- Natalie Banacos

Sometimes, writing is tough. The passion isn’t there, and every word is a struggle. We’ve all had those moments when forced to do something artistic or creative, whether it be writing or drawing or playing an instrument (or anything really). We’re just not into it, we don’t feel the pulse of the art pounding in our blood. Yet at other times, it’s like our blood rushes in a massive torrential pour, as if it had been held back by a massive dam for a thousand years. Whether its a subject that makes you jump for joy, a song you can head-bang to, or some other Picasso, some things just burst forth in a sudden and fervent explosion of productivity and creativity.

A Tongue Twister: Are Artists' Artistry Artful?

I think we’ve all had those moments when the pieces all click together, and a piece of work flows from us as easily as a hot knife through butter. During those moments, we feel alive, throbbing with a vibrant energy as our whole being is focused onto a single task. It’s an exhilarating feeling, yet at the same time, when you finally come down out of this strange natural high, it feels as though there was something slightly wrong about that, as if those who are capable of reaching that level often must have something wrong with them.

This is a popular idea. Edgar Allen Poe alluded to this creative madness in his work, ‘The Tell Tale Heart.’

“The disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?”

Art and creativity have always had their associations with mental issues and powerful personalities. There have always been the stereotypical caricatures of artists:

1) The outcast, socially ill-fitting writer.

2) The out-of-control musician.

3) The quirky and always slightly off painter.

4) The obsessed photographer, whether of the strange shut-in type or the perpetually traveling variety.

Need I go on?

However, these associations have not been without reason. Many famous individuals have been associated with mental disorder. Examples include Vincent Van Gogh and Ludwig Von Beethoven. Others, such as Poe or Richard Wagner, were known to be either troubled or highly passionate, flamboyant individuals.

And recently, a pretty intense population study spearheaded by some pretty cool Swedish guys has actually corroborated some of these general associations. The field has long been investigated and various findings thrown around left and right; unfortunately most of those have been marred by awful experimental design. This Swedish study is an exception. Using a forty year population study encompassing more than a million people, the results are finally in, and some people may be a little disappointed: generally, some associations are there, but they certainly aren’t that strong.

Overall, creative professions were not associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders (except for a mild increase in bipolar disorder), despite there being a link between a familial history of disorders and profession. In other words, families of those people who did creative things were more likely to suffer from psychiatric conditions, on average. Although creative professions as a whole had no correlation with disorder, writers were another story entirely. Apparently, writers generally get the short end of the stick when it comes to mental health, as they were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In addition, they were at a noticeably higher risk for suicide.

Yet despite these findings, a part of me recoils at the idea of “creative” people being more likely to suffer from things like bipolar disorder. What is creativity anyways? Creativity is being able to associate items and express thoughts in novel ways, to make connections where others have yet to be made. Creativity is thinking in a slightly different way, reaching a new conclusion or finding a new way to reach that conclusion.

Albert Einstein was creative. So was John Nash.

In fact, I see high achievement as having a closer link to conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder than the typical association with the arts. However, true creativity has nothing to do with doing anything artistic. It is about making new connections and visualizations of things, and being able to express those in a way for other people to understand and interpret.

Creativity is visualizing riding a bicycle along a beam of light, and imagining what that beam of light would look like. It is revolutionizing game theory. It’s a powerful novel about a dystopian future that touches on some of the most powerful issues in the world today. Creativity is all of these things, and more. More than just the arts, more than the sciences.
Creativity is about uniqueness and newness. Everyone has the capacity for those.

Sources:

Creativity and Mental Illness – Canadian Journal of Psychiatry

Swedish Population Study – Science Direct

Mental Illness vs. The Arts – BBC News

Art and Personality – New York Times

This is in reference to a 2011 lecture entitled “Plato’s Philosophy of Art”, given by Dr. James Grant of the University of London, Birkbeck. An audio recording of the lecture can be found at the bottom.

Today, Plato is probably known best for his work Republic, an outline of a highly idealistic and just city-state. Many remember bits and pieces from their Intro to Philosophy classes, but a criticism that is generally brushed over in discussion of the Republic is Plato’s flat-out renunciation of art. A prerequisite in understanding Plato’s position is realizing the role that art, and specifically poetry, played in Greek culture.

Poetry in the time of Plato played a similar role to the Bible in early American culture. Sections were recited at schools, in homes, and children were expected to memorize various passages for later recitation. Much like the Bible, these poems formed early moral backbones in young Greeks and were very much responsible for the development of certain cultural norms. It wasn’t so much a problem for Plato that art had such a grip on the cultural norms and moral fibers of a society, but rather that the artists themselves had no understanding of what they were representing, and thus inspired corrupt and destructive morals. In the eyes of Plato, the artist or poet was typically not the ideal moral character in any society, and thus should not have been in charge of dictating moral grounds or developing cultural norms. A second complaint Plato had about the role of the artist was that even if they were generally a moral and civilized human being, they were falsely representing reality through their art, something which Plato very much opposed to and which undermined a central theory in Platonism.

A mainstay in Platonic thought is the idea of ideal forms. The Theory of Forms posits that beyond the world we see, touch and hear, there is a world of fundamental reality, of pure truth and form. In this school of thought, the form of a bed, for example, is not its color, material, unmade sheets or mattress, but the essence of “bed” itself. Plato claims that the problem herein is that artists know nothing of form, especially painters. He claims that the painter only knows visual cues and expresses his ideas only through visual representation. Plato says that painters use tricks to inspire error in their weak viewers, making them think that there is a real world inside of the canvas, when there really is not. Dr. Grant elaborates with an example about a painter of a flute versus a flutist. He says that in the eyes of Plato, the flutist has a much deeper understanding of the form of a flute than the artist who represents a flute in a painting. It was this discrepancy in sincerity and honesty of knowledge that disturbed Plato most.

A modern approach in defending Plato’s dislike of art has to do with cognitive biases and more specifically with what we call the Availability Heuristic. The Availability Heuristic is the tendency of people to overestimate the likelihood of an event happening if an example of that event easily comes to mind. Illustrations of this bias include general over-estimations of dying in a plane crash following the attacks on September 11^th, an increased worry about shark attacks after the release of the movie Jaws in 1975 and the general assumption that all celebrities must regularly use cocaine because we see a few cases of celebrity drug binges on television. Similarly, art can affect our perception or reality in a similar way. Dr. Grant claims that perhaps the standardization of “story arcs” in movies and books have given the public an altered and idealized version of how reality works. When life does not, and Dr. Grant notes that it rarely does, follow the standard structure of a Western novel or the story arc of a modern romance film, the cognitive dissonance that arises many times leads to disappointment and sadness.

Duchamp's Urinal

Another example pertaining to art’s stranglehold on modern cultural norms is the accusation that excessive tobacco use in popular films is what led to the wide use of tobacco in everyday life. Still today, public health experts are advocating for the reduction of cigarette use in movies, though efforts have continually come up short due to large bribes from the very informed and aware tobacco companies. This horrible truth highlights why now, more than ever, we may indeed want to question who is doing the teaching in modern culture.

Whether or not Plato was right about art’s destructiveness to the moral fabric of society, the fact is that it does have a large impact. We should then begin to ask, what is the role of art in society? And if that role is very important, who can we trust as an artist? And is art a valuable source of knowledge? For now, these questions will be left out in the open for contemplation and analysis at a later point.

References

Plato’s Philosophy of Art – James Grant Ph.D

One of the things people have not been able to understand, both morally and biologically, is what drives criminal behavior. When people hear about shootings on the news, such as the one in Colorado at the movie premier of The Dark Night Rises, a question that commonly runs through people’s minds, is “Why on earth would someone do that?”  People seem to ask this question with the assumption that the person is at fault for what they have done. However, can we certainly blame the individual for what they did? David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, attempts to unveil the mysteries that surround this question.

In the United States, people are innocent until proven guilty.  Often, it seems as though a person’s fate is predicated on the motives and intentions behind the criminal act.  At first glance, it is easy to blame someone like The Dark Night Rises shooter for his actions. People would say, “Of course he knew what he was doing.”  A criminal is generally aware of the differences between right and wrong; however, it is possible that he may be influenced by a mental health issue, with an inability to control his impulses.  As Eagleman discusses:

“Biological processes describe most or, some would argue, all of what is going on in our brains.  Given the steering power of our genetics, childhood experiences, environmental toxins, hormones, neurotransmitters, and neural circuitry, enough of our decisions are beyond our explicit control that we are arguably not the ones in charge.”

This statement delves into the question of whether or not culpability is the correct question to be asking in our justice system.  Neuroscientists have studied the many different ways in which small changes in the brain can affect our behavior.  Drugs, for example, act on receptors in the brain, triggering or inhibiting certain chemicals that often cause behavioral or emotional changes. In another case, damage to or chemical changes in a specific cortical area, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, makes it difficult to realistically interpret a social situation, which can cause rash decisions.  These are basic examples of how changes to our brain are significant enough to change how we act.

How can we now apply this neuroscience to the evaluation of criminal behavior? How do we know that all criminals are at fault for their behavior? How do we know that the shooter does not have damage to the brain, and how do we know that the damage did not impact his or her decisions?  Asking these questions is crucial for reforming how criminal cases are managed in terms of punishment and treatment. It can be argued that culpability is not the correct question to be asking in courts because it is not necessarily just to blame someone for a crime over which they had no control. As Eagleman states, “The more we discover about the circuitry of the brain, the more the answers tip away from accusations of indulgence, lack of motivation, and poor discipline — and move toward the details of the biology”.  Neuroscience is an emerging field with research applicable to all of human life. It is the mere beginning of discovering how decisions are made, what drives human behavior, and how much freedom humans have in controlling their own behavior.

Sources:

Incognito by David Eagleman

As feminism becomes mainstream, much of scientific research is following suit, from a book being written about female sexuality to mapping out the female orgasm in the brain.

For many feminists, this effort to better understand female sexuality can be a means of empowerment, and it is not surprising that neuroscience research has branched into this area. Many people, rightfully so, believe that to understand our body and mind we must also understand the mechanisms of behavior in the brain. Yet due to its complexity, much of neuroscience research gets misinterpreted, reduced, or even generalized when written about for the public sphere.

Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography, attempts to explain female sexuality by pulling from both subjective accounts and neuroscience to support her arguments. But what exactly does neuroscience research have to contribute to our knowledge of female sexuality? Although Wolf’s attempt at writing such a boldly stated book is admirable, it fell short, especially in terms of the science. Wolf misinterprets the roles of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin in the brain and how they could plausibly influence a female’s romantic relationships.

As Maia Szalavits so eloquently wrote:

“The kind of oversimplification seen in Wolf’s book and, sadly, in many other popular accounts of neuroscience, threatens to perpetuate a psychological myth. Rather than illuminating the complex interplay between mind and body, it portrays human beings — especially women — as automatons, enslaved by brain chemicals we cannot control.”

So what does neuroscience have to say about female sexuality? At last year’s Society for Neuroscience Conference in Washington D.C., a 3D movie was presented of the brain during a female orgasm. Barry Komisaruk, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University, used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to map brain activity in several women. The women were required to masturbate to an orgasm in the fMRI machine. (fMRI results are brain images reflecting activation in specific areas, and these areas are said to be lit up.)

Many areas lit up during the scanning, first, the sensory areas mapped to the genitals in the cortex. Next, the insula cortex, which is an area that is also activated when individuals experience pain. Since an orgasm is pleasurable and not painful, the researchers postulate that this is an activation of inhibitory neurons, because during an orgasm sensitivity to pain is decreased. Then activation migrates to the amygdala: many believe this area is part of the fear circuit, but others believe that it is actually activated in response to all salient information: the latter better explains its activation here. Next, the hippocampus is activated, the area especially devoted to the consolidation of memories. The pre-frontal cortex is also lit up, which could make sense because the individuals were actively pleasuring themselves, a decision requiring the executive function of the PFC. The next two areas of activation are where Wolf misinterpreted the role of the neurochemicals involved: the hypothalamus is activated, excreting oxytocin, and the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, which is largely known as the pleasure center in the brain and once the orgasm is finished the activation subsides.

It is quite fascinating that there is now such openness in science that allows for the study of previously taboo subject matter: the female orgasm. But the findings from neuroscience research should not be reduced to explain matters of the behavior so flippantly. More caution should be taken when writing about the brain especially regarding fMRI studies, because activation in the brain through imaging studies is not quite equatable to behavior. For instance, although the area in the nucleus accumbens is activated during pleasure due to the release of dopamine, it does not mean that dopamine’s release from the nucleus accumbens is solely responsible for female sexual pleasure. As seen from the video, many brain areas are involved in a complex manner during a female orgasm.

Read more:
Naomi Wolf’s Vagina Aside, What Neuroscience Really Says About Female Desire – Time
Naomi Wolf defends Vagina – Slate
The first 3D movie of the female orgasm in the brain – Time

Dr. Frank Werblin at UC Berkeley has dedicated nearly his entire academic life to the study of the eye and visual processing. More recently Dr. Werblin has completed his model of the retinal processing system he has deemed “The Retinal Hypercircuit”. The Hypercircuit itself is made up of the five classical retina cell types: Photoreceptor, Horizontal, Bipolar, Amacrine and Retinal Ganglion Cells, but more recently, a collaborative effort has identified over 50 morphologically different cell types. Of this vast array of unique cell types the most variance falls in the morphology of the Amacrine cells, which offer horizontal properties in the Inner Plexiform Layer between the Bipolar and Ganglion Cells. Although the mechanics behind the Hypercirtuit are fascinating, what I find arguably more important is the output of the system, a topic which Werblin has indirectly stumbled upon, but which I believe could potentially lead to an incredibly progressive line of research.

Amacrine Cell Types

In his studies, Werblin has stumbled upon a couple novel properties of Ganglion Cell output which may hold more information about visual processing than meets the eye. First, he has discovered that the stream of visual information to the brain is actually not a “stream” at all, rather a set of discrete pieces of information sent at different times and with different inherent signal properties. Another finding was that each of the 12 morphologically distinct Ganglion Cells processes only a certain type of stimuli. Perhaps, as an example, one type of Ganglion Cell processes the signal that “something is looming” while another “something is moving to the right”. Although this organization is indeed the work of the Hypercircuit and is mind-blowingly complex, Werblin has shown that the signal leaving the each Retinal Ganglion Cell encodes a certain stimulus quality, discrete in time and purpose. There is a problem with this theory though: We actually perceive a “stream”!

In a recent e-mail correspondence with Dr. Werblin I asked whether there were certain signals that were processed more quickly than others. If you think about it this must be true. When someone jumps out of a bush at night and scares you, you are not at first aware that the person is wearing a red coat, rather that they are there, human and dangerous! This was indeed the response I received from Dr. Werblin. He said enthusiastically, “YES SOME MORE QUICKLY THAN OTHERS” and further that they are probably organized in an evolutionarily advantageous processing order. But again, there is a problem with this, we perceive stream…And not only that but another potent flaw in this discrete logic: If we were to be a constant delay between visual cues, say, we perceive “thereness” before we perceive “color” from birth to death that delay would be constantly growing. Hypothetically, if there were a 0.001ms difference between when we perceive “shape” and “color”, for every second of life we would be adding 0.001ms to the total gap between our perception of shape and color. Visually, we could represent this as two divergent graphs, each having a slope corresponding to the rate at which we perceive that discrete visual quality. As these graphs grow over time they are divergent which means that if our system worked in this simple discrete manner then by late life we would be perceiving the shape of a stimulus, only to receive the color information a day or so later.

Divergence of Visual Stiumulus Quality Arrival Time

So, in essence, it cannot be this simple, there must be something we are missing. Sadly, no research has ever been dedicated to answering this question so for now we can only guess and I think I have a solution that works.

Remember, the visual information is discrete in time and quality. The cut of visual information from the retina to the brain, or what actually makes the signals discrete, is done by a short eye movements called a Microsaccades which occur thousands of times per second. I believe, and again this is all speculation, that these Microsaccades have developed to sync up all of our visual data from all of the different Ganglion Cells. I think that they function to hold the feed of visual information until all of the visual qualities have been analyzed by their respective locations in the brain and the proper reactions have been then initiated. Once our brain has reacted to one of these discrete packages defined by microsaccadic borders our eyes can let up, the saccade can stop, and our eyes can again be soaked in a new set of electromagnetic data for analysis. If we could further analyze which qualities are encoded and sent by the retina in what order we may be able to extract information about downstream processing or evolutionary importance, but until then this idea may have to lie in the realm of mere hypothesis.

Again, I have to stress that this is speculation based on emergent data not intended for this use, but, as a closing remark I would like to mention one thing: When I posited this idea to Dr. Werblin himself he responded with simply, “MAKES SENSE!!!”. Further, for anyone interested in the more detailed workings of the hypercircuit, on The Werblin Lab’s website, which is linked just below, there is a visual walk-through detailing the entire logic and processes behind and within it.

Werblin Retinal Hypercircuit – Werblin Lab

Yes, I know it’s a little bit early to be bringing this up. While the holiday itself may have already passed, many of you are probably still recovering from the hangover that the entire country was forced to endure. I mean really, this isn’t even a good feeling to wake up from this hangover, not that a hangover is something you should usually look forward to. But lets be honest, there is more damage done than overall achievement. This isn’t the morning after where you reminisce about the absolutely stupendous series of events that took place hours ago. This isn’t one of those mornings where you are left in shambles in a downright disgusting alley looking around for your best friend who was lost the day of a wedding. Plain and simple, this is not a good time.

Your groggy, you must resume your daily routine, you have to be at work in an hour, the clock already says your going to be 30 minutes late with the estimated travel time, and you probably gained a minimum of 5 lbs considering how many potatoes you’ve consumed. Hell, you nearly re-enacted the exact opposite of the Irish potato famine in your dining room, not to mention the 20 loafs of bread consumed in ‘this that and another’ stuffing. And then to add insult to injury, you have to open the fridge and think to yourself, “Hmm what the hell am I gonna have for lunch today” right? Wrong! What your really saying to yourself is, “How the hell am I supposed to make turkey or thanksgiving leftovers of any sort sound appetizing again?” And while this may be true, that should be the least of your problems. What your primary worry should be is, “How am I going to stay awake for this crucial late afternoon presentation my boss conveniently scheduled the day after this lovely thanksgiving massacre, when I’m stuffing (pun intended) down marshmallow covered sweet potatoes, [explicit] turkey sandwiches, and some classic Campbell’s green bean casserole at the 2 o’clock lunch break?” Tie all these delightful dishes together and you yourself have found the ultimate thanksgiving myth: Are turkey and all the other thanksgiving fixings responsible for your holiday hangover? Let us find out shall we…

Now let me first jump in and suggest that Thanksgiving isn’t all that bad. It’s a holiday where you have the green light to gorge until you either throw up or the food disappears. Your granted the opportunity to catch up with family that you quite honestly may have never met in your life. And how could you forget that lovely early morning workout known as ‘Black Friday’ in which case as long as your readily equipped with a can of pepper spray and a riot-level baton, you can subconsciously lose the few pounds you may have gained by dropping stacks of money on bargains you may or may not need to take advantage of. Nevertheless this hangover is about the one thing and one thing only: the food.

The Breakdown

Turkey is in most cases the first victim to be accused of causing lethargy during the post-meal recovery, however, is equally to blame as anything else on the dining table. Sure turkey contains L-Tryptophan, an essential amino acid with critical sleep inducing effects, but other foods contain as much if not more of this amino acid. Nevertheless, tryptophan can be metabolized into seratonin and melatonin; the feel good + sleep regulating neurotransmitters that result in the perfect combination to knock you out for a few hours. However, L-Tryptophan must be taken on an empty stomach for drowsiness to occur and the last thing you’d expect to have on Thanksgiving is an empty stomach. So does this make turkey solely responsible for your poultry induced hangover? Not exactly! A carbohydrate-rich meal is what really increases levels of L-Tryptophan and leads to serotonin synthesis in the brain. Breaking it down scientifically, carbohydrates cause the pancreas to secrete insulin. This then leads to higher levels of Tryptophan in the bloodstream which ultimately triggers the synthesis of serotonin; producing that relaxed and drowsy sensation.

But let us consider everything else on the dining table, for example fats. Fats account for the most strain on the digestive system, so your body is going to require that excess energy to break all that down. This loss of energy in other areas of the body is yet another reason you may feel sluggish. Throw in some spiked apple cider or other forms of alcohol for additional nap-factor. Combine it all with excessive over-eating in order to please your crazed relatives who seemingly slaved over the kitchen for each of their homemade delicacies, and you have comatose. Moreover: a big meal + blood being directed to break down the intake = hibernation :)

So what have we learned today. Don’t blame the turkey when you need an excuse for being late to work or your black Friday destination of choice, seeing as all foods play their part in what is the Thanksgiving Day Hangover. Yes, two cans of pepper spray is always better than one when it comes to fending off children for an Xbox 360. Pumpkin pie is a classic and should always be a dessert option, but apple pie cheesecake is better. Fortunately, if you pass out with your shoes on during Thanksgiving, you don’t have to worry about waking up with certain drawings on your face. Finally, turkey leftovers have no limits…seriously! #gettingcreative

Sources:

Myths about Thanksgiving – Scientific American

Turkey makes you sleepy? – About.com

The Tryptophan Effect – TLC

The world seems as though it is starting to move faster and faster, and thus the demand for information and information accessibility is drastically speeding up as well. Modern computers and related technologies, however, have done a remarkable job with both creating and keeping up with the ever growing demand for data and access people need to it. Perhaps one of the interesting innovations on the scene as of late is the emergence of a new form of information sharing and storing colloquially called “cloud computing”.

The term is probably familiar to many people, but the exact logistics of what the “cloud” is and how it works probably isn’t. On the whole, the “cloud” can most simply be thought of as a network over which computing software, resources and information can be simultaneous stored and shared (a perfect example of such a network being is Internet). While such an idea may seem to demolish the personal aspect of personal computing, the silver lining of the “cloud” is it’s ability to make common resources, such as software, “apps” and data readily available to everyone connected to the network from one (or a few) centralized sources. So, instead of…let’s say…Corporation Corp. needing to buy a new copy of Microsoft Office for every computer they have in their building, they can have the software supported on one central server that everyone in the building can be grated access to use. This goes the same for personal data as well; instead of needing to store everything on your computer’s hard drive, you can just upload it to a “cloud” network and have instant access to it everywhere you get internet service! The implications of this are pretty amazing when you consider how this could transform computing on a commercial level. However, one of the most interesting aspects (in my opinion) of the dawn of “cloud” computing comes in at the personal level, specifically the personal level invested in social networking.

Think about how many people you know that have a Facebook or a Twitter account, host their own blog or a Tumblr, have a Spotify or Pandora account. That’s a lot of people, and more importantly, that’s A LOT of data that each of those individuals has generated about themselves floating about on the internet! While the “cloud” may host hundreds of apps, programs and other services, it also hosts A LOT of information about everyone one of those people you just thought about, and about yourself as well most likely (talk about really living with your head in the “clouds”)! While this may seem innocuous enough, expect for those pictures from the Christmas party on your Facebook profile (“it’s okay, I untagged them!”), media entrepreneur and commentator Adam Ostrow has another very interesting take on the “you in the cloud”:

When you think about it, a lot of what Ostrow is getting at is very true (in a rather creepy, Matrix-y sort of way). There is so much data floating around about you, and specifically you, on the internet that it’s mind-boggling. From all the conversations saved on Facebook, to the constant updates on Twitter, the photos of favorite animals and TV shows on Tumblr, catchy songs played over and over again on Pandora…any way you look at it, the internet “knows” A LOT about you, what you do and what you like. Is is so far fetched to think that a program could be designed with a algorithm in place that could allow it to take all that data about you, integrate, and “predict” what you may tweet or post or play next? Personally, I say it isn’t…and, in fact, as programs and mods that Ostrow talked about show, it’s getting very close to being possible (on a basic level of course)!

But what if we could take this beyond the basic? What if this “digital self” strewn all across the internet could be compiled, fine tuned, and modified to create an “artificial self” that, as Ostrow suggests, lives on after you die or in general just lives as you would based off what it knows about you? Think about it, a holographic you (just like Will i Am…funky!) talking and interacting with people, spurting information about what you would probably do today, what LOL cats you thought were funny and could “re-post” to everyone around you, and your latest opinion on so and so’s new album (“you’ve probably never heard of them”). While this may all seem like a simple novelty today, I think this somewhat unsettling topic taps into an even greater implication: as basis for emergent artificial intelligence.

Our usual thoughts about A. I. probably trail off the realms where cybernetic skeletons hunt for future saviors of the human race, rogue computer programs toy with humans, or sassy pixels guide us to the next waypoint on a map. All in all, A. I. is usually consider something strictly robotic and that has to adhere to what the name suggests: the emergence of autonomous thought or “consciousness” from a purely synthetic construct. Indeed, world spanning endeavors such as the BlueBrain project propose to build a fully synthetic brain as a way to best study it’s mysterious functions and, more importantly, shed some light on the elusive topic of consciousness itself. But what if this “cloud” of information could serve as the rough start of something resembling what we want a robotic organism with a metal brain to be one day? While the thoughts of a “digital persona” may be restricted in the sense that it may not be able to “think” but only predict based off previously catalogued information, who is to say that it can’t get better at this? A tweak here and there (and years of work and research later) and we could have an algorithm that takes this compiled information and extrapolates it, compares it to information and exchanges you share with friends and loved ones and employers by accessing conversations, emails and pictures you shared with them all over the internet, adapting itself and getting better and better at predicting patterns that exist within your “internet autobiography”.

Indeed many simple adaptive learning programs already exist, such as the ones worked on by the CELEST lab here at BU for mimicking and modeling speech patterns and sounds, and at MIT’s Personal Robotics Group for modeling and learning fine motor control and movements (as seen in the facial expressions that can be seen modeled by their Nexi robot). Imagine taking that iSelf and integrating it with a machine that could walk and talk like a human being and let it start “predicting” things you would say based off all the information it can access about you, and learn to mimic your words, your likes, your “thoughts” better and better. It may not be HAL 9000 or Sonny, but in a way it is a certain form of artificial intelligence.

While the prospect of a truly text book artificial intelligence is probably still more feasible in the world of science fiction than science fact, the prospect of the “digital you” is very matter of fact in the real world today. Who knows, if programs and algorithms that compile and store information about you like My Next Tweet, and ifidie evolve and integrate more and more with the web, maybe one day we could see something truly new or “intelligent” evolve out of the data stream in a way no one ever thought possible. Perhaps the concept of a viable “artificial sentience” (fans of Jane in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead represent!) is still just as far off…and then again maybe not. If anything though, it may be a good idea to take our heads out of the “cloud” from time to time and truly consider what programs are learning about us, and what information we want to leave for our “digital selves” to compile.

How Cloud Computing Works – How Stuff Works

Role of Expressive Behavior for Robots that Learn from People – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal British Society (Biological Sciences)

A Neural Theory of Speech Acquisition and Production – The Journal of Neurolinguistics

Transforming Robotics with Biologically Inspired Models – Live Science

Philosophy of Mind came into its most compelling forms during the age of modern philosophy beginning with René Descartes. Perhaps infamously, Descartes claimed that mind and body are two distinct substances – philosophical jargon for what exists without the aid of any other thing. For Descartes, the world was clearly and distinctly physical in one sense and entirely mental in another. This seems perplexing, and Descartes did concede that the mind and body were closely intertwined and appeared to act with respect to one another, but his arguments clearly press that they are not causally connected in any way. These notions of dualism seem nearly preposterous with the advent of modern science, but were nonetheless important in developing our thought about the mind in the modern era.

Dualism gave rise to other interesting, yet now strongly refuted movements. One of these was idealism, or the doctrine argued famously by George Berkeley that states that all that exists are either ‘ideas’ or minds that perceive them. In this sense, an idea is defined as that which is perceived, inclusive of information imprinted on the senses, passions and operations of the mind, and conceptions formed by imagination and memory. Importantly, Berkeley argues that these ideas exist ‘in the mind’ exclusively: that is, they are purely mental and all things are simply combinations and aggregations of ideas. These immaterial ‘ideas’ then, are the only objects of human knowledge under idealism, and this theory denies the existence of physical objects entirely! The notion seems preposterous, but there is a very interesting argument found within idealism that can throw our conception of perception for quite the proverbial loop.

One of the main arguments against idealism is the apparent true existence of material objects in the external world. Modern science has allowed us to know with a degree of certainty that we exist in a world that contains physical entities separate from our mental space. Bertrand Russsel, a physicalist, famously made such arguments for the existence of the material world. He coined the term ‘sense data’ to refer to that which we perceive from objects in the environment, e.g. the light rays reflecting off of them. In his thinking, this sense data is caused by an actual material object in the external world, thus endorsing the existence of physical objects. This certainly seems more plausible than idealism given our current level of understanding about the physical world. However, the idealist refute of physicalism draws on an idea called perceptual relativity that is interesting in itself and worth knowing about.

A simple philosophical approach to perception.

Perceptual relativity works similarly to the theory of relativity from physics, but applies it to perceptual content, and it is with this crafty syllogism that an idealist can argue that nothing really exists outside our own minds and ideas. If the idealist accepts that the objects perceived are ideas that exist only within the mind of the perceiver and those things are made up of more ideas which also only exist in the mind of the perceiver, it follows that each perceiver apprehends a different object entirely, rather than a different affection of the same object as a consequence of having different points of view. In other words, each person looking at a common object perceives an entirely unique object, just as if they were looking at two completely different things, e.g. a house and a boat. This seems absurd, but it is nonetheless effective for arguing the physical world out of existence. Taking ideas as exclusively mental phenomena, it remains logically valid to argue that each person perceives a different idea when looking at the same object in that different angles or in different levels of light and shadow make the object of each person’s perception unique to them alone.

Your may see squares A and B as different shades of grey. Look again - they are identical.

While the argument from perceptual relativity is interesting, it remains completely absurd in our modern context. Given that we can forcefully argue for the existence of the material world down to the level of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles that (perhaps) move faster than the speed of light, the idealist well seems to have run dry. It seems evident, if not universally true, that there is an external world filled with a variety of physical objects that exist in a space outside our minds. We may have thoughts of said objects and file them into our minds, but it by no means follows from this that an object solely exists in our minds and is not like the ideas of others about the same object. However, the flip side of this comfortable position would make an assertion about material objects themselves. What are they really made of? On a deep level, they are simply electricity – energetically favorable collisions of packets of energy that are perceived by our sense organs and constructed into a nice, organized stream of consciousness by our brains. To get even loftier, we’ve developed quite a system to differentiate all the different types of electricity out there by giving them names like tree, book or cheeseburger. These are really just ideas about the various clouds of electricity we interact with every day, so how far from idealism have we really come? Are our ideas about voltage simply existing within our own minds as a function of the information our brain is wiling to let us perceive?

What do you see?

References:

Treatise Concerning Human Knowledge – George Berkeley

The Problems Of Philosophy – Bertrand Russell

As I’ve struggled to think of a topic to kick off my sophomore year blog series, I’ve scanned over practically every YouTube video and online article trying to find some sort of inspiration to come up with the next hot topic. While pop culture is at a stand still at this point with the media hiding under every surface because of the heat from “Occupy this, that, and the next big city,” I’ve decided that I’m going to switch up my role as a writer.

Rather than informing you, my lovely audience, about some irrelevant pop culture icon or explaining random biological processes, I’m going to create my own rant about success. However, this wouldn’t belong in the nerve blog if it was just some college student rambling about his own opinions that nobody cares to listen to, so for that reason, I’ll tie in a norepinephrine reference to make it real ‘neuroscience-y.’ So if you’ve made it through my introduction and are interested in seeing what I have to say, please continue. But, if your already making disgruntled looks at your computer screen after the first two paragraphs, now is the time for you to return to Facebook or whatever else you may be doing…

Now lets face the music here. What is life measured on? Is it your ability to obtain materialistic interests, or perhaps your ability to raise your own self-worth by making those around you with different interests feel less deserving or respectable? The question is always going to be biased, but I find this unanswerable question so very apparent in the college setting.

The Crossroads

Thrust into the hustle and bustle of Boston University, students always come up with wonderful and eccentric mnemonic devices for what each school’s acronym stands for. For example, you have the College of General Studies (CGS) here at BU. This lovely school is often the first to be thrown under the bus considering anyone who gets into “Crayons, Glue, and Scissors” is paying full tuition and is presumably not the greatest student. Why? I don’t know, but when your school has nicknames that I can’t even put in this article, I think there’s a problem. Long story short, predisposed ideas of what success should be, how it should take form, and how it should present itself following achievement, are completely skewed.

Consider a day in my life as a pre-medical student. Why am I doing this? Is it because I have a sick desire to ruin my social life, when I could have easily chosen a less demanding path toward my ultimate goal? Not exactly, but my point is right there in the previous line. If success can present itself in any shape or form, am I pursuing a medical career because I’ve been brain-washed my entire life to do so, or am I doing it because it’s a passion of mine? What I’m trying to discuss here is probably made more clear in this video below:

So you see, success is really about finding the balance between your innate talents and how you can apply them to a job setting. Whether that be through choice a, b, or c, success lacks the boundaries which often prevent people from even attempting to pursue their dreams. Coupled with a healthy dose of norepinephrine (see I told you), the neurotransmitter that is responsible for both energy and drive, and a tablespoon of serotonin for emotional stability, I encourage anyone and everyone to go out there and do what they do best. As the old saying goes, live today as if it were tomorrow…

Understanding Neurotransmitters – International Health Supplement Education Foundation