How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams and God
The Accidental Mind is a new book by David Linden. It seeks to explain how brain evolution has given rise to those qualities that most profoundly shape our human experience. It was published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in March, 2007. A paperback edition is scheduled to appear in October, 2008.
Max Delbrück, a pioneer of molecular genetics, said, “Imagine that your audience has zero knowledge but infinite intelligence.” That sounds just about right. Let’s roll...
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." - The Dalai Lama
"Free your mind and your ass will follow" - George Clinton
Some relative of mine pressed these flowers in a photo envelope in Frankfurt, sometime around 1905. I wish I knew the story behind them.
Apparently, The Accidental Mind has won the Silver Medal in the "Science" category at the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. I didn't even know I was entered and only learned about the award through the dubious practice of self-googling (which is prohibited in many of the world's religious traditions).
It sounds like the beginning of an elaborate curse, doesn't it? I recently uncovered a huge stash of old family photos, which I'm just starting to examine. I dig the tonsorial splendor of these fine fellows, circa 1900.
On Monday, I unlocked the door to my office and found the place totally trashed. My scanner was smashed to bits, books were strewn everywhere, my desk and chair were crushed. My first thought was, "Damn. Those creationists who've been sending me all the death threats since The Accidental Mind was published managed to get in here." Then, I realized that all the mayhem resulted from a single action- the huge wall-mounted cabinets full of books had broken loose and had come crashing down (one would have neatly bisected my cranium, had I been sitting at my desk.) Examination of the cabinets…
...is the name of a new podcast series from The University of Texas at San Antonio. These are roundtable discussions with UTSA Neurobiology faculty and a different guest each week. Recent guests include Linda Overstreet-Wadiche, Mario Capecchi, John Lisman and yours truly. These podcasts are intended for an audience of neuroscientists and so they get into the nitty-gritty fairly quickly.
From the promotional material for Gary Marcus' new book Kluge:
"Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature."
Damn, that's clever. I wish I had thought of that. From Chapter 1 of The…
"Phil was probably passed out somewhere, enjoying his dead father's legacy. I found myself wishing I had a loved one who would die and leave me their barbiturates, but I couldn't think of anyone who'd ever loved me that much. My uncle had already promised his to the mail lady."
Donald Ray Pollock, "Bactine"
from his superb collection of stories, Knockemstiff
"Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody ever gets over anything."
--Martin Amis, House of Meetings
"I don't deal with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work."
"Chuck Close: Process and Collaboration" Exhibit
The Times of London reports that British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh has been visiting Kiev in the Ukraine, twice a year, in order to assist and train a Ukrainian colleague. In London, Marsh would use an expensive (30,000 pound) specialized medical drill to create holes on the skull. But, due to lack of funds in Kiev, he and his colleague have made do with a handheld Bosch drill favored by home hobbyists. Cost: 30 pounds. If this cheapskate solution becomes known in the USA, I'm afraid that the insurance companies will reimburse for nothing else.
Yesterday, I spoke at a conference entitled "Law of the Body: Implications of Medical Science on Legal Decision Making" at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon. One of the other speakers was Bill Harbaugh, an economist and neuroscientist from the University of Oregon. In addition to doing cool experiments in which he and his colleagues image the brains of women in the process of paying taxes and making charitable donations, he is also the curator of the online "Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art" which features this lovely dissection by Karen Norberg.
My old pal Attila Girl is a fan of the upcoming film from Ben Stein entitled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" which was recently screend at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in Washington D.C. I haven't seen the film, but a longish preview is available online. It purports to tell the story of how academics at American universities are suppressing discussion of Intelligent design creationism, which they claim to be a legitimate scientific theory.
Now, I don't rant that much, but every once in a while, one is called for. So here it goes.
Hostility to evolutionary biology…
From Germany comes the latest in backpacker cuisine, the cheeseburger in a can. A steal at 3.95 euros.
To paraphrase Michael Pollan...
"Eat beef. Processed in a factory. With lots of packaging."
Update: they also sell dehydrated wine. I swear. I couldn't make this up if I tried.
I say... Our sensory world is anything but pure and truthful. Built and transformed by evolutionary history into a very peculiar edifice, it responds to only one particular slice of possible sensory space. Our brains then process this sensory stream to extract certain kinds of information, ignore other kinds of information, and bind the whole thing together into an ongoing story that is understandable and useful. Furthermore, by the time we are aware of sensations, they have evoked emotional responses that are largely beyond our control and that have been used to plan actions and understand…
"In the elite East Coast worlds where Romney has made his career, Mormonism signifies personal rectitude, professional competence and an idiosyncratic-but-impressive rejection of alcohol and caffeine. If anything, the systematic overrepresentation of Mormons among top businesspeople and lawyers affords LDS affiliation a certain cachet — rather like being Jewish, but taller."
-Noah Feldman
link to NYT article
In my family, when we get our teeth into a joke, we don't like to let go until it's good and dead.
A research group in Australia has determined that, unlike those of sheep and cattle, kangaroo farts don't contain methane, a major contributor to global warming. The kangaroo stomach is host to bacteria that aid digestion, and do so with great efficiency, but don't produce methane as a byproduct. Now, efforts are underway to isolate the bug or bugs responsible and then use them to innoculate the digestive systems of cows and sheep in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another group of Australian scientists have proposed a different solution: raise less beef and lamb and eat more…
This amazing little dude looks like a Pokémon, but is really a long-eared jerboa, an endangered nocturnal hopping rodent from the Gobi Desert.
via BBC News.
I've received a lot of interesting mail since The Accidental Mind was published, but nothing quite like this dollop of haute-geek poetry by Dr. Hilton Stowell of Milledgeville, Georgia.
Kuntry Ham Kludge
In Harvard where the Mind is an Illusion
There's a Kludge of computational confusion
About neurons in the brain
Being mainly in the rain
Of Silly Con Soft plain
While the rest are just an NPG intrusion
Now an Accidental Mind
Was a radiative find
For peripatetic cooling
By Aristotelian ruling,
Where cognitive emotion
Was by cardiac promotion:
Neocortex was an airconditioning rind
Nobel…
The New York Times released its list of "100 Notable Books of 2007" a few days ago. Lots of good stuff there. Novels by Ha Jin, Richard Russo and Haruki Murakami. Stories by William Trevor and Alice Munro. History, Biography, Politics. How about Science? Well, no. Out of a selection of 100 books published this year, the number of "notable" science books was zero. Go team.
A few days ago, I was getting on a plane for Burlington, Vermont and I had the depressing realization that the novel I was carrying was the same one I had carried on two prior airplane trips stretching back to October 11. Now the book, Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, is 600+ pages, but it's actually a very fast and fun read and would be consumed in great lusty bites if I weren't so totally distracted. Today, I'm gonna finish that sucker.
I'm being rewarded with wonderful prose, like this snippet. In the story, it is the musings of a conflicted CIA agent in Vietnam in 1968. It could just…
Tree of Smoke is the title of a kick-ass-wonderful new novel by Denis Johnson. Set in a CIA Psy Ops Group in Vietnam in 1967, it offers this nugget of neurophilosophy:
"Something's warping you," Jimmy told the lieutenant. "Maybe it's your perception of how the brass will see you-- but they're not seeing you at all right now, so it's a perception of a nonperception, man, which is a perception of nothing, which is nothing, man."
This stunning brain-inspired handbag, designed by Jun Takashi, is da bomb. Unfortunately, I don't have the shoes to go with it.
via coolhunting.com
A map of the Tokyo Metro? Psychedelic dog vomit? No, it's God and the Devil Argue Over the Details by the visionary digital artist and Honorary Neuroscientist Kevin Mack. I've just ordered a copy of this print for my office wall and I'm totally psyched about it.
So, I know that I've hit the big time now that I'm featured in the November issue of Real Simple magazine. Did they want my great recipe for Moroccan Lamb Tagine? My helpful hints for getting rid of stubborn stains using only natural ingredients? No. They wanted to talk about brain activation in memory and dreaming.
From the article by Kristyn Kusek Lewis:
"When scientists do brain scans on subjects during REM sleep they find that the visual center of the brain, the dominant area that processes all the new information people encounter while awake, is shut down. The visual memory center,…
Deathswitch.com is website that offers an interesting and unique service. From their description:
"Imagine that you die with computer passwords in yur head, leaving coworkers without access to critical files. Imagine that your loved ones cannot find your bank accounts, or that you die with a secret that that you longed to reveal in your lifetime. A deathswitch is an automated system that prompts you for your password to make sure you are still alive. When you do not enter your password for some [user determined] period of time, the system prompts you again several times. With no reply,…
File this one under "New Frontiers In Biofeedback." The musicians of the Electronic Orifice Orchestra insert sensors of muscular contraction into their naughty bits and then use signals from these sensors to modulate synthesizers, drum machines and the like. And, no, to my knowledge, they don't cover "Mr. Blue Sky." Although, that would be kinda cool.
...has a sign which announces the following (as an ad for their spa).
"Foot soaking in Springtime will strengthen Yang and reinforce vital energy. In Summer, it will dispel disease caused by heat and dampness. In Autumn, it will lubricate the intestines and in Winter, it will warm the pubic region."
Well, I'm sold. Dude, sign me up.
Every author needs an ego-boosting puff piece once in a while. Mine comes from the home team, aka Johns Hopkins Magazine.
from the incomparable William Gibson.
You, she thought, are seriously creeping me out.
But she only nodded gravely and picked up her own burger.
Marshal Zeringue is a book enthusiast who runs the websites "Campaign for the American Reader" and the "The Page 99 Test." The idea behind the latter comes from a quote from Ford Madox Ford: ""Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." Marshal has asked various authors to extract a quotation from page 99 of their book and then comment upon whether it truly revealed "the quality of the whole." So, when I was contacted by Marshal, i quickly filpped to page 99 ofThe Accidental Mind and was relieved to find that it did not entirely suck. …
Aside from the intense and immediate pleasure of orgasm, there is also the warm, lingering post-orgasmic afterglow. This state, which is thought to be crucial for sexual pair bond formation, may be mediated, in both men and women, by release of the hormone oxytocin from the pituitary gland, under control of the hypothalamus. Treatments that block oxytocin release do not prevent orgasm or the immediate pleasurable sensations, but do seem to interfere with the crucial afterglow. It is worth noting that the oxytocin-releasing system appears to be involved in more general aspects of pair bond…
Yesterday, I did an interview with Dr. Kevin Keough of Mind and Body Podcasts. Conversation ranged from the evolution of narrative dreams to internet porn addiction to light therapy for depression. You can download the podcast in MP3 format by clicking here.
I really dig this snippet about The Accidental Mind from Agence Science-Presse in Canada. My favorite part was learning that French for a "popularization," like my book, is an "ouvrage de vulgarisation." How true.
I'm delighted to announce that a Spanish translation of The Accidental Mind will be published by Ediciones Paidós Ibérica of Barcelona, sometime in 2008. This reminds me of the following...
¿Qué es más macho?
Even though there is very little information in these stick figures, we can easily assign them to typically male and female categories. This illustrates that our brains’ visual systems have become very highly specialized for gender recognition.This image was kindly provided by Professor Nikolaus Troje of Queens University, Ontario, Canada.
I just did an enjoyable interview on Richard Spencer’s Internet Radio Show and podcast “Faith and Freethought” which explores religious issues from different perspectives: philosophical, historical, political and biological. Richard is a smart and talented guy and this interview was a pleasure. You can download an MP3 of the interview here.
David Tyler, writing on the website of the "Access Research Network," an intelligent design creationist advocacy group, takes The Accidental Mind to task. He writes: "This book tells us more about the ideology of its writer than it does about the human mind." Fair enough. Everyone should have their shot at critique after all. However, it's revealing that Tyler never makes any specific references to the content of my book. It's very likely that he never bothered to read it. Rather, I suspect that he simply read the review in Nature and went from there. Too bad. If he had actually read…
The New York Times reports...
A distressed, possibly pregnant sea lion was wheeled recently into the Marine Mammal Care Center here, just as two other lions were herded into cages in preparation for their return to the ocean.
“That’s just the way it is,” said Lauren Palmer, the chief veterinarian at the center. “Two go out and more come in.”
Peter Wallerstein of the Whale Rescue Team, a private group authorized by Los Angeles to rescue whales and other marine mammals, said he had found the sea lion on the sand in nearby Manhattan Beach. Mr. Wallerstein said he feared she could have been…
...is a quotation from Jonathan Lethem's breezy new novel "You Don't Love Me Yet." Considering it, I would have to agree. Not in an optimistic way, but in the sense that the act of thinking somehow presupposes that there will be a future.
This, from the L.A. Times..
Hong Chang Corp. of Santa Fe Springs said Thursday that it was recalling frozen fish from China that might have been mislabeled and could contain puffer fish, which carries a potentially deadly toxin. The seafood importer began a voluntary recall after reports that two Chicago-area people became ill after eating soup that contained the fish, according to a statement. The frozen shipments were packed in 22-pound boxes that were sold to wholesalers in California, Illinois and Hawaii beginning in September. Each of the 282 boxes was labeled "Monk fish, gutted and head…
I've always loved magic tricks and stagecraft. The great thing is that even when I know what to look for, I still get drawn in by the illusionist and wind up utterly fooled. From a neurobiological perspective the key issue in most magic tricks is sensory attention. The magician draws your attention to one action in order to facilitate a ploy elsewhere.
At any given moment we are only attending to a small subset of the stream of sensory information that's pouring into our brains. Example: how does your underwear feel on your skin right now? Probably, you weren't attending to that…
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