A Closer Look at Mirror Neurons (BSP 35)

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Brain Science Podcast #35 is a discussion of Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience, by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia.  Mirror neurons were discovered in Rizzolatti's lab in Parma, Italy, in the early 1990s, and his book is a detailed to discussion of the experimental evidence in both monkeys and humans.  Direct single neuron recordings have been made in monkeys.  The evidence in humans is indirect, since it is based on mainly on neuro-imaging studies like PET scans and fMRI scans.  Even so, mirror neurons appear to be essential to our ability to understand both the actions and emotions of others. 

In this episode, we also explore the evidence that there are other neurons in the motor areas of the brain that have sensory properties and that the areas of the brain traditionally thought to be devoted to sensory functions also contain neurons with motor properties.  Another fascinating discovery is the fact that there are neurons that respond not only to somatosensory inputs (such as being touched) but also to visual or auditory inputs from objects within our peri-personal space.  For background on these body maps, I recommend listening to Episode 21 and Episode 23.  If you are new to the Brain Science Podcast, you may want to listen to those episodes first, because this week's episode is a little more technical than most.

I will be exploring the importance of these discoveries in future episodes.

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Links:

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Rachel Herz Talks About Smell (BSP 34)

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Episode 34 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (2007).  Dr. Herz teaches at Brown University, and she is a leading authority on the psychology of smell.  We talk about the how smell works, its role in emotion and memory, why it is so vulnerable, and why smell is much more important than most of us realize.  We also consider some of the questions that remain unanswered.

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Links and References:

Rachel Herz:

The 2004 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology was awarded to Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck for their discoveries of "odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system."

BuckL, Axel R.: "A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors: a molecular basis for odor recognition."

Cell. 1991 Apr 5;65(1):175-87.

"The (Shocked) Nose Knows" by Gisela Telis Science NOW Daily News 27 March 2008.

The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (2007), by Rachel Herz

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Sex Differences in the Brain: A New Book Worth Considering

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This post is a little overdue!

Sex Differences in the Brain: From Genes to Behavior (2007) by Jill Becker, Karen Berkley, Nori Geary, James Herman, and Elizabeth Young, is a book from Oxford University Press that is attracting quite a bit of attention.  It was reviewed in the March 21st issue of Science, but before that my friend Nancy Yanes-Hoffman sent me her review to share with you.

Evan Balaban writing in Science concluded:

All readers will learn something of value from this book, even if they don't agree with the views of particular authors.  Information content is high, references are ample, and the continuity between different chapters has been skillfully coordinated. Science 21 March 2008:Vol. 319. no. 5870, pp. 1619 - 1620

Nancy Yanes-Hoffman offers a detailed review on her blog and while she has some criticisms she also concludes:

While scientists and researchers have long needed a book like Sex Differences, its readership should not be limited to academia.  The questing student of any age will find answers to many thorny questions—as well as more challenges to his or her perspectives and relationships.      Why Can't a Women be More Like a Man? Nancy Yanes-Hoffman, March 19, 2008

She also suggests sources for further reading.

Both reviewers agree that Sex Differences in the Brain: From Genes to Behavior addresses an area that has been underrepresented in the literature.

Exercise and the Brain (BSP 33)

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John J. Ratey, M.D.

Episode 33 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Harvard physician, Dr. John Ratey, about his new book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.

We explore the exciting evidence about how exercise helps the brain.  It stimulates the release of a number of different neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, but probably more importantly, it helps keeps these compounds balanced.  We consider why exercise is so important in dealing with stress, in treating a wide range of mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder.  There is also evidence that exercise improves our ability to learn and our ability to avoid the loss of mental agility associated with aging.

We explore the exciting evidence about how exercise helps the brain.  It stimulates the release of a number of different neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, but probably more importantly, it helps keeps these compounds balanced.  We consider why exercise is so important in dealing with stress, in treating a wide range of mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder.  There is also evidence that exercise improves our ability to learn and our ability to avoid the loss of mental agility associated with aging.

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This episode contains information that everyone can use.  I hope you will share it with your friends and family.

Links and References:

Journey to Perplexity: "The Mind Is Not a Computer"

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The blog, Journey to Perplexity, notes that Gerald Edelman's book, Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge, offers some valuable insights into why "the mind is not a computer."   I am not sure who writes this blog, but he seems to be writing from a philosophical background.

It has been a while since I read Edelman's book.  Edelman won the Nobel Prize in 1972 for important discoveries about the structure of antibodies, but he has devoted the last several decades to studying neuroscience.  His two most well-known contributions are his theory of so-called 'neural Darwinism,' and his study of the importance of redundancy and feedback loops within the brain.  He has written quite a few books on the subject including, Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness (2005).

Second Nature is Edelman's attempt to address some of the philosophical issues about consciousness, while Wider than the Sky introduces some of his theories about how the brain generates consciousness.

Neuroplasticity with Dr. Norman Doidge (BSP 26)

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Episode 26 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Dr. Norman Doidge, MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (2007).  Dr. Doidge and I agree that neuroplasticity is the most important discovery about the brain that has been made in several hundred years.  In his interview, Dr. Doidge talks about some of the obstacles that delayed this discovery including what he calls the "plastic paradox," which is the fact that plasticity itself can contribute to the development of rigid behaviors, including addictions and bad habits.

The Brain That Changes Itself includes the work of the key scientists of neuroplasticity.  In my conversation with Dr. Doidge, we talked about the work of Paul Bach-y-Rita, Edward Taub, and VS Ramachandran.  Dr. Doidge also shared how his own work is being affected, and why he thinks neuroplasticity has the potential to lead to more important discoveries.

I will be talking to Dr. Taub in Episode 28.  If you are new to the Brain Science Podcast, you may want to go back and listen to Episode 10, which is where I first introduced neuroplasticity in my discussion of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, by Sharon Begley.

You can learn more about Dr. Doidge's work at his website: http://normandoidge.com

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Embodied Intelligence with Rolf Pfeifer (BSP 25)

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How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard

Brain Science Podcast  Episode 25 is an interview of author Rolf Pfeifer, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich.  The focus of our conversation was the importance of embodiment.  Brains (and intelligence) cannot be understood separate from their interaction with the body and the physical world.  Pfeifer explains how this realization has led the field of artificial intelligence away from a pure computational approach to one he calls embodied artificial intelligence.  His interview is spiced with numerous examples that demonstrate why this approach is relevant to those of us who are interested in the human brain. 

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Episode Highlights:

  • A brief overview of artificial intelligence.

  • Introduction to biorobotics.

  • Why artificial intelligence and biorobotics are relevant to understand the brain.

  • The meaning of complexity and emergence.

  • Why the close coupling of the sensory and motor systems is essential to intelligence.

  • Applying design principles to understanding intelligence.

  • Numerous examples make these potentially intimidating topics accessible to all listeners.

  • I also introduced a new way for listeners to support the Brain Science Podcast 

Related episodes of the Brain Science Podcast:

Scientists mentioned in the podcast:

Books by Rodney Brooks:

Where to learn more about Pfeifer's work:

The Reading Brain (BSP 24)

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Episode 24 of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf.

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Show Notes:

Dr. Wolf's book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, is divided into three main topics: the history of how writing and reading developed over the last few thousand years, the developmental stages involved in learning how to read, and what happens when the brain can't learn to read.  My podcast concentrates on the main ideas from the first two topics.

History of Writing:

  • The discovery of symbols.

  • Early writing systems- cuneiform and hieroglyphics.

  • Why Chinese gives us a window into the past.

  • Importance of the alphabet.

  • Why Socrates opposed literacy.

The stages of becoming a reader:

  • The early pre-reader-with emphasis on language development.

  • The novice reader-connecting letters to the sounds of language.

  • The decoding reader.

  • The fluent comprehending reader-learning to "read between the lines."

  • The expert reader-why reading continues to change us throughout our lives.

  • What goes wrong when the brain can't learn to read: how new findings are leading to new solutions.

Links and References

  • Maryann Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

  • Her book Proust and the Squid contains extensive references to various scientific studies in the area.

    1. information for teachers.

    2. interview of Dr. Wolf.

  • FastForward -a successful approach to treating dyslexia.

  • Michael Posner - a psychologist who used PET scans to study what happens during shifts of attention (a necessary first step in reading).

Listen in your Favorite Audio app: Audible, Amazon music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and many more.

Follow-up interview with Dr. Wolf (BSP 29)

Sandra Blakeslee (BSP 23)

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This episode is an interview with Sandra Blakeslee, co-author (with her son Matthew) of The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps Help You Do (almost) Everything Better, which we discussed in Episode 21.

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Show Notes

I asked Blakeslee to tell me a little bit of her background as a science writer.  She wrote for the New York Times for many years and was the co-author of both Jeff Hawkins groundbreaking book, On Intelligence, and VS Ramachandran's modern classic Phantoms in the Brain (1998), which was one of the first books to explore neuroplasticity.

In this interview, we explored the relationship between body maps and neuroplasticity, as well as questions from listeners about out of body experiences and other oddities once considered "paranormal."  We talked about how body maps are relevant to understanding why some methods of alternative healing appear to be effective.

I asked her to tell me which scientist she met made the biggest impression.  Here are a few of those she mentioned:

Blakeslee told me about some of the pioneering work that Merzenich is doing to apply his discoveries to help people, both those with disabilities and those who just want to combat aging.  You can learn more about his work at http://www.positscience.com/.

If you would like to contact Sandra Blakeslee to give her feedback or ask her questions, she has a contact form on her books website at http://www.thebodyhasamindofitsown.com/.  She is going to let me know when she gets the references posted on the site.

Consciousness with Christof Koch (BSP 22)

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Brain Science Podcast #22 is an interview with Dr. Christof Koch of Cal Tech, one of the pioneers in the neurobiological study of consciousness.  About two decades ago, when Koch and Francis Crick began looking for what they called the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), such a quest was considered controversial; but now the field is increasing in popularity.  In our interview, we talked a little about his book,The Quest for Consciousness, as well as his on-going research and his thoughts about what the future might bring.

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Here is a list of some of the topics we discussed:

  • Why Francis Crick was an outstanding mentor and colleague.

  • A Working definition of consciousness.

  • How consciousness relates to awareness.

  • What are neural correlates of consciousness.

  • Why vision is the focus of Koch's research.

  • The search for the "footprints" of consciousness.

  • The role of functional imaging and the use of monkeys.

  • Neurons-"the atoms of perception".

  • Why we need a theory of consciousness.

  • The role of the frontal lobes in consciousness.

  • Is consciousness an emergent property?

  • What about zombies?

  • Why do we need consciousness?

  • Will artificial intelligence become conscious?

  • The hard problem:  how does the brain generate subjective experience  (qualia).

Links:

Update on 2012-05-03 15:42 by Ginger Campbell, MD

Christof Koch returned to the Brain Science Podcast in Episode 84.

A review of "The Body Has a Mind of Its Own" (BSP 21)

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Featured in this episode: The Body has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better (2007), by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee.  (Also available on from Audible.com)

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SHOW NOTES

Topics:

  • Body maps and the role of embodiment.

  • Basic ideas about the body maps in the brain.

  • Mapping the world around us.

  • How body maps differ between species.

  • Body schema and body image.

  • The role of body maps in disease.

  • The role of belief in health and illness.

  • How body maps explain non-traditional healing methods and unusual experiences.

  • The role of motor imagery in improving motor skills.

  • Mirror Neurons and grid neurons in the hippocampus  (see more on Scholarpedia).

  • How sensation and emotions come together (the role of the insula).

Scientists mentioned in the podcast:

Other scientists mentioned in The Body has a Mind of Its Own:

Note: This list is not exhaustive.  I know I left off VS Ramachandran and several others, but those listed above did work that was addressed, directly or indirectly, in my podcast.

Brain Structures (links include diagrams of the brain):

"The Female Brain" with Dr. Louann Brizendine (BSP 20)

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Episode 20 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine of the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California at San Francisco.   Her book, The Female Brain, was just released in paperback, and it is on the New York Times Bestseller list.

We explore how hormones and neurotransmitters effect our brains, and how these effects are different in men and women.  This episode has interesting stuff for listeners of both sexes.

If you would like to learn more, visit Dr. Brizendine's website at http://louannbrizendine.com.

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Review of "Gut Feelings" (BSP 19)

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Show Notes forBrain Science Podcast #19: Gut Feelings

This episode is a discussion of Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (2007), by Gerd Gigerenzer.

Dr. Gigerenzer argues that unconscious decision-making or intuition is actually based on the use of heuristics(rules of thumb) that can be explored, and even brought into awareness.  In this episode, I discuss his basic arguments with an emphasis on the differences between intuitive reasoning and formal logic.  Then we explore some examples including the application of these ideas to more controversial areas like morality and social instincts.

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References

Links of Interest:

The Wisdom of the Aging Brain (BSP 17)

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This week we discuss another book by Elkonon Goldberg, Ph.D.  I highly recommend this book to everyone, because it is an excellent review of many of the topics we have discussed over the last several months including memory, emotion, and neuroplasticity.   In this episode, we continue our discussion of the role of the pre-frontal lobes in intelligence, as well as what happens to our brain as we age.

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Show Notes

I want to thank Matthew Lofton for pointing out to me that there is evidence that elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror.  This means I was wrong when I said (in #16) that only humans and some primates can do this. He referred us to "I, Elephant," by Kaspar Mossmanin in the February 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind.  The original article was "Self-recognition in an Asian elephant," by:Plotnik, Joshua M.; de Waal, Frans B. M.; Reiss, Diana. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 11/7/2006, Vol. 103 Issue 45, p17053-17057.  He posted this information as a comment, but I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention.

Episodes that are referred to in this episode:

Note: You should have no problem listening to Episode #17 first, but I have provided these references for those who want to review or go back for more details.

Definitions used in this episode:

  • Attractor: a cognitive template that enables pattern recognition. An attractor is thought to be a concise set of neurons with strong interactions among themselves. A unique and important quality of attractors is that a broad range of inputs activate the same set of neurons. This is thought to be the mechanism of pattern recognition.

  • Cognitive competence: the ability to relate the old to the new so as to recognize the similarities between a new problem and one that has been previously solved.

  • Cognitive wisdom: an enhanced capacity for problem solving

  • Generic memory: memory for patterns

Brief list of topics discussed in this episode:

  • Review of important ideas about the prefrontal lobes from #16.

  • An hypothesis about the differing roles of the right and left hemispheres.

  • How the brain changes in normal aging.

  • Mechanisms that protect the brain from degenerative changes:

    • Generic memory-why this type of memory is more robust.

    • Pattern expansion-how parts of the cortex expand with use.

    • Effortless experts-why familiar tasks are less demanding.

    • Why vigorous mental activity is important throughout life.

For more links related to Dr. Goldberg's work see the show notes for Episode 16.

Is Free Will a Myth?

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I have posted Episode 12 of Books and Ideas.  It is my response to The Myth of Free Will (2007), which was edited by Cris Evatt.

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A review of "The Executive Brain" (BSP 16)

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Brain Science Podcast #16 is a discussion of The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (2002), by Elkhonon Goldberg.

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Show Notes

This episode is an introduction to the role of the pre-frontal lobes in decision-making, and the other "executive" functions of our brain.  The functions of the pre-frontal lobes are not only the keys to what makes us human, but also the keys to our individual personality.

In this episode, using Dr. Goldberg's book, we discuss how the frontal lobes relate to the other structures of the brain.  We also, discuss some ideas about why the left and right sides of the brain differ, as well as several important ways in which the cortex, and especially the pre-frontal lobes differ from some of the older parts of the brain.

We discuss briefly the vulnerability of the frontal lobes to damage and disease, and we consider the implications of frontal lobe dysfunction.  Questions are introduced that will be considered in more detail in future podcasts.

Links:

"Why Choose this Book?" with Read Montague (BSP 15)

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Show Notes

Episode #15 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Dr. Read Montague of the Baylor School of Medicine.  We discuss his recent book, Why Choose this Book? How we Make Decisions (2006).

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Here are some of the questions we discussed:

  • What is computational neuroscience?

  • What is the computational theory of the mind (CTOM)?

  • How isthe objection that the CTOM doesn't account for meaning answered ?

  • What about choice and responsibility?

  • Is there room for free will in this model?

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Unconscious Decisions! (BSP 13)

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Show Notes

The Brain Science Podcast usually focuses on a single book devoted to neuroscience, but Episode 13 begins with a discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and then explores the ideas from several other sources. The key idea is that we do make some decisions without conscious thought and that neuroscience is discovering how this works.

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  • Transcripts: BSP 1-14

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References:

Consciousness: An Introduction (2003), by Susan Blackmore:  Experiments from pages 38-43, 57-63, and 127-132.
Consciousness Explained  (1992), by Daniel C. Dennett
Freedom Evolves (2003) by Daniel C. Dennett: Quote in episode is from page 223
On Intelligence (2005) by Jeff Hawkins

Other Links for this episode:

Vic Braden
Antonio Damasio

The new Brain Science Podcast Community group on Flickr.com:  Please post your pictures here!

"Memory: From Mind to Molecules" (BSP 12)

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This episode of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of memory based on the book, Memory: From Mind to Molecules (2000), by Larry R. Squire, and Eric R. Kandel.

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Show Notes

I highly recommend that you get this book for yourself if you want to read the details of the experiments.  The book contains excellent illustrations.

Some of the experimental animals mentioned in this episode include Aplysia (giant sea snails), drosophila (fruit flies), and mice.

Mechanisms of memory formation and storage seem to be shared from the simplest non-vertebrates up through humans.

Types of Memory:  declarative and non-declarative. Non-declarative memory is generally NOT subject to conscious awareness or control.

There are many different types of non-declarative memory including:

Declarative memory, which seems to be unique to animals that have a hippocampus and cerebral cortex, includes short-term (immediate and working memory) and long-term memory.  Much research has been devoted to discovering how and where long-term memory occurs.  The answer may surprise you.

This episode includes a discussion of some of the unanswered questions in memory research.

Emotion (BSP 11)

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Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, by Dylan Evans, is the featured book for this episode of the Brain Science Podcast.  Thanks to Kate from the UK for suggesting this book.

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Show Notes

This episode is a short introduction to the idea that our emotions are an essential part of our intelligence.

  • We discuss the basic emotions, based on the work of anthropologist Paul Eckman.

  • We learn about culturally-learned emotions, such as "being a wild pig," which is observed among the Gurumba people of New Guinea.

  • Paul Griffiths introduced the idea of "higher cognitive emotions."

  • Emotions seem to exist on a continuum from the highly innate basic emotions to the culturally specific emotions.

  • The work of Joseph Ledoux and Antonio Damasio reveal that our emotions are an important element of normal intelligence.

  • We consider how fear actually follows two pathways in the brain.

  • We consider the role of the limbic system including the amygdala.

  • We consider the relationship between emotions and mood.

  • We consider how mood affects memory and decision making.

  • This includes Robert Zajonc's discovery of the "mere exposure" effect.

  • We briefly consider the question of whether computers could ever display emotions.

Further Reading:

The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (2000), by Antonio Damasio.