarily evil and everyone dies.
Paragon/Renegade
source: 'facebook' if this is yours,
let me know and I will credit you
Some of the moral dilemmas you face in this game remind me of game theory and morality experiments. Do you follow the law in all situations or do you break it for the greater good? Do you kill one to save many, or do you protect your friends and let strangers die?
The biggest moral dilemma in Mass Effect 1 is when you have to decide between two of your teammates, you don't have time to save both of them. Who do you choose?
Interestingly, it's not all 'thanks for saving me' from the person you rescue either, they feel guilty and upset because you chose them instead of the other person. This choice carries over all the way to ME3, where whichever person you saved apparently plays an important part.
My favorite moral dilemma is in Mass Effect 2 though, because it is related to science! Your teammate, the geneticist, confesses to you that he took part in producing the genophage, a mutation that drastically reduces the fertility rate in a particularly aggressive alien species. These aliens previously lived on a very hostile world and the constant environmental threats kept their population low. However, when they came into contact with other aliens and moved off their hostile world, their population exploded under their new non-threatening conditions. The geneticist in your group had lead the initiative to infect this alien species with a mutation (yes the fake science gets iffy here) that would decrease the fertility rate in females to like 1%. In your discussion with him he makes a convincing argument for 'galaxy safety' and this not being 'sterilization' or 'genocide' but simply a check on the population. But the other side is easy to see too, deploying the genophage is playing god with this species, deciding for them what their population should be. Why does the geneticist on your ship get to decide that? and how can he possibly know what the right population should be for this species? But then again, do you really want the galaxy completely over-run with these aggressive aliens? Tough choices.
This game is good because aside from being entertaining, there are points in this game that actually make you think.
2. Seeing women in positions of power
As explained in an Io9 article, by Kyle Munkittrick, sci-fi is historically able to push boundaries further than other media. A quote from that article:
"Science fiction is one of the best forms of social satire and critique. Want to sneak in some absolutely scandalous social mores, like, say, oh, I don't know, a black woman into a position of power in the 1960s? Put her on a starship command deck."
And Mass Effect does that. The 'tough soldier with a lot of health' character (you know the one, it shows up in every video game ever) is the second character you meet in ME1 and she is named Ashley. The all-powerful ruler of Omega who no one in their right mind would mess with is named Aria (also is voiced by Carrie-Ann Moss, who you might recognize from The Matrix and Memento). The game is full of stereotype-destroying characters. It's not another sci-fi story where all the male characters have distinct personalities, but the one token woman character has the personality of 'woman'. The women in Mass Effect show the same range of morality, toughness, power, and emotion that the men do.
Omega only has one law: Don't fuck with Carrie-Ann Moss
However, Mass Effect is not a completely non-sexist game or anything. There are plenty of females with comic-book proportions and there are even strip clubs. The characters aren't all respectful of Commander Shepard when she is a woman (or man for that matter). In a particularly brutal corner of the galaxy (Miranda calls it a 'piss hole'), you go to sign up for a mercenary mission and the jackass at the counter says 'sweetie, you're in the wrong place, strippers sign up over there.' (You can put him in his place for that remark if you choose to though). It's not only sexism that runs rampant in the galaxy, people are speciesist to you too, one bar tender even tries to poison you because you are human. The thing that makes it a good game for women to play is because you see commander Shepard deal with people being rude to her, confront them, earn respect, do her job, and save the galaxy.
1. Being a woman in a position of power.
More important and more effective than just watching women in power, is actually 'being' a woman in power. Modern video games like Mass Effect are highly immersive. You move a character around, you see through her eyes, and you can even make her look like you.
In 2008, Galinsky et al. published a paper testing the effects of perspective taking. That is, they had people pretend to be someone else, either by writing about their day as that person or by pretending to be that person in an interview. They found that after pretending to be someone else, the participants of the study actually took on some of the stereotypes associated with the person they were imagining themselves to be. For example, when they pretended to be a university professor, they rated themselves as smarter and actually performed better on an analytical task. In contrast when they pretended to be a cheerleader, they rated themselves as more attractive but actually did worse on the analytical task. The most interesting thing here is that the effect was stronger when the participants were told to 'write about your day as if you were this cheerleader' than when they were told 'here is a cheerleader, write about her day.'
In short, pretending to be someone can influence how you feel about yourself and even how you act.
This is where Mass Effect can potentially have benefits even beyond watching a powerful woman role model on tv. You actually pretend to be this woman: the commander of the ship, the leader of the team, the hero of the galaxy. You answer as her during conversations. You make the tough decisions described above in Reason 3: Complex Morality. You stand up for yourself when you know you are right, but the alien council doesn't believe you. The fate of the galaxy rests on your shoulders.
If the perspective effect works in a video game setting, then pretending to be a strong woman for an hour a day, might actually make you a more confident person in real life.
I would love to see a study actually using this game to test the perspective taking effect in video games. Galinsky, are you listening? you should do this study:
Have women play Mass Effect (select some key conversations where respect is shown or tough decisions are made) and test whether it affects their self-reported confidence or intelligence. An interesting control might be to have these women play Mass Effect as the male character and run through the exact same conversations.
Does taking the perspective of Commander Shepard boost confidence or ability? And if so is the effect increased when a woman plays as female Shepard compared to male Shepard? What if a man plays as female or male Shepard? The Cellular Scale wants to know!
Galinsky AD, Wang CS, & Ku G (2008). Perspective-takers behave more stereotypically. Journal of personality and social psychology, 95 (2), 404-19 PMID: 18665710
