Interests in Context

As a boy, Oliver Sacks loved chemistry. Though later known as a neurologist, Dr. Sacks was captivated by a different science as a child. In his book Uncle Tungsten, he reflects on his “chemical boyhood”: his early passion for understanding the world and its history in chemical terms.

Dr. Sacks, born in London in 1933, describes his enchantment in learning not only contemporary chemistry, but also its history. By the time he was delving into chemical handbooks, just after the second World War, much of the information in his shabby, older volumes, and many of the beliefs of the chemists he admired, were wrong.

The ancients’ concept of four all-encompassing “elements”—fire, water, earth, and air—had long since been left behind. Likewise, the three elements of the alchemists—sulfur, mercury, and salt—had come and gone. Robert Boyle had bravely put forth his radical, rational definition of an element—indivisible and pure—and Antoine Lavoisier had combatted the lingering alchemical notion of phlogiston, the “principle of fire,” with his experiments in oxidation. So why were these disproven theories and scientific blunders of such interest to the young Oliver Sacks?

Sacks points out that the “path to his [Lavoisier’s] revolution was not easy or direct…it required fifteen years of genius time, fighting his way through labyrinths of presupposition, fighting his own blindness as he fought everyone else’s.” This description of that journey, I believe, highlights an important underlying reason for Sacks’ interest in chemistry, and provides insight into why we are so fascinated by our own particular interests as well.

Sacks enjoyed chemistry because for him, the science was alive. He could trace its convoluted path from its distant, misguided beginnings. He could follow the mistakes, wonder, and bewilderment woven into that long and far from linear history.

Our interests are often shaped by stories. What we appreciate is linked to our exploration of its roots and origins. One NPR podcast episode, titled Why Do We Like What We Like? addresses this phenomenon.

Dr. Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University interviewed for the episode, notes that “…you can enhance your pleasure simply by learning more about something…where it comes from, how it works. Music will sound different the more you understand the music…”

Dr. Bloom further points out that there are neural systems related to attachment. Someone’s brain may be activated very differently by two seemingly identical pairs of baby shoes if one pair is known to have belonged to that person’s child.

Likewise, I believe, as Dr. Sacks did, that chemistry is experienced differently when the stories are introduced. The Periodic Table gains dimension when the struggles of Dmitri Mendeleev are uncovered. The discovery that hydrogen and oxygen, when exploded together, create water, is made all the more intriguing in the characterization of its discoverer, Henry Cavendish, who, it has been suggested, may have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder were he alive today.

Dr. Bloom concludes that the opportunity to learn the stories behind our world “opens us up to get far more pleasure out of life than we could have possibly had otherwise.” From music to science to one another, context, development, and history are worth exploring.

—Kate Oksas

Sources

Sacks, Oliver. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Print.

NPR Science Friday podcast, July 23, 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128721732

Magic Berries

The BBB Society will be hosting a "Magic Berries" charity event to raise money for the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association on Friday, February 10th in Huntsman 270 from 4 - 6 pm.

facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/106585796133311/

For only $3 you will receive a magic berry, a variety of foods to test its effects, and a lesson by Neuroscientist Professor, Dr. Mike Kaplan, explaining how the magic berry works. Make sure to stop by to try out a berry that makes sour and bitter foods taste sweet! For more information about how exactly these berries work, read the entry below:

Sweet Science

by Noah Sanders

Sometimes, I feel like we are all robots. I’m not having a nervous breakdown or trying to start any sort of philosophical discussion. No, I’m merely commenting on the fact that the human brain is a miraculous contraption, an intricate web of axons and dendrites, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, whose function and precision more than closely resembles that of a computer. Moreover, if you tweak the human brain and its “subservient” body parts, you make the human body do some pretty cool things.

Before I get into the “juice” of this article (you’ll get that pun later), a brief overview of the gustatory system (how we taste things) is in order. Lets say you put something sweet in your mouth, like a lollipop. As soon as the candy touches your tongue, special taste molecules, called “tastants” trigger sweet receptors embedded in taste receptor cells in your taste buds. Once triggered, the receptors, called G-Protein Coupled Receptors, recruit a G-Protein subunit and trigger, with the help of a few more enzymes and kinases, an enormous signal cascade. There are millions of these taste receptor cells all over the tongue, and its up to the brain to receive these millions of signals, sift through them, and tell you that whatever is in your mouth tastes sweet. Everything I just wrote is a gross oversimplification, but hey, it gets the point across (and who really wants to think that much about what they’re eating anyway!).

Now that you understand how we taste sweet things, you can understand why humans are robots. One word, my friend: miraculin. Miraculin is a glycoprotein (a protein attached to a sugar) found in the berry Synsepalum dulcificum. When ingested, miraculin will, for up to about an hour, make anything you eat taste sweet. You can try it yourself. Just go to the store, buy some “magic berries,” pop them in your mouth and then suck on a lime – sweetest treat you’ve ever had. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why humans are robots. One tweak, and it is possible to alter the very way we perceive the world. We are not enlightened individuals, paving our own destiny, but slaves to our hard wiring.

I’m just kidding, but here’s how miraculin tricks the brain into tasting everything as sweet, it very simply and pretty cool: miraculin, when ingested, binds to the sweet tastant receptors I described to you two paragraphs ago. The miraculin does not, however, trigger the receptors upon binding. For reasons still poorly understood, it requires the binding of another type of tastant, lets say the H+ ions of a sour food, to activate the receptor and initiate a signal cascade.

If that’s too much science for you, think of it like this: “miraculin sits on your tastebuds and screams "sweet incoming" every time it sees sour. And the tastebuds buy it.”

(http://www.quora.com/How-does-Flavor-Tripping-with-the-protein-miraculin-work)

Mind Control & Robo-Rats

I came across a video on Youtube that reminded me remarkably of a gadget from a James Bond movie; Laser watch? Check. Detonating pen? Check. Mind control device? Check…wait what? That’s right…that inconspicuous control chip stealthily implanted into one’s brain by the enemy may actually start becoming a legitimate concern in the real world of secret agents, if it isn’t already. That’s why it is no surprise that DARPA, a U.S. Department of Defense agency focused on advancing military technology, funds research in this area. Through the use of a body/ machine interface mechanism, scientists have recently demonstrated the ability to control the direction of a rat’s movement (left, right, or forward). Two electrodes placed in the sensory cortex stimulate the rat’s whiskers on either the right or left side, creating a “phantom feeling”. This initiates orientation in the desired direction of movement. If the rat chooses to begin moving in the direction stimulated by the electrodes, it is soon after rewarded by a discharge in the reward center of the brain, releasing the neurotransmitter, dopamine, inducing a widespread feeling of pleasure. Note, that the rat is free to make its own decision regardless of experimental intervention, so the process can be viewed as merely motivating the rat to make a particular decision, not necessarily controlling its ability to do so. However, it is also one step closer to the actualization of mind control.

This remote control of another’s movement has also begun to be tested in humans, but in the vestibular system rather than the motor cortex, affecting the subject’s sense of balance/ equillibrium. While this is an exciting new field to explore, I am sure that I am not alone in expressing that it should be done with caution. Ethical boundaries are being pushed every day with the progression of technology and science. The mere idea of “mind control” threatens each individual’s autonomy by imposing on free will via neuro-manipulation. As seen in the video, we can already create involuntary movement by using electric pulse stimuli on various motor areas of the brain. What if one day this includes entire involuntary actions? The days of the "remote-control human cyborg" may be closer than we think.

Am I Hallucin(8)ing?

Hallucinations are one of the most misunderstood and interesting psychiatric phenomena presently known today. While there are certain drugs known to induce hallucinations, using them on animals to explore the drugs' effects--as is done with many pharmaceuticals--is nearly impossible (if only mice would learn English...).

In light of this, Jan Dirk Blom recently published an entire dictionary of hallucinations (rightly called A Dictionary of Hallucinations). What makes it even better is that you can download it for free here!

So next time you have any questions about that pink elephant in the corner, look no further than your readily available (because who wouldn't print out all 553 pages and transform it into a pocket-sized tome?) Dictionary of Hallucinations. FYI-pink elephants are a type of hallucination called zoopsias.

Procrastination: effective strategy or self-sabotage?

Sitting in front of my laptop, sugar-free Red Bull in hand, I stare at a blank Word document. The monotonous blinks of the cursor serve as incessantly rhythmic slaps to the face of my (as of yet nonexistent) productivity. Yes, I have another week before my research paper is due, but wouldn't it be nice if I handed it in more than 60 seconds before its deadline? Eh. I could be watching Arrested Development reruns (there's always money in the banana stand).

Sound familiar?

Like your neighbor's annoying ball of fluff (er, precious pomeranian), procrastination is the deranged pet most college students only wish they could take back to the pound.

So why is it that, despite the myriad minutes we could spend working on our final projects, papers, whatever--we choose to do otherwise?

Many students are convinced they work best under the pressure of a high-stress, time-constrained environment. Others iterate that they work more efficiently as the due date approaches. Many (and here I would include myself) have absolutely no idea why they procrastinate so inconveniently often.

One study recently published in the Journal of Accounting Education quantified the effects of procrastination in an effort to determine whether or not procrastination actually boosts academic performance or not.

Using an objective measure of 'procrastination' (as opposed to the self-reported ones on which many studies rely), students were given a set of online homework assignments. One group was asked to perform the online task early, the other was given directions to begin the assignment 'just-in-time.'

Interestingly enough (or unsurprisingly, depending on your logical progression of thought), the researchers found a positive correlation between an earlier start time and better academic performance. This is taking quality (i.e. intelligence) of the student into account, so that the task performance can be attributed only to the procrastination factor.

If you are, like me, an ardent procrastinator, this news may be shocking, appalling and altogether repulsive. But hey, who said you had to change your study habits now, this late in the semester? I mean...

...there's always tomorrow.

Tpyos: How the Barin is Arwae of its Mstiaeks

The typo: every perfectionist’s worst nightmare as he looks over his paper, just minutes before handing it in. It may be true that word processing programs keep developing more advanced spell check and auto correct features, but even the best computer can miss some mistakes we make while typing. In addition, while quickly reading over our words, we are prone to not catching some of the spelling errors. It turns out that the master detectors of all keyboard related errors are our very fingers themselves.

Experimenters tested subjects (skilled typists, who could type 40 words per minute with about 90% accuracy, and used all of their fingers while typing) by creating a word processor that would secretly fix a typist’s real spelling errors, and also create new errors in words initially typed correctly. Subjects took both the blame for the errors that were not truly theirs, and the credit for the researcher’s corrections. Despite what was actually typed, the subjects believed that the words they intended to type were actually displayed on the screen, indicating inaccuracy in their conscious analyses of their individual performances.

The typists’ motor signals, on the other hand, weren’t duped so easily. It turns out that the speed at which the subjects typed was reduced for the next keystroke after hitting the “wrong” key, even if the researchers tried to deceive the subjects by correcting one of their errors on the screen. So despite the subjects’ beliefs that all of the presented error and accuracy at the end of the experiment was attributed to themselves alone, their bodies were able to distinguish their true errors. “The body is doing one thing and the mind is doing another,” says psychologist Gordon Logan of Vanderbilt University. “What we found was that the fingers knew the truth."

These results may suggest a “hierarchical method of error correction”; the motor system does the work while several cortical areas assign causal characteristics such as blame and credit. Essentially, these two processes are entirely disassociated, so that the hands and fingers can catch errors that the mind cannot. Not convinced? Try typing a paragraph with your eyes closed. Chances are you will know when you make an error, and automatically go back to fix it. It is suggested that typing is just another activity that we do on autopilot without thinking, liken to walking or doing some other familiar task. Perhaps this can be viewed as the brain's way of providing multiple methods of checking for error -- a reliable autopilot, and a proofreading/ error attributing "higher" cortical system. If our conscious places that much confidence in our "autopilot" , perhaps it is safe to assume we can trust the driver.

To read more, click the link: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/fingers-know-typos/

Sidenote: To illustrate how easy it is to miss a typo, take a look at the title above. I bet that you can easily read each word, despite the jumbled letters. This is because the mind doesn’t read every letter individually, but rather groups them together and reads the word as a whole (the only necessity is that the first and last letters are in the right place). Now imagine trying to catch a typo when reading quickly under time induced stress... not likely.