The Bewilderness

Leap forward the cognitive enhancers!

There is a call for 'cognitive enhancing' pills to be available over the counter if they are seen to be safe. One candidate, designed to treat the problems of Alzheimer's disease, may be marketed in a weaker form as a lifestyle pill.

If the time ever came that companies demanded parmocological performance for greater productivity, you may literally have to work on a treadmill.

Americans today burn 700 calories less per day than they did during the 1960's. Treadmill desks offer a unique solution compared with fad dieting. They offer employees the chance to burn significant amounts of calories during the day, enhance their health and at the same time enhance cognitive function.

Circuit breaking autism

There is some evidence to suggest that alternate models of developing intelligence can overbalance our consciousness, with some potential reflections for AI. Autism may becaused by abnormal and quick growth in babies leading to an overwhelming of the developing consciousness by experiences.

According to a theory developed by Swiss neuroscientists, the condition is not caused by a brain deficiency but by a system overload which causes the world to seem frightening and overly intense.

Husband and wife team Kamila and Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, believe the idea could explain the erratic nature of the condition.

"Our hypothesis is that autistic people perceive, feel and remember too much," Kamila Markram told the New Scientist.

Faced with this "intense world" , autistic infants withdraw, with serious consequences for their social and linguistic development, she added.

Too much intelligence may prove just as debilitating as too little if the brain/mind does not have circuit breakers to regulate the consequences.
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The Ever Closer Union of Human and Machine

Reading the cyberpunks in the 1980s or watching Cronenburg's eXistenZ, provided visions of a noir future where brain computer interfaces were commonplace and you could jack into cyberspace, virtual reality, or whatever hyped up term was collecting reputation dust. In the current world of information chop suey, it is hard to detect truly important developments. Here is one.

Harvard scientists have moved closer to an effective neural interface with engineered silicon nanowires "that detect, simulate and and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons." They are able to attach a non-invasive wire to a single nerve cell as a hybrid synapse and allow signals to travel between wire and cell. The next step in the research programme is  the development of  larger scale contacts between wires and nerve cells. As  Charles Lieber, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard speculates:

This work could have a revolutionary impact on science and technology," Lieber says. "It provides a powerful new approach for neuroscience to study and manipulate signal propagation in neuronal networks at a level unmatched by other techniques; it provides a new paradigm for building sophisticated interfaces between the brain and external neural prosthetics; it represents a new, powerful, and flexible approach for real-time cellular assays useful for drug discovery and other applications; and it opens the possibility for hybrid circuits that couple the strengths of digital nanoelectronic and biological computing components."

(Hat tip: Betterhumans)
 

Could Freud all be down to cats?

Kevin Lafferty, a United States Geological Survey scientist at UC Santa Barbara has recently published a speculative article in 'Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology'.  Lafferty draws attention to a small parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, that reproduces in cats and alters the behaviour of small  rodents as  part of its life cycle.

The typical journey of the parasite involves a cat and its prey, starting as eggs shed in an infected cat's feces, inadvertently eaten by a warm-blooded animal, such as a rat. The infected rat's behavior alters so that it becomes more active, less cautious and more likely to be eaten by a cat, where the parasite completes its life cycle. Many other warm-blooded vertebrates may be infected by this pathogen. After producing usually mild flu-like symptoms in humans, the parasite tends to remain in a dormant state in the brain and other tissues.

Once the parasite has entered the human host, there could be a tendency towards mass neurosis if a large proportion of the population is infected. This is a fascinating theory, though one remains daunted by the experimental hurdles that the speculation would have to conquer, in shifting from observed psychological effect to becoming a statistical cause in cultural patterns across large population samples.

If it is true, then Freud may never have invented psychoanalysis, if the neurotics that he studied had not loved cats.

Perception and Prejudice

One of the science fiction predictions, that has not yet come to pass, is the ability to categorise individuals by measuring certain thoughts or actions, with implications for individual freedom and status. That time may have drawn slightly closer. A forthcoming study, "Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuro-imaging responses to Extreme Outgroups" published in "Psychological Science", the Journal for the Association of Psychological Science, claims that prejudicial states can be measured through the imaging of the brain.

Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) brain imaging determined if the students accurately chose the correct emotion illustrated by the picture (according to pretest results in which a different group of students determined the emotion that best fit each photograph). The MPFC is only activated when a person thinks about him- or her-self or another human. When viewing a picture representing disgust, however, no significant MPFC brain activity was recorded, showing that students did not perceive members of social out-groups as human. The area was only activated when viewing photographs that elicited pride, envy, and pity. (However, other brain regions -- the amygdala and insula -- were activated when viewing photographs of "disgusting" people and nonhuman objects.)

Emotions themselves were not responsible for generating this brain activity. Rather, it was the actual image viewed that produced a response.

One article does not count as evidence that people viewed as "disgusting" are subjected to a process of dehumanisation, reinforced by social interaction. It is an interesting example of how neuroimaging can inform our understanding of the entanglement between emotion, perception and prejudice, although the study only reveals the complexities of this area, especially in the effects of war and genocide. One must keep the broadest definition of humanity.

Neurotechnology: What to Expect

Jack Lynch talks about the future of neurotechnology in MIT Technology Review. he zeroes in on the two developments that  could prove most  productive  in the next two decades as  basic science is applied to palliative treatment. One is neurogenesis:

Neurogenesis promises a potential preventative or nearly cure capability. Right now what we're doing is palliative, rather than being able to target the mechanisms and potentially regrow neurons. But it's an area that's far out. The technology is just getting started.

The other is the development of better neurodevices:

In the next 10 years, I think we'll start to see a combination of technologies, like maybe a brain stimulator that releases L-dopa [a treatment for Parkinson's disease]. Whether that's viable is a whole other question, but that possibility is there because of the microelectronics revolution.

The real breakthrough will come from work on new electrodes. This will transform neurostimulator applications. With these technologies, you can create noninvasive devices and target very specific parts of the brain. It's like going from a Model T to a Ferrari. Those technologies will present the real competition for drugs.