Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Part two

Continued from [ part one ] below:   Now I want to talk about ‘discourse analysis’ and what it reveals about communication over social networks. Discourse analysis is the branch of psychology dealing the way people process information from what they hear and read. I think it’s telling. Face to face communication is a probabilistic event. Language is a relatively narrow band of communication that can only suggest what the speaker has in mind. This presents the listener with a range of possibilities. Communication is successful only when the listener infers the most likely meaning intended by the speaker. Ordinary conversation is generally successful because we have context to help guide us along. We rely on facial expressions, intonation, emphasis, location and other visual and auditory cues. However, where ordinary communication is probabilistic, text messaging is a crapshoot. Text is cryptic. Context is lost and we rely on memory to supply the missing cues. However, memory is fallible. Research in discourse processing has shown that the biggest piece of missing information we supply is the intention of the speaker ..and it’s their intention that we most often get wrong. We perceive threat where none was intended. Offense at what may have only been sarcasm. By nature, the flow of conscious experience is displaced over social networks. This simply means it occurs outside the context of our immediate situation. That’s the beauty of the Internet. It allows us to share experiences that are ‘displaced’ in time and space with users from all over the world. It also places a heavy burden on text comprehension, which is much less developed than speech comprehension in the language centers of the brain. I believe this will provide a rich source of field-observation for the study of human consciousness for years.

Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Anthropology:   I’m going to start with what I know about anthropology, which isn’t much but I feel it’s relevant. In my view, facebook is a fairly tame and nontoxic community – unlike others I’ve been in (such as high school, workplaces, dinner tables, neighborhoods, yahoo chat rooms). Without a constitution or written protocol, congeniality prevails. I think this says something about human nature.  Social networks are tuned to the way we are wired.  Like taking the first step out of a cave and into a larger community where there’s no anonymity – it’s best not to offend anyone. Privacy is a recent development. Tribal villages are more typical of human existence. Just look at the indigenous people of the Amazon. They live in circular settlements with one wall surrounding the perimeter, but no walls on the inside. They’re never alone and everyone can see what everyone else is doing. It pays to be on-guard and congenial otherwise you risk offending others and being banished from the tribe. In the Amazon, that means certain death. I believe that’s where the fear of abandonment comes from. I’m not talking about some trendy catch-phrase from pop psychology. It’s built into our constitution because it was essential for our survival. The threat of death-by-banishment is no longer real but the feelings certainly are. So, on facebook ..we tread carefully.

Behavioral science:   Psychologists have known for a long time now that there are few things more rewarding in life than validation from our peers. It beats television and ice cream and it’s the motivation underlying most communication. That’s why Twitter is so widely popular. Without let-up, it provides a constant stream of validation for every thought that crosses our brain.

“Still your mind and you will not age as fast as people whose minds are constantly struggling to hold their personalities together.” 

This is a Buddhist recommendation aimed at countering a very active function of the human ego:  impression management.   We put a lot of effort into presenting the right ‘persona’ .. or the way we want others to see and remember us. There’s nothing spontaneous going on there. The messages we broadcast are anxiously crafted to make us look the way we want to be perceived. Don’t believe me ..? Look no further than politicians approaching an election year. Newt Gingrich recently found religion because it sends the right message to Christian conservatives. Mitt Romney has ‘reinvented’ himself to look stupid and appeal to the average voter. What people choose to share on facebook in no way presents the whole picture. It’s not our nature.

Extraterrestrial adaptation

Robert Sapolsky

If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. you’d think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this ‘adaptation by behavioral manipulation’ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!

Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.

Bilingual advantage

“If you walk into a room, where a million things can attract your attention, how does your mind pay attention to what you need to pay attention to without getting distracted?” Dr Ellen Bialystok [link]

How we manage to stay ‘tuned-in’ is one of the miracles of modern humanity. Although we take it for granted, not all species are so equipped. The ability to focus and quickly switch focus is part of a legacy system handed down from our ancestors [link]. Neuroscience locates this system in the prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain responsible for focusing attention, ignoring distractions and holding different scenarios in mind while trying to stay clear. According to the Journal of Neurology [link], bilinguals have an advantage doing this that lasts a lifetime. People who can hold a mental narrative in two languages ..and choose the one that best expresses their thoughts in conversation, also excel at swiftly deciding what’s important in situations where they’re presented with relevant and irrelevant information.

Neuro speculation

The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of gray matter deep inside the cerebral cortex that plays a central role in self-control. It helps keep emotional expression in-compliance with culturally accepted norms. When damaged, an individual has difficulty with impulse-control and restraint from inappropriate and aberrant behavior [link]. Over the past decade, research has uncovered a lot more about the amygdala and how it processes signals from our social environment [link].

I have a theory. I believe that some social signals affect the amygdala differently than others. Some elicit greater restraint and vigilance while others offer release from conditioned restraint and vigilance. Neuroscience informs us that when the amygdala is surgically removed, animals show signs of inappropriate affect ..boredom where there should be fear and hypersexual activity where there is no enticement [link]. I predict that if you housed a normal group of animals where they could watch the frenetic activity of the amygdala-impaired group ..they too would show signs of inappropriate affect. Observation alone would induce the same effect as impairment. MRI studies already show heightened activity in response to authority and perceived threat. I believe they would reveal another type of activity in response to collapse of authority and diminished threat. My theory says that the amygdala would then act to release spectators from conditioned inhibition and give license to repressed impulses and sexual aggression.

This may explain the high incident of sexual assault committed by revelers celebrating the downfall of President Mubarak in Egypt [link]. Festivities associated with a break in the social order released a frenzy of predatory sexual behavior in a few that quickly spread to other participants in the crowd. Predatory behavior of this sort has also been observed at soccer matches and in crowds celebrating at the Rose Parade in California. I believe that lowered internal restraints coupled with the lax enforcement of sexual harassment laws in Egypt may have contributed to the chain of events observed. By no mean am I offering excuses for what occurred, I’m only trying to draw a possible connection between real-world events and accounts of aggression reported from the lab.

My heart goes out to the CBS correspondent who fell victim to it.

Avatar

At the University of Geneva in Switzerland, researchers performed a series of studies where they put subjects in a computer generated ‘avatar’ moving through virtual reality [link]. Each subject was fitted with a bicycle cap containing sensors to monitor brain activity and exposed to different digital, 3D environments through head-mounted stereoscopic goggles. What they found were significant changes in the brain's temporo-parietal and frontal regions – the parts of the brain responsible for integrating signals from the body with vision to produce a coherent perception of where we are in relation to our surroundings. Their results expand on clinical studies done in neurological patients reporting out-of-body experiences. Findings of a neurobiological basis for the sense of ‘self’ could lead to advances in the fields of kinesiology, neuro-rehabilitation, and pain treatments. They also contribute to understanding neurological and psychiatric diseases, and have relevance in the fields of robotics and virtual reality.

Neural regenerative training

“The number and size of neural-pathways and the integrity of myelination are important for rapid conduction in the nervous system. They are especially important for the accurate coding and transmission of speech signals.” ~ Dr Paula Tallal (left)

Continued from a previous entry ~> [link]  I leave Esalen and head north on Highway One to UC San Francisco where Paula Tallal and Mike Merzenich are developing neural retraining programs for dyslexia. I have to admit that it felt a little surreal being here after spending 14 days on the Big Sur coast. But I’m thankful to Portia for giving me this opportunity. Anyway, I listen as they explain how dyslexia is caused by “ ..under-developed neural-connections in the auditory system.” [link]. This makes it difficult for children to detect “..the subtle cues that signal the onset of phonemes.” Phonemes are the shortest and most ephemeral units of speech. They require high-speed network-connections to detect. Although they may not be as important for speech recognition ..phonemic awareness is definitely required for reading comprehension. This is especially true when children are trying to decipher words for the first time. They tell me that, by testing children’s’ ability to recognize properties of speech, it is now possible to detect dyslexia as early as the first year of life. Well ahead of reading instruction. They have developed a training program that can re-activate the growth of neuro-pathways for phonemic awareness. They have found that intervention later in life can also help regenerate neural growth if the training approximates the early learning environment of a child. In other words, neuro-regenerative training can be successful through adolescence and possibly adulthood if it is presented in a manner that’s both socially interactive and engaging

Training: They have developed a program of intense ‘sensory discrimination’ training to re-activate neural-growth. Training begins by presenting phonemes in an exaggerated manner. This means they sound louder, last longer and arrive farther apart than phonemes in regular speech. During a typical training session, they ask students to identify which phoneme they recognize from a series they’d previously heard. As students progress, the phonemes are softened, shortened and presented at a rate that more closely resembles the flow of speech. To make it both engaging and rewarding, they hosted training on an interactive computer game. Improvements were verified using standard reading tests and brain imaging. MRI scans actually showed progressive differentiation of neurons in the language centers of the brain [link]. I was stoked (because I’m weird like that). However, the next question I have to ask is whether or not these results hold-up outside the lab, where events in life can quickly overtake the best-laid plans of neuroscience practitioners.

to be continued ..

Neural regenerative training

Dr Patricia Kuhl

I met Portia Iversen while attending a writing workshop at the Esalen Institute in November, 2003. She was a screenwriter by day ..and a neuroscientist by night. I mean she would literally launch web crawlers overnight to see what research they found by morning that might help her son Dove who was somewhere on the spectrum of autistic disorders. When she discovered how little information there was, she started a foundation that awarded grants for research in the neurobehavioral sciences. The money came from the Hollywood movie industry, of which she was a member, and grants were awarded in the millions of dollars to research centers across the country that met two criteria: 1) they must have a reputation for working on developmental disorders and 2) they must be investigating neuro-regenerative practices. Needless to say, she got their attention. Universities around the country started ramping-up their labs to find techniques to help children suffering from either autism, dyslexia or attention deficit with the belief that these may not be discreet afflictions, but may fall somewhere on a distribution of early developmental imbalances. Today Portia is not only a screenwriter, but an author and member of the National Institute of Health. Her story is definitely worth reading [link].  Later at the lodge, she hands me a journal article and asks me to come up to speed so I could help her screen applicants. This led to a three-year collaboration where I learned about groundbreaking research in the neurosciences that literally blew me away. Since this is my first record of events, I’m going through my notes and starting from the beginning .. with the journal article Portia handed me.

Kuhl (2003) Foreign language experience in infancy [link]: It is generally accepted that phonemic awareness is ‘tuned’ by a child’s native language during the first year of life [link]. Initially we are capable of discerning differences between phonemes over a wide range of languages (known as the principle of equipotential). By the end of the first year however, the neural-pathways responsible for discerning native phonemes get established; and the pathways for discerning foreign phonemes, not available in the child’s verbal environment, get ‘pruned away’ by a process called juvenilization [link]. Language development is clearly an expression of the interaction between embryonics and environment outside the womb.

Findings: Dr Patricia Kuhl discovered that short-term exposure to foreign languages at nine months can significantly re-juvenilize areas of the child’s developing brain and help them retain the neuro-pathways for foreign phonemes (in this case English and Mandarin Chinese). Early language intervention can significantly alter the development of a child’s speech perception.

Naturalistic observation: Dr Kuhl cites evidence of neuro-plasticity in the wild. Zebra-Finches can be sufficiently influenced to override the innate preference for songs of their own species and learn the songs of a ‘foster’ Bengalis Finch that nurtured them.

Dyslexia: There is growing evidence to support the view that dyslexia starts out as an imbalance in the development of the auditory system. Neural pathways for phonemic awareness do not fully develop. Although it may not be severe enough to interfere with ordinary speech perception ..it can present problems with reading comprehension later in life [link]. Dr Kuhl cites studies being done at UC San Francisco that show intervention techniques that can: 1) enhance childhood auditory-development and 2) provide neuro-retraining exercises for later remediation [link] and [link].

continued ~> [link]

Receptivity theory

Dr Roger Schank

I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly ‘consistent and uncompromising’ on issues are slower to adapt to change and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, “I think inflexibility leads to arrested development”. Roger Schank has a model of speech comprehension that says sometimes people only tune-in long enough to retrieve the most likely script from memory [link]. After that, communication becomes a process of listening for information to fill-in the missing pieces. Tom Trabasso says script-based processing is a useful strategy but only when matters are highly predictable ..like listening to a kidnapping story where you can safely narrow your attention to the parts that talk about “what kind of force was used” or “what the kidnapper’s demands are.” My theory says that over-reliance on script-based processing is sort of like Procrustes bed in Greek mythology .. reception becomes limited to what conforms to a standard set of precedents in the listeners head. The rest is quickly dismissed as either immaterial, inconceivable or unacceptable (take for example John Boehner’s “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearce’s claim that all opposing views are “treasonous”). I talked to Dr Thompson about it. Although he generally considers theories a dime a dozen, he thinks it merits attention and even suggested some ‘assessment tools’ I could use to measure ‘willingness to yield’ on issues. I didn’t think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now I’m interested in getting started and seeing what turns-up. Perhaps it’s already been done. I mean, you’d think it’d be a factor in Alzheimer’s or something. Considering the political atmosphere around here there’s bound to be some interest in the subject.

Therapeutic writing

Sian Beilock

Writing has been shown to replace ruminating. Ruminating is generally thought of as mental activity devoted to replaying past traumatic experience. It is a well-known contributor to clinical depression. That’s why writing workshops are often included in the treatment of depression. However, ruminating over future events, such as taking a high-stakes exam or something, can be equally disruptive. In this case, ruminating often leads to “choking” where students perform more poorly than expected given their skill level, especially when there are large incentives for optimal performance and negative consequences for poor performance. University of Chicago Psychologist Sian Beilock has found that the simple act of writing about anxiety can significantly reduce students’ chances of choking, especially if it’s done just prior to test-taking [link]. She says that when students are able to express their fears in writing, they’re given the satisfaction that they’ve dealt with them enough to move on and stop ruminating over them. This, in turn, releases space in working memory ..making it available to work on the task at hand.

Reception

In 1998, psychologist Arthur Graesser examined components of speech and reading comprehension in ‘real-time’ [link]. Components of comprehension include things like ‘unexpected event-handling’ and ‘outcome-resolution’. They are measured in milliseconds. Using an interactive computer-presentation, he recorded the time students spent at each step. Sort of like a reaction-time study. What he found was counter-intuitive. Comprehension scores were actually higher for students who took longer to process unexpected events in a narrative. Students who spent less time had lower scores. On closer examination, he found they were interpreting events way too quickly. Consequently, they were missing the bridge to ‘explanatory’ events presented elsewhere in the narrative. What this tells me is that receptivity is more important than reaching conclusions while listening to someone speak.

Advantages of ADD

The kind of focused attention ordinarily required in a classroom is not always helpful overcoming obstacles outside the classroom. A wider focus of attention, which is usually associated with ADD, is actually more adaptive according to neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman [link]. And from what I’ve seen, I believe it ..! They found that when students are more open to distraction, they do better navigating a computer-simulated labyrinth than when they are focused and blocking out distractions (as seen on an fMRI). Students actually see and hear more .. finding their way faster by heuristic than by analytic reasoning. In other words, in many situations, discovering relationships between vague and loosely connected information is more advantageous than step-by-step analysis.

Biomimicry

Notes from Bioengineering Conference, Nov 25, Long Beach, CA

I like to follow developments that are the result of ‘biomimicry’. Then again, I’m weird like that. However, I think it’s something that merits attention. Biomimicry is the practice of overcoming obstacles by seeing what works in nature. Naturalistic observation is just as valid as ‘laboratory observation’ in science. According to the speakers today, discovering how things work in nature has inspired breakthroughs in computer technology, renewable energy and regenerative medicine, just to name three.

Renewable energy: Biologists observing the motion of humpback whales have found more efficient ways to capture energy from the wind. They noticed how the saw-tooth bumps (tubercles) that line the edge of a whale’s fin help them perform better in slow-moving water. When they line the edge of blades on a wind-turbine with similar bumps; the blades rotate faster in response to slow-moving wind. This has led to the installation of more efficient and lower-profile ‘wind-mills’ in the desert outside of Palm Springs.

Regenerative medicine: Psychologists observing the natural development of language have made contributions to the field of regenerative medicine. They saw how children learn grammar as a result of social interaction ..with little or no coaching. When they simulate the social environment of early childhood; stroke victims make faster progress toward recovering language skills. This has led to the design of training-programs, hosted as video games ..that are more interactive and engaging. Results can be seen in speech performance as well as on MRI scans of the brain.

Closing remarks: Geoffrey Spedding, an engineer from USC, talked about limits to what we can learn from nature. He says “… the designs that come through evolution are just good enough to survive, that’s all. Nature has yet to come up with a decent wheel.” I had to disagree. In my humble opinion, evolution did produce an information-processing device capable of infinitely more ..the human brain. So, however indirect ..nature did invent the wheel.

Applied neuroscience

Brain surgeon Wilder Penfield [link] found that whenever he tugged at one place in childhood memory, he pulled the rest of childhood experience with it. His patients would report : “I can hear the sound of my mother’s voice calling me for dinner ..I smell the scent of fresh baked bread like I did then ..I see my mother waiting for me on the porch .. I feel her warmth ..I actually feel like I did as a child right now.” Psychologists see the same thing going on with their clients while they’re talking about present-day relationships. For example, when they report talking to somebody who has a voice or manner similar to one of their parents ..it often triggers the feelings they experienced in the presence of that parent. Could be feelings of warmth and pleasure ..or feelings of intimidation and submission. They may pass through these states during the day without even knowing it. What they do remember, however, is a feeling that tells them whether or not they enjoy someone’s company.

My first boss, Tony, was a commanding presence. He looked like a mafia don ..with a deep baritone voice and a quick temper. He shouted at people a lot and often in a disparaging manner. He intimidated my colleagues, which made them cringe in his presence. For some reason his behavior didn’t bother me. I even got a chuckle out of it. I think I figured out why ..and I believe I owe it to Dr Penfield. Although my father didn’t live with us very long, what I remember about him most is that he was gentle and reasonable. He would explain things I did wrong and never scolded. I don’t have memories of growing up with a ‘bully’ like many of my colleagues. Consequently, Tony didn’t evoke the same feelings in me as he did in them. I always figured there was a method to his madness and he always treated me with civility, while my colleagues always felt like they were getting a whipping.

Quality of understanding

“The meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence that is perceived is rapidly forgotten and memory is for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence” ~ Jacqueline Sachs [link].

For years, neuro-linguists have studied what remains after we hear somebody speak. What they’ve come up with is something that resembles a three-dimensional network inside of our head. The network is made up of propositions (coded events), scripts (a sequence of coded events) and associated images and feelings. Although part of the network is constructed from the original sentence ..most of it is supplied by the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of resonance and familiarity, based largely on our own beliefs and experience ..and not necessarily the meaning intended by the speaker. These finding are consistent with the construction-integration model for narrative comprehension proposed by psychologist Walter Kintsch [link].

Neural net neutrality

There’s a space inside my mind that opens up from time to time …and in those rare moments I’m in there, everything resonates with equal potential. I think it’s a place Eastern-practitioners call ‘Buddha mind’ …a neutral state free from forces of passion and indifference …and nagging questions about what’s right and what’s wrong. In other words, it’s out of reach of my judgmental mind. Apparently neuroscientists have discovered this place too. They’ve located a network inside the brain that comes online whenever the analytic networks are at rest. They call it the ‘default state network’ [link] and it lies somewhere outside regions of the brain dedicated to analysis and judgment. It skirts areas that are active in weighing alternatives and narrowing down possibilities. These areas are never at rest. Even when they go offline, the ‘default state network’ keeps them humming in unison. This creates a state of equilibrium where no one tendency outweighs another. They say it restores a sense of balance and even-mindedness. In some ways it sounds as though they’ve discovered what Eastern practitioners have experienced for the last 25 centuries.

Sensory orientation

Presented to the
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies

It was interesting for me to see a recent study in neuroscience that supports my theory of reading comprehension [link] Bear with me while I try and explain (or you can duck out now and I won’t be offended). What they found is that working memory interacts with the senses in order to produce a stable view of our surroundings and reduce errors of perception. For one thing, it has to identify signals that are the result of actual sensory events and filter out extraneous signals that are produced by fluctuations inside the nervous system itself (like those caused by changes in activity levels, neurotransmitter concentrations, circadian rhythms, etc..). Neuroscientists refer to this as the ‘sensory orientation’ function [link]. The visual areas in the brain must distinguish changes in actual sensory events from changes in internal activity in order to follow the ‘genuine’ action. They claim that the brain makes this estimate based on principles of ‘Bayesian inference’, which are not much different than principles of ‘Pragmatic inference’. It works something like this: Incoming signals that are considered likely to occur, based on the contents of working memory, are given a boost. Signals considered less likely are held in abeyance and immediately suppressed if subsequent events don’t do anything to rehabilitate them.

Biomimicry

Presented to the
Cosmo Computer Group

Biomimicry is the art of solving problems by seeing what similar obstacles exist in nature ..then discovering how nature acts to overcome them. One of my favorite examples of biomimicry comes from the story of the Swiss inventor George de Mestral. He was an avid hiker who spent a lot of time removing the burrs that stuck to his clothes at the end of every hike. Curious about how this happened, he examined the burrs and found they contained tiny, hook-like spears that had a natural tendency to attach themselves to the miniature loops found in fabric. He used the same mechanism in the 1950’s when he invented Velcro.

Technical uses: In order to combat biological weapons, the Defense Industry studies the reproductive behavior of insects to see how they detect trace amounts of chemical and biological agents over long distances. In bioengineering, scientists study birds to see how they recognize the songs of their own species in order to come up with better ‘speech recognition’ systems for the disabled. Last year physicists made the first practical observation of ‘quantum teleportation’ ..a trick of nature that could make future computers incredibly small and powerful.

Computer apps: During my graduate studies I tested theories of reading comprehension. A practical application of this was to see if we could develop a ‘natural language interface’ to the computer. This was before the advent of the ‘graphical user interface’. My job was to see how people ‘store and retrieve’ information about what they read, then submit my findings to the computer science department where they programmed ‘text comprehension rules’ for the computer. We were developing a system that could answer questions by querying a computer database. In a sense, we were studying the activity of the mind in order to develop a better interface to the computer.

Concluding remarks: I believe that this type of research has applications in education, helping people with reading disabilities, as well as in the computer industry, helping designers build more ‘intelligent’ search engines.

In a heartbeat

The rhythm of music is my prosthetic for balance. I don’t have a preference ..just whatever moves me at the time. In fact, I find dancing easier than walking ..that’s probably why I go to the drum circle at the park every chance I get. Following a rhythm has helped me learn to walk again ..just as it helped me learn to ski when I was a kid. It puts me in motion so I don’t have to think about every step ..or anticipate every move. I suppose I have my early experience to thank for that ..those teenage years spent at rock concerts. Dr Oliver tells me that stroke victims, people who have lost the ability to speak ..can still sing. When they begin putting their words into a melody ..they can express themselves fluently. What this tells me is that ‘keeping the beat’ is a deeper, more fundamental process, than constructing sentences.

Turns out that most children with dyslexia don’t have a problem with vision. What they have is a gap in their auditory system ..they cannot identify the sound of the words they see ..and until they can do that .. it’s hard to progress much further. That’s why we have to go back and treat dyslexia using auditory training. Now, I don’t know what the church of scientology thinks about this .. I can’t find any of their literature ..only proclamations made by Tom Cruise. But according to Dr Goswami [link] the first language we learn is the sound of our mother’s heart beat. It’s like an internal metronome ..setting the tempo that helps us follow the sound of speech during early childhood. Lately I’ve been pushing the boundaries of my theory ..to the annoyance of those around me. I’ve come to think of it as the rhythm that helps us follow the events in our life. Without it ..everything we see and hear would simply appear as though they were coming out of nowhere ..and disappearing into nowhere. No coherence ..nothing helping us string them together.

In a heartbeat

Many children with dyslexia cannot keep up with the flow of text fluently enough to convert symbols into sound ..then sound into meaning. To read OK, the brain has about 40 milliseconds to do this. For children with reading difficulties, this may take as many as 500 milliseconds. According to Usha Goswami [link] part of the problem may be caused by difficulty in perceiving the rhythm of speech. Goswami and her colleagues discovered that dyslexic children could not track the beat in speech. The ability to detect a beat matters when the brain is trying to process syllables and phonemes. Like a metronome, it helps children pick-up the properties of speech in time. They inform me that the ability to keep the beat is so fundamental; the first language we learn is our own mother’s heartbeat.

KnowledgeNet

A model for the fabric of the mind has been tentatively settled-on [link]. It’s one that characterizes what’s inside my skull as a 3-dimensional network of delicately connected instances of prior experience and feeling. Prior experience is stored on this network in the form of linked propositions (as in predicate logic). This is referred to as a KnowledgeNet and it is necessary for reading comprehension. Reading is an active, constructive process that requires the interaction of elements of text and the KnowledgeNet. The more area on the net that you activate when you read, the more you are able to understand and remember. Under ordinary circumstances, signals from the senses produce ripples that spread out over this fabric, like stones on a pond, activating network-connections until a clear mental representation is formed. However, when something goes wrong, and there’s a disturbance in the fabric, activation may become amp’d and diffuse ..compounding insubstantial phenomena until, what may have started out as a gentle hummingbird, for example .. becomes a ferocious beast. Sometimes I think it’s only a matter of degree between clarity and delusion ..especially when I consider how many times I mistook a perfectly innocent remark as hostility.

Research proposal

Fear Incorporated
The Role of the Amygdala in Anxiety Disorders

Presented to the
Seminar in Neuroscience

“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” Arthur Somers Roche

Anxiety is a feeling of dread or apprehension that occurs for no apparent reason. It is distinguished from fear because it occurs in situations where there are no outward signs of eminent danger. It becomes debilitating when it grows out-of-proportion to ordinary events in life. Anxiety is deceptive. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying past traumas ~>[Read more]

Multi story memory

Presented to the seminar in
COGNITIVE SCIENCE

It wasn’t long ago that psychologists regarded memory as a single-thread of stimulus-response associations; strengthened by repetition. What went on between the time information was stored and retrieved was terra incognito. Memory was commonly thought to be a passive record of stimulus-events. Once events were stored, they became a reliable part of memory. The information was always there; forgetting was blamed on a failure of retrieval. The associative principles of memory no longer apply. They fail to capture clinical reports of patients with aphasia or Alzheimer’s. Aphasia patients can usually remember current events, but they forget long-term information such as the meaning of words or the names of familiar objects. On the other hand, Alzheimer’s patients can remember long-term information, such as the meaning of words, but they forget recent events such as a visit by a relative or their arrival at the clinic. These observations suggest different types of memory at work. Some temporarily hold events in our immediate surroundings while others preserve them on a more lasting basis.   

~>[Read more]

Evolution of the neocortex

Findings of Comparative Neuro-Psychology

Presented to the seminar in
SOCIOBIOLOGY

Homage to the Tree Shrew

“The cerebral cortex, of all parts of the central nervous system, must be regarded as the most plastic in recent evolution, reflecting new behavioral requirements of niches carved out by increasingly complex relations between predator and prey, and the increasing demands for more subtle relationships within the species.”   Harting  (1973) ~>[Read more]

Recapitulation theory

Research proposal

Presented to the Seminar in Research Methods

The purpose of this experiment is to test the hypothesis that adults can learn languages as easy as children when the method of instruction simulates conditions found in early childhood.

Transcripts of early speech show a reliable trend. Language development occurs in stages that correspond to increasing degrees of derivational complexity. This means fewer and simpler transformational rules appear in children’s speech before larger sets of more complex rules begin to emerge. In addition, children learn their first language without formal training. It occurs spontaneously. There is no evidence of selective pressure for the development of well-formed sentences. It is an innate process that requires only participation in a verbal community.

  ~>[Read more]