Some Recent Research About Embodied Cognition

There is an ongoing debate on the Brain Science Podcast Discussion Forum about whether the importance of embodiment is an essential obstacle to trying to simulate human cognition with computers.  Meanwhile, the role of embodiment in cognition continues to be a growing area of research.  I enjoyed a recent post on the Scientific American Community website entitled, Thinking with the Body, by Art Glenberg from Arizona State University.  He reviews recent research by Holt and Bellock.  The bottom line is that even when people are involved in verbal tasks, like reading sentences, their comprehension is influenced by their body knowledge of what is being described.

You can read more at Mind Matters: Neuroscience, Psychology, Psychiatry, and More.

Brain Science Podcast #32: A Brief Introduction to Brain Anatomy

Episode 32 of the Brain Science Podcast is a whirlwind (55 minute) tour of brain anatomy.  It is based on David Bainbridge's new book: Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain (2008).  Click here for some of the key illustrations from the book.  I want to thank David for sharing these images, and I encourage everyone to read the book.

How to get this episode:

• Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.

• Buy mp3 for $1.

• Buy Transcript for $1.

• New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE.  All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free.  See the individual show notes for links the audio files.

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

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

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.

What Do We Know about the Evolution of Human Thought?

In a recent blog post I objected to Richard Lewontin's claim that we know nothing about the evolution of the human brain.  Apparently my reaction was shared by quite a few researchers in the field.  Michael Balter describes their reaction at an interdisciplinary panel that was also held at this year's AAAS annual meeting.

One thing that seems to drive some of these discussions is a difference of opinion about whether their is an insurmountable gap between human intelligence and what other animals can do.  This connects with the ongoing debate about the importance of genetic factors.  But there seems to be no doubt that this is an extremely fruitful area of research.

"How Human Intelligence Evolved--Is It Science or 'Paleofantasy'?" by Michael Balter. Science 22 February 2008: Vol. 319. no. 5866, p. 1028

Brain Science Podcast #31: Brain Rhythms with György Buzsáki

György Buzsáki, author of Rhythms of the Brain  (OUP 2006), is a professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University.  His book is a comprehensive review of the current state of research in the field of brain oscillations.  It includes the role of these oscillations in sleep and memory.  In Episode 31 of the Brain Science Podcast, Dr. Buzáki explains why the rhythms of the brain are important and reflects on why this field has been neglected by some neuroscientists.  I think he makes a convincing case for the position that these rhythms are an essential component of brain function.

How to get this episode:

• Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.

• Buy mp3 for $1.

• Buy Transcript for $1.

• New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE.  All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free.  See the individual show notes for links the audio files.

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

• György Buzsáki, Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers University.

• Learn about his lab and research.

Scientists and References:

• Stephen Strogatz: known for his discovery of "small world" architecture.: His 2003 bestseller Sync: The emerging science of spontaneous order is aimed at a general audience

• Nancy Kopell: mathematician: Buzsaki recommends her review of the analytical approaches to neuronal oscillators: We got Rhythm: Dynamical Systems of the Nervous System. N Am Math Soc 47: 6-16 (2000).

• Zoltán Néda (Bebes-Bolyai University Romania): the spontaneous synchronization of hand clapping

• Hermann Haken: German laser physicist who studies bidirectional causation.

• The Science of Structure: Synergetics (1984).

• John O'Keefe (University College,  London): along with Lynn Nadel he discovered how the hippocampus forms a cognitive map of the world. He has shown how the timing of oscillations in the hippocampus are important.

• "Independent rate and temporal coding in hippocampal pyramidal cells," by John Huxter, Neil Burgess, and John O'Keefe. Nature 425, 828-832 (23 October 2003).

• David McCormick (Yale University): showed that neurons from the thalamus of a ferret can oscillate spontaneously.  He has also studied the oscillations of place cells in the hippocampus.

• David Hubel and Thorston Wiesel: along with Vernon Montcastle, they pioneered the use of single neuron recordings in the neocortex of casts and monkeys.

• Montcastle, VB (1997), "The Columnar Organization of the Neocortex." Brain 102:01-722.

• Claude Shannon: founder of Information Theory.

• Jan Born (University of Lübeck, Germany): experiments with how sleep improves both memory and problem solving.

Topics and questions:

• Basics of oscillations and synchrony.

• What functions are accomplished by brain rhythms?

• The role of hippocampal ripples in memory.

• What happens to our brain rhythms while we sleep.

• The importance of synchrony in saving energy in the brain.

This episode will appeal to listeners with a background in math or engineering, but Dr. Buzsáki provides numerous everyday examples that make the material accessible to everyone.

Lewontin Claims We Know Nothing About Brain Evolution

Episode 30 of the Brain Science Podcast was devoted to the subject of language evolution.  In that episode, I mentioned Steven Jay Gould's claim that language was a spandrel, an incidental by-product of evolution.  Gould's co-author on his famous 1970's paper about spandrels was Richard Lewontin, who is well-known for disagreeing with prevailing opinions in evolution.  At the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he reportedly gave a talk that discounted all the current theories about brain evolution.

I have not read the transcript of his lecture, but I just finished reading Georg Striedter's comprehensive textbook, Principles of Brain Evolution  (2005).  This text is highly regarded by leaders in neuroscience research like Michael S Gazzaniga.  It does an excellent job of describing both the challenges and progress in the field, as well as exploring the pros and cons of alternative theories.  I can't help wondering what Lewontin's comments contribute to the field.  Of course, it is reasonable to point out how limited our knowledge is, but to  dismiss the work of so many scientists seems rather arrogant. If anyone has access to the transcript I would like to read it.

From AAAS: The Evolution of Morality

The Science magazine podcast is providing highlights from this year's AAAS meeting in Boston.

So far, I found the discussion of the evolution of morality with Marc Hauser and several other scientists to very interesting.  One issue that was raised was whether the utility of a theory depends on its ability to generate testable hypotheses.  Listen and let me know what you think.

Do People Hear Sounds Differently?

There is lots of interesting stuff coming out of this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  I hope to attend the meeting in person next year. This year's meeting is  ove,r but I hope to bring you a few brain-related highlights in the next few days.

Since Episode 30, I have been on the lookout for linguistics related news, which is why the following item in ScienceDaily.com caught my eye:  Linguistics professor, Jackson T. Gandour, presented information from several of his pitch processing studies entitled "Brain Basis of Speech."

"Everyone has a brainstem, but it's tuned differently depending on what sounds are behaviorally relevant to a person; for example, the sounds of his or her mother tongue," Gandour said.

Jackson T. Gandour is a researcher in neurophonetics at Purdue University.  The complete article, "Linguist Tunes In To Pitch Processing In Brain" is available at the Science Daily website.

A Clue To Why Tobacco Is So Addictive

Nancy Yanes-Hoffman sent me this review of an article just published in the Journal of Neuroscience:

That was good!" "Do it again."

This is what the brain says when people use tobacco, as well as ‘hard drugs’ such as heroin.  New research published in the February 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience indicates that the effects of nicotine and opiates on the brain's reward system are equally strong in a key pleasure-sensing areas of the brain – the nucleus accumbens.

"Testing rat brain tissue, we found remarkable overlap between the effects of nicotine and opiates on dopamine signaling within the brain’s reward centers," says Daniel McGehee, Associate Professor in Anesthesia & Critical Care at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

McGehee and colleagues are exploring the control of dopamine, a key neurotransmitter in reward and addiction.  Dopamine is released in areas such as the nucleus accumbens by naturally rewarding experiences such as food, sex, some drugs, and the neutral stimuli or ‘cues’ that become associated with them.

Nicotine and opiates are very different drugs, but the endpoint, with respect to the control of dopamine signaling, is almost identical.  “There is a specific part of the nucleus accumbens where opiates have been shown to affect behavior, and when we tested nicotine in that area, the effects on dopamine are almost identical,” says McGehee.

This research is important to scientists because it demonstrates overlap in the way the two drugs work, complementing previous studies that showed overlapping effects on physiology of the ventral tegmenal area, another key part of the brain’s reward circuitry.  The hope is that this study will help identify new methods for treating addiction – and not just for one drug type.

"It also demonstrates the seriousness of tobacco addiction, equating its grip on the individual to that of heroin.  It reinforces the fact that these addictions are very physiological in nature and that breaking away from the habit is certainly more than just mind over matter," says McGehee.

This work is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, T32GM07839 and F31DA023340 to JPB, DA015918 and DA019695 to DSM.

Jonathan P. Britt and Daniel S. McGehee, "Presynaptic Opioid and Nicotinic Receptor Modulation of Dopamine Overflow in the Nucleus Accumbens,"The Journal of Neuroscience, February 13, 2008 • 28(7):1672–1681

Taking Tests Might Help Your Memory!

There is an interesting paper in this week's Science magazine that suggests that being tested might be an essential component of making what we study part of longterm memory.  In the study, students had memorize Swahili-English word pairs.  According to the authors,"Repeated studying after learning had no effect on delayed recall, but repeated testing produced a large positive effect."

"The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning," by Jeffrey D. Karpicke and Henry L. Roediger, III2, Science 15 February 2008: Vol. 319. no. 5865, pp. 966 - 968

How Philosophy of Mind Influences Artificial Intelligence

The latest episode of Talking Robots is an interview with Inman Harvey of the University of Sussex.  He observes that when researchers attempt to build autonomous robots, their approach is strongly influenced by their philosophy of mind, even if that philosophy is only implicit.  He also points out that what he calls "good old-fashioned AI" fails to represent how brains really work.

This is a point I have emphasized repeatedly.  Inman observes that approaches liked embodied artificial intelligence (which we discussed with Rolf Pfeifer in Episode 25) are really based on a different philosophy of mind that "good old-fashioned AI."

His paper, Philosophy of Mind Using a Screwdriver, is available as a PDF.

BrainConnection: A Website from the Creators of FastForward™

I get a monthly newsletter from BrainConnection, which is an educational website managed by Scientific Learning, the people who market Dr. Michael Merzenich's FastForward™ method for helping dyslexic children learn to read.

This month they have several language-related articles that might be of interest, including part 1 of a series about how children learn to talk and an article about the evolution of language.  The latter article includes a discussion in favor of Chomsky's universal grammar, which many linguists still find to be quite fundamental to their work.

New Journal: Mind, Brain, and Education

From the Blackwell Publishing website:

"On April 2nd Wiley-Blackwell celebrated the premiere issue of Mind, Brain, and Education with a reception at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

During the celebration, Kurt Fischer (Harvard University), Howard Gardner (Harvard University), Maryanne Wolf (Tufts University), and Stanislas Dehaene (Collège de France) discussed their recent findings regarding how brain science informs educational practice."

Natasha Mitchell Interviews Jonah Lehrer about "Proust was a Neuroscientist"

The February 9th episode of All in the Mind  is an excellent interview of author Jonah Lehrer about his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist.  In the interview, Lehrer reflects on the danger of viewing science as the sole source of discovery, but he also talks a little about several of the people explored in his book.  His basic premise is that artists from various fields often intuitively grasped truths that are now being revealed by neuroscience.  One example is the insights that Proust had about memory.

Proust was a Neuroscientist is a valuable contribution to the current exploration of the relevance of neuroscience to everyday life.  It can be easily read in a few sittings or savored one artist at a time.

Natasha Mitchell is an excellent interviewer because she always asks interesting and probing questions.  (I think of her as the Australian Terry Gross.).  All in the Mind is an excellent compliment to the Brain Science Podcast.

Mitchell has recently begun an All in the Mind blog and there is a new All in the Mind group on Facebook.

The Evolution of Language (BSP 30)

Episode 30 of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, by Christine Kenneally.  We focus mostly on the first part of the book, which tells the story of how the study of language evolution has grown from almost a banned subject to a new field of inquiry called evolutionary linguistics.  We also reflect on how recent findings in neuroscience like the importance of plasticity are influencing the field.

How to get this episode:

• Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.

• Buy mp3 for $1.

• Buy Transcript for $1.

• New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE.  All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free.  See the individual show notes for links the audio files.

Scientists discussed in the Episode:

• Noam Chomsky

• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

• Stuart Shanker: Brain Science Podcast #7: Interview about bonobos

• see also Brain Science Podcast #6: Discussion of The First Idea

• Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom

• Philip Leiberman

*References:

• Pinker, Steven, and Paul Bloom, "Natural Language and Natural Selection," Behavioral and Brains Sciences 13 (1990): 707-84.

• Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch (2002). "The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?" Science 298:1569-1579.

• Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (2007).

• Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker,  The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans  (2004).

*Additional references can be found in Kenneally's book and at the websites of the scientists listed above.  Also, be sure to check out Kenneally's blog for follow-up information.

Check Out This Interview with Linguist Alice Gaby

I just listened to the February 6, episode of Science Talk, the podcast from Scientific American.  Steve Mirsky talks with linguist Alice Gaby, from the University of California-Berkeley, about the relationship between language, culture, cognition and perception.   This is very relevant to Episode 30 of the Brain Science Podcast  (due out on February 8), which is about the evolution of language.

Jeff Hawkins Talks About Why Computers Aren't More Like Brains

I often emphasize the fact that our brains our different from computers.  If you would like to read an article that comes at the subject from the opposite direction (computers are not brains), read this summary of a recent talk given by Jeff Hawkins about "why computers can't be more like a brain on Dean Takahashi's Tech Talk Blog.

Jeff Hawkins was the co-founder of Palm, Inc. and he is author of On Intelligence, which was discussed in the Brain Science Podcast  Episode 2.

Easter Seals Announces Program to Help Vets with Head Injuries

In a recent interview with Dr. Edward Taub (Brain Science Podcast #28), we learned that Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy has been shown to help people with traumatic brain injuries, but that the Veteran's Administration has been slow to acknowledge the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and  Afghanistan.  Fortunately, the problem seems to be receiving increasing attention.

The January 25th episode of the Science Magazine podcast discusses an article exploring the possible mechanisms of brain injury ocurring in near-blast conditions, where often the effects may be delayed and subtle.

Also, Easter Seals has just announced that it is funding a program that will provide access to Michael Merzenich's highly regarded Posit Science Program, an on-line program originally developed to help older patients regain and maintain their mental agility.  I don't know if they have done any work with traumatic brain injury, but the program certainly shows promise.

References:

"Shell Shock Revisited: Solving the Puzzle of Blast Trauma," Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science 25 January 2008: Vol. 319. no. 5862, pp. 406 - 408.

Press Release: Easter Seals Launches Nationwide Program for U.S. Service Members and Veterans Deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan with Traumatic Brain Injury.

The IMPACT study: a clinical trial of the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program.

Posit Science Podcast: Dr. Merzenich presents the results of the IMPACT study.

Reading and the Brain with Dr. Maryanne Wolf (BSP 29)

Dr. Maryanne Wolf, Director of The Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University

Episode 29 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.  I discussed her book in Episode 24, so this interview was an opportunity to ask her some follow-up questions, and to focus more on how children learn to read.  Dr. Wolf shares her ten years of experience helping children learn to read and developing programs to help children with problems like dyslexia.  She shares some practical advice for parents as well as her concerns about how reliance on the internet could influence reading skills.

I enjoyed the conversation and, while I especially want to share this episode with parents, I think Dr. Wolf gives everyone some interesting ideas to consider. 

How to get this episode:

• Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.

• Buy mp3 for $1.

• Buy Transcript for $1.

• New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE.  All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free.  See the individual show notes for links the audio files.

Links:

Maryanne Wolf

• Faculty page at Tufts.

• Director of The Center for Reading and Language Development.

• Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

• The Center for Reading and Language Development (Tufts University)

• RAVE-O: A Comprehensive, Fluency-Based Reading Intervention Program.

Philosopher's Zone Podcast Explores "Minds and Computers"

The Philosopher's Zone is one of the excellent Australian podcasts that I listen to regularly.  The episode of January 12, 2007, is especially relevant to our recent discussion of embodied intelligence.  Host Alan Saunders interviews Matt Carter, author of Minds and Computers: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

Their conversation is a good brief introduction to some of the issues of philosophy of mind, the relevance of the computational theory of the mind (introduced in Brain Science Podcast #15), and the  importance of embodiment to the field of artificial intelligence.

If anyone has already read this book, I would love to hear your feedback and impressions.