Short People Got No Reason....(to gripe)

That's not how the song goes, but according to a recent NPR podcast, a recent neuroscience study shows that short people actually may experience things more quickly than tall people. Really, it's more an experiment about the subjective nature of time than about tall vs. short -- from the same neuroscientist who brought us the Possibilitarian movement, Dr. David Eagleman combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to understand the neural mechanisms of time perception. For example, touch your nose and toe at the same time. (Humor me, will you?) ... Did you feel the touch at the same time? I did. But if you think about it, shouldn't the signal from the toe take a tiny bit longer longer to get to your brain? After all, your nose is on your face, which is closer to your brain. So shouldn't you have felt the touch on your nose first?

Eagleman calls this phenomenon "temporal binding": the brain manages to synchronize what's happening even though sensory data comes through your eyes, ears, tongue and skin at slightly different times and speeds. According to Eagleman, it may be that our sensory perception of the world has to wait for the slowest piece of information to arrive; "Given conduction times along limbs, this leads to the bizarre but testable suggestion that tall people may live further in the past than short people."

To listen to the entire podcast, click here, and to read more about subjective time versus neural time, click here. And to learn more about Eagleman's Lab for Perception and Action, click here.

Are You a Possibilitarian (or Possibilian)? Tales from the Afterlives...

Tired of the blather between Dawkins and the Discovery Institute? A refreshing and amusing voice in the debate on is-there-God-or-an-afterlife, is neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, who explains that science has taught him that 1) there are so many possibilities out there, 2) that there is a new movement, Possibilitians, who are not certain about anything, 3) the bigger point is that we really don’t know what is going on, and 4) Science teaches you not to commit yourself to anything if there is not enough evidence.

In his book, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, he imagines a variety of scenarios; here is an excerpt:

"In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn’t take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and meanspirited in other ways. How was She to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men’s lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories—good and bad—seemed like a more reasonable task when She was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh hundreds of factors, and ran computer programs that rolled out long strips of paper with eternal decisions. But Her sensitivities revolted at this automation—and when the computer generated a decision She disagreed with, She took the opportunity to kick out the plug in rage. That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices....
The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality. The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote. So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell."

As this interview on NPR reveals, Eagleman's imagined afterlives range from the mundane to the profane. You might say that he's a member of the Church of What's Happening Now. Or a Singularitarian.
Either way, the possibilities are endless!~ And fun to consider...

To read more about Afterlives, click here.

Top Ten Neuroscience Trends in 2009

[Cross posted from Brainwaves.corante.com] Here are ten emerging areas of neuroscience that will impact the future of treatments for brain and nervous system which were published as a result of the cutting edge research being presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference held in Washington DC last month. Top 10 Trends of 2009:

1. Epigenetics leading to new treatment targets: New research highlights the critical interactions of genes and the environment in brain health and development revealing new treatment strategies and potential therapeutic targets for obesity, memory loss, addiction and mental illness.

2. National Neurotechnology Initiative Act: Momentum for this recently introduced legislation which provides $200M a year for federal R&D aimed at accelerating translational neurotech innovation and improving the effectiveness of FDA review process for neuroscience drugs, devices and diagnostics grows.

3. New Sources of Stem Cells: The discovery of new sources of neural stem cells are opening up new avenues and potentially whole new treatment strategies for stroke, vision loss, hearing loss, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.

4. Deep Brain Stimulation: New clinical research into the use of deep brain stimulation devices for the treatment of neurological diseases and psychiatric illnesses continues to provide new hope to those suffering from drug treatment forms of these illnesses.

5. Addiction advances: New research that clarifies the role of impulsivity in treating cocaine addiction and synaptic plasticity in the control of inhibitory circuits could potentially lead to new treatment strategies for this epidemic impacting over 1.1 billion worldwide.

6. Stress prevention: New research shows that even a few hours of stress can reduce neural connectivity and that chronic stress, in particular early in life, can shrink critical areas of the brain. These findings may lead to new treatment strategies for PTSD and other anxiety-related disorders.

7. Traumatic brain injury advances: Early detection proves important for effective treatment while new research into inflammation may provide new treatments for people with brain injuries and stroke.

8. Get your sleep: More research points to the critical role that a proper night’s sleep plays in the memory consolidation, learning and mental illness further validating the need for effective therapeutics which engender healthy sleep patterns.

9. Discovery tools underpin innovation: New imaging techniques coupled with advances in neuroinformatics, image-based neural circuit analysis, and neural computation are accelerating the pace of neuroscientific discovery beyond what was imagined a decade ago.

10. Neuroscience infiltrates society: From neurofinance, neuroeconomics to neuroesthetics to neuroethics and neurolaw, the influence of neuroscience on society continues to grow.

AND if you are interested in more, check out the Neuroscience Summer Boot Camp 2009 for Non-Scientists, Aug. 2-12, 2009 at Penn.

Some bioethics stories of note this past week....

For you trekkies, could this be Data version 1.3? -
Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, spends a lot of time in Second Life, but not for recreation or entertainment -- he and his team at RPI (RPI) are the creators of synthetic agent Edd Hifeng, who they have endowed with a limited ability to converse and reason.

See the rest of the article here.

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Do difficult times call for deep brain stimulation?

Brain-stimulation devices for treating depression have faced unexpected setbacks. To serve the 40 million or so sufferers who fail to respond to antidepressant drugs, a few companies have tried to treat the disorder with electronic implants and electromagnets. These therapies, however, have stumbled en route to the doctor's office.

To take a crack at those intractable cases, experiments exploring five device therapies will start this year. In total, nine different technologies are now under investigation in at least 27 human trials.

Full story here.

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A Superhighway to Bliss

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR was a neuroscientist working at Harvard’s brain research center when she experienced nirvana.

But she did it by having a stroke.

On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great.

Access the rest of the story here.

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Concerns about carbon nanotubes as carcinogenic

Nanotechnology experts are calling for prompt government action to ensure that carbon nanotubes are properly regulated, after researchers discovered that some carbon nanotubes can cause precancerous growths in the same way that asbestos does.

Researchers led by Ken Donaldson of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Inflammation Research, UK, found that in mice, long, straight, multi-walled carbon nanotubes can cause the same kind of damage as that inflicted by asbestos fibres when they are injected into
the lung's outer lining, called the mesothelium.

Full article accessible here.

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How Our Brains are Wired for Belief

From the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, transcripts from a discussion about how recent advances in neuroscience and brain-imaging technology have offered researchers a look into the physiology of religious experiences. The whole article and transcripts accessible here.

Neurodiversity blogger subpoenaed in "vaccine-autism link" lawsuit

Kathleen Seidel, of Neurodiversity Blog, has been subpoenaed by the plaintiffs' lawyer in a lawsuit claiming that vaccines caused autism. It appears that this subpoena may be retributive action from the lawyer for the plaintiffs, whom Seidel criticized a few weeks ago.

She has since filed a motion to quash the subpoena because she is uninvolved in the Sykes v. Bayer case other than as an independent blogger who has discussed issues related to neurobiology and autism.

This action has many potential impacts for the medical and legal arenas, and opens up the possibility of harassment and undue barriers for bloggers if they can be required to produce the amount of paperwork required in a subpoena at the drop of a hat by a bitter lawyer who perpetuates fraud.

More from:

* Pure Pedantry

* Pharyngula

Prejudice and Mentalism: It's All In Your mPFC

Scientific American reports on a study that shows difference in medial pre-frontal cortex activity when distinguishing between people who are part of one's group and who are not.

The experimenters used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of Harvard and other Boston-area students while showing them pictures of other college-age people whom the researchers randomly described as either liberal northeastern students or conservative Midwest fundamentalist Christian students. The categories were a ruse.

Heightened activity in the ventral mPFC was associated with mentalization of self-similar people, whereas dorsal mPFC activity was associated with mentalization of self-dissimilar people. But when the participant pondered the subject in situations where an outsider was believed to behave in the same way as the participant would, activity in dorsal and ventral mPFC was equivalent.

With continuing advancements in the field of neuroscience, this study presents some excellent data to help us better understand the roots of prejudice and stereotyping. This study also poses potential challenges for the future since humans have a tendency to follow up discovery with manipulation - how long until someone posits the use of treatment to suppress activity in the parts of the brain responsible for prejudice, discrimination and bigotry? Are these "diseases" to be cured, deficiencies born of ignorance, or simply a part of being human?

Headgear that could reverse Alzheimers?

According the Daily Mail, British neuroscientists found that exposing middle-aged mice to infrared light for six minutes a day help to improve their performance in a cognitive tasks. The prototype cognitive helmet, a futuristic looking headset, is scheduled to be tested in the human trials starting this summer. The rest of story here.

Why Look for God in the Brain?

If you've ever wondered which came first (does the brain physiologically induce spiritual experience? or do spiritual experiences physiologically affect the brain?), an article in Scientific American explains that it may not be such a crucial question:

"Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine—a new discipline with the warring titles "neurotheology" and "spiritual neuroscience"—not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people's lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate. Ultimately, however, neuroscientists study this question because they want to better understand the neural basis of a phenomenon that plays a central role in the lives of so many. "These experiences have existed since the dawn of humanity. They have been reported across all cultures," Beauregard says. "It is as important to study the neural basis of [religious] experience as it is to investigate the neural basis of emotion, memory or language."

Author David Biello goes to explain that "Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body." But don't expect neuroscience to prove or disprove the existence of God, as Biello concludes: "Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God's interactions with them."

The rest of article can be accessed here .

Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics

Advances in neuroscience are going to pose some of the most important ethical questions yet about what it means to be human, and will challenge our concepts and viewpoints on gender and genetic determinism, free will, and what sets us apart from other species. This year, we will be launching several exciting initiatives designed to encourage women to engage on these issues.

The first, in coordination with the Dana Foundation’s Brain Awareness Week, is a lecture on Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics. Our featured expert will be Judy Illes, Ph.D., Director of the Program in Neuroethics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, founding member of the Neuroethics Society, and editor of “An Anthology in 21st Century Neuroethics” published by Oxford University Press.

Please email info@womensbioethics.org for registration information. Seating is limited for the March 16th Seattle area luncheon. For those who can’t attend, the lecture will be available via podcast.

PMS and the Female Brain

This week’s edition of The Economist brings us news of a recently published study from the National Institute of Mental Health, suggesting that women’s brains may respond differently to reward stimuli depending on their oestrus state.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8625794

Aside from the lesson that, well, maybe we’ll have less fun gambling when we’re PMS-y, this study importantly demonstrates measurable distinctions in brain blood flow with changing hormone levels in the body. How such information may be interpreted or used in women’s health or broader social assumptions remains to be seen. Thoughts? Predictions?

Altruism and the Brain

"Are you a giver? Brain scan tells the truth."

Or so the headline of a recent MSNBC.com article on altruism and the brain declares. With the recent hype around gender differences and the brain, and the fact that many fMRI studies include men only, I thought it was prudent to find out if women were part of this 45 person study, and if so, did the researchers find any gender differences.

One of the authors of the study published in Nature, Scott Huettel, Ph.D, responded to my email inquiry:

Our subject sample - not all college students, although all were 35 and under - comprised 25 males and 20 females. We looked at gender effects, but found no significant influence on either brain activation in key regions or on the relation to altruism. Now, of course, this does not mean that there are no gender differences in altruism nor in the function of these regions; it just means that our study doesn't provide any evidence for such gender effects.

Thank you, Dr. Huettel.

As with my previous post on the importance of including women in heart clinical trials, it is critical that we study the female brain as well. We don't want to wake up twenty years from now, as we have with heart disease, and need to promote a "National Wear Grey Day" because we didn't have the data we needed on how to treat women for depression, Alzheimer's, and a whole host of other neurological diseases.

If I Only Had a Brain

Reproductive technologies seem to be getting all the press these days: from designer/deformer babies, made-to-order embryos, to womb transfers. And while these issues are of critical importance to women, I believe neuroscience is the emerging field we need to keep an eye on (and drive the policy debate.)

Advances in neuroscience are going to pose some of the most important ethical questions yet about what it means to be human – challenging our concepts of free will, gender and genetic determinism, and what sets us apart from other species. Many believe that it will displace genetics as the leading edge of scientific discoveries in the 21st century.

I was pleased to learn about an upcoming conference on the implications of neuroscience - see details below. The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future has recruited an impressive range of scholars and policy makers including:

Marsha Darling, Ph.D., Professor of history and interdisciplinary studies and director of the African American & Ethnic Studies Program at Adelphi University;

Andrew Imparato, J.D., president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities;

U.S. Representative Brad Sherman, J.D., CPA, (D-CA), member of the House Committee on Science;

Patricia Smith Churchland, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego and author of Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain;

Linda MacDonald Glenn, J.D., L.L.M., faculty member in the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical Center and in the University of Vermont’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences

Conference details:
A Spotless Mind? Policy, Ethics & the Future of Human Intelligence
Friday, February 16, 2007 - 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
National Press Club, 529 14th Street N.W., Washington, D.C.
RSVPs are required. There is no charge for the event.
E-mail: rsvp@thehumanfuture.org

I'll be there and will be reporting live from the conference.

A Transcendental Experience?

One of the more interesting blogs launched recently is Numenware, a blog about Neurotheology. Is God a function of our brains or was the need for spirituality (or feeling connected to a higher power) implanted by God in the process of evolution? Stayed tuned for new neural imaging techniques to measure spiritual experiences...