How Much Control Do We Have Over Our Brains?

There is a significant trend in neuroscience, and maybe even more so among the commentators who use that science to justify their political or social beliefs, of denying that we are really responsible for our own behavior. The usual argument goes like this: when a person does X, their brain scans light up in a certain way. People with brain damage to that area don't do X, or do it differently. Therefore we don't really have control of ourselves, our decisions or beliefs are just a function of our anatomy. I have written critically about these Just-So Science Stories here. Other writers (ok, better writers), in a political context, have pointed out that some liberal social scientists have started using this same approach to define conservatism as a disease.


However, just because science can be manipulated to support certain dubious conclusions doesn't mean there isn't a lot of interesting work being done in understanding how the brain works. And one such finding has to do with how a parasite in our brains might be responsible for our positive reactions to the scents of certain wines and perfumes. As writer Patrick House puts it:

Why is it that the elite French perfumers (known as “noses”) and sommeliers (“upturned noses”) of the world spend so much of their time inhaling cat effluvia from expensive glass bottles? A guess: It may have to do with a mind-control parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. The tiny protozoan may be getting into our brains and tricking us into liking cats—not to mention certain perfumes and wines.

In a recent study, Czech scientists gave men and women towels scented with the urine of various animals—horses, lions, hyenas, cats, dogs—which they rated for “pleasantness.” Turns out, men who tested positive for Toxo found the smell of cat urine more pleasant than men without Toxo. For Toxo researchers like me, this was a shock but not entirely surprising. Why? Toxo does approximately the same thing to rats.

You'll have to read the article to get the full theory of why Toxo does what it does, but the implications are staggering: a single-celled organism might be altering way our brain processes information from our senses. Think of it: could we find a bacteria that lowers the speed at which our neurons fire, influencing how fast we remember or respond to stimuli? Could we find a parasite that alters our hearing our sight?

Or think of the commercial issues. Some perfume and wine companies would presumably do better if more people were infected by Toxo. Maybe Chanel will start working with animal adoption organizations to try to get cats into more homes, increasing their likely customer base.

If we begin to discover that some significant portion of the way we perceive the world is influenced by outside organisms, will we attempt to purge them all to standardize the way the human mind works? Will we search for those with favorable impacts and try to infect everyone with them? Could this be the next frontier in pharmaceutical development? Or is this a one-off, and our mental machinery is basically unaltered by microscopic invaders? I guess we just have to wait and see.

Is Your Decaying White Matter Making You Afraid of the Unfamiliar?

If you write about the inner workings of the brain, you soon find out that we don't actually know all that much about how it works. Sure, we have a reasonably good theory of how the brain processes sensory information, and we think we're starting to understand which parts of the brain do what, but how the elements of the brain interact and how all those processes lead up to consciousness is still largely the province of informed speculation.

So it is good to be humble when we theorize about the brain. Especially since we're still finding out things about its function that surprise us. For example, a recent study found out that the white matter of the brain, long treated as the unimportant part, seems to be the basis for the brain's overall "processing speed" (I use the quotes because we should also be careful with the mind-as-computer metaphors) and attention span. Thus, say the researchers, the increasing degeneration of the white matter in the aging brain can lead to, among other things, trouble coping with unfamiliar situations.

The prevailing theory of why people become, in common terms, stuck in their ways in old age is that we develop hard-to-change habits of mind. I've read a number of articles that imply that repeated behavior strengthens neurological pathways that lead to habitual processes, sometimes called "chunking". In other words, the brain forms habits to aid cognition, and sometimes we create bad habits through the same process of repeated behavior. And while this study doesn't undermine that theory, it does offer a complement to it: degeneration of white matter might make it harder to form new habits and leave us more reliant on the old.

Think, for a moment, of what that implies: your mind may inhibit you from comfortably doing something different from what you've done before as you get older. That's somewhat different, and more negative, than the idea that habits are hard to break. It also has implications for marketing: when targeting an older audience, the disruptive techniques that work so well to get the attention of the young might actually be upsetting or disorienting. Not a fun notion for those of us advertising to the baby boomer audience.

The good news, at the individual level, is that scientists believe that cognitive training may help resist white matter decay. But this study provides sobering evidence to support the notion that aging societies (and most societies globally are aging) will be more resistant to what's new and more uncomfortable with change. Which doesn't bode well for those of us who believe some pretty profound changes are necessary.

When We Say the Wrong Thing

Did Rick Santorum come this close to calling Barack Obama the slur-that-shall-not-be-named? The answer is probably no, as evidenced by the fact that the media, instead of saying he did, merely pointed to the video and asked its audience, "what do you think?" If this was a blog about politics, I'd spend my time railing against what a scuzzy tactic it is to drive traffic by drumming up a non-existent controversy, or how this type of story reinforces the divisions in our society by implying that the "other side" is secretly thinking awful things.


But this is (supposed to be) a blog about the mind, and now that I've done the savvy blogger thing of connecting my post to a topical event, I'm going to give some time to discussing the "Freudian slip", and whether it is really the telling event we think it is.


I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Julie Sedivy got there first, her excellent post on the topic covers the current science on the subject of speech errors. I particularly liked this analogy:

Speech errors occur because when it comes to talking, the mind cares much more about speed than it does about accuracy. We literally speak before we’re done thinking about what we’re going to say, and this is true not just for the more impetuous amongst us, but for all speakers, all of the time. Speech production really is like an assembly line, but an astoundingly frenzied one in which an incomplete set of blueprints is snatched out of the hands of the designers by workers eager to begin assembling the product before it’s fully sketched out.

This "just in time" language production is inherently risky, in that our minds only have a broad sketch of how they're going to express the thought they have. Believe it or not, an entire book has been written on the topic: Um… Slips, Stumbles, And Verbal Blunders, And What They Mean. In a review by Charles Ester, I learned that we make errors in between 5% and 8% of the words we utter each day. What is generally agreed is that or mistakes as speakers are balanced by our skills as listeners. In other words, we quickly pick out the speaker's intent and discard the incorrect information from all of those slips and disfigurations in speech.


Unless, of course, the mistake ends up being particularly noteworthy or humorous, in which case it will be noticed. George W. Bush might have been at the far side of the bell curve in terms of language assembly errors, but he was known as a poor speaker in part because some of his miscues were very funny (I personally love, "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family") and of course were noteworthy as they were coming from the most powerful man in the world. 


But here's the thing: we knew exactly what caused Bush to mess up. His brain mixed up "put food on your table" and "feed your family" and out came a bizarre visual image. And of course, President Obama and everyone else who speaks in public has their share of mistakes. We recognize these as errors we could just as easily make, and yet we use them to help make our partisan arguments. Why? 


I think, perhaps, we've confused a slip of the tongue, meaning a speech construction error, with a gaffe, meaning a statement where a public figure accidentally says something they would rather not admit in public, or that reinforces the public's reason to dislike that figure. In this (otherwise excellent) Jonah Goldberg column about the "etch-a-sketch" remark made by Romney's communications director, the headline is, "A Fawlty Slip of the Tongue." That remark was not a slip of the tongue, but rather a gaffe, confirming the view of many people that Romney has no core, and just says what he needs to in the pursuit of power. 


In our public life, a gaffe can usefully highlight a fault in a public figure, but we should just let the slips of the tongue pass by without comment. It seems pretty clear from the science, and from common sense, that these errors don't carry the meaning we'd like to assign to them.

My Son is Making Me a Girlie Man

The latest scientific study to get big press is one from Northwestern University that demonstrates men undergo a large drop in their testosterone levels when they become fathers. Previous studies did not show if testosterone dropped when children arrived, or if men with lower testosterone were likely to have children. But now there is proof that becoming a father sucks the manliness right out of you. And the effect is even more pronounced if the father takes a significant role in child rearing, meaning that my cute little son is actually a diaper-soiling male hormone remover. (See! I publicly used the word 'cute'.)

Maybe I wouldn't be so distraught, but the researchers make testosterone sound pretty damned awesome:

While scientists still argue over testosterone's exact function, it's fairly clear it provides a boost to confidence, increases competitiveness, and orients men to achieve more in the social world, said Christopher W. Kuzawa, co-author of the study and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern.

Don't worry, though, because I can't imagine any downsides from being less confident, competitive and outgoing. Nope, everything should be just fine.

All joking aside, the article, and apparently the underlying research, do a terrible job of thinking through what this drop in testosterone might mean, instead going with the pat answer that having less of the quintessentially male hormone will make men more 'nurturing' and 'caring'. First, hormones (like most of the other inputs into our biological functioning) aren't simple dials. You don't turn the testosterone way down to make men take on traditional feminine roles. Second, it seems unlikely evolution would be geared to radically lower a 'confidence' hormone when a man is going to have to take on a big new challenge and provide for a growing family. So let me offer some more nuanced takes on why testosterone levels might drop in new fathers:

1) Fewer stupid risks: It seems apparent that young men are often primed to be daredevils, taking crazy chances with little thought to consequences. Maybe this originally evolved to give males the courage to charge into battle when provoked. At any rate, dialing down the big T might help a new father pause before he charges someone with a club, or goes out racing on his dirt bike.

2) Open a bonding window: Children are likely to get more paternal affection and protection through life if they form a connection early on, and a lowering level of testosterone level could bring down the desire to socialize enough to keep dad around more. Less time at the pub means more time with the new baby.

3) Aid to fidelity: Let's be honest: new baby time isn't sexy time. Maybe evolution or a merciful God brings down testosterone levels in new fathers so they don't go crazy during the time when their wives can't imagine using the bed for anything other than sleeping.

Whatever the full explanation, I've decided to forgive my son for any decline in testosterone he might be inflicting on me. And I've realized another benefit of this study: if we can make sure the male cast members of Jersey Shore hear about it, we can be pretty confident they'll never procreate.

A Brief Bit of Self-Promotion

I'm proud to announce the first step has been taken on a path that will undoubtedly have me joining the ranks of the Bard himself as a colossus of English letters. That step comes courtesy of Necon E-Books, which has seen fit to publish one of my (very) short stories as a winner of their March flash fiction contest, and will also include it in their end-of-year anthology.

If you have a second, definitely go check them out. My story took its inspiration from the idea that some of the large computing networks we are creating are for shockingly trivial, and even anti-social, activities. Readers of this blog may also enjoy another story featured: "HEALTH CARE 2016", by Jan Kozlowski. It offers a humorous yet vivid take on where our desire to cut costs in the health system could take us.

Enjoy, and any feedback on the piece is welcome in the comment section.

What Are Cell Phones Doing to Us?

The big study that got a lot of media attention this week was one that showed extended cell phone use causes changes in brain activity, presumably due to the proximity of its electromagnetic field. Here's the key bit:

"Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (part of the National Institutes of Health), reports Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that a cell phone's electromagnetic field can cause changes in brain activity. Specifically, she and her team found that the regions nearest to the antenna of closely held mobile devices showed higher rates of energy (or glucose) consumption."

Glucose consumption essentially means that that part of the body is working harder, and using more energy. Is that because we are stimulating the cells in such a way as they could become cancerous? Or is the brain just more active in the area near a signal? No one knows, although those who believe wireless signals cause cancer will not wait for definitive proof to validate their fears.

I highlight the study not because I think we're all about to grow iPhone shaped tumors in our brains, but because it shows how unclear we still are about how the changes we make to our environment impact the human body. When someone wants to build a dam, they have to do detailed studies and show exactly how that the development will impact the river. But if someone wants to sell us transmitting devices that we'll hold up to our ear or keep next to our reproductive organs all day, they go ahead and we figure out later if it is a problem. I think we ask too much in the case of the dam, and too little in the case of the cell phone.

And maybe we should be a bit more humble about pursuing advances in genetic engineering, bio-enhancements, and brain-computer interfaces when we can't even figure out if our phones are doing something nasty to our brains.