On January 17th, the talented Lazaro Arbos, a 21-year-old from Florida, went viral on Youtube for his amazing performance during his American Idol audition. The most impressive part of his beautiful voice? The fact that it was stutter-free.

During normal speech, Arbos involuntarily makes long pauses and extended vowels, using his hands to trace the words he is trying to convey. However, as soon as he starts to sing, the difficulty disappears. His new Twitter fans are calling it a divine miracle, but the phenomenon is well-known to many stutter sufferers – industry legend has it that B.B.King and Carly Simon were among them!

What’s going on here? The disorder is highly varied in its presentation and severity, so science is far from a consensus about the etiology, though there have been some compelling findings. One 2003 study by Van Borsel et al. at the Ghent University Hospital in Belgium showed a marked increase in activation of the right hemisphere during speech in fMRI studies of patients with the speech disorder; more so than in normal speakers, leading to the idea that perhaps this over-activation is interfering with the fluent production of speech on the left. Specifically, a study of stutterers in Frankfurt, Germany found that activity in the right frontal operculum was negatively correlated with the severity of stuttering symptoms in patients, suggesting a compensational role. This area has been associated with timing tasks in speech in healthy controls, adding further possible significance to the specific dysfunction in verbal timing seen in stutterers.

So why was Arbos able to sing Simon and Garkfunkel without a hitch? David Ward, the author of “Stuttering and Cluttering: Frameworks for Understanding and Treatment,” suggests several general theories. Singing and other lyrical modes of linguistics tend to be the domain of the right hemisphere, therefore in stutterers the increased right hemisphere participation is in place to facilitate  fluent language production. Many therapies for language-center damage use music as a way to access communication. Another theory proposes that perhaps music’s rhythmic nature increases fluency by providing timing and changing (lengthening) the patterns of airflow during singing. Finally, from a more psychological perspective, Ward suggests that perhaps singing allows the stutterer to take on a different persona, leaving their speech deficit behind.

Whatever the cause (or the cure) of stuttering is, its seemingly magical disappearance during Arbos’ audition made for great TV, and surely will propel him to the final rounds of America’s favorite talent competition.

Sources:

Florida man with stutter Lazaro Arbos impresses on ‘American Idol’ – The Miami Herald
21-Year-Old With Stutter Wows ‘American Idol’ Judges – mashable.com
fMRI of developmental stuttering: A pilot study – Brain and Language
Stuttering: a view from neuroimaging – The Lancet
Stuttering and Cluttering: Frameworks for Understanding and Treatment - David Ward

Recently, 23 year old Kim Suozzi who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer was seeking financial help for cryonic suspension.  Diagnosed with an aggressive form of Glioblastoma multiforme, Kim died on January 17th and spent the final two weeks of her life at a hospice in Scottsdale, Arizona, close by to the cryopreservation center that she chose.

Suozzi was seeking financial help for her suspensial, which proved controversial but is now settled since the Alcor board agreed to fund her cryopreservation as a charity case, stating “The board accepted the CEO’s recommendation to accept Kim Suozzi as a charity case, based on arrangements that will reduce Alcor’s costs. The full allocation of $25,000 to the patient care trust fund will be made. Alcor members have contributed to the fundraising effort to enable Kim to be cryopreserved.” More controversial, however, is the possiblilty that many terminally ill patients might seek preservation as charity cases, potentially impacting the viability of the entire operation. Furthermore, cryopreservation is not a cure in itself, terminally ill patients could possibly not be the best test subjects for a successful preservation and revival simply due to the chance of succeeding.

The board also passed the following in addition to Ms. Suozzi’s preservation: “Alcor shall tender to the PCT (patient care trust) the full amount of the current PCT minimums for all underfunded cases, as soon as practicably consistent with Alcor’s cash flow needs, except to the extent that the PCT board waives some amount. Any amount not immediately paid shall be recorded as a liability to be discharged as soon as practicably possible.” It seems like Alcor’s goal is to preserve more people in order to help potentially cure them rather than those who can simply afford it. An altruistic goal most people would agree with.

Most importantly, Alcor CEO Max More wrote “If cryonics is to become more widely accepted in the general scientific community, we need to add to existing evidence for the effectiveness of our procedures. One way to do this is to gather more data during all stages of stabilization, transport, and cryoprotection. We can also gather evidence of the quality and effectiveness of brain perfusion and structural preservation by routine CT scanning of neuro patients and by conducting biopsies of the spinal cord and possibly other samples for all patients. The board expressed general support for carefully moving forward with this, ensuring that members understand what we propose to do.” The goals of Alcor are part of a broader one of the entire scientific community, and that goal is a better understanding of the brain. Whatever commercial or charity enterprise that gets us closer to that goal is one I can support.

Sources:

Alcor 2012 Stategy Meeting — Kim Suozzi’s Cryonic Suspension Funded and More – H+ Magazine

Futurists set up charitable fund to help terminally ill woman get cryonically preserved – io9

Report on 2012 Alcor Strategic Meeting – Alcor News

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

It’s Halloween, folks, and you know what that means: Jell-O molds of brains and punn-y costumes (Freudian Slip, anyone?), right? Amirite? Okay, maybe that’s just me, whatever, guys. But I can name at least one cherished Halloween pastime that tends to be pretty popular across the board, and that’s the horror movie marathon.

As we learned earlier this month, the mechanisms by which our brains process fear are intricate yet animalistic—after all, we’re by far not the only species that experiences the sensation of fear. Though what may be a uniquely human instinct is the propensity to actually seek out fear (and the sensation of arousal that inherently comes with it)—a concept illustrated nicely in this piece from The Dana Foundation. This purposeful seeking-out of fear-inducing stimuli is undoubtedly present in the act of partaking in the aforementioned horror movie marathon, and a particular subset of said scary flicks (and the characters therein) will serve as the main focus of this post.

There are lots of types of scary movies out there, from the psychological thriller to the slasher film and everything in between, but today, for the purposes of this entry, our interests lie in the psychopathic killers. Whether your allegiances fall with Freddy Kruger or Jason Voorhees, the psychopath is a popular character in cinema and in popular culture in general. But what makes this character profile so enjoyable and even attractive at times? And furthermore, what can we learn from the psychopaths among us?

A recent piece in Scientific American covered a conversation between psychologist Kevin Dutton of the University of Oxford and actor Michael C. Hall, the man behind America’s favorite serial killer, Dexter Morgan, of the hit Showtime series, Dexter. In his remarks and in his new book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us, Dutton asserts that possessing some of the qualities of a psychopath—ruthlessness, charm, inflated self-worth, lack of remorse and empathy, and the ability to manipulate others, to name a few—might not be all that bad.

Conventionally, we picture psychopaths as horrifying, antisocial killers and menaces to society, but Dutton argues that psychopathic tendencies fall on a spectrum (much like other psychological disorders), and those individuals that fall on the lower end can actually use these traits to their advantage. One of the examples he uses in his book (an excerpt of which can be found here, and is definitely worth a look), is that of a neurosurgeon. Ruthlessly cool and focused under pressure, and immune to emotional flair-ups of empathy and compassion in times of stress, the neurosurgeon (or any surgeon, for that matter) is a great example of someone who may possess psychopathic tendencies on some low level. Another prime example presented by Dutton is the business mogul—in order to climb to the top of a huge conglomerate, it’s imperative that some insensitivity, cutthroat ambition, and ruthlessness come into play.

In the context of the discussion, Michael C. Hall echoed Dutton’s claims that psychopathic tendencies can be a plus, saying he envies some of Dexter’s qualities, stress-management especially. And though we may not realize it consciously, the acceptance and even embracing of psychopathic traits isn’t uncommon. In his book, Dutton makes reference to an informal poll conducted in one of his classes in which students were presented with the aforementioned personality profile and asked what line of work might best suit someone who fits that description. Not surprisingly, their answers included CEO, spy, surgeon, and politician, as well as assassin and serial killer.

So what does this mean for the non-psychopathically inclined among us? And what does it mean for those who possess some of these traits? Could surgeons and CEOs be one step away from being the next Dexter Morgan or Hannibal Lecter? Probably not. As for everyone else, maybe we should try embracing some of our psychopathic tendencies, if we have them. It’s no surprise that characters like Dexter are so appealing to so many people (myself included)—though Dexter is on what Dutton would consider the higher end of the spectrum in terms of intensity of psychopathic qualities, a lot of those qualities are admirable ones, and ones that we would tend to seek out. So who knows, maybe you could be a psychopath, too.

Sources:

“Dexter” and British Psychologist Ask: Who Wants to be a Psychopath? – Scientific American

What Psychopaths Teach Us about How to Succeed [Exceprt] – Scientific American

Desperately Seeking Stimulation: Fear, Reward, and the Human Need for Novelty – The Dana Foundation

WHEW! Nothing like drawing inspiration from some late-night Youtube videos! Especially when my editor has to: 1) Make sure that this post is indeed relative to neuroscience 2) Verify that I’ve used proper grammar 3) Make media changes such as share links etc. 4) And have all of this done within a few hours during which I’ve procrastinated until the midnight hours of the new work week. Apologies to my editor…but man, am I pumped for what I’ve got in store with this post! Let’s get started shall we?

The cream of the awkward crop

Who doesn’t love awkward situations? Well, actually, most people probably don’t like awkward situations. But why…I tend to find it hilarious when there is so much discomfort in a room that it can be cut with a knife. In my opinion, that’s what makes “awkward” so exciting. It’s a moment where everyone is out of their comfort zone, nobody is safe, nobody can run and hide, and often nobody knows what to do. For example, consider the harmonious situation when the distraught, balling girlfriend confronts her cheating boyfriend.

Prior to the confrontation, everyone is trying to enjoy themselves, stirring up social conversation via the flow of cheap beer and mixed cocktails. The music is playing, the light machine is making a twenty dollar attempt at adding ambiance, and the owner of the apartment is wondering how their casual get together turned into “GET OUT, I don’t know you!” Suddenly, the cord connecting the Ipod to the speakers is ripped out, the lights are turned on, and the fun begins. The balling girlfriend confronts her cheating boyfriend in the middle of the dance floor, screeching “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!” Flabbergasted, the seemingly soon to be ex-boyfriend pushes the girl he is currently talking to away, bracing himself for the wrath of a broken heart. Meanwhile, everyone in the room has now entered ‘awkward,’ that unknown gap in time where indecision meets emotional response. Should we feel bad for her? Shouldn’t we look at his side of the story? Flashback to reality, where all of this is going on in everyone’s heads, leaving a dance floor filled with blank stares and no sudden movements. Everyone at the beer pong table has now focused their attention on the dynamic duo, while the ping pong ball continues its final bounces, having rolled onto the floor. And then, there is me. I’m in the corner of the room, literally dying of laughter inside, desperately trying to hold back tears of utter joy for this moment of awkward has once again proved itself to be entertainment gold!

Now where were we? Ahhh yes, awkward and neuroscience. There is an emotional response that is tied to any situation, and in return, this response directly effects our decision-making processes. In the initial moment before making a choice, we consider the risk and rewards associated with both options. For example, if I decide to study for an exam, my reward will be a good grade. What is so beautiful about awkward situations is that they stress the internal conflict of risk and reward to a higher degree due to emotional responses. In coordination with the basic neural circuitry that is active when making a decision, awkward situations bring to light the competing emotional responses that are associated with both social norms and self-subjective response. Consider the brilliance of Andrew Hales in this video:

Genius, right? The scientific breakdown behind most of the responses seen within the video is simple. When Andrew approaches the individual, as if he is going to high-five them, basic social cues are signaling neural circuity to respond, thus they accept Andrew’s social behavior and attempt to high-five him back. However, Andrew adds the awkward element into the situation by having his friend (the individual he actually wants to interact with) approach at the last minute, and more importantly, out of the view of the ‘random’ person. The coolest part about this is the reaction of the random person after they’ve found out that they were not suppose to be involved at all. The application of the cognitive strategies seen during this awkward emotion generation process is known as emotion regulation, which results in an alteration in the affective experience of emotional stimuli. Broken down, the competing emotional responses: wanting to satisfy the salient cues of Andrew (by reciprocating the high five) vs. emotional indecision (attempting to play it off as a joke) demonstrate the risk and rewards of social behavior. Pretty cool huh?

If you’d like to see more videos, definitely check out Andrew’s Youtube channel where you can see more awkward scenarios, like cutting people in line to loudly complimenting people. A personal favorite of mine is the Almost Picking Up Chicks video.

Sources:

The Influence of Emotional Regulation and Decision Making – PMC

Sorry kid, you're doin' it wrong (source: http://shechive.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/halloween-babies-3.jpg?w=500&h=500)

With Halloween fast approaching, people are going to get scared. Zombies, ghosts, and werewolves will soon be stalking the streets of Boston, frightening innocent college students. Yet, when we are jumping back in fright from costumed pranksters, what is really happening inside of our brains? For years, it was considered fact that the amygdala, a part of the limbic system in our brain that processes components of emotion, was solely responsible for this reaction. Yet, this simplistic explanation doesn’t truly explain was happens inside our brains every time we feel fear. To investigate what really happens, we need to first talk about anxiety.

Anxiety is similar to fear, though some experts say that anxiety is less centralized and has less of a focus. There are chemicals, called anxiogenics, in the brain that can create a heightened anxious response in the brains of humans and animals. Conversely, there are neurotransmitters known as anxiolytics that help to reduce anxiety. Benzodiazepines, a class of drug often prescribed for anti-anxiety, are actually exogenous forms of natural anxiolytics.

When a frightening stimulus is first presented, it has been postulated that it is not the amygdala that first responds, but rather a small area of the pons called the locus cereleus. Activity in this region activates a stress response that sends messages to other parts of the brain, including the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. This has beed dubbed the “fear circuit.”

The pathways of this circuit have been studied using methods such as electrical brain stimulation and investigations into the deficits found when brain areas are lesions. The pathways have been mapped as such: as the locus cereleus receives sensory information from the thalamus, it sends out stress signals to the other parts of the brain, including the hippocampus. These stress signals help to activate different neural pathways in the amygdala that produce a number of natural fear responses- the “freezing” in fright behavior, adrenocortical hormone activation, and a number of other autonomic nervous system responses to threatening stimuli.  In addition, the amygdala contains the fear chain by sending signals to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hypothalamus.

The prefrontal cortex, in the forebrain, is mostly responsible for “higher thinking” or the capabilities we consider to be purely human. Yet, it is also clear that the prefrontal cortex is also highly involved in emotional processing. Lesion studies have shown that the right (but not nearly as much in the left) PFC is involved with anxiogenesis and it is thought that the PFCis responsible for the mental interpretations of fear.

the fear circuit in response to a frightening stimulus; source: http://creatingbettersoftware.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-software-became-expensive.html

The hypothalamus, often thought of as the director of whole-body endocrine effects, is the next major stop in the fear circuit. A specific area of the amygdala called the BNST sends out messages to the lateral hypothalamus and other areas that activates specific panic responses, part of sympathetic nervous system response to threatening stimuli. Given the answers we have now, this completes the major immediate processes of the fear circuit- in actuality, there are surely much more complex, long-lasting effects of fear-feeling in the brain, already a sophisticated field of study very appropriate to this time of year. Happy halloween kids, post in the comments below costume ideas  that you think will elicit the best fear-response!

Source:

The biology of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors – Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience

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

Are there REALLY parts of the brain dedicated to categories of thoughts like some reports say?

The field of neuroscience has undoubtedly expanded over the past two decades, and the explosion of all this cutting-edge discovery has inevitably lead to its proliferation in our culture. However, the spread of interest to the general population has begun to instigate the problematic phenomenon of what some scientists deem “neurobabble”. It refers to the overly simplified and misinterpreted information that many contemporary writers use to appeal to the public. Neurobabble in recent pop-science books and articles often engenders false conclusions and denies proper understanding about how the brain really works.

Society’s absorption of this ‘neurobabble’ has somewhat elevated the brain into a cultish status, mythologizing its functions and romanticizing the promise of research applications. Anyone could walk into a bookstore now and come across a magazine article exhibiting vibrantly colored images of brain scans coupled with a beguiling title such as “The Part of The Brain Responsible for Being in Love!” It’s the kind of phrase that fools people into thinking a psychological event can be equivalently replaced by a biological one. And it attracts many of us because it appears to offer explanatory answers to the questions we really care about. But to believe that something as ambiguous and abstract as love can be simply defined as a localized function is not only flawed reasoning, but utterly unsupported by the neuroscientific evidence of the brain as an extremely interconnected and dynamic network.

The media is particularly fond of fMRI studies because the visual aspect seems to make the claims of neurobabble more persuasive. One fallacy people unfamiliar with neuroscience are apt to assume is that the particular part of the brain that “lights up” in the MRI  scanner is accountable for the behavior, emotion, etc. of the person inside. But the machines aren’t directly measuring any real-time, chemical or electrical neural activity; rather, they measure changes in oxygen content in blood. The more neurons fire, the more O2 is used. So activity in the area is being measured, but there’s always ‘background noise’.

Imagine a scenario in which two different men volunteer for an experiment in which they both view pictures of their wives in an fMRI, and those conducting the study look at the areas thought to be involved in ‘empathy’ or ‘love’ based on previous research. Firstly, all brains are unique. There is a lot of variation in background brain activity, including how susceptible neural patterns can be to experimental conditions. Inside an enormous, loud, hollow machine certainly isn’t a natural environment. So can we really conclude that one man loves his wife more than the other because of the results?

Because of the rich technical and conceptual sophistication involved in the questions we really want answered, it’s tempting even for specialists to make overstatements and say things that make no sense. David Eagleman (a neuroscientist at the Baylor college of Medicine) had said in his book “Incognitio: The Secret Lives of The Brain” that neuroimaging scans may someday be used to identify those with the potential to commit crime. He goes as far to say that (quite Orwellian-ly) “some people will need to be taken off the streets on the basis of their fMRIs”.

Pop culture loves twisting neuroscience!

A pod cast by Rationally Speaking & NYC Skeptics used a metaphor to depict the manner of how the brain works and shed light on the neurobabble issue:

Suppose you were running a desktop computer and you were observing which components of the hardware were active when a procedure (we’ll call it Graphics Displays) was carried out. You notice one part of the computer is active when graphics are displayed, but when that active part is taken out, they cannot be displayed. So you assume THAT component causes the display. But… it could be that the graphics are run by another component, but the process of graphics display is so energy intensive that it produces an amount of heat that activates the computer’s cooling device, always active during graphics. So that initial component could actually be for regulating the machine’s temperature, and some automatic safeguards recognized its absence, preventing graphics displays.

The moral of the metaphor is that correlation never implies causation. As a neuroscience student myself, I’ll urge you to be wary of bad claims. Ask yourself questions when you come across them.  Here’s a reliable method: Assume the brain is the most complex object in the entire universe. If a claim about it sounds too simple to be true, then it probably is!

Neurobabble obscures deeper significance of brain science – UCLA Today
The End of Evil?
Neuroscientists suggest there is no such thing. Are they right? – Slate
Neurobabble – Rationally Speaking

The one day of the year dreaded by the many people in, out of, and between relationships has come and passed. Being a huge neuroscience nerd, I spent much of February 14th searching for articles and scholarly papers about the neuroscience of love, sex, attraction, friend zones, what have you. But nothing really blew me away. In my third year of studying neuroscience, I have a relatively extensive knowledge of the brain. I certainly have heard all about neurochemicals being released during sex, when you’re constantly thinking (to the point of obsessing) about that special someone, and even when you just look at a photograph of them. And sure, it’s cool the first five times you read about how fascinating oxytocin and serotonin are. But I’m over hearing it.

And then I thought about long-term relationships that reach the point of boredom. We all understand the ‘honeymoon phase’ of a relationship—we all have felt those butterflies in our stomachs and remember constantly thinking of our crush *ahem* Ryan Gosling *ahem*. But only those in the very committed long-term relationships understand what happens after this phase (which generally lasts for two years, believe it or not). You get comfortable together; certain boundaries that are present in the ‘honeymoon phase’ are crossed and you’re both fine with it. You accept that those butterflies got tired of flapping their wings and they’re ready to settle down at the bottom of your stomach while you settle down with your sweetheart. So how can we rekindle these relationships that have slowed down?

Here comes the good stuff guys- no more mushy gushy relationship business; we are now approaching neuroscience territory—neuroenhancement of love. Huh? Yeah, that’s right, researchers have been trying to figure out ways to salvage a failing relationship or marriage by playing with your brain chemicals.

Some of these are expected. For example, increasing pheromones or testosterone in both men and women also increases sexual desire, activity, and satisfaction. An increase in oxytocin may ‘reinforce pair bonds by giving the right drugs to subjects while they are in close contact with their partner.’ Yet there are some that will most likely produce controversy. Entactogen drugs encourage sociability, emotional connections and openness, and a decrease in anxiety. What are entactogens, you ask? An example: ecstasy (MDMA). Considering the stigma that ecstasy has attained, it seems unlikely to me that this will ever be an option for the forborne lovers. Another interesting prospect is corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). Studies have found that ‘upregulating the CRH receptor may promote partner attachment.’ But this one seemingly works by increasing fears of separation and being alone, so it has some pretty negative psychological side effects, such as depression and anxiety.

I think it’s important to assess the neuroethics of this whole shebang. Sure, committed companionship is important. But should we be playing around with our brain chemicals because we aren’t giving off or receiving the kind of emotional response we’re looking for in a relationship?

The Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage – University of Oxford
Neuroscientist Ryan Gosling Blog – Thank you, Tumblr