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Best of HUMANITY’S NEW FRONTIER

JANUARY 2019 • brainworldmagazine.com

WIRED FOR STORIES

(AND READY)

H

umans don’t only respond to stories, we can’t stay away from them. Because of a unique emotional property, the brain tends to connect us deeply to stories and narratives. Why are we so primed for a good book or movie to carry us away?

To understand how, look no further than Clark Kent’s glasses.

Stories connect with our emotions directly and make believers out of us. When you think about it, a superhero known the world over putting on a pair of glasses and a tie and going to work at The Daily Planet, where nobody recognizes him, is kind of ridiculous.

Except it isn’t. It’s actually a testament to what can be thought of as story-readiness potential. Our emotional response sees us swept up in stories and narratives instinctively, even without meaning to. If a film, book, comic or even a friendly anecdote builds a world and characters and puts them in a coherent sense of their own logic, we believe it fully — often suspending belief in our own world to do so. When Superman puts on glasses and the dialogue and performances make it obvious nobody around him knows who he really is, it poses no barrier to us believing it — no matter how silly.

From jaw-dropping tales of the hunt around the tribal campfire to the incredible reach of the modern media, our emotional response to accounts of danger, romance, drama, thrills and terror have been a critical part of our social evolution as a species. But while enjoying a good yarn on a screen or in the pages of a book (or around the primeval campfire) is great for relaxation and amusement, such a strong disposition must have a deep-seated anthropological point.

Research has shown books, videos and other products provide the same levels of happiness as life experiences, suggesting that the emotions portrayed in stories are as real to us as our own.

TALKING TO OURSELVES

The first step to understand why humans are such effective storytelling and story-readiness animals is to realize that we ourselves are “stories” — your unbroken stream of consciousness is the “story” of your life, told in the language of emotion about your memories and experiences.

As the late neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote, “each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative.’ This narrative is us.” Philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote, “we are all virtuoso novelists, who find ourselves engaged in all sorts of behavior … and we always put the best ‘faces’ on it we can. We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character at the center of that autobiography is one’s self.”

Everything that goes on around us is likewise a story, from war and peace to a garden beetle we watch climbing up a flower. We even attribute story where none might exist — holding back from impeding the beetle’s progress because of the disappointment or frustration it might feel, even though we know both emotions are probably too advanced for a beetle to ever experience.

It partly explains our tendency to anthropomorphize, subconsciously applying human characteristics and emotions to nonhuman — sometimes inanimate — objects. In 2000’s “Cast Away,” Tom Hanks paints a face

onto a volleyball, and it becomes a stand-in for human contact to the extent it keeps him sane.

Think of the way a child will apply human emotion and interactional frameworks onto any toy or object. (A practice that The Walt Disney Company has made a fortune out of over the years.)

We’re even hardwired to react emotionally to stories so much that we sometimes make them up to make sense of the world when they don’t fit all the facts, in a phenomenon called “confabulation.” (Note “fabula” is the Latin word for “story.”) If two equally qualified candidates — male and female — apply for a job, the bias toward believing males are more capable in the workplace kicks in, and recruiters will tell you afterward they picked the male candidate because he seemed more qualified.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

BY DREW TURNEY

THE FIRST STEP TO UNDERSTAND WHY HUMANS ARE SUCH EFFECTIVE STORYTELLING AND STORYREADINESS ANIMALS IS TO REALIZE THAT WE OURSELVES ARE “STORIES” — YOUR UNBROKEN STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE “STORY” OF YOUR LIFE, TOLD IN THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION ABOUT YOUR MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES.

Mapping the universe’s most complex entity PAGE 19

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Best of

brainworldmagazine.com

JANUARY 2019

Letter from the Publisher

W

e may wish each other good health as we ring in the new year, but we’re probably not always considering our own brain power when we do it — without considering how crucial it is to the rest of our well-being. Whether we know it or not, the brain is regularly making decisions for us — things as mundane as what we eat or feel like eating on a particular day. By simply applying more brain power to these tasks, being mindful of what we eat and the sights and sounds we experience while doing so, we can make ourselves happier and healthier. Besides digesting our food, it also could come helpful when digesting

tion be better, but it may make you healthier with a longer lifespan.

We enter 2019 with wonder and a little trepidation, as we anticipate what will come next — our brains continuing to evolve. How far will the technology of artificial intelligence take us? Will we learn what it means to be human? Will minds become downloadable? Will we make the breakthroughs we need this year to conquer autism, dementia and mental illness?

Or will we at least take an important step in destigmatizing them? It is our sincere hope that you enjoy reading the Best of Brain World 2018, and join us in a toast to healthier minds in 2019.

life — condense your day down to the joyful moments where you can find them and share them with others, helping them to find joy of their own. It is natural for us to try and draw out the empathy of others and share in their emotions — it’s why we tend to trust people who blush, whose emotions seem to be written on their faces; why we are hard-wired for stories and storytelling; and why we sometimes follow emotions over facts — sometimes they seem more tangible. We may feel we have no control over them, just as we sometimes have anxiety about the things over which we have no control. But if we know why we react the way we do, we sometimes can change our

emotions by simply changing the ingredients and taking further control of our lives.

The brain is perhaps the universe’s most complex entity, determining all that makes us human — and continues to grow throughout our lives, forging new connections among its neurons as we learn new things, meet new people and explore new worlds. Simple conversations about past experiences allow us to relive old experiences again, allowing us to share in a collective memory. It’s why we work better in groups and seek out new friendships while keeping old ones alive. When eating mindfully, you may want to consider sharing a meal with someone else — not only will the conversa-

Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences showed how the brain responds to an event that’s not happening to us, but we nevertheless witness. If we hit our thumb with a hammer, one “circuit” ascertains whether the sensation is pleasant or unpleasant, another tells us where in the body the sensation is localized, and the third gives us the perception of the pain itself. If we see someone else hit their thumb with a hammer, the first circuit — distinguishing between pleasure and pain — is activated, creating a general awareness in us of how nasty it must feel, despite not feeling the pain ourselves.

There’s also the finding that the stories you experience in films and books might be making you as fulfilled as if you’d lived them yourself. As research from San Francisco State University has shown, books, videos,and other “experiential products” provide the same levels of happiness as life experiences, suggesting that the emotions portrayed in stories are as real to us as our own.

Such a claim stands to reason — as we’ve already seen in the phenomenon where your sense of self effectively ceases to exist — a good story comes to life in our consciousness and feels as real as other experiences in life when you’re engrossed in it. Lisa Bortolotti, professor of philosophy at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham, who specializes in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, says that if our avid consumption of stories is at least partly explained by our capacity to feel for fictional characters, it seems to fit the idea that fiction helps simulate feelings appropriate to different circumstances. “When we read a book or watch a movie about war, illness or divorce, we prepare ourselves for those situations that we might not have encountered yet in our lives,” she says. “Fictional stories are like a practice run for real life.”

Clues from the chemistry of brain response certainly seem to identify empathy as the secret sauce of story-readiness. As Zak’s research showed, the brain produces oxytocin when we feel trusted or are shown a kindness, and it motivates cooperation with others, doing so by enhancing the ability to experience others’ emotions. “By taking blood before and after the narrative, we found character-driven stories consistently cause oxytocin synthesis,” he says.

CLUES FROM THE CHEMISTRY OF BRAIN RESPONSE CERTAINLY SEEM TO IDENTIFY EMPATHY AS THE SECRET SAUCE OF STORYREADINESS. AS ZAK’S RESEARCH SHOWED, THE BRAIN PRODUCES OXYTOCIN WHEN WE FEEL TRUSTED OR ARE SHOWN A KINDNESS, AND IT MOTIVATES COOPERATION WITH OTHERS, DOING SO BY ENHANCING THE ABILITY TO EXPERIENCE OTHERS’ EMOTIONS.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

THE POWER OF STORY

Our predilection for stories makes them one of the most powerful tools to communicate with and sometimes manipulate behavior through our emotional response, as experts from advertising, politics and plenty of other professional fields well know. Facts and reason are cold, even-tempered — not concerned with context. Stories connect directly with the emotions, so they elicit a much faster, hotter and stronger response.

Think of the boundless statistics about hunger in developing nations we gloss over impassively, while a picture of a single sick, hungry child with flies on her face in a magazine has us reaching for our wallets to make a donation. In his book “Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes,” biologist Nathan Lents says, “Stories carry more weight with us than generalized statistics do because we can relate to the protagonists of a story and feel empathy for them. We cannot feel empathy for data.”

It’s the kind of ethos Hollywood was built on — artifice designed to move us emotionally even at the expense of the truth. How many movies “inspired by true events” have there been? Today, commercial and political interests, hoping to convince the public, know how important it is to find, design and spread the narrative about a product or candidate.

But the emotional power of stories isn’t just about swaying people to your way of thinking. Dr. Paul J. Zak is an author, professor of economics, psychology and management, and the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and his work has shown that character-driven stories with emotional content result in a finer understanding of key points and enable better recall later.

STORYTELLING MACHINES

What’s perhaps most amazing isn’t just our willingness to buy into stories but the efficiency with which our emotions latch onto them even when we know it’s a fictional construction. If we watch shadow puppets against a wall, we immediately understand the emotional journey the dog and the rabbit are going on. It’s not the quality of the art that makes our response transcend the artifice; it’s our constant state of story-readiness.

Part of that is the extent to which our brains want to believe in illusions. We’ve all heard of the experiments where mirrors and rubber arms trick us into thinking a fake limb is ours and swear we can feel it being stroked by a feather. Writ a little larger, the same mental trickery can be applied to the frameworks that deliver narratives. One example presented at Siggraph 2017 (the annual trade show for computer-driven visual technology) was a new approach to virtual reality.

Traditionally a virtual space has to be much the same size as the physical space the user occupies. But by very slowly rotating the VR image at a different speed to that of the user’s movements and the selective moving and replacing of features within the VR world, the University of Southern California’s Dr. Evan Suma Rosenberg and his team can make the virtual space far larger than the real-world user area. Part of Rosenberg’s research came from psychology, where he discovered that even when the brain perceives of something as spatially wrong, it doesn’t take us out of the experience. It works partly because the changes made without the user directing them are too subtle to perceive, but also because the environment is simply another story we instinctively want to believe in.

But the second and maybe even more fascinating aspect of our hardwiring for stories is the unique phenomenon where we’re completely decoupled from our conscious selves.

There are a couple of similar things in the human behavioral repertoire (sleep, the point of orgasm, etc.), but when we’re watching a movie or reading a novel, we quite literally forget we exist, vicariously living the lives and feeling the emotions of those in the story — in place of ours.

THE SECRET INGREDIENT

The instinct that expresses itself as story-readiness might be Homo sapiens’ advanced powers of empathy — a critical skill in the “collaborate or die” world of protohumans.

It’s a thesis that some brain studies seem to bear out. Dr. Tania Singer of the Max Planck

MENTAL BEDFELLOWS

Just like our love of stories, empathy predates language, which gives a little more credence to the idea that the two are inextricably linked.

Findings at London’s University College go so far as to claim that story-readiness was the element that promoted cooperation among hunter-gatherers before the advent of religion. Seeing the signals tribe mates gave off let us imagine the pain, fear or joy they felt before they

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had the means to just tell us how they felt, and the fact that empathy is an entirely emotional response gave us a very efficient method of social interaction. Encouraging everyone to be a productive member of the group often was a literal matter of life and death.

But what about story-readiness? “There are different hypotheses about the evolutionary advantages our love for stories might have,” says Bortolotti. “Some think telling stories increases sexual attractiveness and improves our chances to reproduce. Others say storytelling brings us together, forging social bonds among individuals and supporting cooperation in groups. One theory that resonates with recent debates about fake news and the power of stories in politics is that telling stories helps us control other people.

We often tell stories to support an argument and persuade others we’re right to get them on our side.”

Weirder still, maybe being hardwired for stories is just an unintended evolutionary consequence of empathy — a skill taken too far like some research suggests that language is in relation to breath control. In a world full of predators, rivals and mating opportunities, anything (the prehistoric equivalent of a good book) that so completely disconnects you from your immediate sense of self and your environment is dangerous.

Of course, evolution is a constant series of trade-offs. We won’t notice the hungry saber-toothed cat sneaking into the cave until it’s too late if we’re in the throes of passion, but sex ensures greater genetic diversity across a species. Spending eight hours a night unconscious likewise left our forebears completely unguarded, but sleep offers a biological advantage that’s worth the biological risk.

In the cost-benefit analysis of empathizing with others to the point where a story will carry us away from the here and now and leave us vulnerable, how can story-readiness possibly be an evolutionary advantage? If the upside wasn’t worth the risk, evolution would have elected against the behavior (or gene) long ago.

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Bortolotti agrees that our capacity for becoming engrossed in story has both benefits and costs when it comes to survival. The advantage might be that stories count as practice for the day that we ourselves live the experience depicted, whether it’s falling in love or fighting off alien invaders. “But too much empathy or too much involvement in a story can also be costly,” she says.

USING IT

We can artificially change dopamine levels, affect thought processes with transcranial magnetic stimulation and improve brain health in countless other ways. Could we somehow hack our hardwired propensity for narratives to treat mental illnesses or brain disorders?

Zak’s lab has found that highly immersive stories can change attitudes, opinions and behaviors effectively, even weeks after the story was seen or heard. “I haven’t seen a systematic application of story to mental illness,” he says, “but take the friend or family member who convinces you to visit a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist who convinces you to take some medications or join a counseling group, the stories by others to stay on the medications that often have unpleasant side effects.”

“Some mental illnesses are what I call ‘cortical fantasies,’ like depression and pain.

Not to say they’re not real, but the brain establishes a maladaptive loop where anxiety leads to inaction [depression] or pain signals are experienced as debilitating. Social support, which always comes with a story, can change our interpretation of the stressors and, in some cases, make them disappear.

I don’t think stories are the most effective treatment for severe mental illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, but they could be part of it.”

The concepts of self, story, emotion and empathy are closely linked in the human animal. Whatever they can teach us about what we are and where we’re headed — it’s certain they’ve played a pretty big part in getting us this far.

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JANUARY 2019

brainworldmagazine.com

dementia de ti

3

Personality

journey to the root of

A Q&A WITH DR. SUSAN GREENFIELD

BY SARA BELLUM

■ Scientist, writer, broadcaster, parliamentarian, baroness and business entrepreneur, Dr. Susan Greenfield has spent the last 40 years looking at the root causes of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. She has received 32 honorary degrees and a number of awards, including the Michael Faraday Prize, awarded by the Royal Society of London for “excellence in communicating science to U.K. audiences.” Also known as a “popularizer” of science, Greenfield has written a range of books and papers about the brain, covering topics as distinct as modern technology and how it could be related to autism to the basic brain mechanisms involved in addiction and reward and those involved in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She is now president of a biotech company, Neuro-Bio, which she founded in 2013 to develop a disruptive approach to Alzheimer’s disease based on her research.

In our quest to bring neuroscience closer to people’s lives, Brain World had the opportunity to tap into Greenfield’s insight.

Brain World: Tell us a little more about yourself.

Susan Greenfield: I’m a British neuroscientist. I’ve been primarily based in Oxford. I think my background is very unusual because when I was in school, I didn’t like science at all — so I didn’t do any science. I did Latin and Greek and ancient history and math. Then I came to Oxford University and did philosophy, and that led to an interest in experimental psychology (which back then was a new subject), and that in turn led me to physiology. Then I ended up at Oxford doing a Ph.D. in neurochemistry — even though I had no chemistry background at all. That was quite challenging, but I think it taught me that the important thing in life is to be motivated and enthusiastic, and if you’re interested in something, then you’ll just put the time and energy to find out about it.

In 2010, I was at Oxford and made some discoveries that led me — quite unusually for an academic — to set up a company and to leave the university. We’re now in the fourth year of existence, and things are going very well. I’m learning a lot as I transition from the university sector to the commercial sector.

BW: What is the company about?

SG: The company is called Neuro-Bio, and we’re building on my basic research over the last 40 years to develop a completely different approach to Alzheimer’s disease. Because my own view is that something must be wrong with all the attempts by the pharmaceutical industry that have seen no cure to

Alzheimer’s for the last 15 years.

Clearly, the approaches — as they are — are not working. We are suggesting an innovative take on it. Whether our own approach will work, of course, is an open question because we’re still at the early stages of development, and it’s very different from everyone else’s.

So far, everything seems consistent with the theory I’ve extracted from my 40 years of research. So we are cautiously optimistic.

BW: Please tell us more about your research!

SG: Our idea is that Alzheimer’s disease, like other related diseases — Parkinson’s, dementia and all other so-called neurodegenerative diseases — they don’t happen just anywhere in the brain. There is really something special about the cells that are vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease. Our view is that those cells are deep down in the brain, not in the outer layers, as most people think. And this group of cells has very particular properties. Of these, the most important property is their ability to grow.

This is a good thing in a young brain. But in a more mature brain, the brain mechanisms and factors that form our growth can actually turn toxic. The molecule that is released by these cells will actually start to kill the cells, creating more damage and causing more release of the now toxic chemical. This cycle of cell death is what we call “neurodegeneration.”

BW: So this molecule that is helpful in developmental stages, can turn against us in adulthood?

SG: Exactly! It’s like the myth of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a man with good nature who all of a sudden becomes evil. What we’ve

discovered is that this molecule released deep inside the brain [that we have related to Alzheimer’s] in development — it’s very good, just what you want. But in a mature brain, it turns evil, and it becomes poisonous. That is because the context of a mature brain is different from that of a young brain.

So the very system that promotes growth and development will actually kill cells in maturity.

What we have discovered is the identity of this molecule. We showed that there is indeed an increase of the molecule in Alzheimer’s brains. We measured it in blood and could see how it relates to cognitive impairment. And we’ve identified a way in which it can be blocked with a drug. So the company is trying to develop a process by which we can actually detect if there is a problem before the symptoms come out. If you’ve been diagnosed and developed some symptoms, our drug, ideally, would help you stabilize.

But even better, if you were diagnosed before the symptoms came out, then the symptoms would never come out.

BW: How does this molecule develop?

SG: Alzheimer’s disease is not an actual consequence of aging, but it is a disease of older people, as we know. The issue is that as we age the defense mechanisms in the brain are not so efficient as they are in younger people.

So if you do have a problem at a later stage in your life, your brain might be more vulnerable and in certain cases begin to be damaged, which would activate this mechanism and grow these vulnerable cells. There are many

reasons easons the cells can be damaged, but what we’re trying to do is develop a noninvasive oral medication — nasal spray — that stops these cells from growing. Even if they have to take this medication every day, I think most people would find it preferable to having dementia.

BW: Does this theory apply to all kinds of dementia?

SG: In our view, neurodegeneration is a basic phenomenon.

Of course, it would be called different things and have different symptoms clinically according to where in the brain the problem lies. But the actual mechanism of cells continuing to die in this cycle is similar in Parkinson’s and other forms of dementia.

BW: What happens to our identity with Alzheimer’s disease?

SG: For most people, their identity is very much related to their memories — the things they have experienced in the past, their relationships — which is why we fear dementia so much.

Although cancer, heart failure and other conditions are of course serious diseases,… you can still recognize your grandchildren and you can still share memories with your family. You can therefore still understand what’s going on around you and put it into a context. Sadly, with dementia, as time goes by that ability becomes less and less. So you end up like a small child, and a small child doesn’t really have a strong sense of identity.

They’re very much responding to external influences coming in, and they’re just living in the local. Whereas we get older, we escape from the present to the past and the future, and we’re able to do so because of our personal history and the idiosyncratic links of associations we make with objects and things.

This personalizes the world for us and gives us a sense of who we are. And that is exactly what, sadly, with dementia is very much compromised.

BW: How would you relate Alzheimer’s with our consciousness?

SG: I wrote a book in 2016 called, “A Day in the Life of the Brain[: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn till Dusk]” and it shows how we can, as neuroscientists, understand consciousness on the one hand and the mind on the other.

So the mind is, I say, “all these associations that we form” — in fact, the very word dementia means a “loss of mind.” But

“WHAT WE’VE DISCOVERED IS THAT THIS MOLECULE RELEASED DEEP INSIDE THE BRAIN [THAT WE HAVE RELATED TO ALZHEIMER’S] IN DEVELOPMENT — IT’S VERY GOOD, JUST WHAT YOU WANT. BUT IN A MATURE BRAIN, IT TURNS EVIL, AND IT BECOMES POISONOUS.” when it comes to consciousness, you could be conscious but “lose your mind” or “blow your mind” or be “out of your mind.” So, it means the two things aren’t the same. My own view is that when you “blow your mind” or “lose your mind,” you are somehow denying your sense of self. You are for a moment putting your identity on hold. You are literally “letting yourself go.” And this we can do consciously. Many seek this condition through external stimuli like drugs or alcohol.

You become like a small child — in the moment. You become very much the passive recipient, and your senses get heightened.

In this sense, dementia is very much a “disconnect.” It’s literally a loss of mind. People with dementia don’t have a frame of reference; they don’t have an internal, ongoing system for checks and balances. What you see is what you get. But they didn’t choose this consciously.

BW: Does mindfulness help us get in touch with our senses?

SG: In mindfulness, what happens is that you give significance to the things that you might usually take for granted. You look at a certain object, a color or a scene … in a greater detail than you would normally — trying to notice all the aspects. Instead of just responding to something and moving on, you actually use it as a trigger for deeper thought or more associations.

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JANUARY 2019

HOW INFLUENCE REALLY WORKS

OVER FACTS

I

BY LAUREN MIGLIORE

magine this for a moment: It’s the afternoon of Feb. 6, 2018, and you just watched the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket successfully launch into space. With it was Elon Musk’s signature in the form of a red Tesla Roadster aboard the rocket. Two things stood out about this launch. First, Elon Musk broke barriers (literally), as the Falcon Heavy is now the most powerful spacecraft in operation and among the highest-capacity rockets ever built. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s the first time a consumer car has left this atmosphere, and it was equipped with cameras that provided views of Earth against the backdrop of space. Secondly, there’s a growing group of people who think the entire launch was a conspiracy … wait, what?!

They’re known as The Flat Earth Society and as their name suggests, they believe the Earth is a flat disk. They released a statement following the rocket launch that read, “People who believe that the Earth is a globe because ‘they saw a car in space on the internet’ must be the new incarnation of ‘It’s true, I saw it on TV!’ It’s a poor argument.

NEUROIMAGING RESULTS HAVE SHOWN THAT IN THE BRAIN, PARTS INVOLVED IN LOGIC AND REASONING TAKE A BACK SEAT WHEN IT COMES TO ANALYZING NEW INFORMATION. INSTEAD, AREAS THAT ARE KNOWN FOR PROCESSING EMOTIONS AND CONFLICTS — THE ORBITOFRONTAL CORTEX AND ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX — LIGHT UP WITH ACTIVITY.

Are they serious? Hard to say. But upon looking further into The Flat Earth Society, they believe the North Pole is at the center of this Earth pancake and the edge is protected by an ice wall (also known as Antarctica). They write off more than 2,000 years of scientific observation and evidence, and their society has grown by about 200 people per year.

Some celebrities, including NBA star Kyrie Irving and rapper B.o.B, commit to this misguided belief and rejection of science. It doesn’t make sense, right?

If it seems that facts, data and evidence are falling flat (pun intended) in the face of influence, that’s because they do. Similar to those skeptical of climate change or vaccination-linked autism, facts are not enough to change beliefs or opinions that are already set.

Data and facts never meant much to me until I was sitting in my first cognitive neuroscience course as a psychology major. Instead of Freudian theories and assumptions, the evidence and data that accompanied neuroscience was like a tidy and organized set of answers. But as it turns out, facts and figures aren’t what influence people. Even in our current digital era, they still fall short when it comes to changing minds. The mind is not easily swayed.

Neuroscientist and author Tali Sharot may have explained it best: accessibility to data is the product of the last few decades while the brains we are attempting to influence are the product of millions of decades. The problem with making decisions through an approach that prioritizes information and logic is that it ignores the core of what makes us human: motives, fears, hopes, desires — essentially, our emotions. Because of this, established beliefs can be extremely resistant to change even when scientific evidence is provided to undermine those beliefs.

In fact, information tends to polarize opinions even further, especially when it comes to issues people are passionate about. Sharot tested this by asking a group of volunteers about their opinions regarding climate change: “Do you believe that man-made climate change is happening, and do you support efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?” Based on the answer, the respondents were assigned to one of two groups: “weak” believers of man-made climate change and “strong” believers. Sharot then informed both groups that climate scientists estimate that the average global temperature would rise by approximately 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and asked them to write down their own estimates of the likely temperature rise by 2100.

Following their estimates, one group was informed that in

recent weeks scientists had reassessed the data and concluded that the situation was not as dire as they originally assumed. The other group received opposite news — they were told that scientists realized climate change was far worse than previously assumed. The volunteers were then asked if they would like to provide a new personal estimate for the likely temperature rise.

Sharot found that people adjusted their estimates only if the new information fit their original beliefs. Climate change nonbelievers were influenced by the news that the situation was better than previously thought and their estimate dropped by about 1 degree.

However, news that climate change was worse had no impact on their estimates.

Strong believers showed the exact opposite pattern. They were less persuaded by news that climate change was not as dire yet heavily influenced when told that the situation could be worse.

When you provide someone with new data, they are quick to accept evidence that confirms their prior beliefs. When those beliefs are challenged, people dig their heels in and hold to an even stronger opinion than before.

We also engage in motivated reasoning to defend our beliefs by discarding inconvenient facts and using data subjectively. And in today’s society, we’re able to easily discredit any opinion to support our own with the power of the internet. In 0.45 seconds, Google produced 17.9 million results about the negative health effects of dark chocolate. Want to make an argument for the contrary? No problem. It took only 0.56 seconds to come up with 23.8 million items supporting the health benefits of dark chocolate.

The tendency to cherry-pick and interpret new evidence that confirms our personal views is something we are all guilty of. In fact, being intelligent and informed often can make the problem worse. The higher someone’s IQ and analytical abilities, the better they are at twisting data to support a position — but only one they already agree with.

Yale professor and researcher Dan Kahan demonstrated this in a study that tested people’s ability to view data and facts objectively given their political beliefs.

In the experiment, a random sample of individuals with varying political beliefs were given two data sets. The first was on various skin creams and their ability to reduce rashes. The second set showed crime statistics in various cities and whether these cities would benefit from a law that banned private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public. The participants had to use quantitative skills to solve each of these problems. Herein lies the issue: the exact same set of numbers was used in each scenario. The only thing that changed across the two data sets was the topic.

Participants were easily able to analyze the numbers rationally and solve the skin cream problem but not the one for gun control. Because the gun control problem is a topic that elicits strong opinions and biases, it tainted the participants’ ability to analyze objectively.

We like to think we’re fairly rational and sensible beings. So then why do we

tend to subconsciously discount conflicting data and skew information in our favor? Before Google and modern-day tools, the brain evolved to evaluate information in relation to what we already believed as a way to help us make decisions quickly. Certain pre-existing beliefs also become part of our identity and ideology.

When these are threatened, it can feel like our identity is being threatened.

Neuroimaging results have shown that parts in the brain involved in logic and reasoning take a back seat when it comes to analyzing new information.

Instead, areas that are known for processing emotions and conflicts — the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex — light up with activity.

Researchers also have found that when people receive information that does not fit with their earlier beliefs, their brains almost “shut down” and neuronal responses are reduced.

What then, if anything, can we do to evolve stubborn beliefs and opinions?

Sharot explains that to successfully elicit change, we need to identify with common motivations and consider the other person’s mind. Beliefs and opinions are usually intertwined with our identity — how we grew up, experiences that have shaped our outlook, etc. By identifying with common goals and relating to emotions instead of resorting to logic, we have a better chance of getting our message across to someone. When we argue about the facts of an issue, rarely is it about the facts at all; it’s more so a dispute over values that don’t align with our own and our emotions embedded with those values.

It goes without saying that as humans, we’re emotional creatures. From a scientific standpoint, emotions are a physiological reaction to external events or internal thoughts. The brain uses them to alert us about a situation or environment we’re in. But from a social perspective, emotions are one of the strongest ways we communicate with one another as well as garner attention.

When someone has a message to convey, emotion is the quickest ways to engage an audience. In the corridors of the brain, emotion creates synchronization.

Your amygdala — the region in your brain important for signaling arousal — is activated, and it prompts people to act and view the world in a similar way. When it comes to influencing others or being influenced ourselves, awareness and emotion is key. Understanding why we are the way we are, how we feel about a certain situation and our deep-rooted life experiences can help us to pause and re-evaluate.

There still is a lot of research to be done to fully uncover and understand the various appeals of influences on the brain. But the knowledge we do have is beginning to help us parse how certain influences activate the brain’s reward system and neural pathways.

We all have differences, personality quirks and our own individual upbringings that make us unique. But sometimes we tend to focus on that, and we forget that our brains are actually organized very similarly. Our reactions to experiences and stimuli tend to mirror each other, and that’s what makes it easier to communicate our ideas, express our feelings, and navigate through life’s challenges.

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VIEWPOINT

A LOOK IN THE MIRROR W EXAMINING YOUR IDENTITY

BY MAURICE J. ELIAS, PH.D.

ho am I? Many of us spend our lives seeking an answer to that question. Sometimes, even when we think we have the answer, events lead us to wonder.

Before we go into the question, here are a couple of brief activities that will give you some insight into your own identity.

WE DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ONE IDENTITY. WE HAVE MULTIPLE IDENTITIES. THEY CHANGE OVER THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF OUR LIFE SPAN, IN RESPONSE TO THE EVENTS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND RELATIONSHIPS IN OUR LIVES.

WHO AM I?

This one is simple. Take a piece of paper, write, “Who Am I?” at the top of the page, number the lines 1 to 20, and write for each line the incomplete sentence: I am someone who________.

Once you have set this up, write as many answers as you wish to that question. Please don’t read ahead until you are finished with the task.

WHO AM I IN SITUATIONS?

Next, take a piece of paper and fold it into quarters. Label the four corners thusly: Me at my best: How would you describe yourself when you are at your best?

Me at my worst: How would you describe yourself when you are at your worst?

Situations and people when I am at my best: When and/or with whom do you find yourself being at your best?

Situations and people when I am at my worst: When and/or with whom do you find yourself being at your worst?

As before, write in your answers and please complete this task before you read on.

So, what can you learn about your identity from these activities?

First, let’s start with the insight of researchers Seymour Rosenberg and Michael Gara: we don’t actually have one identity. We have multiple identities. They change over the course of development of our life span in response to the events, opportunities and relationships in our lives.

They found this through numerous research projects

involving a range of individuals, and they completed a matrix of how they acted across a range of roles and relationships. Using a data technique called “hierarchical classes analysis,” they found that who we are depends in part on the contexts we are in.

If you are saying to yourself, “Hmm, if circumstances and opportunities affect identity, wouldn’t that have tremendous implications for individuals who live in poverty, isolation, oppression or disability?” Indeed, yes. One of the great misfortunes of poverty is the way it constrains identity, sometimes shaping it toward unattainable aspiration, and at times leading us to foreclose possibilities that, while remote, may still be accessible.

Second, let’s look at your identity.

Take a look at your responses to “I am someone who … ” How many did you write? How hard was it getting to the number that you did, even if you made it to 20? One reliable finding is that individuals from disadvantaged circumstances rarely get to 20 and often have struggles getting to 10.

Third, take a look at how you answered. How many of your responses were phrased as, “I am someone who has…”? How about, “I am someone who does…”? or “I am someone who is…”? Those three and their variations let you know whether you tend to frame your identity in terms of possessions, activities or attributes. In what percentage of your answers did you mention other people? Family members?

Friends? In what percentage of your answers did you mention things related to your home and family?

Work? Looking at your responses in this way gives you insights into how you shape your identity.

Okay, now let’s examine your second task. Take a look at what you wrote for “me at your best” and “worst.” Rosenberg and Gara’s insight is that both of these are part of your identity. Their studies found that the ability to integrate our disparate identities has implications for our mental health. Sometimes we are proud of who we are; other times we are not. Also revealing is your perception of whether you feel you spend more time being your best or your worst. Note that because we tend to think highly of ourselves (unless we are depressed, in which case the mechanism is exactly reversed), it would not be surprising if we identified ourselves with us at our best even if we are not like that so often.

Finally, let’s look at when and with whom you are at your best and worst. By now, you

Here is a relevant activity, based on something shared with me by master high school educator, R. Keeth Matheny, in Austin, Texas.

Take a sheet of paper and draw four overlapping circles: top, bottom, left, and right: In top circle: List what you truly love the most, including what you love doing the most.

In bottom circle: List what someone would be willing to pay you to do.

In left circle: List what you are good at.

In right circle: List aspects of yourself that the world needs.

Your Passion is the overlap of top and left circles Your Mission is the overlap of top and right circles Your Profession is the overlap of left and bottom circles Your Vocation is the overlap of right and bottom circles And your Purpose is the overlap of your Passion, Mission, Profession, and Vocation regions. Purpose sits at the intersection of these essential identities.

likely have picked up on the revelation within the question: our identity is not best thought of as a single, stable personality trait or even a set of attributes. We are different with different people and circumstances.

Knowing when and with whom we are at our best and worst is a valuable life tool. We can avoid “temptations” or situations that may well trigger us to act in ways we will regret. In baseball, relief pitchers often are at their best in high-pressure situations; when asked to come in to throw with a big lead, they are more likely to give up runs. You may find yourself at your best or worst working under deadlines or working with a lack of structure.

These are all facets of who you are.

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

Very much related to our identity is our sense of purpose. In William Damon’s recent book, “The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find

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Their Calling in Life,” he summarizes a four-year nationwide study of how youth benefit from being guided to consider their sense of purpose in life versus focusing on short-range goals and plans.

In essence, from early adolescence, we benefit from saying to ourselves the simple, profound statement, “Who am I? I exist to fulfill my purpose.”

Our purpose serves as a kind of North Star for our multiple identities. It helps us find our bearings when we find ourselves acting in ways that do not seem aligned with our sense of purpose. I have worked with students who are clear when they come into college that their purpose is to be a doctor. Yet, in their first semester or two, organic chemistry and biology classes seem insurmountably hard; they almost seem helpless to get As in those classes.

When we debrief, the story is almost always the same: strong family pressure to adopt medicine (or law, business, psychology, art, etc.) as their major and direction. Our public identity may not embody our more deeply held purpose. We can cognitively fool ourselves for years, telling ourselves that we hold an identity we feel we “should” have while deeply feeling that this is not “who we are.”

There is some healthy debate about whether we have one purpose or several; whether we are always aligned with our purpose, or as Rosenberg and Gara would suggest, we sometimes need to be “someone else” for a while to better enable us to pursue our sense of purpose.

Think about someone whose purpose is to help others in times of greatest need. These first responders almost never can be purpose-driven all the time. While they have a primary purpose, they have other identities that they must pursue.

They may not feel that they are at their absolute best at Thanksgiving dinner versus at a four-alarm fire, but their lives will be more fulfilled overall, and they will be more likely to pursue their purpose if they allow themselves to embrace multiple identities.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL COMPETENCIES MATTER

It may seem obvious to say so, but the only way to achieve your best selves is to enact them. And for that, you need social and emotional competencies. You need to know how to: • Recognize feelings in yourself and others • Manage your emotions • Know your strengths • Be able to set and monitor goals • Be organized • Keep a sustained focus • Have empathy for others You need to be able to work in groups effectively as both a leader and a team player, and be a constructive, ethical problem solver and decision maker who is not thrown off by the inevitable obstacles one will encounter in life. This is an area where science has been advancing steadily.

Indeed, you will find that by building your social and emotional skills, you will be able to come closer to being someone who is “at your best” more of the time. Having the mindset and skills to make the best of one’s opportunities is the key to having an attainable, satisfying identity.

Maurice J. Elias is a professor in the psychology department at Rutgers University and director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab (www.secdlab.org). He has written “Emotionally Intelligent Parenting: How to Raise a Self-Disciplined, Responsible, Socially Skilled Child,” “Talking Treasure: Stories to Help Build Emotional Intelligence and Resilience in Young Children,” and “The Joys & Oys of Parenting.”

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JANUARY 2019

HOW FRIENDSHIP FORGES YOUR IDENTITY

BY CHARLES ETHAN PACCIONE

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any of you have probably heard of the saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” but do not know where it comes from — some attribute it to Sun Tzu, and others say it was originally said by Niccolò Machiavelli, or Petrarch, or even Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II.” Whomever it was, this phrase has had a popular effect upon how we understand social interactions, trust, communication and the potential for personal growth amongst others. Yet when we begin to contemplate its meaning within the field of neurobiology, it may take on a new meaning. In fact, it might not be so true, or should I say beneficial, in regards to our psychophysiological health. Pioneering research within the fields of developmental psychology, interpersonal psychology and social neuroscience is revealing that keeping your friends closer than your enemies may be more neurologically beneficial than keeping your enemies closer than your friends. This is especially true when we explore how close friendships can influence how we develop a healthy sense of identity.

Positive social interactions, such as supportive friendships, are already known to cultivate psychophysiological well-being and psychosocial adjustment, decrease cancer mortality, decrease cortisol under stress and have buffering effects on functional decline in old age, health complaints and depression. Given the significance of social interactions and friendship on healthy functioning, it is essential that we investigate the neurobiological mechanisms behind these associations.

In humans, research has predominantly focused on the ties between sociality and health. Socially isolated people are at greater risk of cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and elevated blood pressure. A meta-analysis published in 2010 in the journal PLOS Medicine, titled “Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review,” found that there is a 50 percent increased likelihood of survival for people with many strong social relationships, even after controlling for age, sex, health and cause of death. But the link between affiliative tendencies and fitness seems to go beyond the mere “frequency” of social interactions to the formation of “high-quality” relationships.

A 2013 review paper published in the journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, titled “The neuroethology of friendship,” describes how some investigations suggest that men have a larger number of friends than women, but they sacrifice quality for quantity. This has been attributed to the fact that men may tend to spend less time with each friend and rate their friendships as less important than women do. It also is said that men tend to treat friends to whom they are unrelated in a similar fashion to how they treat strangers, whereas women treat unrelated friends as though they were kin. Differences also have been noted in the cognitive domain, where women often are better at empathizing and inferring the thoughts and intentions of others. However, it might be that gender-based differences in human friendship have been exaggerated.

A book by Daniel J. Hruschka, titled Friendship: Development, Ecology, and Evolution of a Relationship, explains that many meta-analyses reveal that men and women cultivate and define friends in very similar ways and that sex is not a very strong predictor of how much personal information people share with their friends. Recent research has determined that empathy, pleasure and reward may be better factors to consider when trying to understand the bidirectional link between social cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and goal-making. In particular, the ability to experience the feeling of reward is in fact crucial for the mental and physical health of an individual and those he or she associates with.

The importance of feeling “rewarded” within the context of friendship may have survival value, especially in regards to its ability to

heighten perceptions of pleasant experiences such as winning and positive cooperation. In fact, both of these experiences have been found to be involved in a circuit of brain regions centered around the nucleus accumbens.

Diminished functionality of the nucleus accumbens as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were found to be linked to a wide variety of mood disorders, including major depression.

Thus, researchers have begun to investigate whether increasing our interactions with friends can be partly driven by our evolutionary need to avoid detrimental mental states or moods such as depression, stress and anxiety. Nurturing our connections with friends already has shown to evoke stronger activations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens than interactions with peers who are not friends.

A 2007 study published in the journal NeuroImage used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural activity during different social interactions — peers versus familiar celebrities — and the “emotional valence” involved with that relationship — positive, negative or neutral. Imaging results revealed friend-specific brain regions that activated more when participants interacted with their friends rather than with other peers and celebrities.

Activation of the occipital-temporal junction while interacting with friends might be related to its role in the visual-spatial representation involved in autobiographic memory retrieval.

Activation observed in the occipital-temporal junction, together with the medial temporal lobe (including both hippocampus and amygdala), may indicate that interacting with friends induces the spontaneous retrieval of emotionally salient memories. This difference in emotional memory retrieval might be simply based on the fact that friends share more joint experiences, which are also more emotionally charged, than they do with other peers or celebrities.

Emotionally charged situations usually have the tendency to bring people together and have the potential to nurture affiliations and social connections with others. A critical mechanism, which sometimes catalyses such connections, is the need to share one’s emotional experiences — by sharing one’s emotions with another, an indi-

vidual can regulate their own emotions, gain perspective and reflect or reappraise their state of mind. But what actually drives our want or need to actually share our emotions with others, especially if they are our friends?

A 2014 study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience investigated the behavioral and neural activity associated with the social sharing of emotions on subjective feelings among pairs of friends.

The researchers had friends view emotionally negative, positive and neutral pictures either alone or with their friend. Even though the two friends remained physically separated throughout the experiment — with one undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and the other performing the task in an adjacent room — they were made aware on a trial-by-trial basis whether they were seeing pictures simultaneously with their friend (shared) or alone (unshared).

The researchers found that participants reported significantly more positive affect when viewing emotional pictures together with a friend than when viewing them alone, and this effect was accompanied by a higher activation of the dopaminergic reward system in the brain encompassing the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex/ orbitofrontal cortex. Notably, this effect was independent of whether the emotional state elicited by the pictures was negative or positive. These results strongly suggest that: 1. Emotional episodes are rendered more pleasant when they are shared psychologically with a friend (whether that friend is physically present or not).

2. Sharing experiences with a friend neurobiologically activates the neural reward system.

This finding also seems to clarify the long-held debate on whether effects of emotion sharing would be the same or different for positive and negative emotional situations — these results indicate that sharing renders all emotional experiences more pleasant with a friend, whether they are intrinsically negative or positive. The emotional synchrony that can be experienced between two friends is so powerful that one does not even need to be present with his or her friend.

Just being aware that your friend may be having the same experience as you from afar can trigger deep neurological activity associated with reward. However, this effect may be mediated by how “close” we actually feel ourselves to be with our friend.

A study published in 2011 in the journal Social Neuroscience, titled “I feel your pain: Emotional closeness modulates neural responses to empathically experienced rejection,” found that the interpersonal closeness one feels with a friend modulates the degree to which their pain network is activated when watching that friend suffer social rejection.

Functional magnetic resonance

pain. Activity was found in the cerebellum, inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal sulcus, all of which are regions previously found to be involved in empathic responses to others. However, the degree of this activity was strongly dependent on how close the observer felt to their rejected or accepted friend.

These findings seem to redefine empathy altogether. Rather than being a fixed, genetically influenced, trait-like response predominantly governed by the mirror neuron system, empathy seems to be strongly dependent upon the “closeness” and “connectedness” of a friendship. When we witness a friend experience social rejec-

THE EMOTIONAL SYNCHRONY THAT CAN BE EXPERIENCED BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS IS SO POWERFUL THAT ONE DOES NOT EVEN NEED TO BE PRESENT WITH HIS OR HER FRIEND — JUST BEING AWARE THAT YOUR FRIEND MAY BE HAVING THE SAME EXPERIENCE AS YOU FROM AFAR CAN TRIGGER DEEP NEUROLOGICAL ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH REWARD. images were collected from participants who observed their friends being included and then excluded in a ball-toss game by two other participants outside the scanner. The researchers then had the scanned participant fill out an adapted version of the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, which measures the emotional closeness of a friendship by the: • Degree of sharing emotional information: “My friend and I are always telling each other about our problems.”

• Degree of interdependency: “When I’m mad about something, I can always talk to my friend about it.”

• Emotional support: “My friend makes me feel good about my ideas.”

The researchers found that when participants watched their friends be rejected, there was a an overlap in brain regions activated for the actual experience of social rejection as well as for actual and empathic experiences of physical

tion, we may experience pain-related neural activation — whereas we may instead recruit more cognitive-based strategies when watching the social rejection of a stranger. Although empathy for strangers may likely be a genetically influenced trait, empathy for known others can develop over the course of a relationship.

As we grow closer to a person, forming a more complex and elaborated understanding of that person, our empathic neural responses to their experiences increases, drastically changing the quality of shared experiences we have with them. Knowing a person better allows us to construct a richer representation of that individual’s experience, leading to greater empathic responses and healthy bidirectional behavior.

This in turn changes our sense of self, our well-being and ultimately molds us into the people we become. Keep your friends closer than your enemies.

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MOB MENTALITY The Madness of the Crowd

‘T

BY EARL MEAGAN

he mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Henry David Thoreau wrote famously in 1847 before embarking on a trip to Walden Pond, where he lived largely in seclusion for two years. He hoped that somewhere deep in the New England wilderness he’d be able to find his true self, one he felt was lost so easily among the grind of everyday life. Nearly two centuries later, the transcendentalist movement is long gone, but the daily distractions it seems have gotten only significantly greater. He knew, like we know today, that the individual functions differently when separated from the crowd — though neurological differences may have been far from his mind. In fact, being part of the herd may not be as far removed from nature as Thoreau once thought. After all, how else did our ancestors migrate across great swaths of continent without a collective crowd mentality?

“ALTHOUGH HUMANS EXHIBIT STRONG PREFERENCES FOR EQUITY AND MORAL PROHIBITIONS AGAINST HARM IN MANY CONTEXTS, PEOPLE’S PRIORITIES CHANGE WHEN THERE IS AN ‘US’ AND A ‘THEM.’ A GROUP OF PEOPLE WILL OFTEN ENGAGE IN ACTIONS THAT ARE CONTRARY TO THE PRIVATE MORAL STANDARDS OF EACH INDIVIDUAL IN THAT GROUP.”

While we probably dread the long lines on the city commute home from work, we’ll probably shuffle through the line, watching each other for directions and social cues. As independent as we might believe ourselves to be — priding ourselves on our innovative new ideas or for just being able to get up without an alarm clock — we’ll find ourselves moving among the herd at some point or other during the day. How we act also will inevitably influence the people around us in ways in which we may never be fully aware.

It would seem that being a part of the herd does have its advantages. After all, there’s strength and safety in numbers.

In the modern era, this conventional wisdom applies to hashtags as well, as the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements continue to gain traction, along with their counter movements — and plenty of people adamantly fighting on each side behind a computer screen. As pundit Lindy West describes the newly interconnected landscape: “I hear people asking, ‘Where is the next generation of the social justice movement?’ ‘Where are all the young feminists and womanists and activists?’ Dude, they’re on the internet.” Crowds do have the ability to affect real change, but their functioning as a group does have the adverse side of human nature, worse than what Thoreau feared.

Mina Cikara, a sociologist from Carnegie Mellon University, who dedicated her life to studying phenomena like mass communications, became enamored with the concept of crowd mentality after seeing a Yankees game with her husband at their home stadium.

Being fans of the Boston Red Sox, they proudly wore ball caps with their team’s insignia to the stadium. This was a mistake. Both Cikara and her husband left the ball field amid taunts and insults from the crowd of fans, and on the way home she couldn’t help but wonder why they were both singled out for ridicule — insults that got personal beyond their team preference.

“I have never been called names like that in my entire life,” recalls Cikara. She kept this experience in mind when she published her paper on mob mentality in 2014 with co-author Rebecca Saxe, an associate professor of cog-

nitive neuroscience. Cikara’s experience isn’t too far from the norm when it comes to sporting events. Cikara and her team of researchers suspect that the answer lies within the brain, in which something changes the moment we find ourselves amongst a throng of other faces.

“Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people’s priorities change when there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’” explains Saxe. “A group of people will often engage in actions that are contrary to the private moral standards of each individual in that group, sweeping otherwise decent individuals into ‘mobs’ that commit looting, vandalism — even physical brutality.”

Much of the reasoning behind mob mentality appears to be well understood. At a political rally or sporting event, participants can hide behind anonymity — something that is much more easy to do over the internet. Responsibility plays a factor too. Being part of a mob, however unruly, the guilt can be dispersed fairly easily. Both of these factors, however, are a bit too subjective to be measured by science, so Cikara and her team decided to look elsewhere: the individual’s sense of self.

Fortunately for Cikara, measuring one’s sense of self is easier than it sounds. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor the brains of their participants.

It turns out, when you think about yourself — planning your weekend or fantasizing about driving your new car — the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex lights up. It also goes dormant when you’re in a group with your co-workers working on a project or playing basketball.

In this test, the subjects were asked several questions about morality — both as individuals and when competing as a group. The medial prefrontal cortex was more inactive in some participants than others, particularly during the group questions. Those with lower levels of activity tended to be the least friendly. Following the questions, participants then were asked to select pictures of their teammates as well as members of the opposing team. The people who showed the least amount of self-reflection picked the most flattering images of themselves while

choosing the ugliest pictures of their opponents. They also had difficulty recalling the questions they were asked when doing a follow-up assessment. Cikara suspects it’s because the questions asked them about their own morality, something they weren’t closely paying attention to at the time of the first survey.

“It’s been hard to get a direct handle on the extent to which people within a group are tapping into their own understanding of things versus the group’s understanding,” said David Rand, a Yale University psychologist who was not involved with the study. “This is a nice way of using neuroimaging to try to get insight into something that behaviorally has been really hard to explore.”

It leaves a few questions to answer — mainly, why do we act the way we do in a crowd?

In 2008, researchers at Leeds University decided to investigate what happens when people find themselves engulfed in a crowd. Professor Jens Krause, a behavioral ecologist, and Ph.D. student John Dyer had several groups of randomly assorted people walk up and down a large campus hallway. The only rules: Group members were not allowed to communicate with each other, and stay within arms-length of the person next to you. Out of each group, a chosen few were provided with detailed information on how and where to walk. Eventually, the rest of the crowd began to emulate their movement.

“We’ve all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd,” said Krause. “But what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another. In most cases the participants didn’t realize they were being led by others.” The experiments became more elaborate, with crowds of up to 200 people moving in snakelike formations. .The larger the crowd, the fewer individuals it took to have an impact on leadership.

While the results may sound unsettling for some, Krause saw the immediate benefits that this research could have.

“At one extreme, it could be used to inform emergency planning strategies and at the other, it could be useful in organizing pedestrian flow in busy areas,” he said.

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moetm o m s i e n o o t s i o n moti ns em h how

Personality

aree m are made ade

A Q&A WITH DR. LISA FELDMAN BARRETT

BY JAMES SULLIVAN

■ We often think of our emotions as sudden and fleeting, and we pride ourselves on making our decisions based on reason and logic — not letting our emotions get in the way. The reality is a bit grayer.

Our emotions, it seems, are a bit more complex than we think. We respond to them in a variety of ways that may surprise us — and use multiple parts of the brain. The process has been a longtime interest of neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of “How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain,” which was published last year. She has given a number of lectures on the subject and was the recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award in 2007. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University of Massachusetts.

Her theory of constructed emotion explains why we experience emotions differently — and why we think we can perceive the emotions of others, even if we’re not necessarily accurate. Brain World recently had the opportunity to sit down with Barrett to discuss her work.

Brain World: What got you interested in neuroscience?

Lisa Feldman Barrett: I was always super interested in biology and in physiology and in anatomy. So I ended up going to graduate school, and I became very interested in the science of emotion when I was completing my doctoral dissertation, because I had a collection of self-reported measures of emotion — where you ask people how they feel — that weren’t performing the way they were supposed to according to people’s beliefs about emotion at that time. So when people reported feeling anxious, they also reported feeling depressed and vice versa. I thought, “Well, it’s obvious that anxiety and depression differ in many ways — including in how aroused people feel — so there must be some physical ways of measuring emotion. There must be some objective ways of measuring emotion that can tell you when someone is accurate about their experience and when they’re not.”

I thought it would be a really simple, straightforward task that I would just go through the literature, look up the evidence and use it, because we all learn in our introductory psychology classes and all through graduate school that there are several categories of emotions that are universal — anger, sadness, fear, disgust — that everyone around the world is born with a brain that has circuits for these emotions. When the circuit triggers, everyone makes the same expression on the face and the same autonomic changes in the body, and everyone can recognize these expressions, and so on. You know, when you’re angry, you scowl and your blood pressure goes up, and so on.

So I went through the literature, and I found that in fact, that’s not the case at all. ... You have people claiming that everybody scowls when they’re angry and pouts when they’re sad, but when you actually measure those muscle movements in the face electrically, you don’t find that at all. You know, sometimes in anger your heart rate goes up, some-

times it goes down, sometimes it stays the same. It all depends on what your brain is preparing your body to do — what action to take.

So as I was going through this, people started making claims about the localization of emotion in the brain — that there were particular brain regions dedicated to particular emotions. So I started off as a clinical psychologist, and I retrained in psychophysiology so I could learn about the electromyography of the face — the electrical signals of facial muscle movement — and I learned about autonomic physiology so I could measure the end organs of the body. This was right at the time when brain imaging started to become very popular, and I thought, “Well now I needed to become a neuroscientist.”

So I did. I did all of those things as a professor, moving up through the ranks in a lab. I took a little bit of a different approach than most neuroscientists coming out of psychology do.

People studying the brain and the mind tend to start with the message. They might learn about functional brain imaging, for example, or they might learn about measuring electrical changes in the brain or invasive brain stimulation. Instead of doing that, I decided I would start by learning the anatomy of the nervous system. So I started with the anatomy of the peripheral nervous system — up through the brain stem and into the cortex.

I think this gave me a really different view than my colleagues, and I also think that because I didn’t start off steeped in the assumptions — I wasn’t trained in a neuroscience program. I was free from the assumptions of my field. I just came in kind of naive, and I think that allowed me to see some things that other people didn’t see at that time.

BW: Has our understanding of emotion changed significantly?

How so?

LFB: Well, I’d like to give you a redemption story. Scientists had mistaken ideas about emotions, and then came neuroscience and now we know better — look at the revolution that occurred. I don’t think that’s exactly what happened. I do think that brain imaging played a super important part. I think the story is more like this — that since the time of the ancient world, people have believed that emotions are

these urges that are built in to the more animalistic parts of our brains from birth, and that they can be localized to particular regions of the brain. So back in ancient times, some people weren’t thinking about the brain as being important for the mind, like Aristotle, but other people, like Hippocrates, were really interested in the brain as the seat of the mind. The assumption was always that the brain or the cortical parts of the brain were important for thinking, and the body or the subcortical parts of the brain which control the body are important for emotion. This was always the assumption.

Yet at every point in history, whoever was writing about emotion also raised concerns about this view — and nobody ever listened. Then in the late 19th century, when psychology was emerging as a science, researchers tried to understand the physical basis of thinking or of being angry. For many years, people tried to find the physical basis of emotion in the body, in the brain, and nobody could do it.

So people started to offer ideas on how the brain was creating emotion, but those ideas were never formalized really well.

When brain imaging emerged, people started to again test the hypothesis that emotions can be localized in different parts of the brain, and that’s actually how it looks for a little bit of time in some of the first studies.

But it quickly became clear that that wasn’t the case. One of the things that you sometimes hear from neuroscientists is that we’ve learned nothing from brain imaging at all for various reasons, but that’s completely untrue. We’ve learned a tremendous amount from brain imaging. It’s just not what people expected to learn.

What we learn is that the brain, when it comes to psychological phenomena like thinking and feeling, and deciding and seeing, and so on, doesn’t have any dedicated regions or even dedicated networks for these phenomena. Instead of asking where is emotion in the brain, what you can ask instead is, “How is emotion created by the brain?”

We understand now that the brain is equipped with large-scale networks that are involved in a lot of the same functions. Neuroscience didn’t so much give us an aha moment as it put the nails in the coffin built over a very long period of time.

WHAT WE LEARN IS THAT THE BRAIN FOR THE MOST PART, WHEN IT COMES TO PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA LIKE THINKING AND FEELING, AND DECIDING AND SEEING, AND SO ON, DOESN’T HAVE ANY DEDICATED REGIONS OR EVEN DEDICATED NETWORKS FOR THESE PHENOMENA. INSTEAD OF ASKING WHERE IS EMOTION IN THE BRAIN, WHAT YOU CAN ASK INSTEAD IS — HOW IS EMOTION CREATED BY THE BRAIN?

BW: How are emotions created?

LFB: Your brain didn’t really evolve to think and feel and see.

It evolved to regulate your body.

As bodies got bigger … brains got bigger. I like to think about the brain as kind of like the financial office of a company. I think that’s what the brain is really doing for the body — it’s running a budget.

Instead of money, the budget is for things like glucose and salt and water.

Neurons in the brain are structured to predict as opposed to react to the world, so basically what your brain is attempting to do is while it’s thinking and feeling and seeing, it’s simultaneously attempting to anticipate the needs of the body and meet those needs before they arise. If your brain’s going to stand you up, it will raise your blood pressure before it stands you up so you don’t faint.

You may be asking what all of this has to do with emotion — well, it’s really important to understand this to understand how your emotions are made. When your brain is regulating systems in your body, there are sensations that arise from those changes. You experience them as simple feelings — pleasant or unpleasant, feeling worked up. They’re not emotions, they’re the result of your brain’s budgeting.

So we have names for these feelings — some people call them “moods.” … Your brain is trying to make sense of these feelings and of the world in order to prepare your body for what to do next. If I have a big change in the systems of my body, and I feel intensely unpleasant, my brain might make an instance of anxiety. It might make an instance of nausea or just hunger.

But it may affect my perception of the world — if I’m driving on the highway and someone cuts me off, my perception could be that that guy’s a jerk. I might think he’s the cause of these sensations of unpleasantness. So it’s not your reactions to the world — it’s the way your brain makes sense of the inner workings of your body in relation to the world.

BW: So this is why so many people express their emotions differently.

LFB: Yes. It’s not so much that other people express their emotions differently — it’s that you yourself experience the same emotion category differently in different situations. Sometimes in anger you’ll lash out, but sometimes in anger, you cry, you freeze. It’s very similar to Darwin’s definition of a “species” — you know, just like there are many individuals in a species, you have many different instances of emotion, a category like anger.

There are also differences in people between cultures and also within a culture. In some cultures, anger doesn’t even exist as a category — people make sense of those sensations in a very different way.

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COPING WITH

COMEDY THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMOR AND SADNESS

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BY NICOLE DEAN

ccording to the old adage, “Laughter is the best medicine” — and who would disagree? Nothing lightens our moods and lifts our spirits better than a good belly laugh. From simple horseplay among friends to the witticisms of the most talented stand-up comedians, making each other laugh is a universal human activity — helping people from every culture on earth cope with the difficulties of life. Several scientific studies have confirmed that comedy is indeed good medicine, effectively reducing the stress response, bolstering the immune system and relieving chronic pain.

Why, then, are the lives of comedians so often marked by tragedy and sadness? One might think that these folks would be the healthiest people in the world, able to laugh off all the hardships of living. But instead, the comedy world is full of people battling demons and often losing. When news broke in August 2014 that Robin Williams had killed himself at age 63, the nearly universal response was shock. “How could such a funny man, someone who had given so many happy memories to so many, have done this to himself?” we collectively asked. In the weeks that followed, a tragic story of a man haunted by a combination of depression, alcoholism and dementia was added to Williams’ legacy of brilliant comedy.

Robin Williams was not alone in his struggles, either. Comedians Freddie Prinze, Ray Combs, Richard Jeni and Charles Rocket all committed suicide, too. And beyond these sad endings, numerous comedians, including Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor and Woody Allen, have spoken (or joked) about the depression and lack of self-worth that has haunted them in the past or present. For those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, it can be a way of dulling the pain that they feel.

One of the earliest psychological studies of comedians, completed in 1975 by Samuel Janus of New York Medical College, surveyed 55 fulltime, successful comedians (defined as those making a six-figure salary or more). Janus found that 80 percent of the comedians had sought psychotherapy at some point in their lives.

Interestingly, he commented in his article, “They repeatedly expressed the fear that if they were successful in analysis, to the point where their suffering was greatly relieved, they would then cease to be funny.” There was not only an observable correlation between mental distress and comedy, but the comedians themselves saw this distress as integral to their abilities.

When you look at what makes us laugh, this connection between humor and psychological pain makes some sense. Humor can vary drastically by culture, and psychologists and philosophers have been debating for decades about what makes one joke shine while another flops. One thing is clear, though — laughter is connected to our sense (and fear) of humiliation. In its most juvenile forms — schoolyard teasing or slapstick pratfalls, for example — it is very obviously that; we are giggling watching while someone else is made the fool. Cartoons in the style of Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera function similarly: they are funny because we see Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd and Tom Cat fail miserably to capture their prey over and over and over again. In real life, these predators are on the top of the food chain, but in these cartoons they are laid low … and that’s just funny to watch.

More sophisticated comedy has this same element, even if it may not be as obvious. In romantic comedies, for example, the protagonist is continually frustrated in his or her efforts to succeed with the desired romantic partner. When the connection finally happens, the story is over.

Likewise, in typical family-focused sitcoms, we see parents — often single parents, as on “One Day at a Time,” “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Full House” — bumbling

they challenge social assumptions, conventions and hierarchies, as in the humor of George Carlin, Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory. Psychologists refer to this as “benign violations of social norms.”

Comedians may be good at what they do because they themselves are especially well-tuned to feelings of humiliation. Psychological studies have found that comedians tend to be highly introverted, which might seem surprising since they make their living

COMEDY, WHETHER WE ARE VIEWERS OR THE MAKERS OF IT, IS A KIND OF SELF-MEDICATING, A WAY OF SEEING THE LIGHT AT THE END OF DARK TUNNELS. MORE AND MORE PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE ACKNOWLEDGED ITS USEFULNESS FOR BOTH DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT WHEN USED DELIBERATELY IN CLINICAL SETTINGS. through the process of raising cheeky, precocious children. In classic shows that focus on married couples, traditional roles often are turned upside down for humorous effect. For example, in “I Love Lucy,” the female protagonist Lucy repeatedly goes against the wishes of head-of-the-household Ricky — trying to start a showbiz career, buying expensive new furniture, getting a candy factory job — only to find embarrassment that sends her back to her “proper” role of a housewife. In all these cases, frustration is the key comedic element.

In stand-up comedy, the same is true even if no one is acting out the roles; the humiliation here is primarily delivered through words. One of the most common types of jokes in this genre involves self-depreciation, as when Kevin Hart references his own diminutive stature, or Phyllis Diller calls herself ugly. Other standup jokes skewer powerful figures or

standing in front of audiences and acting silly for a living. Psychologists have observed, though, that comedic ability often is developed as a coping mechanism in adolescence. These children are highly shy and sensitive to humiliation, and they deal with the threat of social embarrassment through clownish extroversion. Comedians also are very likely to have come from difficult socio-economic backgrounds or to have experienced traumatic childhoods, so they know the pain of being a low-ranking social outcast. Consciously or unconsciously, they decide for themselves, “To avoid being laughed at, I’ll make a fool of myself and purposely make people laugh.” Thusly, they take control of the situation, and the class clown is born.

These same youngsters also tend to experience depression and feelings of social isolation; a study of depressed teens conducted in 1998

and published in the Journal of Adolescent Research observed a definite connection between comedic ability and depression. Furthermore, comedians have IQs much higher than average — between 110 and 160, as compared to the average 100 — which also has been associated with depressive tendencies. Psychologists theorize that this is true because very intelligent people are simply more aware and therefore more sensitive to the vicissitudes of life. And, of course, they have greater capacity to make a witty remark in response.

In an interview for Time magazine, comedian Jim Norton remarked in response to Robin Williams’ death, “The funniest people I know seem to be the ones surrounded by darkness. And that’s probably why they’re the funniest. The deeper the pit, the more humor you need to dig yourself out of it.” Comedy, whether we are viewers or the makers of it, is a kind of self-medicating, a way of seeing the light at the end of dark tunnels. More and more psychologists have acknowledged its usefulness for both diagnosis and treatment when used deliberately in clinical settings. Books like Elcha Shain Buckman’s “The Handbook of Humor: Clinical Applications in Psychotherapy” and Herbert Strean’s “The Use of Humor in Psychotherapy” are now classic educational texts.

The problem for comedians (and others) appears to be that, ultimately, jokes alone cannot eliminate the monsters that can plague our inner lives; some turn to drugs and others to suicide. Laughter may be the best medicine, but it isn’t a perfect medicine.

Writing over a century ago in a 1907 edition of the still-flourishing The American Journal of Psychology, L.W. Kline expressed the purpose of comedy in these words: “No stimulus, perhaps, more mercifully and effectually breaks the surface tension of the consciousness, thereby conditioning it for a new forward movement, than humor.”

In the end, comedy can’t get rid of all the sadness we humans hold inside, but at least it can lighten the load for a little while, so we can keep on moving forward.

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JANUARY 2019

Joy and How to Find It (WHERE YOU MIGHT BE OVERLOOKING)

BY EARL MEAGAN

J

N

early everyone can remember a situation in which they’ve said the wrong thing. Who hasn’t suddenly felt their cheeks burning and their face redden with humiliation?

Although embarrassment isn’t actually painful, its intensity can create an agonizing memory that lives in our minds for years. For some people, it can lead to a vicious cycle of feeling increasingly awkward and blushing more.

“It’s hard to walk through life if you’re constantly blushing and embarrassed about your blush,” says Dr. Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in North Carolina. While some people blush only a few times a year, others blush a dozen or more times a day. An unfortunate few find blushing so frustrating and distressing that they resort to cognitive behavioral therapy, medication or even surgery.

One reason we dislike having flushed cheeks is that we worry others might judge us negatively. But if we believe that blushing makes everything worse, then we could be mistaken. In fact, some studies show the opposite to be true.

Researchers have found that people often prefer men and women who blush. So instead of being a bad thing, blushing might have some positive effects.

WHY DO PEOPLE BLUSH?

Embarrassment is emotional as well as physical. When embarrassment strikes, it causes us to flush and even freeze up for what can seem like an unbearably long moment. Your body goes into fight-or-flight mode, which is the same sympathetic nervous system response that kicks in whenever you feel fear or anxiety. It also triggers the release of adrenaline and other hormones.

Adrenaline causes the small veins under the skin’s surface, or capillaries, to open wider, which allows more blood to flow into them and gives you rosy cheeks. People who are fair-skinned flush more easily and noticeably than people with darker skin, in whom a blush often is still visible but less conspicuous.

Women tend to blush more readily and frequently than men. Like all sympathetic nervous system reactions, blushing is involuntary, so it’s not under our control.

It’s perhaps the uncontrollable nature of blushing that bothers us most. Psychologist Dr. Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, has found that, contrary to what we might believe, most people consider faces with more reddishness to be more attractive. When Stephen presented people with images of visages of varying skin tones and allowed them to enhance their appearance, participants almost invariably added an extra hint of pink to increase their rosiness.

Of course, turning red-faced with embarrassment is a different matter.

Blushing affects our most visible

ple, if you sense a group of people sitting on a bench staring at you.

Yet you also can blush at something someone else says or does. This seems to suggest that other factors, besides social attention, might be part of the puzzle.

FAKE HUES?

Some scientists think blushing has an even broader social function. What might that be? To get at this question, neuroscientists and behavioral psychologists have studied the nuances of why people show embarrassment and how others respond. One theory is that silently expressing our discomfort with a situation communicates something vital and important about our social values.

In a series of studies, Dr. Matthew Feinberg, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto, observed how people react to embarrassment in others.

He tested whether blushing has a positive social aspect, for instance, as a means of showing that you are the type of person who doesn’t take advantage of others.

During one such experiment, researchers asked people to describe an embarrassing incident from their past. They first measured how intensely the participants blushed as they recounted the experience. Next they tracked how much each person spent on a raffle ticket. It turns out that people who were more easily embarrassed also exhibited greater generosity when purchasing the tickets.

In a second part of the study, the scientists tested people’s willingness to act in a prosocial manner (for

feature — our face — and it often happens when we least want to be the center of attention. As Stephen puts it, you don’t always want your feelings displayed on your face.

Some people are more vulnerable to blushing. People who are very shy or have social anxiety can have a much harder time than the more confident. “It depends on how sensitive your nervous system is,” says Leary. “How is your brain designed? How PEOPLE INTERPRET easily are certain emotions triggered?”

BLUSHING AS A SIGN “People differ in how OF TRUSTWORTHINESS much they think people think about them,” says AND ARE THUS MORE Leary. “The more you think about what other WILLING TO ASSOCIATE people are thinking about WITH OTHERS WHO you, the more likely you are to blush. You’re more BLUSH OR SHOW attuned to social attention.” For instance, peoOTHER SIGNS OF ple who worry about their public image, have low BEING EMBARRASSED. self-esteem or are highly IT SHOWS THAT YOU concerned about the negative opinion of others CARE WHAT OTHERS are more vulnerable to blushing.

THINK OF YOU. This raises two questions: What is the example, being cooperative) toward purpose of blushing when we feel someone depending on whether embarrassed? And how might it they exhibited higher or lower levels serve as a social cue? Many psyof embarrassment. They found that chologists believe that after a social people were more likely to cooperate misstep — like if you open a bottle with those who openly displayed their of water and it sprays all over the awkward feelings. The reason, they stranger next to you — blushing believe, is that doing so increases trust. apologizes for the mishap. It ac“A blush is something you can’t knowledges having broken a social fake,” says Feinberg. People interpret rule and helps avoid a more serious blushing as a sign of trustworthiness confrontation. and are thus more willing to associBut negative attention is not the ate with others who blush or show only reason people blush. There are other signs of being embarrassed. other reasons as well. “We think of Embarrassment is different from people blushing with embarrassshame or guilt — all of which belong ment. But people can blush when to a group of “self-conscious emothey’re viewed positively,” says Leary. tions.” These also occur after failing You can blush when receiving an to meet social expectations, but each award, being complimented or hearof them is expressed differently and ing profuse thanks. felt differently. Unlike shame or guilt, “There’s a point at which even sheer awkwardness doesn’t involve a positive attention is too much,” moral transgression. “When people says Leary. Confused or ambivalent are ashamed they will cover their face, feelings also can put you on guard but with embarrassment you grimace and cause the blood to rush to your and turn it to the side — you don’t face. This can happen, for examcover it,” says Feinberg.

Not blushing may be worse. It could be seen as evidence of a person lacking self-awareness or insight into oneself. On the other hand, if embarrassment or momentary awkwardness brings on a blush, this only reveals our concern for others’ feelings.

So, although it sometimes can make us feel uncomfortable, the advantages of blushing might outweigh the disadvantages — it just doesn’t feel that way at first.

oy is not in things; it is in us.

It sounds simple enough — but it’s an aphorism that’s all too easy to forget as we live our day-to-day lives. Too many moments are spent simply trying to make ends meet — even when we think that promotion or that new apartment is bound to make us happier and more content with our lives. It may be common knowledge that acquiring more luxuries doesn’t bring more happiness — no matter how in sync with our dreams it may be. Finding that joy within us seems a much more daunting task.

We may come to believe that it’s only available in small doses — you get that dream apartment and then the refrigerator goes. Life somehow reverts back to normal eventually. We may spend our whole lives searching and trying to extract purpose from everywhere we turn.

Fortunately, recent research suggests a good place to start. Joy may be in us, but how we perceive our own lives could be the exact thing that keeps us from experiencing it. Shelly Gable and Jonathan Haidt, experts in a rising field known as “positive psychology,” have demonstrated through research that however unhappy we may be with our lives, we typically have three times more positive experiences than bad ones on a daily basis. For some reason, it’s the bad ones that seem to stand out. Why is that?

Experts have singled out two factors: negativity bias and habituation.

As the psychologist Roy Baumeister once wrote: “Many good events can overcome the psychological effects of a single bad one. When equal measures of good and bad are present, however, the psychological effects of bad ones outweigh those of the good ones.” You probably had a full night’s sleep, picked up a surprisingly decent cup of coffee on the way to work and probably just opened your office window to let in some unseasonably warm weather before sitting down to check your email and find a rather scathing one sent from the project manager. It’s pretty likely that whatever she wrote is going to dampen the rest of your day — no matter how many pleasant little surprises are just around the corner. If it’s a pretty decent job on most days and you started with good pay, you may forget the things you enjoy about it the longer you stay around — even promotions and raises aren’t always likely to make you happier — a cycle known as the “hedonic treadmill.”

Aside from trying to reflect on the good experiences you have from day to day, maybe you should feel free to share them with those around you — your spouse, significant other, friends, co-workers or family. It might sound like showing off — we all don’t want to be the office overachiever. As a result, we tend to play up the negative events in our life, feeling it makes us easier to relate to and more empathetic to our co-workers who don’t have it so good.

Yet, research conducted by Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues at Brigham Young University demonstrates that discussing your positive life experiences not only increases your well-being but your overall satisfaction with life — and even increases your energy.

Lambert and his researchers suggest that you share the good things that happen to you with close friends or romantic partners, those trusted confidantes more likely to support you. The participants in the project felt happier and more emotionally satisfied the more they shared their experiences with people on that particular day. Earlier studies also have shown that gratitude improves our ability to connect with others, while also making us more optimistic and even improving physical health.

Lambert’s study, however, shows how verbally expressing the gratitude is even more crucial than merely experiencing it. Test subjects were asked to write daily reflections in a journal over a monthlong period about events for which they felt grateful. The group that shared their reflections by reading aloud to a partner reported greater satisfaction with life, happiness and their overall vitality.

All too often we seek out people with whom we can confide with bad news. It may be just as important that we are able to break good news the same way, seeking out a trusted listener who can appreciate these moments with us each day. For those we care about, we can try to be that person — a supportive and empathic listener. You may not only be helping your friend, but the people around them as well. It’s easy to think of seeking joy as a selfish goal or at least a lonely one, but perhaps it is long past time we see it differently — something we can share with others while helping them realize their own. The novelist Virginia Woolf once cautioned us: “Pleasure has no relish unless we share it.”

Now we have evidence she was right.

JANUARY 2019

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it seems that even after very brief conversations with others in small groups, crowds collectively come up with much better judgments.

Personality

collect collective understanding

intelligence

A Q&A WITH DR. MARIANO SIGMAN

BY ISABEL PASTOR GUZMAN

■ Dr. Mariano Sigman is a renowned neuroscientist with more than 150 publications in prestigious scientific journals. He is passionate about experimentation and has worked with magicians, chess masters, musicians, athletes and visual artists to bring his knowledge of neuroscience to different aspects of human culture.

Born in Argentina, Sigman grew up in Barcelona, Spain, and obtained a master’s degree in physics at the University of Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in neuroscience at The Rockefeller University in New York.

He moved to Paris to investigate decision-making, cognitive architecture and consciousness. In 2006, he founded the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires, an interdisciplinary group formed by experts of all backgrounds. The lab has developed an empirical and theoretical approach to decision-making with a special focus on understanding the development of confidence and subjective beliefs. Recently, his research has focused on collective decision-making and why it is hard for us to come together. He also has explored how “semantics” create concepts in our minds and even can predict the future as it relates to our mental health. Many aspects of his research rely on computational tools on massive bodies of human behavior.

Brain World: In your famous TED Talk in 2016, you talked about how we can look at the words we use to analyze how we create concepts and how our mind evolves.

Tell us more about that.

Mariano Sigman: We started off by looking into a question that seemed at first almost intractable to quantitative science: the evolution of the consciousness of our ancestors. One idea, first proposed by Julian Jaynes, is that consciousness even as early as 3,000 years ago was very different from how we perceive it today. His argument was that at that time the world was a “garden of schizophrenics” where humans perceived their own mental creations as voices from gods or muses. Technically, this accounts to saying that our early ancestors, before the explosion of written text, did not have “introspection” — the capacity to think about their own thoughts.

In the same way that we can reconstruct how the ancient Greeks cities looked like just based on a few bricks, the writings of a culture are the archeological records — the fossils of human thought.

However, the problem to examine Jaynes’ hypothesis is that it cannot be solved simply by counting words: the word “introspection” as such does not appear in ancient Greek books, but the concept behind it does. Thus, to look at its evolution, we looked at what I call

the “space of words.” This is a huge space that contains all words in such a way that the distance between any two of them is indicative of how closely related they are. So for instance, the words “dog” and “cat” are close together, but the words “grapefruit” and “logarithm” are far away. And this is true for any two words within the space. So for “introspection,” words such as “self,” “guilt,” “reason,” and “emotion,” are very close to it, but other words, such as “red,” “football,” “candle,” and “banana” are very far away from it. By projecting books from the ancient Greek tradition into this space of words through computerized systems, we could see that for the oldest books in the Homeric tradition there is a small increase with books getting closer to introspection. But about four centuries before Christ, this starts ramping up very rapidly to an almost fivefold increase of books getting closer and closer to the concept of introspection.

BW: Then you went on to analyze how this method could be applied to predict the future — particularly as it relates to our mental health?

MS: Yes. One of the nice things about objective science, in general, is that the same idea, the same algorithm, can be tested in a whole lot of different domains. In our case, we could use this idea to ask not only about the past but the future of consciousness.

The space of words can be seen as the map of the mind. Our hypothesis was that the words we speak, tweet, email, etc., can tell us ahead of time whether something will go wrong with our minds in the future. We looked into the recorded speech of 34 young people who were at risk of having schizophrenia.

We measured speech and analyzed if the properties of this speech could predict future psychosis. But it turned out that semantics by itself (the analysis of the meaning of spoken words) was insufficient to predict the onset of psychosis. And this, in a way, was not so surprising.

For years, psychiatrists had realized that coherence of speech — more than its content — was one of the best indicators. The most important thing was not what these individuals were saying but how they were saying it. The question was how to measure and quantify this from a computational analysis of language. And our tools allowed

WHEN IT COMES TO COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE, ONE OF THE QUESTIONS THAT ARISES IS — IS IT BETTER FOR EACH OF US TO DECIDE INDEPENDENTLY AND THEN AGGREGATE OUR DECISIONS, OR SHOULD WE BE DISCUSSING AND TALKING TO EACH OTHER TO REACH AN AGREEMENT? IN OTHER WORDS, DOES TALKING TO EACH OTHER HELP OR HINDER COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE?

for that. It was not in which semantic neighborhood the words were but how far and fast they jumped from one semantic neighborhood or group to the other — in other words, “semantic coherence.” And it turned out that the algorithm based on semantic coherence could indeed predict who developed psychosis and who did not. In a way, our work can be seen as a way to convert an intuition that we all have that allows us to read in between the lines to understand whether a person might go into form of mental distress into an actual algorithm.

In doing so, we may be seeing in the future a very different approach to mental health prevention based on objective, quantitative and automated analysis of the words we write or the words we say.

BW: Most recently, you’ve been interested in collective intelligence and how we can get the best out of groups to make collective judgments. This is intriguing and seems quite timely considering the strong polarizations of opinion that exist today.

MS: When it comes to collective intelligence, one of the questions that arises is — is it better for each of us to decide independently and then aggregate our decisions, or should we be discussing and talking to each other to reach an agreement? In other words, does talking to each other help or hinder collective intelligence?

One simple way to come out with a collective judgment is to just add up all opinions. This has the advantage that there is no herding, echo chambers, polarization and all sorts of effects that we all have seen when collective discussions are held — for instance, in social networks. On the other hand, we all understand the benefits of talking.

People can exchange ideas, revise procedures, correct for errors, reason about their own thinking and so on. So what we asked is if we set dialogues in their natural scales of human communication (of just a few), could this optimize collective intelligence and judgments?

With my colleagues Joaquin Navajas, Bahador Bahrami and Dan Ariely, we inquired into this by performing experiments to figure out how groups can interact to reach better decisions. For instance, we did a test in a TEDx event in Argentina with over 10,000 people, dividing the crowd in small groups and asking them questions that have a simple right or wrong answer, such as “How high is the Eiffel Tower?”. We discovered that averaging the answers of the groups after they reached consensus was much more accurate than averaging all the individual opinions before debate. In other words, based on this experiment,

BW: That’s helpful for getting groups to solve problems that have right or wrong answers. But can this method of aggregating the results of debates in small groups also help us decide on social or political issues that are critical for our future?

MS: One relevant question to begin with is why do we have such different opinions? We often blame others who disagree with us of being too emotional or irrational or uneducated or uninformed. But actually, people tend to make very rational and well-informed opinions that they feel strongly about. And this is increasingly the case with so much information out there. So what is the key to agree as a group?

We put this to test at the TED conference in Vancouver where we presented the crowd with two moral dilemmas of the “future you” and gave them 20 seconds for each dilemma — to judge whether they thought it’s acceptable or not. The first dilemma was about shutting down an AI machine that says it has feelings; the second one was about the ability to play with our genes to select cosmetic changes in your child, such as eye color, height and other nonhealth-related aspects. We have also explored this idea with a whole set of other ideological, political and moral issues in which there is no right or wrong answer and in which societies tend to be highly polarized.

Then we asked everyone to gather into groups of three, and they were given two minutes to debate and try to come to a consensus. We found that many groups reached a consensus even when they were composed of people with completely opposite views. What distinguished the groups that reached a consensus from those that didn’t?

The answer is where and how the third person stands. Typically, people that have extreme opinions are more confident in their answers.

Instead, those who respond closer to the middle are often unsure of whether something is right or wrong, so their confidence level is lower. However, there is another set of people who are very confident in answering somewhere in the middle. We think these high-confident “grays” are folks who understand that both arguments have merit.

They’re gray not because they’re unsure, but because they believe that the moral dilemma faces two valid, opposing arguments. And we discovered that the groups that include highly confident grays are much more likely to reach consensus.

BW: Could this be related to our ability for compassion? Are these “grays” more compassionate?

MS: These are only the first experiments, and many more will be needed to understand why and how some people decide to negotiate their moral standings to reach an agreement.

Perhaps it’s more to do with common sense. One thing we found consistently in all dilemmas in different experiments — even on different continents — is that groups implement a smart and statistically sound procedure known as the “robust average.” In the case of the height of the Eiffel Tower, let’s say a group has these answers: 250 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters, 400 and one totally absurd answer of 300 million meters. A simple average of these numbers would inaccurately skew the results. But the robust average is one where the group largely ignores that absurd answer, giving much more weight to the vote of the people in the middle. Back to the experiment in Vancouver, that’s exactly what happened. Groups gave much less weight to the outliers, and instead the consensus turned out to be a robust average of the individual answers. The most remarkable thing is that this was a spontaneous behavior of the group. It happened without us giving them any hint on how to reach consensus.

Now, when it comes to the idea that compassion or empathy is what might play an important role in reaching consensus — it’s possible.

We are at the beginning stages of another experiment where we divide the group in couples. We have a treatment group, where the couples hug before they start the discussion, and a control group where they just shake hands and go straight into the discussion. What we have preliminarily discovered is that a simple hug can make a better framework for the differences — not to weigh down on liking each other or “bonding.”

BW: Where do we go from here?

MS: We need to run a lot more experiments. In a time when the world’s problems are more complex and people are more polarized, using science to help us understand how we interact and make decisions will hopefully spark interesting new ways to construct a better democracy.

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SCIENCE

ALWAYS AT THE

BACK MINDS OF OUR

Exploring The Science of Anxiety

I

BY JAMES SULLIVAN

t keeps us up long hours, fearing sleep. Perhaps it’s the reason we toss and turn at night or wake up in a panic, sometimes even struggling to breathe, or why you find yourself reluctant to look at the news alerts on your phone or read email. As advanced as our species has become in the last two centuries, it seems we cannot elude the primal state of anxiety — it’s almost always right there waiting for us. Of course, some sense it more than others. Usually, you’ve got a good reason to be worried — will your yearly job review be a good one? Did you prepare enough for your final exam? Will the hospital test results come out OK? It’s easy to think that we’re the only ones who agonize like this over events that are all too often inevitable, but what we’re experiencing actually is something our species has long evolved with. Our primate ancestors navigated a harsh and unforgiving terrain, bringing with it an array of predators. Those who survived the prehistoric times, at least long enough to produce offspring, were those who could best recognize approaching danger.

Crossing paths with a striking adder would have triggered the classic “fight-or-flight response” in their brains. The response starts off when the brain’s amygdala first processes the threat. It relays a message to the hypothalamus, activating the pituitary gland that begins to secrete the hormone epinephrine, rapidly increasing blood flow to the muscles and allowing our ancestors to either flee or intimidate their attacker. The rush of chemical signals from the brain produce cortisol, increasing blood sugar and blood pressure to heighten that same energy and awareness we sense in a stressful situation.

TO FLEE OR NOT TO FLEE? From the time Walter Bradford Cannon first described this response back in 1929, we have come to equate the almond-shaped amygdala with the emotion of fear — thinking with our amygdala, the primal so-called reptilian brain, when we are easily startled.

Recent research, however, suggests that basic emotions like fear and anger hardly are restricted to any particular region of the brain. As Aalto University doctoral candidate and researcher Heini Saarimäki describes it, “From the biological point of view, an emotion is a state of the

entire brain at a given moment.”

Rather than specific regions of the brain being activated when we anxiously await our test results, the emotion we feel actually is the sum total of a number of factors. The doctor’s tone of voice or the way they enter the room may be interpreted by the brain as ominous or reassuring. As that happens, the brain also is quickly pulling up a number of memories — where you were the last time you received bad news, for example.

You may wonder why painful memories remain so detailed in our minds for years after they happened. We may know now why this has become part of our mental fabric. A recent study identified “anxiety neurons” residing in the hippocampuses of lab mice using calcium imaging to highlight brain activity. The hippocampus is a part of the brain’s limbic system that plays a role in the formation of memories.

SHINING A LIGHT To instill feelings of anxiety in the mice, the researchers at the University of California-San Francisco, placed them in an intricate maze.

Some of the trails brought them to open spaces, others lifted them onto a different platform — forcing them from the safety of the walls.

Even though they have no natural enemies, the mice displayed the same feelings of vulnerability to predators. Microscopes placed into their brains highlighted activity in the ventral CA1 region of the hippocampus the more agitated the mice became.

The output from these neurons came from the hypothalamus, responsible for regulating the hormones behind emotions. The

same regulation process occurs in people too, so the researchers suspect that the same anxiety neurons occur in human biology. The good news is that at least for the mice, there’s a way these neurons can be controlled.

The technique is known as “optogenetics” in which the cells are controlled by a beam of light, shone directly onto the ventral CA1 region. The cells that were activated during periods of high anxiety shut down, and the mice confidently explored their environment once again. Adjusting the light settings further allowed the researchers to reverse this effect.

They were able to increase anxiety levels even when the rodents were safely enclosed in familiar surroundings. The team suspects that these neurons may exist in other parts of the brain as well.

“These cells are probably just one part of an extended circuit by which the animal learns about anxiety-related information,” said neuroscientist and lead researcher Mazen Kheirbek, who plans to pursue the study further. Perhaps one day in the future, conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder could become as treatable as turning a light switch on and off.

WHAT ABOUT US? Another experiment, performed at University of Waterloo in Canada, looked at anxiety levels in students who were categorized as having either high or low anxiety, though all at levels they could manage.

They were shown words that flashed across a computer screen, superimposed on random images, and then they were quizzed on the words they could remember. While the high- and low-anxiety groups seemed to recall a similar volume of words, the researchers noticed that the high-anxiety group actually was better at recalling words superimposed on the more bleak images — pictures of car wrecks or burning buildings, for example.

“Their memories were more emotionally tinted,” says professor of psychology Myra Fernandes, who co-authored the study, “and as a result rendered more memorable.”

While anxious people may have an advantage with memory over their less anxious peers, there is a caveat.

If you have too much anxiety, your mood also can affect the way you perceive day-to-day events.

Therefore, Fernandes suggests being mindful of the biases you bring to the table when you live your day-to-day life. Keeping a journal in which you simply list events that happened throughout your day can help us to look objectively, even helping to remember some of the things we accomplished more smoothly.

The constant fear of predators likely stole sleep from our ancestors, and the problem of sleep deprivation plagues us today.

Nearly one-third of the population is thought to suffer from what the World Health Organization has described as a catastrophic sleeploss epidemic. Around 31 percent of the American and Canadian population falls into this statistic.

With an eventful workweek, it may seem like second nature to lose a few hours of sleep, but our brains take a toll that we may not realize. The more tired your brain is, the more difficult it is to assess an ordinary situation from a threatening one. You might attribute feeling tired after work to crunching numbers all day, but working longer hours and sleeping fewer hours actually leaves you vulnerable to more negative emotional states.

With sleep deprivation, the connectivity of the amygdala to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is weakened. The amygdala initiates a fear response but cannot act without the approval of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Connectivity between the insula and the amygdala are increased, magnifying the fear response. As basic as it sounds, getting a minimum of seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep is crucial — for much more than we realize. Just getting back those few extra hours each week can be the difference that pushes us to go the extra mile — to chase after the dream job or apartment that we never thought we could get, rather than to just play it safe and keep our deepest fears at bay.

THE MORE TIRED YOUR BRAIN IS, THE MORE DIFFICULT IT IS TO ASSESS AN ORDINARY SITUATION FROM A THREATENING ONE. YOU MIGHT ATTRIBUTE FEELING TIRED AFTER WORK TO CRUNCHING NUMBERS ALL DAY, BUT WORKING LONGER HOURS AND SLEEPING FEWER HOURS ACTUALLY LEAVES YOU VULNERABLE TO MORE NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL STATES.

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SCIENCE

YOU, REWIRED How New Technologies Can Impact Your Sense of Self

BY DREW TURNEY

O

ur sense of self is one of the deepest and seemingly immobile expressions of brain activity. If something as innocuous as a magnetic field can change it — then, who are we, really?

At some time during our toddler years, we start to understand that we’re a distinct person with free will and a constant internal monologue, distinct from everyone else around us, and (unless we’re struck with a neurodegenerative disease) our sense of self is the bedrock upon which we interact with the world for the rest of our lives.

But the sense of who we are is the result of neural activity, no different from less abstruse aspects of our personalities, like whether we like broccoli or not. Deeper, self-referential philosophy about who we are might recruit more mental maps than the simpler stuff, but it’s all still just bioelectric sparks in the synaptic void.

Now imagine we could somehow isolate or read those neurological impulses that make up the dream you had last night, the memory of your first pet or your feelings for your spouse, and even affect them.

In fact scientists already have — albeit in very basic terms. In 2015, researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke implanted a remote-controlled device into the brains of mice that delivered drugs and can shine a light source on individual neurons. The technology could not only reveal neural circuits very precisely, it let the scientists determine the path the mouse walked by — to some extent — controlling its behavior by turning neurons “on” and “off” at will using the light source.

Back in 2010, headlines were made by an even more sensational experiment when scientists at MIT induced mild electrical currents in the scalps of subjects using a technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation. The currents slightly disrupted a brain region called the right temporo-parietal junction — not enough to destabilize the subjects’ sense of their personality — but when tested on their moral understanding of other people’s intentions, they found their moral reasoning impaired.

CHANGING WHO YOU ARE If such technology is possible, what else might we use it to alter? Could every aspect of our sense of identity be zapped by some machine, changing us into a fundamentally different person from the one we woke up as?

Dr. James Giordano is a professor of neurology and biochemistry and chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Washington D.C.’s Georgetown University Medical Center. He says technologies like transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial electrical stimulation can certainly affect patterns of node and network activity of our brains. “[These technologies] can

induce ‘back and collateral propagation’ effects to alter the activity of linked brain networks that are involved in a number of cognitive and behavioral functions.”

However, Giordano adds that the tools we have today tend to modulate activity of neuron networks rather than switch them on or off or generate them. “The analogy is that they function more like a dimmer switch to ‘adjust,’ increasing or decreasing neurological nodes and networks that are in a particular activity state.” In other words, that means we don’t have the technology to make you think of a boat when asked to picture a dog or convince you that killing is a good way to settle a dispute with a neighbor.

“Use of [these technologies] can affect the ‘disposition’ to visual imagery or be clearer in our interpretation of certain visual images, but not to imagine a specific object or event,” Giordano says.

“That said, use of TMS can make us somewhat more susceptible to certain patterns of thought and emotion, and perhaps increase suggestibility. But current forms of transcranial neuromodulation can’t be used to completely alter existing beliefs or moral convictions or implant ideas.”

WHAT THE SELF IS MADE OF But the very fact that precepts like moral judgment are subject to manipulation by external forces says something interesting about our sense of self. We tend to think of the more arbitrary mental characteristics, like preferences for food or knowing the way to the supermarket to buy it, as being less pivotal to our innermost nature. Religious beliefs or our connection to family and friends — the stuff that makes us truly ourselves — feels much more deep-seated and harder to budge, so it must be made up of more neurons or more complicated neural maps (and therefore hard to manipulate with technology like TMS or TES) — mustn’t it?

“To some extent,” Giordano agrees. “This centers on what brain scientist Greg Berns has termed ‘sacred values and beliefs.’ It seems that certain cognition represent fortified patterns of neurological activity that have been developed and strengthened over time and as a consequence of experience. They tend to be pretty durable, likely

because they involve a number of convergent and co-active neural nodes and networks. But while they’re durable and relatively stable, they can, in fact, be modified.”

But as Dr. Ed Boyden points out, we’re still too far from knowing the ins and outs of how the brain really works to affect our personality that deeply. Currently head of MIT’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group and associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences, Boyden was one of the pioneers of using light to activate neurons. “We lack a good understanding of how the brain represents and computes information,” he says. “Right now we don’t know how thoughts, emotions and memories are represented in the brain.” Besides that, Boyden points out that if we’re talking about neurons and neural maps changing, the idea that we’re the same person through our whole lives is an illusion of consciousness anyway.

“Actually our internal narrative is changing constantly,” Boyden says, “a lot of data shows the self is a reflection of the environment. But we shouldn’t confuse ‘changing’ with ‘fallible’ — in the face of a changing environment that demands we adapt, they might be opposites.”

Giordano calls it a form of “cognitive closure” to “clump” the qualities that define the sense of “me-ness” we all have. “But should my brain be altered in some way via trauma or some kind of intervention that affects the pattern of the neural nodes and networks that are operative in my integrated sense of identity, then that sense of self might — and likely would — be disrupted, if not changed in some way,” he says.

DOING IT YOURSELF But imagine the potential — and the potential double-edged sword.

If we could use TMS, TES or some other futuristic method to directly affect the inner workings of our cognition and affect memory and experience, we might be able to deploy a brain scanner and “edit out” an undesirable artifact, maybe curing PTSD or depression.

Consumer devices already are on the market, promising to make buyers think faster and sharpen attention. Electrical stimulation increased math performance in experiments conducted at Oxford

University, after all. But scientists warn that using such devices yourself in such uncontrolled circumstances might bring about “unintended results.”

“Could it be done more precisely and with greater finesse? Yes,” says Giordano. He says cognitive abilities and behaviors like memory and intentional states involve both convergent and divergent network activity that engage a fair amount of neurological real estate. “But that’s the core challenge — and opportunity — of non-invasive brain stimulation, to increase the specificity and precision of effect.”

Continuing development of the technology in labs might lead to startling new research — and ramifications for theories about personal identity. Boyden can

IF WE COULD USE TMS, TES, OR SOME OTHER FUTURISTIC METHOD TO DIRECTLY AFFECT THE INNER WORKINGS OF OUR COGNITION, AND AFFECT MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE WITH ENOUGH FINESSE, WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO DEPLOY A BRAIN SCANNER AND “EDIT OUT” AN UNDESIRABLE ARTIFACT, MAYBE CURING PTSD OR DEPRESSION. imagine a world where it’s possible to “upload” specific thoughts or feelings into the brain from an external source by manipulating brain activity, and he says that at the rate the technology is improving we might see it within the next 50 years.

But he cautions that oversight will be crucial. “All experiments with brain stimulation on humans, and frankly any human subject experiments, must be approved by a panel who judges the ethics of the work. It’s important to take an ethical stand and make sure neurotechnology makes us who we want — as a society and a civilization — to be.”

One thing’s for sure. As our understanding of the way the brain works deepens, such technology will shine even more light onto many cognitive abilities and phenomena, including our seemingly immutable sense of self.

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SCIENCE

AFFECTIVE NARRATIVE

MEDICINE

The Role of Emotion in the Clinical Conversation

M

BY CHARLES ETHAN PACCIONE

edicine has always relied heavily upon the art of conversation in order to successfully treat the behaviors, thoughts and especially emotions of those who are suffering. However, there is little research which explores how well clinicians can recognize and manage their own emotions during difficult health care conversations. Furthermore, practical and theoretical approaches on how patients and clinicians can optimize their awareness and utilization of these emotions within the clinical encounter still are somewhat unknown.

Many patients and clinicians still believe that the body can be successfully treated without much conversation and use of emotions. However, the underlying etiology of much of psychopathology is the inability to separate thought from emotion — and emotion from physiological health. Health care professionals often deliver their care in a logical, evidence-based fashion, and patients tend to withhold their emotions due to their state of vulnerability. How can emotions be a source of healing and empowerment for both doctors and patients, and how can we imbue the clinical encounter with the values of narrative medicine? It seems that the ability of doctors and patients to successfully communicate emotions can be both a cause of — and a remedy for — suffering.

An article published in 2015 by Margo M.C. van Mol and colleagues in the journal PLOS One investigated how emotions can bidirectionally and negatively effect both the patient and the caregiver within stressful clinical environments. Burnout among nurses and physicians who work in intensive care units can be a direct result of the demanding and continually stressful work environment. It is thought that end-of-life issues, the nuances of ethical decision-making, observing the continuous suffering of patients and miscommunication with the patient’s relatives emotionally affect many ICU professionals. From their analysis, van Mol’s team determined that the difficulty with communication might be a major source of emotional distress. Due to the fact that many patients in the ICU lack optimal decision-making capacity, health care professionals must successfully communicate with relatives for decision-making in regards to care — and this can be a serious source of miscommunication and misunderstandings in regard to treatment expecta-

tions. The emotional burden of medical care and failure to communicate ultimately may cause absenteeism for both the patient and the caregiver who wish to preserve their own health.

A 2015 study published in the journal Patient Education and Counseling by Elliott B. Martin and colleagues examined the most commonly reported emotions faced among health care practitioners when holding difficult conversations with patients. Clinicians were asked to describe up to three emotions they experienced when having difficult health care conversations with their patients. The researchers also used subsequent questions to measure the frequency of each emotion and whether or not the clinical care was affected.

Martin’s team found that empathy and anxiety were emotions perceived to influence care more than sadness, frustration and insecurity, and that most clinicians, regardless of clinical experience and discipline, strongly believe that their emotional state influences the quality of care that they deliver. It is especially important to note that anxiety and empathy emerged as the most common emotions within their analysis. The findings showed that empathy was generally described as a positive emotion, since it emotionally grounds the clinician and enables him or her to experience the emotions of others with which they work.

However, the researchers found that empathy, to a particular degree, can be experienced as a negative emotion when it starts to contribute to the overidentification of difficulty, loss and sadness of a patient. Given that there were no significant differences that were found based on discipline or work experience, empathy may reflect a person-

ality trait for those who are drawn to work in the health care field in general.

Physical emotional stress reactions — headaches, sleeping disturbances, low back pain and stomach problems — as well as mental responses such as irritability or hostility, cognitive fog (loss of concentration), low self-confidence and emotional instability could all indicate the presence of an emotional trauma. Compassion fatigue is a state of physical or psychological distress in caregivers that may occur as a consequence of an ongoing relationship with a demanding patient or colleague. It also is known as the “helper syndrome,” which results from a continuous onset of disappointing situations that leads to moral distress. Indicators of emotion, which range from facial responses to changes in body positioning, represent an essential part of nonverbal communication in everyday life and may be an important means of creating a healthy caregiver-patient relationship.

Doctors and nurses who instill in a patient a sense of motivation, positive expectations and pride have better clinical outcomes than those who are less emotionally interactive and supportive. A 2016 study by Louise H. Hall and colleagues showed that poor well-being and moderate to high levels of burnout among health care providers are associated with poor patient well-being and safety outcomes, such as medical errors.

In regards to patient well-being, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies by Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University Rotterdam investigated whether or not happiness is in fact good for one’s health. A synthetic analysis of 30 follow-up studies on happiness and longevity was performed and found that happiness does not predict longevity in sick populations, but instead, predicts longevity among healthy populations. In other words, happiness does not cure illness but it strongly protects against becoming ill.

Proud patients are more willing to cooperate with caregivers than patients who lack the competence to manage their own life situations.

When caregivers are feeling

emotional distress, it often ironically results from their lack of emotional care, which they are prescribing to their patient.

Patients often can become ambivalent and frustrated if they become dissatisfied with the inadequate emotional care and support that they are receiving from their health care provider. Many patients desire to feel understood, respected and seen from a humanistic and subjective point of view rather than a problem that needs to be objectively solved.

This is especially important in medicine where a patient’s vulnerability is coupled with feelings of shame, fear and low self-esteem.

POSITIVE RESULTS FOR TREATING CHRONIC PAIN Chronic pain is currently considered one of the leading social and economic burdens to society, and is one of the most difficult pain conditions to treat and manage. This may be due to an unknown etiology and a lack of current treatments designed specifically to meet the complex pathophysiology and emotional profile of those suffering from it. None of the most commonly used pharmacological, medical or surgical treatments are, by themselves, sufficiently able to remove pain or to significantly

of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that weekly elevations of pain and stress predict increases in negative affect in CP patients, and both higher weekly positive affect results in lower negative affect, both directly and in interaction, with pain and stress.

Research investigating the relationships between CP patients’ dispositional optimism and pessimism and the coping strategies they use has found that there is a positive relationship between optimism and the use of active coping strategies and pessimism and the use of passive coping strategies. In a 2012 study by Carmen Ramírez-Maestre and colleagues published in The Spanish Journal of Psychology, titled “The role of optimism and pessimism in chronic pain patients adjustment,” found that active emotional coping is associated with low levels of pain, anxiety, depression, and impairment and high levels of functioning, whereas passive emotional coping is related to high levels of pain, anxiety, depression and impairment and low levels of functioning for those suffering from a variety of CP conditions.

Identifying the factors that influence affective coping and expectancies potentially

MANY PATIENTS DESIRE TO FEEL UNDERSTOOD, RESPECTED, AND SEEN FROM A HUMANISTIC AND SUBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW RATHER THAN A PROBLEM THAT NEEDS TO BE OBJECTIVELY SOLVED. THIS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT IN MEDICINE WHERE A PATIENT’S VULNERABILITY IS COUPLED WITH FEELINGS OF SHAME, FEAR, AND LOW SELF-ESTEEM. enhance physical and emotional functioning for patients suffering from CP. However, effective coping strategies, motivation and positive treatment expectancies may play an important role in the treatment of and adjustment to CP. A 2010 study published in the journal Current Pain and Headache Reports by John A. Sturgeon and Alex J. Zautra of Arizona State University, titled “Resilience: A New Paradigm for Adaptation to Chronic Pain,” strongly proposes optimism and resiliency as the integrative perspectives that can illuminate the traits and mechanisms underlying the sustainability of CP recovery and well-being. A 2008 multilevel modeling analysis by Zautra and colleagues, titled “Positive Affect as a Source of Resilience for Women in Chronic Pain,” in the Journal

could help clinicians facilitate the use of emotional adaptive coping strategies for treating patients that suffer from several conditions. Even though clinicians and patients seem relatively capable of recognizing and managing their emotions, there still is significant room for growth. Further qualitative research and continuing education programs designed to increase clinicians’ and patients’ recognition of, reflection on and management of emotions may be helpful in improving their ability to navigate difficult health care conversations.

Understanding how to manage emotions is a powerful strategy for nurturing clinicians and patients who are more resilient, aware and capable of engaging with the hardships and losses that life sometimes has to offer.

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SCIENCE

OUR

EXPANDING BRAIN (and Human Toolkits: Now with Gene Editing)

W

BY EARL MEAGAN

hen we think back on how far the human race has come, from the days our ancestors left the trees and eventually migrated across continents, it’s a tantalizing question to think of what evolution will bring us next. In another century or five, what will the brain that allowed us to plan massive migrations, build shelters out of raw elements and later turn them into cities, compose classical music and create the internet be capable of?

Some of us may hope for telekinetic and psychic powers — a future giving birth to gifted individuals like the X-Men — while others are less optimistic, envisioning a future in which people no longer need to worry about shaping their intellect, where machines do everything.

BEFORE THE NEURONS CAN FULLY DEVELOP, THE NOTCH2NL GENES BECOME ACTIVE AND SLOW DOWN THE RATE AT WHICH THE NEURONS MATURE — THINK OF NOTCH2NL AS COOLING OFF A PIECE OF BLOWN GLASS, KEEPING THE SHAPE FROM STRETCHING TOO FAR.

The brains of our prehistoric ancestors contained about 0.5 liters of gray matter. Today, they contain 1.4 liters, making up for 40 percent of the brain. Problem-solving and abstract thought come with a considerable price tag — as gray matter takes up about 95 percent of the oxygen flowing to our brains.

Whatever you may think about our direction as a species, the question of “Where do we go from here?” is an important one. As appealing as psychic or telekinetic powers may seem, neither are very likely to appear in our descendants any time soon. Evolution isn’t as guided as we imagine it to be and is reliant on the movement of genes. The brain I’m currently writing with actually is the product of four separate yet closely related developmental genes belonging to the NOTCH2NL family, which is responsible for the development and functioning of neuron cells.

Proteins from these genes also are present in fluids produced by the adult nervous system, suggesting they play a part in the plasticity of the brain and central nervous system throughout our lives.

Two studies published in the journal Cell this spring have attributed these developments to an accident that happened some 3 million years ago. The NOTCH gene family from which NOTCH2NL derives — earning its name due to a feature of the gene that causes a notched wing to develop in fruit flies — is a common test subject for genetic experiments.

David Haussler is a bioinformatician at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where he uses

software and statistical models to interpret the replication of genes over time. While looking at “organoids” — miniature petri dish models of human and macaque brains grown from embryonic stem cells — Haussler and his team of researchers observed that as they grew, the NOTCH genetic pathway worked differently in both species. The macaque brain organoids lacked NOTCH2NL completely, as did other nonhuman primates — implicating the role it may have played in our evolution. Larger primates such as chimps and gorillas had only inactive versions of the gene.

“To find that humans have a new member of this family that is involved in brain development is extremely exciting,” says Haussler.

“One of our most distinguishing features is larger brains and delayed brain development, and now we’re seeing molecular mechanisms supporting this evolutionary trend even at a very early stage of brain development.” Roughly 14 million years ago, a piece of an ancestral NOTCH2 gene was replicated by mistake — a random

mutation incomplete and unexpressed in our distant ancestors, known as a “pseudogene.” 11 million years later, a new piece of NOTCH2 was inserted into the pseudogene, allowing the gene to materialize into something new and functional.

“This event marks the birth of the NOTCH2NL genes we now have in our brains,” says Frank Jacobs, who co-wrote the paper and works as an evolutionary genomicist at the University of Amsterdam. The NOTCH2NL gene would copy twice more, with three active genes at one end of human chromosome 1. The opposite end of the chromosome contains the pseudogene. One copy of the gene in nature continues the job it was tasked to do, while the others take on new functions.

HOW OUR BRAIN EVOLVED TO BE “HUMAN”: (

W

eighing in at about 3.3 pounds, the human brain is proportionally larger than that of any other animal. Its highly advanced cognitive and affective powers have driven us to create art, build empires and dive deep into our own oceans as well as the depths of outer space. Fossil records and genetic analyses have shown that the evolution of higher cognition began sometime after the chimpanzee and human lines separated about 5 to 6 million years ago, and it has continued until the rise of modern humans roughly 200,000 years ago. However, recent research is revealing that the evolution of the human brain may not have stopped when Homo sapiens arrived, and may, in fact, be continuing to this day. But in order to understand how our brains may still be evolving into the future, we must first understand how they evolved in the past.

Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz of the Department of Human Evolu-

tion at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology describe how the “globularization” of modern human brains has played a key role in our cognitive development as a species. In their 2018 paper, they explain how our globular brains — a characteristic that separates us from our extinct Homo relatives — is quite unique. It is thought to develop during a prenatal and early postnatal period during which our brains undergo rapid cognitive growth. Interestingly, the evolutionary globularization in Homo sapiens parallels the emergence of “behavioral modernity”: the characteristics of modern human behavior. The archeological record shows us that the emergence of the Middle Stone Age, the beginning of an accelerated pace of innovation in stone technology, is close in time to the currently earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens. When brain globularity of our ancestors fell within the range of variation of present-day humans around

50,000 to 40,000 years ago, the full set of features of behavioral modernity had accumulated.

Previous studies have suggested that the beginning of cooking food by the fire could have been a prerequisite for the expansion of brain size in early hominins.

However, this hypothesis was only supported by mathematical models suggesting that an increasing number of neurons in the brain would constrain body size in primates due to a limited amount of calories obtained from our diets. A 2016 study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience showed that a tradeoff between body mass and the number of neurons as determined by dietary constraints during hominin evolution is very unlikely.

Instead, the predictable number of neurons in the hominin brain varies much more as a function of foraging efficiency than body mass.

The expansion of brain volume in the hominin lineage is shown to be independent of fire use, and therefore, cooking does not account for this phenomenon. So what could

be driving human brain evolution?

And if there is such a driver, is it still in operation today?

Two studies in 2005 led by human geneticist Dr. Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago concluded that two genes, “microcephalin” and “ASPM” (which are thought to regulate brain growth), have evolved under natural selection and may still be evolving. Lahn’s team sequenced DNA in about 90 human cells from a collection that is broadly representative of global human diversity. For each gene, they found an “allele” with a surprisingly high frequency in human populations. Further tests showed that the high frequencies of these alleles are unlikely to be due to random genetic drift or population migration. Instead, this strongly suggests that the alleles were favored by natural selection.

Making assumptions about past mutation rates, the team then estimated when each allele arose.

The favored microcephalin allele arose about 37,000 years ago — about the time of the explosion

of symbolic behavior in Europe as seen in cave paintings. The ASPM allele arose 5,800 years ago, just before cities came about in the Near East.

Lahn and his team also found an interesting pattern in the distribution of these favored alleles in various populations around the world. The microcephalin allele was found to be much more common in Europe, Asia and the Americas than in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a larger sample from 1,184 individuals, the team found this allele in roughly 75 percent or more of Italians, Russians and Han Chinese, and in nearly 100 percent of Colombians. In contrast, the allele had frequencies of less than 10 percent in the Zime of Cameroon and the San of Namibia, and about 30 percent of Tanzanian Masaai. The possibility that these favored alleles might confer some sort of “cognitive edge” — and that they are unevenly distributed in human populations — raises many social and ethical issues. Yet, as the researchers pointed out in an

JANUARY 2019

As the brain develops, (this goes for Haussler and Jacobs’ organoids too), neural stem cells develop into “cortical neurons” — building blocks of a vast network that plays an invaluable role in memory formation, attention and consciousness. Before the neurons can fully develop, the NOTCH2NL genes become active and slow down the rate at which the neurons mature — think of NOTCH2NL as cooling off a piece of blown glass, keeping the shape from stretching too far.

This process sets off something of a chain reaction. One of the NOTCH2NL proteins disrupts a step in the cellular signaling pathway — as a result, the stem cells differentiate rather than divide.

Since the cortical neurons don’t mature as rapidly as they should

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— a greater pool of stem cells, known specifically as “radial glia” — begin to build up in this developing brain, resulting in the formation of the neocortex. In the macaques and other mammals, this makes up the outer layer of the brain. In people, it gives us our higher cognitive abilities like reasoning and using language.

It’s often been said that an infinite number of chimpanzees banging away at the keys on typewriters will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare. It’s really just a way of saying that anything can happen with enough time and intervals for trial and error, but it’s not quite hyperbole to say that a typo in genetics (and the subsequent mutations needed to correct it), led to the advent of all human linguistics.

The study’s senior author, Sofie Salama, another researcher at UC Santa Cruz, adds that these newly isolated genes are just one of numerous factors that led to our cortical development: “NOTCH2NL doesn’t act in a vacuum, but it arose at a provocative time in human evolution, and it is associated with neural developmental disorders. That combination makes it especially interesting.”

The precise location of these newly discovered NOTCH2NL genes on the DNA strand has piqued the curiosity of researchers like Salama and Haussler, because they neighbor genetic

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particles associated with autism, schizophrenia and a developmental delay known as Chromosome 1q21.1 duplication syndrome — which may cause the fetus to develop an oversized head and later symptoms like seizures and heart disease. The instability that comes with having to carefully replicate these strands is a trademark of these disorders: one copy too many or too much DNA lost during the duplication could have lifelong consequences.

While obstacles like mass migrations and tool making led to the development of language and the forgery of even deeper connections into the brain, important discoveries in neuroscience and genetics like the isolation of NOTCH2NL are becoming ever more commonplace. Not only have techniques like the genome repair kit CRISPR given us means to fighting hereditary illnesses thought incurable even a decade ago, but we may soon have a toolkit into the workings of human emotion, with genetics providing a roadmap — more importantly, one that could be easily tested and repaired.

A study in March, completed

: (AND WHERE IT MAY BE HEADED) interview with Science, there is a lot of potential for misinterpretation of the results. Nonetheless, it seems that human populations are still subject to the operation of general forces of biological evolution through natural selection — but what about selection through “artificial” means?

Surprisingly, the study of the future evolution of the human brain has tended to be predominantly exercised by futurists and proponents of “transhumanism” rather than purely experimental and theoretical neuroscientists.

Futurists and transhumanists explain the future condition of the human brain as one that is constantly reliant on biotechnology. Our ability to manipulate gene pools by artificial selection and to offset maladaptive biological traits by technology (for example, eyeglasses, insulin injections and prosthetics) has proven to be an innovative operation of evolution.

Andy Clark, author of “Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of

Human Intelligence,” envisions that neural implants will have a significant impact on the way in which humans will interact with their environments, especially in regards to global positioning systems. The combination of GPS with various neural implants could have numerous applications including driving, flying aircraft and finding one’s direction. Virtual reality headsets and haptic systems, which create intimate links between the simulated environment and human user, and personal digital devices with GPS, fitness and health apps are being worn by people today and serving several practical purposes.

Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan claim in their book “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind” that current technology already is evolving the human brain. Small and Vorgan note that constant human exposure to our computers, tablets or smartphones can accelerate learning by rewiring neural circuitry. A 2009 paper published in The

American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry by Small and colleagues employed a cross-sectional, exploratory observational design to investigate the possible influence of internet experience on brain activation patterns. The authors performed functional MRIs on 24 individuals between the ages of 55 and 76 years during search engine use and explored whether prior search engine experience was associated with brain activation patterns seen during internet use. Subjects were neurologically normal — 12 had minimal internet search engine experience (the “net naive” group) while 12 had more extensive experience (the “net savvy” group).

Results showed that the text-reading task activated brain regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

Both the magnitude and the extent of brain activation were similar in the net naive and net savvy groups. During the internet search task, the net naive group showed a similar activation pattern as their

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by the consumer genetics company 23andMe, recruited its test subjects using a University of Cambridge survey that measures one’s “empathy quotient.” Going into the study, the researchers already had data to confirm a number of suspicions about empathy — women typically express it more than men, and people who suffer from autism often express lower levels.

The study, which surveyed 46,000 participants (each volunteered to give a saliva sample for testing), concluded that genetics plays a role as well, even if it is a minor one. In fact, the researchers found a variant related to both lower degrees of empathy and a higher risk for autism, although the exact genes have yet to be specified through future research.

According to the study’s co-author, professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University: “Finding that even a fraction of why we differ in empathy is due to genetic factors helps us understand people such as those with autism who struggle to imagine another person’s thoughts and feelings. This can give rise to disability no less challenging than other kinds of disability, such as dyslexia or visual impairment.

We as a society need to support those with disabilities, with novel teaching methods, workarounds or reasonable adjustments, to promote inclusion.”

There still are a number of variables to be considered and external factors that play a role in the creation of empathy, but already this year, discoveries are starting to suggest that the lines between cognitive disorders and mental well-being are much closer than we have ever realized — and new solutions may be on the way.

BY CHARLES ETHAN PACCIONE

text reading task. However, the net savvy group demonstrated a more than twofold increase in the extent of activation and signal intensity in additional regions controlling decision-making, complex reasoning and vision. The researchers noted that internet searching may engage a greater extent of neural circuitry not activated while reading text pages but only in people with prior computer and internet search experience. In middle-aged and older adults, prior experience with internet searching may alter the brain’s responsiveness in neural circuits controlling decision-making and complex reasoning.

The inevitability of the human brain and the human mind to continue to evolve into the far distant future is quite clear.

However, accurately predicting the progress of neurodevelopment in the future is fraught with uncertainty and bias toward preferred outcomes. Nonetheless, it is necessary to explore all possible directions of future changes in the human brain and our evolution.

THE FAVORED MICROCEPHALIN ALLELE AROSE ABOUT 37,000 YEARS AGO — ABOUT THE TIME OF THE EXPLOSION OF SYMBOLIC BEHAVIOR IN EUROPE AS SEEN IN CAVE PAINTINGS. THE ASPM ALLELE AROSE 5,800 YEARS AGO, JUST BEFORE CITIES CAME ABOUT IN THE NEAR EAST.

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JANUARY 2019

SCIENCE

ON THE

SPECTRUM Understanding the Nature of Autism

I

BY JAMES SULLIVAN

n the fast moving car, the young doctor doesn’t waste time. He seems to be unaware of the speed at which he and fellow hospital resident, Claire, are traveling in the backseat, and he slips on a pair of gloves. Only he knows something is wrong — he needs to find only a small spot on the MRI film in order to tell. Ignoring Claire and the driver, he reaches into the large container sitting between them and studies what looks to be a raw steak wrapped in plastic, feeling the flesh with his eyes closed. “I can feel it! The scans show no clot, but there is a clot!” He’s delicately working his hands over a human liver as he speaks — and only the doctor himself, Shaun Murphy, knows that the live organ will be useless before they reach the hospital — unless he and Claire begin to operate immediately on the side of the road and flush out the organ’s left lobe.

The unfolding drama is part of the new series “The Good Doctor.” The protagonist, played by Freddie Highmore, is a gifted surgeon — seemingly a prodigy as he is decades younger than many of his peers but quietly suffers from autism. It may seem at once unusual to find a character like Shaun Murphy in an occupation of this nature and refreshing to see a character on the spectrum portrayed in a good light — but it leaves many viewers wondering if such a person could exist in real life. However, the idea that people who live with autism are capable of honing complex skills and talents slowly is prevailing. What sets someone like Murphy apart from the rest of us?

The information technology business Auticon has employed 15 consultants — all of whom have varying degrees of autism — and were given their jobs following long periods of unemployment.

The company’s founder, Dirk MüllerRemus, is a former software developer whose son was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. Müller-Remus’ son had a difficult time finding employment, something with which many people with spectrum disorders often have trouble. MüllerRemus also knew that people like his son had an array of traits that made them unique: being able to focus on a single task for extended intervals of time and a sharp eye for patterns and systems.

Little is known about the disorder itself, but Auticon’s horizon looks fairly bright.

Just last year, the German-based company opened offices in London and Paris with the hopes of employing 100 consultants from such high-profile clients such as GlaxoSmithKline and Experian.

Their U.K. CEO, Ray Coyle, is a former lawyer and IT specialist who has long been a supporter of Müller-Remus’ mission.

“Some of the most loyal, capable and dedicated employees I’ve had have been on the autism spectrum,” says Coyle. Coyle even goes so far as to describe his employees with the term “neurodiversity” — appreciating the fact that there are myriad ways in which the human brain can be wired.

“We’ve got to be really careful with the language we use: we don’t want to give people the impression that all autistic people are IT geniuses or that there are not neurotypical [nonautistic] people who can do all of these things,” he says.

“But in the right role, and with the right support, an autistic person will significantly outperform a neurotypical person

doing the same job. If you’ve got a team of people on a project, and they’re all neurotypical, and your project encounters a problem, the chances are that those 20 people will all come up with the same kind of answer. Bring in someone with a totally different cognitive process and a completely different perspective, and they’ll come up with something different. And that’s invaluable.”

For a disorder not fully understood by experts, it would seem that Auticon is making some great strides in helping people who struggle with the disorder.

Müller-Remus’ son is among 37.2 million people worldwide with Asperger’s syndrome. The number of people worldwide affected with autism is estimated to be 62.2 million, and the precise cause is not yet understood. However, over the last several years, researchers have identified a number of risk factors closely associated with the prevalence and severity of symptoms.

Genetic factors are thought to play a factor — and studies consistently show that degrees of autism are between 15 and 30 times more common in the siblings of autistic children than within the general population. Rather than isolating a singular gene, researchers suspect that several genes acting in a pattern may be responsible — that autism spectrum disorders may be the result of both brain enlargement in some portions of the brain while others are reduced. Because symptoms typically occur after the first year of age when the brain is developing, the neurons may not be distributed evenly throughout the brain. The frontal lobes of ASD patients, as well as the mirror neuron system, the limbic system, the temporal lobe and the corpus callosum have all shown abnormalities.

The mirror neuron system of the brain is a pipeline of regions associated with processing empathy in humans. Located in the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule, you activate this network when observing or imitating other people. It’s part of why we’re conditioned to cry at weddings and funerals.

Irregularities in this region could explain why those higher on the ASD spectrum have trouble with recognizing emotions.

The temporal lobe also consists of the superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform face area, which also are used to process facial expressions. ASD patients have even demonstrated lower activity in the temporal lobes during functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, as they were given faces to look at. Back in 2012, scientists formed a consensus on another possibility — that ASD actually is the result of trouble with connections

between these regions and the way they function, rather than a problem with any specific one — that persons with ASD simply are wired differently.

Neuroscientist Ted Abel of the University of Iowa took another approach. He and his researchers chose to look at why ASD targets boys at four times the same rate as girls. A similar pattern of male bias is seen in other neurodevelopmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and even language impairments. The researchers decided to look at a genetic deletion occurring in ASD patients — a copying variation that left out extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1, a signaling protein.

Mice without the ERK1 failed to exhibit reward-seeking behavior — pulling levers for treats, for example. Female mice with the same deletion did not have trouble making the connection between rewards and the associated behaviors.

The study’s first author, Nicola Grissom, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, thinks they may be onto something: “These findings shed valuable new light on the science of neurodevelopmental disorders, many of which are more common in boys.

However, they also address the broader question of how sex and gender influence the neurobiology of how we learn and behave, which may be involved in the different levels of risk between women and men for developing many other neuropsychiatric conditions, as well.”

Male mice that lacked the ERK1 protein also had an increased expression of the D2 receptor, critical for picking up the brain’s reward chemical dopamine. Females showed no difference in dopamine receptor D2 expression. One thing that seems consistent so far is that reward learning may be a key component of ASD cases. Dopamine typically is distributed in human relationships — when we interact with friends, significant others or even have conversations online with strangers — but when the reward circuitry is blocked, this no longer occurs and could be a primary reason that persons with ASD, particularly in extreme cases, do not socialize.

Abel is optimistic moving forward: “We have begun to identify what may be an underlying reason why neurodevelopmental disorders predominantly affect boys, and that involves the function of the striatum and reward learning. This has implications for how we think about the underlying behavioral differences in autism, and implications for how we develop both behavioral or pharmacological therapies to improve the lives of those with autism.”

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WORLDWIDE AFFECTED WITH AUTISM IS ESTIMATED TO BE 62.2 MILLION, AND THE PRECISE CAUSE IS NOT YET UNDERSTOOD. HOWEVER, OVER THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, RESEARCHERS HAVE IDENTIFIED A NUMBER OF RISK FACTORS CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH THE PREVALENCE AND SEVERITY OF SYMPTOMS.

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Personality

most m ost ccomp complex omplex lx pe p mapping the universes universe’s

entity

A Q&A WITH DR. DAVID VAN ESSEN

BY STEPHANIE KRAMER

■ David Van Essen, Ph.D., is the Alumni Endowed Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis where he leads the Human Connectome Project. The $30 million, five-year-long study began in 2010 with funding from the National Institutes of Health with the goal of creating an interactive map of the living, thinking human brain.

Researchers from around the world now can download the scans from the HCP to study how the brain develops and the harm caused by disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Recently, Van Essen’s team used the new technology to identify nearly 100 new brain regions. Brain World had the opportunity to speak with Van Essen about the connectome, his enduring fascination with neuroscience and how having a blueprint of our wiring enhances our understanding of the brain.

“THE BRAIN IS THE MOST COMPLEX ENTITY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. THE WIRING OF THE BRAIN IS WHAT DETERMINES HOW WE THINK, HOW WE PERCEIVE, AND WHAT OUR EMOTIONS ARE — EVERYTHING THAT MAKES US HUMAN. EVEN THE WORDS IN THIS CONVERSATION ARISE FROM THE AMAZING CAPABILITY OF OUR BRAIN’S CIRCUITS, OR WIRING, TO CARRY OUT COMPLEX FUNCTIONS.”

Brain World: How did you become interested in studying the connectome?

David Van Essen: I began studying the cerebral cortex — its structure, function and connectivity — more than four decades ago. I’ve always been fascinated by how the brain works, how it’s wired, how it develops and how it evolves. So when the NIH put forward the opportunity to compete for the Human Connectome Project back in 2009, I was very enthusiastic about it and teamed up with investigators at Washington University, the University of Minnesota and Oxford University to consolidate our efforts.

BW: Why is it important to map the brain’s circuitry?

DVE: I would answer this in two parts. One is an utter fascination with how the brain works. The brain is the most complex entity in the known universe. The wiring of the brain is what determines how we think, how we perceive and what our emotions are — everything that makes us human. Even the words in this conversation arise from the amazing capability of our brain’s circuits, or wiring, to carry out complex functions.

Another important reason is there are billions of people in the world who have brain disorders.

The reality is that the brain can malfunction in a variety of ways.

Those range from childhood disorders including autism, dyslexia, attention disorders and many other deficits, to diseases occurring late in life, such as

Alzheimer’s. So, if we’re going to do better at identifying, characterizing and treating disease, we need to know what’s going wrong. And a starting point for understanding what healthy brains are like is knowing how they’re organized and connected.

BW: How difficult is it to build a wiring diagram?

DVE: It’s extremely challenging for several reasons. One is that the wires are very numerous with very complex interconnections.

In some ways the brain’s wiring is as important to its function as a computer’s wiring is critical for it to carry out its amazing computations. But the principles of brain connectivity and wiring are fundamentally different from that of computers, and in many ways more complex. We have trillions of connections, or synapses, that communicate information from one cell to another, and the cables linking one brain region to another are incredibly complex. Even though the tools we’re using to map the brain, like magnetic resonance imaging, are particularly important and can be used in several ways, their sensitivity and resolution are still limited.

Another hugely important aspect is that each person’s brain is different. There are differences in how it functions, how we think and how we acquire and express our personalities.

Our brains are also physically different, especially the cerebral cortex, which is the dominant structure of the human brain.

The cortex is about the size of

two 13-inch [pizza-sized] sheets of tissue — one for each brain hemisphere — but they’re crumpled up to fit inside our rather modestly sized skulls. The folding process is different for each of us. Even in identical twins, who have the same genetic instruction kit — folding patterns differ from one twin to another.

That was something we confirmed in our HCP study, which included hundreds of twin pairs, many of whom are identical twins. So, the anatomical and structural differences from one person to the next have posed a major challenge for comparing one person to the next and for combining information to gain insights into common patterns and organizational features of our brains.

We’ve made two major advances in how we decipher the human brain. One is surface-based mapping of the cerebral cortex. By generating geometric models of the cerebral cortex, we can manipulate the shape of the cortex, inflate it and smooth out the wrinkles. We can use that as a strategy for better aligning of different people’s brains. We can also create maps of distinct cortical areas and use information about functional specialization to further align the brains.

BW: Could you explain?

DVE: There’s a useful analogy with the geographic features of the earth’s surface. The earth’s mountains, valleys, rivers and

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other physical features are like the folding patterns of the cerebral cortex — except we have billions of individual brains but only one Earth. The functional specializations of the cortex could be compared to political subdivisions — the communications, interactions and social organization of the billions of people populating the Earth. Their interactions define the political boundaries, countries and states within countries. Similarly, the billions of neurons interacting and communicating create many distinct cortical areas.

BW: Which findings from the HCP have intrigued you the most?

DVE: One that I’m particularly excited about, and which is extremely valuable for the field, is having a better map of cortical areas, or “parcellation.” To give the historical context, one of the great classical anatomists of a century ago sliced up human brains postmortem and identified only about 50 distinct cortical areas. But by other estimates there were upwards of 200 distinct cortical areas. For more than a century, that debate raged and there was no clear resolution of the lay of the land — how many distinct cortical areas there are — even though it’s as important to know that information as it is for a political scientist to understand how many countries there are, where their borders are and how they interact with one another.

Going back to the brain, with the HCP we were able to acquire extremely high-quality data and to analyze it much more carefully with far greater accuracy.

It’s not the final story, but we think it’s a major step forward in accurately slicing and dicing the cortical sheet. Ultimately, my talented graduate student, Matt Glasser, led an effort that successfully identified 180 cortical areas in each hemisphere and with higher confidence in the map’s accuracy.

One thing we’ve learned is that the differences between the right and left hemispheres are much less pronounced than widely believed. If you read in the popular literature, there’s a lot of discussion of left-brain and right-brain differences.

Some of those are going to hold up, but we anticipate that many will be more subtle or nuanced, and that the information processing between the hemispheres will be more coordinated rather than independently operating.

BW: What can the connectome not explain?

DVE: To give you an example, intelligence is often associated with a single number, such as IQ or some other measure. It would be fascinating to understand what makes the brains of highly intelligent people different. We found some bits of evidence related to that, but there’s no single explanation. We suspect that the difference is due to very complicated and subtle differences in the brain’s circuitry, or wiring, that currently are only barely within our grasp. Getting a deeper understanding of that, or other differences from one person to the next, is extremely challenging given the incredibly complex wiring, the principles of wiring that remain somewhat mysterious and the practical limitations of current methods.

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JANUARY 2019

WHEN (AND WHY) TO TRUST YOUR

INTUITION

BY STEPHANIE KRAMER

W

hen it comes to making decisions, “look before you leap” sounds like good advice. Isn’t deliberately calculating all possible outcomes the best way to arrive at an appropriate solution?

There is growing emphasis on critical analysis of cold, hard facts. Relying on intuition is increasingly viewed as naive or misguided. As we spend more time in our heads, we spend less and less time listening to our gut.

But gut feelings can be a powerful tool in making decisions. Why? Because intuition is based on knowledge and information you’ve collected consciously and unconsciously about the world around you — since you were born.

Setting the stage for a gut feeling is a whole lot of processing as the brain absorbs new input and compares it with prior experience. Some scientists say the brain is a “guessing machine,” continually making predictions and updating its cognitive models. “To deal rapidly and fluently with an uncertain and noisy world, brains like ours have become masters of prediction — surfing the waves of noisy and ambiguous sensory stimulation by, in effect, trying to stay just ahead of them,” writes Andy Clark in his book, “Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind.”

Most predictions occur unconsciously, as our brains sift through the deluge of information in daily life. The brain constantly compares and revises its ideas based on whether our current experience strongly aligns with our prior experience — or if there is a significant discrepancy between the two. Intuition happens when our cognitive models are confirmed or contradicted, but the information hasn’t yet seeped into our conscious awareness.

Say you’re walking down the street at night, and as you approach a park, an inner voice tells you to cross to the other side of the road.

Moments later a large dog comes bounding out of the woods, barking and baring its teeth. Thankful that you listened to your intuition, perhaps you don’t even recall that as you started down the block you heard the dog’s owner calling to it.

Yet your brain picked up on subconscious cues and registered that something felt off.

The reason for gut feelings is “implicit memory” — or knowing without knowing. Implicit memory is when you learn something without any recollection of having learned it, such as knowing how to ride a bike. You’re unaware of the knowledge that you’ve acquired.

“Explicit memory,” on the other hand, involves conscious learning. An example would be memorizing a list of dates for a history exam. We generally take for granted that with practice you can learn to memorize facts better. But as you gain experience in a specific situation, you also can sharpen your intuition and become more adept at using it over time.

THINKING WITHOUT THINKING

In order to avoid danger, we sometimes need to react instinctively. At other times, we need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of a matter like applying for college or a job.

Psychologists contrast these two thinking styles as “intuitive” (fast and emotional) versus “analytical” (slow and rational). Depending on the scenario, one or the other is considered more appropriate. In matters of the heart, we trust our feelings, but for “serious” decisions — intuition often is considered too messy and inaccurate.

Emotions play a crucial role in making rational decisions, however.

They reflect the thoughts, impressions and experiences stored in your body and brain. This bodily knowledge manifests as gut feelings, shaky knees or a chill in the bones. You not only remember whether a past experience was good or bad; you also recall how it felt.

In his “somatic marker hypothesis,” neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains the driving force behind gut feelings. The brain and body are in constant communication, and when we feel strong emotions about a person, place or situation, our heart rate increases and hormones are released. Areas in the brain, such as the insula (which is responsible for

ONCE YOU ARE AWARE OF COMMON COGNITIVE BIASES THAT CAN INFLUENCE INTUITION, YOU CAN BECOME MORE ADEPT AT RECOGNIZING AND AVOIDING THEM.

social emotions like empathy as well as drives like hunger), learn associations between specific situations and our emotional states. In this manner, a somatic marker either sounds an alarm bell or provides an incentive to pursue a future reward.

Damasio applied his theory in the “Iowa gambling task,” which is a test of decision-making ability.

In this experiment, participants are told to draw cards one at a time from four different decks in order to win game money. Some decks contain more “reward” cards while others carry a penalty. Most people switched to the “good” decks after 40 or 50 cards. Yet it took only about 10 “bad” cards before they exhibited physical signs of anxiety, as measured by a skin test of stress levels — showing that the body thinks faster than the mind.

In general it’s difficult for studies to quantify intuitive thinking, however, because it occurs subconsciously. Nor are reason and intuition completely separate from one other.

Instead, we often combine the two.

While snap judgments can be wrong, overthinking also has disadvantages. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have shown that people with little knowledge of the stock market can sometimes create a better stock portfolio than financial experts.

Whereas the nonexperts chose companies whose names they recognized, the experts were misled by a surfeit of information.

WHEN CAN YOU TRUST YOUR GUT?

In any situation, we tend to rely more on one thinking style than the other. How reliable are gut feelings?

It’s tricky. Given that intuition uses involuntary, older processing, it potentially can lead you astray. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman describes the drawbacks of intuitive thinking in detail in his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” He says some major problems we face are cognitive biases. People often are inclined to evaluate a situation based on available evidence while overlooking absent evidence. Some errors in judgment include: Confirmation bias: This is when people see only the evidence that confirms their pre-existing beliefs and ignore the rest.

Overconfidence: People who act overconfident have an excessive belief in their own intuitions, assumptions and predictions. (“I told you so.”)

The ostrich effect: It can be tempting to bury one’s head in the sand, especially when hoping to avoid bad news.

The zero-risk effect: Most people desire certainty and security. They will avoid taking risks even if it would benefit them.

Optimistic bias: Human beings tend to imagine that the future will be better than the present. (“Won’t it be great when … ?”)

When you are facing a decision, it can be a good idea to try looking for such biases. Once you are aware of common cognitive biases that can influence intuition, you can become more adept at avoiding them.

By combining intuitive and analytical thinking, you can improve your ability to make sound decisions. And you’ll know whether it’s better to sleep on it — or go with your gut.

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21

FUTURE SHOCK WHY MANY OF US DON’T SEE IT COMING

BY DREW TURNEY

I

t’s not just sci-fi authors and futurists who predict the way the world will work and look like tomorrow. The human brain is configured to constantly anticipate and prepare for the future, and that makes “prediction machines” out of us all. But why do we so often get it so wrong?

A lot of the teachings of Buddhism are about being present in the “here and now” and fully experiencing the world around (and inside) you, and it’s telling how much of a conscious effort this takes to do so. You might think it’s the constant and crazy pace of life today that’s got our minds fixed on the near future, but our species actually grew up this way. Once upon a time, we spent all day thinking about where our next meal was coming from or whether we could convince that cute cavewoman or man in the next tribe over to mate with us.

press: the internet, which immediately rendered centuries of science fiction and futurism about 21st-century life just plain wrong by not conceiving its emergence.

PARALLEL UNIVERSES

But a startling feature of our powers of prediction — especially when we extrapolate them out to wider fields with longer games like technology, economics or culture — is how wrong we are. U.S. Commissioner of Patents Charles Holland Duell has become emblematic of how wrong we are when we play with crystal balls, for being (albeit incorrectly) credited with an infamous 1899 prediction that “everything that can be invented has been invented.”

Part of the problem is that the last few millennia — particularly the years since the post-World War II economic boom — have tricked us into thinking progress just happens, like biological evolution or gravity. But where survival pressures drove progress for most of our history, the Industrial Revolution inextricably tied its march to economic and political factors.

Progress seems immutable because it pervades so many areas of life, but it’s easy to forget how little gets done nowadays without a profit motive behind it. We can talk to someone on the other side of the world using a plastic and metal box held up to our ear, but 815 million of us are suffering chronic undernourishment.

Just think back to the space shuttle years of the 1980s. We all thought space travel in the late 2010s would be like something from a movie, all silver suits and airlocks. Who could have predicted not only that there wouldn’t even be a space shuttle fleet in 2018, but that there’d be nothing to replace it — with one of the primary drivers of human spaceflight (the U.S. government) having exited the business altogether?

Another example is air travel.

In the heady days of the Atomic Age when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X1, you’d have thought tourists in 2018 would be getting from New York to London in minutes thanks to an atomic rocket or teleportation device. But after 70 years of mass-market air travel, all that’s really changed is the entertainment system now is digital and you can’t smoke anymore. Breaking the sound barrier isn’t that hard for a modern commercial jet, it’s just that the price of fuel and wear and tear on the aircraft aren’t very cost effective compared to the price of tickets.

WE CAN TALK TO SOMEONE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD USING A PLASTIC AND METAL BOX HELD UP TO OUR EAR, BUT 815 MILLION OF US ARE SUFFERING CHRONIC UNDER-NOURISHMENT. THE NARROW VIEW

Another limitation we face is that we can see the future only from our own individual here and now, where or whenever that may be. We can imagine incremental improvements to the tools we have today, but the advances around the corner that will upend the world (“game changers” as modern economics calls them) essentially are unknowable to all but their progenitors.

Once upon a time they might have imagined faster horses through selective breeding, paved trails through the countryside and saddles with cupholders. None but a small few ever conceived of sleek metal machines moving at unimaginable speeds using only a wheel and a few foot pedals or the way the automobile would conquer mass transport (A Michigan bank told Henry Ford’s lawyer his client’s “horse-

less carriage” was a “fad.”).

But as history has repeatedly taught us, technologies and traditions advance for a time until a sudden shock to the system occurs that nobody sees coming. For a time our brains could grasp only screaming and waving a stick at the hungry sabretooth skulking into our cave. When we learned to start and control the fire most animals so feared, it shifted the position of our entire species on the food chain.

Today we couch such changes in economic terms because they upend industries and render entire classes of tools and artifacts obsolete, like ballistics and gunpowder did to swords and arrows or mechanized harvesters did to ox-drawn ploughs. Think of what many consider to be the biggest change to human culture, economics and communication since the printing

If you’ve ever become bored with eating the same kind of lunch every day, looked at your sleeping partner and wondered what you ever saw in them or regretted your career choice, you’ve felt the effects of one of our most highly developed survival mechanisms. Human beings evolved to be among the most adaptable life forms on Earth. We spread to countless places, lived in all kinds of climate and terrain and even though the essential materials needed to sustain the human organism are in constant need — we found them, resynthesized them and made the resources at our disposal work wherever we traveled.

An effect of our being so adaptable is that the human nervous system (and the mind it informs) has a very sensitive and fast-acting sensor to reset what it considers “normal.” A sociologist will tell you people born and raised in obscene wealth and privilege and those born in abuse, deprivation or hardship don’t feel as different from each other as you would imagine — because the particular experience and worldview that we hold as an individual is all we know.

When it comes to inventions, technologies and changes that sweep the world so completely, we forget it’s often the outliers and mavericks that seemingly didn’t stand a chance, which overturn established norms and become the new default. Everything, from the controlling of fire and the stone flint to electricity and TCP/IP (the digital communications protocol that underpins the internet), was thought up by driven loners in proverbial garages, and it’s only the benefit of hindsight that makes them seem like manifest destiny. Before they became such an inextricable part of the world, these game changers probably never would have occurred to most of us.

But it’s about more than just what we can make in factories.

We live in a “sociosphere,” where we’re looking forward from a very particular collective mood about culture and the world around us. Space travel was the vanguard movement for an entire era of futuristic change, and icons like the Saturn V rocket, television and even the electric clothes dryer were part of a pioneering spirit that made us believe we’d travel ever higher, ever

faster, and become more prosperous every year. Back in the 1950s, the world was a happy place full of optimism after the misery and devastation of depression and war — the hive mind of humanity was excited, engaged and therefore more creative and the rate of innovation was high.

But such utopian visions were casualties of the Cold War, and even before the Berlin Wall came down, the political shocks of the 1970s (oil crises, Watergate, Vietnam) made us all more cynical — flying to the moon seemed like it belonged in comic books.

Today, with unpopular political movements having swept the globe, the #MeToo movement revealing that we have eons to go to achieve equality and deep divisions across races and cultures, the visions of the future we dreamed in the Atomic Age seem hopelessly childish and naive.

THE FUTURE WE WANT

Above all, one of the most influential factors behind our powers of prediction — and the reason we get the future so wrong — might be a simple inability to see the difference between what we think and what we want.

A study at the University of Cape Town during the late 1950s asked students to imagine what would unfold over the rest of the 20th century.

Two-thirds of the black students and 80 percent of those descended from India thought apartheid would end, while only 4 percent of white students thought so. In another study about U.S. presidential candidates conducted over more than 30 years until 1980, 80 percent of those surveyed expected their preferred candidate to win by a ratio of around four to one.

Why is apparently clear-headed analysis so effectively hijacked? Kurt Danziger, the psychologist who conducted the South African experiment, noted that those who benefit from the existing state of affairs in a given system or regime are reluctant to see it end. Those who are oppressed by it can imagine that day keenly, thus “desire” makes the leap to “informed” opinion.

We might all be tripped up by simple confirmation bias, talking ourselves into an outcome we’d like to see by selectively (and unconsciously) recruiting supporting facts to our cause and ignoring others.

When it comes to predicting the future, the human mind seems to wield the same attributes it does over most other cultural pursuits — well meaning, emotional and flawed.

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Never Eat Alone!

THE BENEFITS OF EATING WITH OTHERS

BY NICOLE VISNIC

W

hat is it about breaking bread with others that makes a meal more than just a meal? Research is showing communal eating promotes health benefits that extend beyond merely eating in the company of others.

With the pace of modern life, people are eating fewer meals at the table with loved ones and more meals in the car, at their desks and in front of the TV. The unfortunate news is our timesaving and multitasking strategies have serious health implications.

In a 2014 study published in the journal Nutrition Research and Practice and in a 2015 study published in the journal Appetite, people who eat alone were shown to have poorer eating habits than those who eat with others. The primary diet pitfall contributing to the unsatisfactory nutritional rating is lower intake of vegetables. Vegetables have a benevolent reputation for a good reason.

They are a rich source of micronutrients and antioxidants — essential nutrients that help our bodies function and protect our DNA. Compounding low vegetable intake is the fact that meals eaten alone tend to be lower quality. Food technology has made it possible to consume hyperpalatable meals that are cheap and convenient. No longer is a home-cooked meal the only way to get comfort food. Now you can find frozen entrees and fast food with the same taste as a homemade meal, but with fewer nutrients and more artificial ingredients.

There also are dietary patterns that tend to occur with isolated eating such as stress eating and binge eating. Without social influence, people tend to engage in behaviors they normally would refrain from if they were in the presence of friends and family.

So if eating alone is associated with poorer dietary habits, what does the research show about eating with others?

In short, communal eating not only activates beneficial neurochemicals, but also improves digestion. The dining table provides an opportunity for conversation, storytelling and reconnection.

When you bond with others and experience a sense of connection, endogenous opioids and oxytocin are released that stimulate pleasant feelings. The neurochemical changes lead to improved well-being and contentedness.

Even more promising is the effect of social connection and a healthy diet on telomere length, a marker that indicates your rate of aging. Telomere length has been shown to be positively associated with a healthy diet in a study published in 2011 in The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. More studies currently are under way, as reported in the journal Aging in 2016, to demonstrate how both diet and social factors protect your telomeres and promote longevity.

One of the most well-known benefits of enjoying a meal with others is the effect on heart rate variability and the parasympathetic nervous system. High HRV activates the PNS, which also is known as the “rest and digest” branch of the nervous system. Positive states of mind like love, gratitude and connection induce the relaxation response, which increases HRV and activates your PNS. As the PNS is activated, digestive function improves. Proper digestion not only improves absorption of nutrients but also prevents symptoms of indigestion like heartburn, flatulence and bloating.

With all the evidence pointing to the benefits of communal eating, it seems the traditions of yesteryear have merit.

Inviting a friend over for meals or being intentional about sitting down at the dinner table with your family can add not only life to your years but years to your life. Bon appetit!

ARE WE WHAT WE EAT?

T

BY ISABEL PASTOR GUZMAN

he world is full of different cuisines and thousands of different meals. Yet when we reduce them to their essence, there are just a handful of ingredients that our bodies absolutely need to survive. These basic molecules come in a series of groups we’re all familiar with — carbohydrates, fat, protein — each class of molecule is very important for the way our bodies work.

So, what to choose?

Our physical and mental well-being is directly linked to what we eat and drink. The nutritional content of what we eat determines the composition of our cell membranes, bone marrow, blood, hormones, tissue, organs, skin and hair. Our bodies are replacing billions of cells every day — using the foods we consume as the source. Researchers at the University of Oxford have demonstrated that the diets of organisms even can affect the composition of their genes.

Since organisms construct their DNA using building blocks they get from food, Dr. Steven Kelly of Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences and his colleagues hypothesized that the composition of food could alter an organism’s DNA. The results revealed a previously hidden relationship between cellular metabolism and evolution, and it provided new insights into how DNA sequences can be influenced by adaptation to different diets. The team also found it is possible to predict the diets of related organisms by analyzing the DNA sequence of their genes.

A well-balanced diet not only results in better health and overall body composition, but because of the “brain-gut connection,” it also can make us feel great. Eating well is part of the strategy that can reduce our risk of any chronic disease and even improve the condition of our very genes. There is not “one rule fits all” when it comes to eating well.

Applying the commonly accepted recommendations such as low sugar, low salt and a good variety of nutrients might be the most advisable for all of us. Paying attention to how much we are eating is another very im-

portant aspect of healthy nutrition — that naturally concerns us all.

What we eat and how much we eat is critical, but how we process it is perhaps even more important.

Through thousands of little sensors, the gut has the immense task of managing all the information contained in the food we intake. Food alone will not promise a thriving gut. If you are eating a nutritious and delicious meal with a friend, but all of a sudden you start to fight with each other — your stomach is going to shut off, and you’ll probably experience indigestion, pain or nausea. Even when eating by ourselves, most of us have an ongoing internal dialogue going on in our brains. We are filled with countless thoughts and emotions that distract all our attention from the food in front of us, and there is reason to believe that eating in this way may slow digestion. Stress hormones, such as adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol, will interact with the cells in our gut, making us alert and ready for fight or flight. By paying attention to our mental state when eating, we can improve our food processing. All of our body parts are connected to our emotions, but the gut sends the strongest signaling to our brain’s emotional centers.

It can be as simple as becoming more aware of the act of eating itself — including seeing, smelling, chewing and swallowing. We also can ex-

TRIALS USING THE MINDFUL EATING APPROACH HAVE SHOWN THAT PARTICIPANTS SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED COMPULSIVE EATING HABITS, IMPROVED SELF-CONTROL, DIMINISHED DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS, LOST WEIGHT, AND MAINTAINED THEIR WEIGHT LOSS FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME. tend our attentiveness to the influence the food has on our bodies and mood. In fact, researchers have found that teaching such “mindful eating” skills can change bad eating patterns.

Trials using the mindful eating approach have shown that participants significantly reduced compulsive eating habits, improved self-control, diminished depressive symptoms, lost weight and maintained their weight loss for long periods of time.

By paying attention to all the details and layers of information involved in our eating, we also can awaken our gut senses — in turn helping us make better choices of the things we eat, and the amounts we eat in the future.

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understanding the mechanisms in the brain that can cause these conditions is extremely important so that we can better develop new approaches to treatment that have an impact. So it really is a combination of basic research about how the brain works to clinical research about what types of treatments: whether it be medication, whether it be forms of talk therapy, whether it be other types of interventions — that can better treat these conditions.

BW: So how has neuroscience contributed to our understanding of mental illness?

JB: Neuroscience is a key to understanding mental illness.

Neuroscience is studying the brain, and a better understanding of how the brain works and what can go wrong in terms of how it works helps provide important information about the cause of mental illness and potential treatments for it. So neuroscience is extremely important in our understanding of the brain.

for minds Personality

healthier A Q&A WITH DR. JEFFREY BORENSTEIN

BY JAMES SULLIVAN

■ Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein is the current president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, a global nonprofit organization. Since 1987, they have awarded more than $380 million to more than 5,500 grants, given to over 4,500 scientists to study brain and mental health disorders.

In addition to his work with the organization, he also created the Emmy Award-nominated “Healthy Minds,” an educational series broadcast on public television and available for streaming online at www.bbrfoundation.org/healthyminds, which was produced in an effort to educate the public on psychiatry and mental health.

Borenstein, who earned his medical degree at New York University, also is the editor-in-chief of Psychiatric News, the newspaper of the American Psychiatric Association, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Brain World recently had the opportunity to sit down with him and discuss the role of BBRF and his long-term goal of fighting and destigmatizing mental illness.

Brain World: How did you become interested in neuroscience?

Jeffrey Borenstein: I became interested in neuroscience in medical school when I decided to become a psychiatrist. It was having the opportunity to see people who had various psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and wanting to understand what may cause those conditions and how to best help people with those conditions.

BW: Why is science communication important?

JB: I think science communication is extremely important because there’s a lot of misperceptions about psychiatric conditions — a lot of stigma and prejudice toward people who have these conditions. Scientific information about it — having the facts, having the knowledge — makes a very big difference in people’s lives. I think that understanding psychiatric illness such as depression or schizophrenia is an illness like any other illness — that it’s based on the biology of the human brain, just like pneumonia is based on the biology the human lungs and that there are treatments available to help people, and that

people shouldn’t suffer in silence — that they should seek and accept help.

BW: What is the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation?

JB: The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is the largest private funder of brain and behavior psychiatric research grants in the world, and we fund scientists around the world who are doing innovative and cutting-edge research about the brain. Our major focus is supporting young scientists who are just beginning their career in brain research. Unfortunately it’s very, very hard to begin a career in brain research — in any area of medical research. We are able to give support so that people can begin to develop initial pilot data so that they could then go on and receive subsequent funding from the government and other sources.

BW: Why would you say that it’s harder? Would you say it is harder now than when the foundation began?

JB: Yes, it’s become more difficult over the last few years — the amount of funding available and real dollars hasn’t kept pace. It’s very challenging and difficult — for especially young researchers — to get that kind of funding to begin a career and to continue a career. We really don’t put enough dollars into research despite the large number of people who have these illnesses and the significant number of people affected by these illnesses: whether it be themselves or a family member.

We don’t put enough into research and development for understanding these conditions, and we need to.

I think there are many issues in society related to mental illness. Certainly and foremost, people who have a variety of illnesses would benefit from improved methods of treatment

and potentially methods of prevention for these conditions. In medicine now, by treating things like high blood pressure and cholesterol, we are able to have methods of prevention for heart disease. We need to similarly develop these kinds of methods for treating depression and bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, all the psychiatric conditions. We need to look at: “Are there ways to prevent these illnesses?” “Once they occur, are there better ways to treat them?”

“More effective ways to treat them?”

And then there are issues like ... suicide prevention and the increasing rates of suicide that’s happening now and sometimes gets attention in the press when a well-known person dies of suicide, but day in and day out people are dying as a result of suicide. More people die because of suicide than because of homicide in our country. So that’s an important issue. Our returning service members who have post-traumatic stress and depression are at risk of suicide — that’s a particular area that needs more attention as well. The issue of people that are homeless and have psychiatric illnesses and are not receiving appropriate treatment and appropriate support is a very important one. So I think there are a variety of issues that are very important from a societal standpoint where improved treatment would have a tremendous impact.

BW: So how can we improve treatment? Or how can it improve?

JB: Well, over the years, treatment has improved. So that somebody who has any of these conditions in 2018, it’s a better time to have it because we have better treatments than we did in the past, but we really need to build upon that. Research into better

GETTING THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT SO THAT PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT THESE ILLNESSES ARE THE RESULT OF BIOLOGY, NOT THE RESULT OF CHARACTER WEAKNESS OR MORAL WEAKNESS. THESE ARE PHYSICAL ILLNESSES THAT AFFECT THE BRAIN. THESE ILLNESSES ARE TREATABLE AND PEOPLE SHOULD NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE.

BW: What would you say the most impactful breakthrough in neuroscience has been?

JB: I think there’s a number of important breakthroughs. First of all, when I went to medical school in the 1980s, I was taught that old brains do not grow new cells, and that “old” was after the age of 2 or 3. We now know that’s not true — that adult brains, even older adult brains, are able to grow new cells and have brain cells make new connections through a process called “neurogenesis.” This is an extremely important finding, because it shows that the brain can adapt — can change.

I think that our tools to understand the brain have significantly improved: whether it be through neuroimaging studies, using MRIs, or other forms of imaging; whether it be through genetic studies where we’re able to look at large numbers of people who have a particular condition and compare them to people who don’t and look for certain areas of genetics that may have some relationship to that illness.

Our ability to use new technologies such as “optogenetics” to study the brain is extremely important.

BW: How does that work — optogenetics?

JB: Basically, it’s used to study the brain in laboratory animals, and they’re able to genetically engineer brain cells so that they respond to light. They turn on as a result of being stimulated by light, and then they surgically put in a wire that can provide laser light to instantaneously turn on and off a particular brain cell or group of brain cells, and then see changes in behavior — see the connections of those brain cells to better understand the brain. We were also early supporters in the work of Dr. Mark George and his development of transcranial magnetic stimulation, and other conditions, where electromagnetic stimulation from an electrical coil placed on the scalp target specific areas of the brain. Today, it’s an important method of treatment, which is now widely used for depression.

BW: What do you hope BBRF will achieve in the near future?

JB: We are hoping to accelerate the support for brain research so that we can really have in hand improved treatments, cures and methods of prevention for these illnesses. My hope is that in doing so, we can have a positive impact on the lives of so many people who have been affected by these conditions so that they can live full and healthy and happy lives.

BW: What can we do to help — in terms of helping with research and destigmatizing mental illness?

JB: I think that getting the word out to people is extremely important so that people understand that these illnesses are the result of biology, not the result of character weakness or moral weakness. These are physical illnesses that affect the brain.

These illnesses are treatable and people should not suffer in silence. They should seek help.

One of the ways that I’ve done that is through the “Healthy Minds” public television series, which is broadcast on public television stations around the country, but is also available on demand online. In each episode, I interview an expert in a particular area or for a particular illness and/or a person who has lived with a particular illness to share their experience.

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