Quote of the day

“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?"  

VS Ramachandran

Ramachandran isn't just expressing awe as to the wonder of the human brain but referencing the incredible concept of emergence:

"emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own."

A system such as the brain can exhibit properties - or even behavior - that none of its constituent parts possess individually. It's not possible to explain emergence through conventional means of conceptualising knowledge - reducing down to parts or explain what it does. Emergent properties and behavior can be identified everywhere, even (my favourite example) among humans in concert mosh pits or take the concept of reputation!

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2-minute Big Think video: a nice explainer on Emergent Thinking

Dear god...

Brain Based Learning and Neuroscience – What the Research Says!

Yet again, Will Thallheimer produces a highly readable, well-researched report on where we are on neuroscience and learning.

Only a few years back, when I attended a course on Neurosience in Trinity College Dublin, there was huge excitement about the potential of cogntiive neuroscience for research in learning. But so far it hasn't produced the jewels it promised. Thallheimer mirrors my thinking: 

"As learning professionals, we must be more skeptical of neuroscience claims. As research and real-world experience has shown, such claims can persuade us toward ineffective learning designs and unscrupulous vendors and consultants."

Neuroscience will reveal much more through the meld of disciplines and technology (particularly AI), but for now, we need to be wary of broad claims or neurosientific land grabs. Give Thallheimer's report a read - it's a good primer on how to avoid neuroscientific 'learning theory' baloney! 

An elephant never forgets? An elephant I am not

Do you struggle to get out your front door without leaving an important item behind? Are you constantly forced to write things down or add reminders to your phone? I regularly berate myself for forgetting things.

So I'm heartened to read that according to a recent study the "goal of memory is not to transmit the most accurate information over time, but to guide and optimize intelligent decision making by only holding on to valuable information".

According to this study, there are mechanisms in our brains that are involved solely in forgetting information (as distinct from storing information). Production of new neurons means overwriting old ones in the hippocampus, which possibly explains why children, with their neuron production to the max, forget so much (apart from the fact that the limbic system is not fully developed).

I read voraciously, grazing from a broad range of diverse pastures that grows by the day. And I seem intent on cramming every crevice of my brain with brand new stuff. The payoff is that I have to force myself to keep focused on the practicalities, but the upside seems that decision making in the realms that matter to me is enhanced by my top-class ability to forget! .

I'd posit that forgetting is integral to the creative process. Forgetting allows us to get through much more information than if our brains, with their apparently limited memory capacity, were fixed storage units. Forgetting keeps our minds nimble and up-to-the-minute, allowing us to generate novel ideas and meld old and new learning.

All said, thank goodness for postits!

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Article: Scientific American: Why Do We Forget Things?

Can neuroscience help us understand philosophy?

Nick Byrd, a cognitive scientist studying reasoning, willpower, and wellbeing asks if neuroscience can help us understand philosophy.

This research tells us that our philosophical judgments will change as a result of what seem to be unrelated thoughts and their effect on our brain. It demonstrates that variations in our brain can cause variations in our philosophical judgments. No great surprise there, but interesting to review the studies that support it.

I find it fascinating how our biology, the time of day, our blood sugar levels, what day of the week it is, and a whole host of other seemingly random factors, can affect how philosophical we are - and which way we might swing on an issue. I like to tell friends, "On a Monday, I'm an atheist, on a Wednesday, I'm a socialist, and on a Friday I'm a Christian anarchist!" ;-)

As Byrd says, philosophical judgments depend on features of our brains. If the brain is plastic, then you'd think that would be vice versa. Professor Barry C. Smith, Director of the Institute of Philosophy, writes in the Guardian:

"Getting at the elusive nature of our own experience and freeing ourselves from faulty interpretations is a tricky business. Many disciplines are needed if we are to make a real breakthrough."

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Video: Big Think: Hugely engaging video featuring Prof Smith on Moving Beyond The Traditional 5 Human Senses

The splits: why the brain's got a right and left

Discover Magazine has a fascinating article on why our brains are split into right and left that goes beyond the myth of one creative side, one logical side.

Most interesting for me is the discovery that some birds and fish use one eye for finding food while the other scans for predators. Efficient!

Highly creative? It's your brain wiring...oh, and environment, humility, and ambivalence!

There are a thousand different explanations and avenues into the concept of creativity, which I've written about previously. But let's think about it. What does being 'creative' involve? Chiefly, it's about the meeting of diverse concepts - preexisting concepts - and their meld into a new form.

New research from the world of neuroscience casts light on how creativity physically manifests in the brain - and beautifully reflects our intuitive understanding of what's going on. 

Apparently, highly creative individuals have multiple highways in their brains: more connections between the right and left hemispheres. 

The left side of the brain is responsible for tasks that have to do with logic. These are tasks broadly associated with science and mathematics but can be broken down to a more granular level to everyday activities - for example, counting and map reading - that adhere to previously laid-down structures. The right side of the brain performs tasks that are more broadly associated with artistic pursuits and the arts as a whole.

Creative outputs are no use in entirely anarchic form, without order and presentation. Highly creative individuals can typically package and present seemly disparate ideas and concepts as new, intelligible ideas - ideas that reference, if not entirely follow, the rules and accepted ideas of the status quo. The referencing bit is essential, and that's where the logic comes in.

A technique known as diffuser sensor imaging, which maps the paths of axons by following the movement of water along them, was used in the study to provide visibility into white matter brain connections. People who scored high on creativity tests (e.g. divergent thinking) were found to have significantly more connections between the right and left hemispheres.

I've voiced skepticism as to the profundity of some of the findings of cognitive neuroscience. But what I love about this research is that it echos the metaphors that surround creativity. It gives credence to the indispensable mushrooming of ideas, voluminous cul-de-sacs, and global, illogical, yet ordered, process that leads to brilliant new ideas.

But hang on. There's more in terms of recent research that can shed light on creativity. For example, it's clear that resource constraints can aid the creative process. Less to work with drives new ideas? This may be because the mushrooming of ideas naturally requires reigning in. Also, ambivalence is the friend of creativity - ie. "Being extremely firm in our opinions is an enemy of creativity." Makes sense. If you're not open to the opposite view, then your idea seedbed is limited. In fact, humility naturally foments creativity.

The brain wiring researchers say their methods could also be used to predict the likelihood that a person will be highly creative. Will recruitment of the future involve head scans? Perhaps - but not necessarily to ensure a more creative workforce. There's evidence to suggest companies don't really want to hire creative thinkers, and that people are generally biased against creative thinking:

"As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform."

However, great ideas are what every company desperately needs. Not for obvious reasons, but the bottom line: to unlock productivity.

What do you think? What makes you creative? Are you feeling the creative squeeze?

Beauty of brain cells – in pictures

We probably know as little about the mind, as we do the depths of the ocean. What wonders lie ahead...

Check out these drawings by 19th century Spanish proto-neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal published in the Guardian during the week. It's funny how us humans think of ourselves as apart from 'nature' - yet within our own depths are vistas that equate in beauty and intricacy to the most astonishing landscapes of our 'natural world'.

We are all dreamers

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds."

Neil Gaiman

Does the brain alone create conscious experience?

We all know consciousness. It's that ridiculously complex infinity: thinking, experiencing, perceiving, hearing, tasting, feeling, dreaming... our everything. Learning is embedded in consciousness, and vice versa. But what is consciousness? And can brain science really explain it? 

According to neuroscience the brain alone produces consciousness. This is a pretty standard view in scientific circles and among members of the wider pubic. But there are a number of leading thinkers and scientists who aren't so sure. 

Oh man! Am conscious? 

Mysterianism is a philosophical position that says consciousness is a problem that cannot be resolved by humans. It's held by quite a number of scientists, including Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky. Just recently Edward Witten, a physicist compared with Einstein for his brilliance, came out as a mysterian. Witten is the guy who popularised string theory (think multiple universes per Netflix's Stranger Things) and has highlighted the limits of science throughout his writing.

Some believe consciousness is irreducible, like space and time and mass, and so potentially non-local. Erwin Schrödinger, a founder of quantum theory, and winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics, said "Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else." 

Who knows what neuroscience's stance on consciousness will be in 100 years time. Who knows what neuroscience will be. But if we cast an eye back over history, we can conclude that practically everything we know today will be proved wrong at some stage in the future. This isn't a new idea. To quote philosopher Michel de Montaigne (16th century) “The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain.”   

While it makes sense to declare facts based on logic, the universe couldn't care less about what makes sense. Is knowledge, like Schrodinger's cat, simultaneously dead and alive?

Schrodinger's elephant, it's dead and alive

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• Blog post: Philosopher and scientist Bernardo Kastrup's lucid writing on consciousness from an idealistic (rather than materialistic) perspective deserves attention. 
• Video: Here's a fascinating talk on consciousness and neuroscience from Morten Overgaard, who studies the relationship between conscious experience and brain processes from a combined experimental, philosophical and neurorehabilitation perspective.
• Video: Susan Blackmore makes for a convincing advocate of the neuroscientific approach to consciousness. Which might explain her status as a former paranormal researcher ;-) 
• Video: Schrödinger's cat explained in 4 minutes.
• Video: 6 minutes on Montaigne by the fabulous School of Life.

Creativity - what is it?

Creativity is a tough one to define. Yet we couldn't and wouldn't exist without it. Can you increase your creativity or is it kind of set?

This video is well worth a look. It offers insights into research on creativity across a span of disciplines, including recent observations from neuroscience.

"Creativity has always been essential for our cultural growth, but there are still many misconceptions about this elusive process. Not the left-brain/right-brain binary that we've come to believe, being creative is considerably more complex, and requires a nuanced understanding of ourself and others. Being a powerful creative person involves letting go of preconceived notions of what an artist is, and discovering and inventing new processes that yield great ideas. Most importantly, creators must push forward, whether the light bulb illuminates or not."

Balmy Summer 16 Dips!

I've not posted in a while but I've been feeding from a smorgasbord of mind-expanding research since June. Here's a sample of some meaty reads on learning and neuroscience:

First up, A Neuroscientist Explores The Illogical Behaviors Of The Mind In 'Idiot Brain': "The human brain is like a computer that files information in a way that defies logic".. eh, so not a computer then, surely? Or am I wrong about the 'logic' bit being fundamental?

Which reminds me of Aeon's very convincing argument against the brain-as-computer metaphor (dunno about you, but I find the mind a far more nebulous a territory than an operating environment) in The Empty Brain.

For a very technical telling of how memories are formed, read From Memories to Addiction. "Memories are the product of physical changes that occur in our brains. Nerve cells in our brains called neurons talk to each other via physical connections called synapses. At the synapse, one neuron does the ‘talking’ and one neuron does the ‘listening...."

No doubt this captures what's happening from a human observer's angle but technical descriptions of memories and their formation never completely gel with me. The human mind, as per the articles above, regularly defies logic. It only apes the mechanisms of an ordered system. The mind is like an Escher drawing - glaringly impossible in its structure. It seems replete with trap doors and pathways only accessible at certain times, in certain contexts. I call it the Rubix-cube effect: certain rotations open different doors.

What will our metaphor of mind be in the future? Is it possible that the brain is mirroring or picking up from elsewhete, rather than just recording? How are our memories tied to and modified by our dreams? What's going on?!  

Want to remember? Study, wait, then exercise

You've got an important exam tomorrow. You're convinced you won't remember some last minute cramming. What do you do? Panic? Pray? Keep studying?

In a new take on fight or flight, new research says run for it! The study implies that you can enhance memory for what you've just learned by exercising, not straightaway, but four hours later. The connection between exercise has been previously evidenced, but the specific time frame between learning and the development or memory traces is crucial, it seems.

So study, take a break, then hit the park or the gym. Wake up next morning, and ace that exam (let me know how this goes!). You'll also some great research from other domains on how to study below.

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Blog post and video: Mind Hacks post on the cognitive science of how to study (with video - excellent)
Blog post and research: Big Think on How to Learn - evaluates 10 techniques for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting - surprising conclusions: