Attribution theory

Attribution theory says that observers tend to attribute an individual’s actions to enduring character traits whereas the individual tends to explain his or her own actions in terms of the passing demands of a situation [link]. Here’s a recent case in point. Dr. Andrew Bourne was a famous surgeon in Mammoth Lakes, California. He saved the lives of many people who’d been seriously injured on the ski slopes. In December he was charged with sexual misconduct. In January he committed suicide. Some members of the community attribute his suicide to the same ‘self-destructive’ tendencies that lead to his misconduct. Others describe him as “..energetic, optimistic and precise but perennially late” leaving the impression he had ‘contradictory tendencies’ that could help explain his behavior. According to his attorney, Dr Bourne attributed his conduct to “..a single temptation.”

Ecology of mind

Learning context  (quality of avocados increases from left to right)

At Trader Joes  [ (others)  (haas) ]
At Scolaris [ (haas)  (mex)  (others) ] 

Context dependent learning is better suited to learning in natural settings than artificial ones. Learning the quality of different avocados by sampling from selections at different store-locations improves decision making in the wild where choices come up one after another. Context dependent learning is less suited to decision making in a warehouse where choices are presented all at once in a single location. It's the difference between seeing [(haas) (mex) (others) ] in one location as opposed to seeing them appear one at a time in different locations:  

[ (haas) ]        where you’ve learned that mex generally beats haas

[ (mex) ]               but in some instances other varieties are better

[ ( others) ]            ..so it pays to keep looking.

Economists say that humans deviate from optimal choice when making context-dependent choices. On Wall Street or in a classroom, context information can be misleading. Economists call this the “more-is-less effect”. I’d say they lack ecological perspective. There’s a reason humans are sensitive to context. Psychologists are finding out that it has adaptive value in nature that you don’t see in a classroom or trading floor. It helps people make ‘optimal choices’ about which trail to take and what foods to eat in the wild. In an experiment using a species of birds called starlings, researchers at Oxford found that even though context learning may hinder performance in simultaneous prey choices; it improves performance in sequential prey encounters where subjects could reject opportunities in order to search the background. Because sequential prey encounters are more likely in nature, storing and using contextual information has greater ecological value than economists give it credit for.

Freidin et al. Science 18 November 2011 [link]

The development of appetite

It’s well known that the ability to perceive the sounds of language is tuned in childhood as a result of the interaction between exposure and early development. Infants start out with equipotential for languages. However, by the end of the first year ..neural-pathways responsible for discerning the sounds of their native language get established. Turns out that appetite for particular foods are formed this way a well, perhaps even earlier inside the womb. Infants start out indifferent to tastes, however “..later exposure changes the way taste signals are carried to the brain.” Recent studies show how exposure to a diet of crackers, cereal and bread during early development results in a lifelong preference for starchy-salt rich food [link].

Inference making

“Your job as a reader is to use your imagination and analytical skills where the author has left off.”

Intentional fallacy: it’s not what an author means to say that’s important ..it’s how the reader interprets what they say. What they intended is subject to interpretation, which isn’t necessarily going to turn out the same. But if we’re the readers, our interpretation is what matters. Communication is mostly an interpretive process. We add our perspective and ingenuity to whatever we hear or read. Attempts by the writer to narrow it down are futile ..or sterile [link]. In Harry Potter, some may see Dumbledore as gay; others might view him as quirky and without a particular sexual identity. I'm reminded of the ghost in “Hamlet” and how little we really know about him. Is he the spirit of his murdered father asking to be avenged ..? Is he a hellish apparition sent to make Hamlet commit murder ..? Or, is he just a figment of Hamlet's imagination ..? And who really gives a shit now what Shakespeare meant ..?

Immateriality

“Each person is capable of perceiving infinitely more. The universe is funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system ..what comes out at the other end is a measly trickle.”

From ‘The Doors of Perception’ by Aldous Huxley 

Only 20% of available ‘matter’ - at home or in the universe - is observable by the senses. This includes the composition of our bodies as well as all it’s surroundings. The remaining 80% is not even visible using the most sophisticated instruments of science. It’s a mystery supplied by indirection and the divinity of inference. What does this mean ..? Ordinary reality represents only a fraction of the energy that exists in the universe. The forces at work in my life are largely invisible. Perhaps the limits to what I can see are not so much physical as they are mental, like Huxley said.

Neuropharmacology of ketamines

Glutamic acid is the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in the nervous system. When released, it binds with the NMDA-receptor site to produce long-term potentiation (LTP).

LTP improves synaptic transmission by increasing the cell’s sensitivity to incoming signals, which allows for neuro-plasticity, learning and memory. 

NMDA (N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid) is a synthetic amino acid, which acts as an agonist at the NMDA-receptor site .. mimicking the action of glutamic acid (excitatory). 

Ketamine is an NMDA-receptor antagonist. It blocks the action of glutamic acid and acts as an analgesic at low doses. At high doses, ketamine produces a disassociative state, characterized by a sense of detachment from the physical body (depersonalization) and the external world (derealization). Users may experience what is called the “K-hole”, a period of dissociation and intense hallucinations where they experience other worlds or celestial-like dimensions ..while being completely unaware of their individual identities or the external world. Users have reported flying .. connecting to other users and objects in the cosmos ..and sharing hallucinations and thoughts with adjacent users. They feel as though their perceptions are located so deep inside the mind that the real world seems distant (hence the use of a “hole” to describe the experience).

Memory: Users do not remember the experience after regaining consciousness, in the same way that a person may forget a dream. Owing to the role of the NMDA receptor in long-term potentiation, this may be due to disturbances in memory formation. The ‘re-integration” process is slow, and the user gradually becomes aware of surroundings. At first, users may not remember their own names, or even know that they are human, or what that means. They may not be aware they have a body at all.  Ketamine is also used with local anesthetics for its amnesia action. It effectively wipes out memory for the trauma associated with severe injury and surgery.

Therapeutic value of hallucinogens

Recent studies reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry [link] and the Journal of Psychopharmacology [link], reveal that hallucinogens actually have legitimate therapeutic value. Scientists now believe these agents have the potential to help patients with post-traumatic stress, drug and alcohol dependence, unremitting pain, depression and the existential anxiety of terminal illness. According to Roland Griffiths, author of the first study:

“The psilocybin experience takes away the veil of fear and enables patients to see things in a more expanded and interconnected way. It can relieve the existential anxiety of terminal illness. The psychological improvements have helped many to reverse the course of their illness, which reinforces the notion that one should never underestimate the healing power of the psyche. Scientifically, these compounds are way too important not to study.”

This sounds familiar. In college I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the Neurological Basis of Hallucinatory Experience. I had the foresight (or audacity) at the time to recommend that hallucinogens would be a useful method-of-investigation for Psychologists. I said: “.. it would be negligent not to consider the guided peyote session as portal into alternative states of consciousness” [link].

Synthesizing minds

At a graduate seminar many years ago, a fellow student named David Stoltenberg proposed a theory that said that the simple act of reading is a “cross-sensory” event in the brain ..he even had a name for it ..“sensory synesthesia” ..which he described as “perceiving the sound of a color ..or the light of a sigh.” He was giving a multi-media presentation to demonstrate this idea ..but it didn’t turn out the way he planned ..the projectors malfunctioned ..the main point got lost ..and what I was able to get out of it left me feeling unconvinced ..it sounded too much like science fiction. When I think back, I realize I owe Dave a big apology ..and a pound of red Lebanese ..he was right ..you have to be able to “hear” what you “see” in order “understand” what you “read”.

Research now shows that synesthesia, far from being a “fringe” phenomenon, can actually enhance cognitive function in addition to being part of the reading process. Many notable artists, poets and novelist are thought to have this ability. The condition occurs from increased communication between sensory areas of the brain [link]. It probably lies on a spectrum of the way we normally perceive and experience the world. In other words, we all have it ..just some more than others [link].

Calculating minds

Success at math is often more about focusing attention and screening distractions (caused by threat and anxiety) ..than it is about activating areas of the brain actually involved with math calculation. Sian Beilock (University of Chicago) reports: 

“We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to separate anticipatory neural activity from what’s occurring while performing math. Increased activity in frontoparietal regions of the cortex, involved with focusing attention and suppressing anxiety, were better predictors of math scores than activity in regions associated with arithmetic calculation (the left intraparietal sulcus of the cortex) [link].” 

Think about walking across a suspension bridge if you're afraid of heights versus if you're not – it’s a completely different ballgame. This work suggests that educational intervention emphasizing anxiety-reduction (rather than additional math training) will be most effective in revealing a population of mathematically competent individuals, who might otherwise go undiscovered.

Parsing Gabrielle

Notes made while watching interview with Diane Sawyer.

Her speech centers are still intact ..but some of the pathways that connect speech with concepts may have been severed. They show her a picture of a table and she comes up with words all right ..just not the right ones. She’s guessing and her therapy involves prompting her to narrow down the range of possibilities until she’s in the vicinity of ‘table-ness’. It is geared toward building alternate pathways to replace the one’s she lost. The connection between her lexicon (the place where words are stored) and semantic memory (memory for meaning) may be all that’s affected. Prognosis is good. She can read words from her lexicon OK. Her difficulty is connecting them with ideas in the mind. So it’s just a process of generating alternate pathways. I wonder if she can write or type in complete sentences. I wonder if there’s a way to prompt the language pathways of the brain to act with equipotentiality, same as they did during childhood, to help facilitate the regenerative process. Apparently music can help because it activates greater brain-area ..and she can sing the words she has difficulty coming up with on her own.  Spontaneously however, she doesn’t speak in full sentences yet. Her two word utterances show a ‘return to the kernal’ ..meaning she can express the main idea without the generating the phrase-structure necessary to produce a full sentence. Hopefully, she hasn’t lost the rules of grammar ..only the ability to pick-out the words to express them. 

Kernal: When asked if she wants to return to Congress, she relies: “No, better!”
Generative grammar: Two embedded verb phrases are required to turn the kernal “No, better!” into the sentence: “No, I want to get better first” 

Beauty of uncertainty

based on a study showing what happens when we discount the surprise value of unexpected events ~> [link]

Network theory of communication

I have a theory that says whenever messages are transmitted between people in different locations; the accuracy of communication drops by 60%. I call it the ‘displacement theory of communication’ and it's an extension of findings in the field of human information-processing [link].

This drop in communication is wide-scale and can occur anywhere from cell phones to air traffic control systems. Messages are by nature incomplete and often assume knowledge of local conditions that aren’t available to the receiver. Without exacting protocols, like those developed in the air traffic control industry, incomplete messages are at best probabilistic and rely on the receiver to supply the most likely meaning intended. Since this is an innate function of human information-processing; it can happen quickly and imperceptibly. When it does, we are prone to making overconfident and faulty decisions about the most likely meaning intended. It has long been know that the most frequent decision we make during conversation is about the intention of others .. it’s also the one we get wrong most often. So, facebook users and text messagers ..beware! We are making the rules up as we go.

Anti anxiety

“With the ideal comes the actual
like two arrows in mid-air ..they meet” ~ Sandokai

What does this have to say about stress and anxiety ..? The odds of events meeting our ideals are about as likely as two arrows meeting in mid-air. At the local-level, what we think people should do or say is an ideal ..what follows is the actual. Like arrows in mid-air, they seldom meet. At the neural-level, when events don’t meet our expectations, an orienting response is triggered. Pupils dilate ..light intensifies ..sounds get amp’d ..muscle tone increases ..acetylcholine is released .. blood vessels constrict and blood pressure rises ..all in a fraction of an instance. The orienting response is meant to be transitory. It should subside once dissimilarities are found to be non-threatening. But when the incidence of dissimilarity occurs too often, and the orienting response doesn’t get a chance to recover ..it becomes chronic. You experience a constant sense of vigilance both mentally and viscerally, which is similar to what someone with PTSD suffers. It takes a toll. There are many reasons for experiencing a higher incidence of dissimilarity. I have a theory that highlights one possibility: memory becomes scripted with age and repetition. Many of our old views of the world simply don’t match present-day reality anymore. However, we persist. This leads to a false sense of knowing and anticipating what comes next. However, what comes next is never certain ..only imagined. Anticipation-fueled imagination is a vicious cycle that leads to more frequent experiences of dissimilarity between the imagined and the actual. I believe this results in chronic anxiety and a pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction.

transformation cycle

Dr George, professor of ‘lifespan development’, can identify what year you graduated from high school during a 20-minute interview while blindfolded. Clues? Verbal expressions, vocabulary, explanatory-style, values, ideals, etc. “..basically, it’s recognizing what’s in focus and what’s on the periphery of their narrative. Tells you what cohort they belong to.” What’s a cohort ..? “A cohort is a group of people who pass through periods of historical and social change at around the same age. As a result, they experience these events during the same period of development. People who were in their adolescence when 9/11 occurred for example, or those who were coming-of-age while fighting in Iraq. It makes a difference in the way they express themselves and how they explain current events. Their narrative is an interaction between lifespan-development and socio-cultural development.” He says, however, if college was a transformational experience .. they’re not so easily pegged. “It’s a game changer” Why’s that ..? “Because it sets in motion a transformation-cycle that follows them throughout life. Like recurring periods of renewal ..they shed what’s out-of-date and adapt more contemporary elements to their narrative. In other words, they periodically cover their tracks.”

Reading behavior

When I make a conscious effort, I can kind of catch a glimpse of whatever’s going on inside my head that helps me grasp the meaning of what I’m reading and relate it to other things I know about. It may be part of my training, but ..what I’m seeing is not unique to me. It is a process that’s common to everyone. It’s universal. It’s been observed and documented by linguists all over the world. As I read, I’m building an ‘event-chain’. An event-chain is made up of information from prior-sentences, which I get from working-memory, and prior-experience, which I get from long-term memory. When I read about the rebel invasion of Tripoli this week, I immediately built a relatively simple event-chain based on a limited set of events stored in long-term memory. It looked something like this:

However, as I read further ..I discovered this was not the case. The invasion was the result of Kadafi’s own undoing. Now my event-chain looks something like this:

Suddenly NATO air strikes don’t seem quite so important anymore. My first reading was in error. It doesn’t take into account a whole heap of events I didn’t know about. My second event-chain probably doesn’t either. However, I still come away with the feeling that I’m sufficiently informed, which leads to something else I’ve noticed: I struggle with yielding to the probability of the unknown, which is always greater than what I can fit into an event-chain. However, an event-chain is about all that I can fit into my pea-brain.

Temporal binding

The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a major role in the process of memory formation. It is not entirely clear how the hippocampus manages to string together events that are part of the same experience but are separated in time. Newly published research finds that there are neurons in the hippocampus that encode the sequence of events that make up experience [link] and [link].

Dyslexia

Voice recognition involves perceiving differences in the way people speak. Individuals with dyslexia, however, cannot do this. The problem is a slight auditory impairment. They can understand perfectly well what others are saying and who is speaking. They’re just not as sensitive to subtle phonic variations between speakers. 

A study by Tyler Perrachione at MIT [link] reaffirms the theory that the underlying deficit in dyslexia is about processing the sound of what’s written, not about seeing what’s written. They took it a step further and discovered a link between reading difficulty and the social ecology surrounding spoken language. Individuals with dyslexia have difficulty hearing consistent properties of speech within speaker as well as differences between speakers. “Lots of research has shown that individuals with dyslexia have more trouble understanding speech when there is noise in the background” says Perrachione. “These results suggest that part of the problem may be trouble following a specific voice.”

They took it another step further and found something that I find interesting. Individuals without dyslexia have the same difficulty hearing phonic variation between speakers in their second language (Mandarin Chinese) as dyslexics do between speakers in their native language. This corroborates my observation that children, without dyslexia, often perform at the same level as children with dyslexia when they are being taught to read for the first time in a foreign language. They don’t have the ‘phonic background’ necessary to identify the phonetic compounds of words. I believe this puts children from non-English backgrounds at a disadvantage when learning to read in English-speaking schools [link]

Sensory sampling

Rubén Moreno-Bote, David C. Knill, Alexandre Pouget, Bayesian sampling in visual perception PNAS July 26, 2011 vol. 108 no. 30 12491-1249.

Abstract: It is well-established that some aspects of perception and action can be understood as probabilistic inferences over underlying probability distributions. In some situations, it would be advantageous for the nervous system to sample interpretations from a probability distribution rather than commit to a particular interpretation. In this study, we asked whether visual percepts correspond to samples from the probability distribution over image interpretations, a form of sampling that we refer to as Bayesian sampling. To test this idea, we manipulated pairs of sensory cues in a bistable display consisting of two superimposed moving drifting gratings, and we asked subjects to report their perceived changes in depth ordering. We report that the fractions of dominance of each percept follow the multiplicative rule predicted by Bayesian sampling. Furthermore, we show that attractor neural networks can sample probability distributions if input currents add linearly and encode probability distributions with probabilistic population codes [link].

Bayesian inference

Bayesian inference is a function of Bayesian probability. Bayesian probability is a measure of the likelihood of a desired outcome (H) (Colts winning the playoffs for instance) based on the conditional probabilities computed for a set of event-sequences (D) that would lead to the desired outcome ..adjusted for (divided-by) the conditional probabilities computed for the set of event-sequences leading to other possible outcomes (Hi ) (Dallas Giants or Eagles winning the playoffs).

Bayesian inference may be native to the way people make judgments. At the level of sensory processing, studies show that the nervous system perpetually distinguishes the most relevant signals, from incidental/peripheral signals, using likelihood estimates of a Bayesian sort. Signals that are the most likely outcome of ongoing activity, 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 do nothing to rehabilitate them.

In Bayesian terms, where H is the candidate signal and D is the current state of sensory memory, then the probability that H will be the winning candidate or P(D|H) ..is a function of sensory memory (D) mitigated by P(D|Hi) ..or the probability that the contents of sensory memory might favor other winning candidates (Hi ).

speech recognition

The way we process and interpret speech is largely dependent on the neuro-anatomy of the brain. Speech signals must travel from lower to higher regions before something resembling someone speaking can occur. Sound waves enter the ear canal where they are first broken down into their component-frequencies or ‘tones’. Individual tones are then converted to signals that get transmitted, over auditory pathways, to higher centers of the brain responsible for processing and synthesizing complex signals of speech such as phonemes, which are essentially complex bursts of multiple frequencies [link]. After completing sufficient cycles of phonemic synthesis - the phonic representation of a word is formed. Compound signals representing word-sounds are then passed to higher centers of the auditory cortex (Wernicke’s area) where word-meaning is retrieved from areas in the cerebral cortex where semantic processing is performed.

agents of expression

Most children learn to speak and understand what’s said effortlessly. It’s a spontaneous process that doesn’t require classroom training. The brain is innately tuned to extract the rules of spoken language. Observations show that parents rarely correct for rules of grammar during early childhood. However, they frequently correct for the rules of semantics ..making sure their children convey the proper idea [link]. That’s why it’s interesting for me to see that, while children may discover the correct rules of grammar on their own ..by adolescence they’re playing pretty loose with the rules of semantics they’d been taught. In other words, they frequently use well-formed sentences to fabricate and misrepresent what’s going on.

Beauty of uncertainty

In 1975, Baruch Fischoff identified a major obstacle to forming new memories ..ourselves. He found that people frequently underestimate how surprised they are when events don’t turn out the way they expect. He polled a group of students before and after the Watergate hearings. Respondents who felt Nixon would be exonerated (with say 80% confidence) .. overwhelmingly came back and said they weren’t surprised by the verdict (and remember being just over 50% confident). When people learn the outcome of events, they unconsciously go back and adjust the estimate for what they thought would happen. This has the net-effect of revising memory so that it feels as if they “..knew it all along”, which diminishes the surprise-value of information [link]. More recently, neuroscientist Moshe Bar says that surprise is what gives ordinary events the informative-value necessary for transfer to long-term memory [link]. What we retain are mostly the novel bits of information we pick up along the way. They go on to form a ‘pool of scenarios’, which we use to prepare for future events. So if we go around dismissing the surprise-value of information, we sabotage memory, lower our ability to deal with the unexpected ..and don’t learn as much from experience. My friend Audrey likes to say that we can prevent future memory loss by making a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary everyday ..increase our exposure to what’s new ..or at least give ordinary events greater value than “ ..it's just the same old story.”

Reading behavior

“Our universities deliver education in English ..[so] we should teach reading in the language that will be most useful.” Letter to the LATimes re. dual-language immersion ~ [link ]

As reasonable as this may sound ..it is not consistent with the way nature prepares children to read. Nor is it supported by the state-of-the-art in neuroscience and language development. The language children are going to need in college isn’t as important for reading education as their native language. Learning to read in one’s native language is the most effective route to fluency. That’s because learning to read starts out as a process of linking the sound of words on paper to their meaning in memory [link]. This puts children from non-English backgrounds at a disadvantage when trying to read English first. They have no ‘phonic memory’ for it. That’s what accounts for the high percentage of high school students in the U.S. who cannot read or write well. Furthermore, it is widely known that reading fluency in one language is easily transferable to another [link]. It only makes sense to teach children to read in a way that assures early success in one language and boosts their chances of future achievement in other languages.

Academic captivity

I have a theory. I think home schooling is more native to childhood development than the classroom. If you took a random sample of home-schooled children I think you’d find the same incidence of so-called ‘learning problems’ coupled with higher levels of achievement. That’s because dedicated parents, tuned to the strengths and weaknesses of their children, can overcome many problems ordinarily associated with classroom learning ..and do so without drugs. I’m talking about problems with attention span, short-term memory, and communication. Public education in the US is way behind the learning curve and traditional classrooms are designed to tap only a limited range of childhood potential. For instance, the kind of focused attention ordinarily required in a classroom is not all that helpful overcoming obstacles found outside the classroom. There are many instances where a wider focus of attention, which is usually associated with ADD, is way more adaptive [link]. This is also true of other developmental disorders, including autism. I know of a mother who taught her son to communicate even though he was in the most disabling range of the autistic spectrum. He’s now a prolific writer with several published works to his credit [link].

Neural basis of PTSD

Anxiety is a conditioned emotional response. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying past traumas [link].

Coming of age in a combat zone is bound to leave a deep impact on the tissues of the mind. I know that early experience with driving, while exposed to roadside bombs, can lead to phobias for city and highway driving. Witnessing the devastation of a mortar attack on a remote Afghan village can make a walk in the park seem like a high-risk venture and experiencing the impact of bombs detonating in town square can make it hard to sit still at Denny’s. Hearing someone say, “you’ll get over it” is not going to sound all that convincing. Why ..? I have a theory. We already know that the networks of the mind continue developing well into a person’s twenties. In fact most neural-development takes place outside the womb where it can be guided by culture and experience. I believe when combat is someone’s introduction to the ‘ways of the world’, it profoundly affects development that prepares them for adulthood. Depending on a soldier’s degree of resilience going in, the experience can produce a conditioned anxiety so pervasive; it becomes debilitating. It’s not uncommon for veterans to feel suspicious when neighbors knock .. panic in public places. Or they may find themselves taking different routes to work everyday ..sleeping less than five hours a night and barricading themselves indoors all weekend. Early combat experience becomes neurologically ‘cemented’ in the naive soldier’s mind creating a generalized fear that, at any point, at any time, someone’s going to take their life.