The brain isn’t going to take it lying down

The brain isn’t going to take it lying down in Mind Hacks

The brain may manage anger differently depending on whether we’re lying down or sitting up, according to a study published in Psychological Science that may also have worrying implications for how we are trying to understand brain function.

Anger experiments that have measured electrical signals from the brain (using EEG) or that have altered neural activity with magnetic pulses (using TMS) have found that the left frontal lobe is more active than the right, but studies using fMRI functional brain scans have found no differences.

Psychologists Eddie Harmon-Jones and Carly Peterson wondered whether the brain might be working differently in EEG and TMS experiments because the participant is usually sitting upright, while in fMRI, the person is usually lying flat on their back.

If this seems like a trivial distinction as far as emotion is concerned, it actually has some sound theory behind it. A field of study called 'embodied cognition' has found lots of curious interactions between how the mind and brain manage our responses depending on the possibilities for action.

For example, we perceive distances as shorter when we have a tool in our hand and intend to use it, and wearing a heavy backpack causes hills to appear steeper.

Anger is a prime example where we feel motivated to ‘do something’. In the sitting position we’re much more ready to approach whatever’s annoying us than when we’re flat on our backs, and the researchers wondered whether these body positions were interacting with our motivations to change the brain’s response.

So Harmon-Jones and Peterson asked 46 participants to write a short essay before wiring them up to an EEG that measured the electrical activity across the brain.

The participants then put on headphones and listened as someone else read their essay and rated the author on personal characteristics, such as intelligence and competence. Some participants listened while lying down, others while in the sitting position.

What they didn’t know was that the ‘raters’ were actually pre-recorded audio, and while some heard a benign commentary on their work, other participants heard the other ‘person’ slagging-off them off and harshly rating the participant and their personality.

In line with the ‘ready to respond’ theory, when the participants were angry and sitting up, the left frontal lobe was much more active than the right – but when angry and lying down, there was no difference.

First off, the findings provide evidence that body position interacts with how the brain processes emotion, perhaps depending on which actions are immediately possible.

But more importantly, the experiment might also indicate that different neuroscience techniques may be throwing up varying results because of the differing body positions needed to take the tests.

Although this is only an initial study, it could be a major spanner in the works for cognitive science which often assumes that clumping together evidence from a whole range of techniques gives a better idea of what’s going on.

You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain's Representations of the Body

"While we think of our body as a fixed feature of our lives, the brain displays a surprising ability to accept as part of ‘me’ whatever I happen to be touching and using at any given time."

How tools become a part of your body

By Patrick Haggard and Matthew R. Longo

All our experience of the world, and ability to act on it, are channelled through our body. The pioneering computer scientist, Alan Turing, correctly realised the human mind is special not particularly because of its computing power, but because the body provides it with a unique interface to the world. Current research in psychology and neuroscience is probing how the brain represents the body. Recent advances have revealed that body representation is fundamentally multisensory, arising from the combination of many different sensory signals. These include classical “senses,” such as touch and vision, and also much more specific signals, such as the flexion or extension of each muscle, which define the body’s posture in space. This information is integrated to construct a multisensory representation of the current state of the body. Intriguingly, multisensory signals also affect what we perceive our body to be like, for example by making us feel like a rubber hand really is our hand! Our thoughts about what our body is are highly flexible, and track the multisensory inputs that the brain receives.

A common illustration of just how flexible the sense of our body is comes from changes in the brain’s representation of the body due to tool use. Humans, and some other animals, are able to use tools as additions to the body. When we use a long pole to retrieve an object we couldn’t otherwise reach, the pole becomes, in some sense, an extension of our body. Is this merely a poetic way of speaking, or does the brain actually incorporate the tool into its representation of the body? Studies of monkeys learning to use a rake to obtain distant objects show that this may be more than a mere metaphor. Multisensory brain cells respond both to touch on the hand or visual objects appearing near the hand. When the monkeys used the rake, these cells began to respond to objects appearing anywhere along the length of the tool, suggesting the brain represented the rake as actually being part of the hand.

A recent paper in Psychological Science elegantly illustrates the plasticity of body representation, and provides further evidence that representations of the body really do expand to include ‘external’ objects we hold. Thomas Carlson of the University of Maryland and colleagues at Harvard University and Utrecht University in the Netherlands used an unusual subjective experience of the body first reported by Franklin Taylor of Princeton University in 1941. If you look towards your hand in a darkened room and see it illuminated by a bright flash, an afterimage of your hand remains after the flash. If you then move your hand, the afterimage changes, though no actual visual signal is present. The precise effect, like so much of the richness of human sensation, is difficult to catch in words, but is like a fading, or loss of clarity of the hand. This fading is normally explained by the multisensory nature of body representation: when the hand moves, but the afterimage does not, visual information and ‘proprioceptive’ information from muscles no longer agree about where the hand is. The visual impression of the hand fading may be a by-product of this inability to integrate different sensations due to conflict about where they are in space.

Carlson et al used this fading to investigate the limits of the brain’s representation of the body. When participants held an object and then moved their hand after the flash, the object’s afterimage faded as well. Further, if participants reached for the object after the flash, the object still faded. The brain may detect a conflict between the location of the object in the afterimage (on the table) and the location where the object is actually felt (in their hand). Alternatively, the object may be rapidly assimilated into the representation of the body and therefore subject to the same perceptual conflict.

The authors also ran additional tests in which volunteers dropped the object, providing new evidence for a spatial bound on plasticity of body representation. Objects released from a mechanical gripper held in the hand did not fade, while those released directly from the hand’s grasp did fade. These conditions suggest that direct contact with the skin may be an important cue to plastic bodily extension. A critical, though elaborate, test might involve forming an initial afterimage of the hand, gripper and object placed separately on the table, then picking up the gripper, and using this to pick up the object. The authors would predict a fading of the afterimage of the gripper, due to its incorporation in the body representation. However, the object should not be incorporated because it would not be touched directly.

These results elegantly confirm that the human brain maintains a highly flexible representation of the body, despite the tendency in everyday life to think of ourselves as having a fixed personal identity, linked to our body. Two distinctive features of mental body representation emerge. First, from the brain’s perspective, the body is by far the most familiar object in the world: the body, as William James elegantly put it, is “always there.” In these experiments, the mechanical gripper could be treated as part of one’s own body. However, this did not extend to an object held in the gripper, perhaps because this situation wasn’t familiar enough. We speculate that skilled prosthesis users might experience objects grasped in the prosthetic hand as fading, even though first-time users in the present experiment did not. Given the ability to move an object through voluntary action, and sufficient sensory experience of doing so, the capacity to extend the self may be virtually unlimited.

Second, these studies suggest a view of the body as an interface between the brain and the external world. This view has important implications for human psychology generally. The sensorimotor mechanisms of the body are effectively a tool for our voluntary actions to respond to the environment and to change it. While we think of our body as a fixed feature of our lives, the brain displays a surprising ability to accept as part of ‘me’ whatever I happen to be touching and using at any given time.

About the authors:

Patrick Haggard leads a research group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. His research interests include the brain's representation of one's own body, and the control of voluntary action. Matthew Longo is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, and soon to be a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is interested in how we represent our bodies and how this shapes how we perceive the external world.

Source: Scientific American via Body in Mind

Walking (and Yoga) Boost Brain Connectivity

A group of “professional couch potatoes,” as one researcher described them, has proven that even moderate exercise – in this case walking at one’s own pace for 40 minutes three times a week – can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks.

The study, in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, followed 65 adults, aged 59 to 80, who joined a walking group or stretching and toning group for a year. All of the participants were sedentary before the study, reporting less than two episodes of physical activity lasting 30 minutes or more in the previous six months. The researchers also measured brain activity in 32 younger (18- to 35-year-old) adults.

Rather than focusing on specific brain structures, the study looked at activity in brain regions that function together as networks.

“Almost nothing in the brain gets done by one area – it’s more of a circuit,” said University of Illinois psychology professor and Beckman Institute Director Art Kramer, who led the study with kinesiology and community health professor Edward McAuley and doctoral student Michelle Voss. “These networks can become more or less connected. In general, as we get older, they become less connected, so we were interested in the effects of fitness on connectivity of brain networks that show the most dysfunction with age.”

Neuroscientists have identified several distinct brain circuits. Perhaps the most intriguing is the default mode network (DMN), which dominates brain activity when a person is least engaged with the outside world – either passively observing something or simply daydreaming.

Previous studies found that a loss of coordination in the DMN is a common symptom of aging and in extreme cases can be a marker of disease, Voss said.

“For example, people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have less activity in the default mode network and they tend to have less connectivity,” she said. Low connectivity means that the different parts of the circuit are not operating in sync. Like poorly trained athletes on a rowing team, the brain regions that make up the circuit lack coordination and so do not function at optimal efficiency or speed, Voss said.

In a healthy young brain, activity in the DMN quickly diminishes when a person engages in an activity that requires focus on the external environment. Older people, people with Alzheimer’s disease and those who are schizophrenic have more difficulty “down-regulating” the DMN so that other brain networks can come to the fore, Kramer said.

A recent study by Kramer, Voss and their colleagues found that older adults who are more fit tend to have better connectivity in specific regions of the DMN than their sedentary peers. Those with more connectivity in the DMN also tend to be better at planning, prioritizing, strategizing and multi-tasking.The new study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether aerobic activity increased connectivity in the DMN or other brain networks. The researchers measured participants’ brain connectivity and performance on cognitive tasks at the beginning of the study, at six months and after a year of either walking or toning and stretching.

At the end of the year, DMN connectivity was significantly improved in the brains of the older walkers, but not in the stretching and toning group, the researchers report.

The walkers also had increased connectivity in parts of another brain circuit (the fronto-executive network, which aids in the performance of complex tasks) and they did significantly better on cognitive tests than their toning and stretching peers.

Previous studies have found that aerobic exercise can enhance the function of specific brain structures, Kramer said. This study shows that even moderate aerobic exercise also improves the coordination of important brain networks.

“The higher the connectivity, the better the performance on some of these cognitive tasks, especially the ones we call executive control tasks – things like planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity, working memory and multitasking,” Kramer said. These are the very skills that tend to decline with aging, he said.

This study was supported by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Diana Yates University of Illinois via Innovations Report

And here is a related article by John M Grohol on PsychCentral Walking, Yoga Helps Your Brain

Lifestyle changes may preserve communication between nerves and muscles to delay age-related damage

Delaying age-related damage to nerves and muscle

From: Deric Bownds' MindBlog - This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.

Both exercise and drastic dieting have been shown to have anti-ageing effects in the brain. Studies on mice now suggest that such lifestyle changes preserve communication between nerves and muscles.

Abstract:

The cellular basis of age-related behavioral decline remains obscure but alterations in synapses are likely candidates. Accordingly, the beneficial effects on neural function of caloric restriction and exercise, which are among the most effective anti-aging treatments known, might also be mediated by synapses. As a starting point in testing these ideas, we studied the skeletal neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a large, accessible peripheral synapse. Comparison of NMJs in young adult and aged mice revealed a variety of age-related structural alterations, including axonal swellings, sprouting, synaptic detachment, partial or complete withdrawal of axons from some postsynaptic sites, and fragmentation of the postsynaptic specialization. Alterations were significant by 18 mo of age and severe by 24 mo. A life-long calorie-restricted diet significantly decreased the incidence of pre- and postsynaptic abnormalities in 24-mo-old mice and attenuated age-related loss of motor neurons and turnover of muscle fibers. One month of exercise (wheel running) in 22-mo-old mice also reduced age-related synaptic changes but had no effect on motor neuron number or muscle fiber turnover. Time-lapse imaging in vivo revealed that exercise partially reversed synaptic alterations that had already occurred. These results demonstrate a critical effect of aging on synaptic structure and provide evidence that interventions capable of extending health span and lifespan can partially reverse these age-related synaptic changes.

New Understanding of How We Remember Traumatic Events

Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland have discovered a new way to explain how emotional events can sometimes lead to disturbing long term memories.

Read more ...

Source: ScienceDaily (29 October 2008). The story was reprinted from materials provided by University of Queensland, via EurekAlert!.

Motor imagery enhances object recognition

Thoughts and actions are intimately linked, and the mere thought of an action is much like actually performing it. The brain prepares for an action by generating a motor simulation of it, praticising its execution of the movements by going through the motions invisibly. Seeing a manipulable object such as a tool, for example, automatically triggers a simulation of using it - a mental image of reaching out and grasping it with the hand that is nearest to the handle.

Motor simulations and movements are known to influence thought processes. Magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex influences the processing of words related to arm and leg action, whereas polonged movements in one direction slow the comprehension of sentences related to movements in the other. Psychologist Jessica Witt of the Action-Modulated Perception Laboratory at Purdue University and her colleagues now provide further evidence of this link - in a study published online in the journal Psychological Science, they show that motor simulations may enhance the recognition of tools.

Read more ...

References:

1. Witt, J.K., et al. (2010). A Functional Role for Motor Simulation in Identifying Tools. Psychological Sci. [Abstract]
2. Castiello, U. (2005). The neuroscience of grasping. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6: 726-736. [PDF]
3. Tucker, M. & Ellis, R. (1998). On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions. J. Exp. Psychol. 24: 830-846. [PDF]

Source: Neurophilosophy

Touch influences social judgements and decisions

Neuro Philosophy, Category: Psychology Posted on: June 25, 2010 10:05 AM, by Mo

Applying for a job? The weight of the clipboard to which your CV is attached may influence your chances of getting it. Negotiating a deal? Sitting in a hard chair may lead you to drive a harder bargain. Those are two of the surprising conclusions of a study published in today's issue of Science, which shows that the physical properties of objects we touch can unconsciously influence our first impressions of other people and the decisions we make about them.

Josh Ackerman of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and psychologists Chris Nocera and John Bargh of Harvard and Yale Universities, respectively, performed a series of six experiments designed to investigate whether or not the weight, texture and hardness of objects can influence our judgements of, and decisions about, unrelated events and situations. Their findings provide yet more evidence for the embodied cognition hypothesis, which states that bodily perceptions can exert a strong influence on the way we think.

In the first experiment, 54 passersby were asked to evaluate a job candidate on the basis of a CV attached to either a light (0.34 kg) or a heavy (2 kg) clipboard. Those given the CV on the heavier clipboard generally rated the candidate as being better and having a more serious interest in the position than those given the lighter clipboard, even though the CVs used in both cases were identical. Those given the heavy clipboard also rated their accuracy on the task as more important than those given the lighter one, but did not report putting more effort into it. They did not, however, rate the candidate as more likely to get along with co-workers. This suggests that the weight cue affected their impressions of the candidate's performance and seriousness, but not the irrelevant trait of social likeability, and that the observed effects were not due their perception of their own actions.

The effect of an object's weight on decision-making was explored in a second, smiilarly designed experiment. Again, 43 passersby were asked to complete a "social action survey", asking whether various public issues should receive more or less government funding. And again, the weight of the clipboard was found to affect the participants' responses, although an interesting sex difference was observed: men allocated more money when given the survey on the heavier clipboard than when handed the lighter one, whereas women chose to allocate as much funding as possible in both the "heavy" and "light" conditions.

Next, the researchers looked at the effects of an object's texture on participants' perceptions of a social interaction. Participants read a passage describing an ambiguous interaction between two people, and were then asked about their impressions of the situation - whether it was confrontational or friendly, competitve or co-operative, a discussion or an argument. Beforehand, they were asked to complete a five-piece jigsaw puzzle; in one version of the puzzle, the pieces were covered in rough sandpaper, and in the other, they were smooth. Those who completed the rough puzzle perceived the situation as being confrontational and more competitive than those who completed the smooth puzzle.

Texture was also found to affect the decisions made in a social situation. Participants completed either the rough or the smooth puzzle before playing a version of the Ultimatum game. They were given 10 tickets for a $50 lottery, and made to give any number of them to a second anonymous participant. If the second participant rejected the offer, all the tickets are forfeited. Those who had first completed the rough puzzle offered more tickets to the second participant than those who did the smmoth puzzle. The roughness of the puzzle pieces apparently made them perceive the situation as being more difficult and consequently caused them to behave in a compensatory way - they offered more tickets to increase the chances that their offer would be accepted.

The researchers then investigated the effects of an object's hardness. Another group of participants was asked to watch a magic trick, and to try to figure out how it was done. Beforehand, they were asked to examine the object to be used in the trick - either a soft pice of blanket or a hard wooden block. They were then told that the trick was to be postponed, and asked to give their impressions of two individuals (an "employee" and the "boss") involved in an hypothetical interaction. Those previously given the blanket evaluated the employee as being kinder than those given the wooden block.

Finally, texture was also found to affect peoples' behaviour in a bargaining situation. But whereas the other five experiments examined the effects of actively touching an object, this one investigated passive touch. The participants were seated in either a hard wooden chair or a soft cushioned chair, and asked to perform two tasks. In one, they gave their impression of an hypothetical employee. In the second they were required to imagine shopping for a new car priced $16,500 and to negotiate a lower price. In this bargaining task, they were allowed to make two offers on the car, the assumption being that their first offer would be rejected. The participants who sat in the hard chair judged the employee to be more stable and less emotional than those seated in the soft chair. They also deviated less from their first rejected offer.

These experiments show that touch sensations have a strong influence on our impressions of people and the decisions we make about them, even when the people and events are completely unrelated to the objects being touched. Thus, hardness is associated with rigidity, roughness with difficulty, and heavy objects with seriousness. Our metaphors reflect these associations: we sometimes describe people as having a "hard hearted", "rough day", and serious matters are often said to be "weighty". The weight, texture and hardness of touched objects evidently has a strong priming effect on the thought processes that immediately follow, and can trigger the associated concepts. These findings suggest various "tactile tactics" that could be very useful to job seekers, marketers and negotiators.

Reference:
Ackerman, J., Nocera, C. John A. Bargh, J. (2010). Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions. Science 328: 1712-1715. DOI: 10.1126/science.1189993.

Abstract:
Touch is both the first sense to develop and a critical means of information acquisition and environmental manipulation. Physical touch experiences may create an ontological scaffold for the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal conceptual and metaphorical knowledge, as well as a springboard for the application of this knowledge. In six experiments, holding heavy or light clipboards, solving rough or smooth puzzles, and touching hard or soft objects nonconsciously influenced impressions and decisions formed about unrelated people and situations. Among other effects, heavy objects made job candidates appear more important, rough objects made social interactions appear more difficult, and hard objects increased rigidity in negotiations. Basic tactile sensations are thus shown to influence higher social cognitive processing in dimension-specific and metaphor-specific ways.

Making Sense of Sense - The roads less travelled – four paths to get from touch to the body

By Nadia Barnsley, a third year medical students from the University of New South Wales.

Nadia's research interests include bodily awareness, body ownership and immune responses. She is doing an independent learning project on Body in Mind research. Here she reviews Serino and Haggard’s paper “Touch and the Body” which was published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews.

Serino and Haggard’s paper gives a four-part model that explains the notion that our sense of touch carries information about both the external object touching our skin and also our own body. Tactile information can influence (or be influenced by) our mental representation of the physical body. Mental body representations (MBR) are simply descriptions in our mind of the parts of the body, their position in space and their organization into a structural whole (us!)

Serino and Haggard firstly examined the idea that the physical body structures tactile sensation – that when we touch or get touched, tactile afferents will map this into a homunculus, “little man”, in the parietal lobe of the brain. This information is conveyed to what’s known as S1 (the primary somatosensory cortex) of the opposite hemisphere.

Serino and Haggard’s second pathway explains that tactile information provides an important afferent input to mental body representations. Importantly they clarified the difference between body schema and body image; where body schema is short-lived and represents the positions of body parts in space, whereas body image remains fixed over time, representing a basic appearance of the body as an object in third person perspective.

Interestingly they reviewed how visual information relates to tactile sensation; the third pathway. They found that tactile acuity improved when subjects viewed the body. Moreover, this is independent from visuo-spatial orienting to the location of the body. The paper explained those with poor tactile ability will have vast improvements in tactile sensation when visual information is added. This has clinical implications for those with reduced sensation following brain lesions.

The last pathway explained how MBRs not only contribute to our body perception, but the perception of external objects. Basically, our touch of external objects is ‘body referenced’. This implies that MBRs are not just a stored body image; they are updated to integrate current sensory information.

So the first pathway tells the brain where we are being touched, the second pathway gives our brain a representation of what we are (our body image), the third is that this representation influences how we understand our sense of touch and the last being that our body image alters how external objects are perceived.

Reference: Serino A, & Haggard P (2010). Touch and the body. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 34 (2), 224-36 PMID: 19376156 Epub 2009 Apr 17.

Touch and the body
Serino A, Haggard P. Dipartimento di Psicologia and Centro studi e ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy.

Abstract
The dual nature of touch has long been understood. The sense of touch seems to carry information at the same time about the external object touching our skin, and also about our body itself. However, how these two interact has remained obscure. We present an analytic model of how tactile information interacts with mental body representations in the brain. Four such interactions are described: the link between the body surface and the maps in primary somatosensory cortex, the contribution of somatosensory cortical information to mental body representations, the feedback pathway from such higher representations back to primary tactile processing in somatosensory cortex, and the modulation of tactile object perception by mental body representations.

Source: Body in Mind Research into the role of the brain and mind in chronic pain disorders

Serotonin cell discoveries mean rethink of depression

If you thought depression was caused by low serotonin levels, think again. It looks as if the brain chemistry of a depressed person is much more complex, with mounting evidence suggesting that too much serotonin in some brain regions is to blame.

Read the full article by Linda Geddes at: NewScientist 22 July 2010 Issue 2770

Source: Neuroscience and Pain Science for Manual Physical Therapists on Face Book

Feeling blue, seeing gray: Reduced contrast sensitivity as a marker for depression

Depression has long been associated with vision - and to colour perception in particular - and the link between them is evident in everyday language. Depression is, of course, often referred to as "feeling blue", and those who suffer from it are sometimes told to "lighten up". The link can be found in art, too - Picasso's so-called "Blue Period", for example, which was brought on by the suicide of his close friend Carlos Casagemas, is characterised by a series of striking paintings in shades of cold blue, which express the deep melancholy he felt at the time.

Although the association between depression and colour is largely metaphorical, there is actually some evidence that they are closely linked. The most recent comes from a new study by German researchers published in the journal Biological Psychiatry. The study shows that depressed people have reduced sensitivity to contrast, and therefore that they may perceive the world differently from others. It also suggests that depression can be diagnosed by objective measurements of electrical activity in the eye.

Earlier work has already shown that there is a physiological link between depression and vision. It has long been known, for example, that reserpine, a drug which is prescribed for psychosis and hypertension and which induces depression in humans, causes excessive sensitivity to light in various animals. Other studies have shown that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) may also be supersensitive to light and that this can be reversed by anti-depressants; that depression causes changes in the electrical activity of the brain in response to visual stimuli; and that this change in activity can be altered by antidepressants.

Last year, neuropsychiatrist Ludger Tebartz van Elst of the University of Freiburg and his colleagues reported that patients with MDD exhibited a reduced sensitivity to contrast, while a team of researchers from Yale showed that visual motion perception is enhanced in depression. But these experiments could not establish whether the observed changes were due to alterations in the retina or the various parts of the brain through which visual information travels and is processed. And because they were based on the conscious experiences of the participants, the reported effects could have been modulated by attentional or other mechanisms.

For their latest study, van Elst's group sought to confirm their previous findings using objective methods, and to determine if any observed changes in the contrast sensitivity of depressed patients are due to changes in the eye or brain. They recruited 40 patients diagnosed with MDD and 40 matched, healthy controls. They presented the participants with visual stimuli consisting of black and white checkerboard patterns, and used pattern electroretinography (PERG) to measure the response to the patterns. The PERG is evoked by viewing patterned stimuli and, in this case, its size is indicative of contrast gain. It is recorded at the cornea, and is thought to represent the activity of the retinal ganglion cells, which are involved in the early processing of visual information and whose axons form the optic nerve that carries the information into the brain.

Specifically, the researchers looked for differences between the two groups of participants in activity reflecting contrast gain, the process by which cells in the retina adapt to variance in the light intensity of the visual scene so that the amount of information extracted from it can be maximized. They found a significant difference in the contrast gain-related activity between the depressed patients and controls. The participants diagnosed with depression displayed a marked reduction in contrast gain when compared with the controls. The reduction was observed in both medicated and unmedicated patients. Those taking medication for their depression, however, had slightly lower depressivity scores and correspondingly better contrast gain than unmedicated patients.

Furthermore, the reduction in contrast gain was strongly correlated with the severity of depression - the more severe the depression, the greater was the observed reduction in contrast gain. No difference was observed between patients with recurrent depression and those experiencing their first episode of the condition, or between depressed patients taking selective serotonin uptake inhibitors such as fluoxetine (Prozac) and those taking tricyclic antidepressants such as imipramine. The intensity of the treatment, or dose being taken, did not affect the reduction in contrast gain observed in the depressed patients. Finally, the researchers could predict, with an accuracy of greater than 90%, which of the participants had been diagnosed with depression on the basis of their electroretinographic recordings.

This is a pilot study whose results need to be replicated. Nevertheless, it shows that processing of visual information related to contrast is altered in the retinae of depressed patients. A likely consequence of this is a reduced ability to perceive contrast - depressed people may indeed experience the world as being less colourful. The study further suggests that PERG could be useful in diagnosing and objectively measuring depression. It's still unclear, however, whether reduced contrast processing is a specific marker of depression. The same effect could possibly occur in patients with other neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, and this is could be investigated in future work.

Bubl, E., et al. (2010). Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue? Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased. Biol. Psychiatry 68: 205-208. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.02.009.

Source: http://networkedblogs.com/66zEG

A related article by Sandy Gantaum on The Mouse Trap also asks the question: Why is the world vivid in mania but bleak in depression?

Move it, baby! Can exercises help to avert dyslexia?

Move it, baby! Can exercises help to avert dyslexia?
by Celia Brayfield

When you gaze at your new baby and wonder what destiny has in store, you hope dyslexia won’t be part of the picture, with its possible consequence of alienation. However, parents can act to minimise the possibility.

According to Sally Goddard Blythe, who runs the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology (INPP), a self-funding research and clinical organisation based in Chester, there are factors of family life that interfere with the development of a child’s mind. Her book The Well Balanced Child describes how the infant mind matures and what action parents can take to help it develop.

She argues that the restrictions of a modern childhood, with small homes, baby-seats and reduced opportunities for movement, produces problems. A couch-potato lifestyle can have mental as well as physical consequences. The INPP has 30 years of experience in working with children whose learning difficulties begin in infancy, when they don’t move enough, and in the right way, for their brains to develop the abilities they need to master reading and writing.

“In the first year of life, important connections are being formed between the brain and the body,” Goddard Blythe says. “Balance, co-ordination and eye movements, which a child needs before it can read, all depend on these connections.”

One thing that interferes is a persistence of the reflex reactions of the newborn. These give the baby survival instincts, prompting it to search for the breast, gain control of its body and react to danger. As the baby grows, the movements of crawling suppress the reflexes, which die as the child develops balance.

Babies who don’t crawl or aren’t active enough in their first year retain their newborn reflexes and have to struggle against them. Not only could they have difficulty in reading and writing, but they may also be clumsy and unco-ordinated, have trouble tying shoelaces, riding a bicycle, catching balls and find it hard to do things that involve two skills together – such as copying from a whiteboard.

Immature reflexes may also show up in a child’s feelings and behaviour, because the balance mechanism in the brain also has emotional connections, so children might be hyper-reactive, have trouble concentrating, be easily upset and be overly anxious, fearful or aggressive.

The INPP has developed a ten-minute remedial exercise programme, being tried out in schools. Studies in Cumbria and Derbyshire have indicated that it is twice as effective as traditional exercise and four times better than none at all, in improving reading and writing and behaviour in primary schoolchildren. A study of 670 children — average age eight — in seven schools in Northern Ireland showed improved concentration and a trend towards higher academic achievements.

Every child with learning difficulties is different and has a unique cluster of physical, mental and emotional challenges to overcome. The analysis isn’t a perfect fit, but in some cases it can turn a child’s life around. Of course, it is better to need no remedial exercises. “The process of maturation is hard-wired into our instincts,” says Goddard Blythe. “All children need to develop normally is the opportunity to do the natural thing.”

This means giving a baby ample space and freedom of movement, particularly in the first year. She suggests that from the age of about six weeks a baby should have “tummy time”, when it can lie on its front and wriggle freely. “And don’t make the mistake I made. I was so delighted to have a girl after two boys that I put her in pretty dresses, which aren’t nearly as easy for a baby to move in as Babygros,” she says.

The baby will naturally start doing “push-ups”, raising its head and upper body, and within a few months will start crawling — this is vital for its neurological development.

Because the sense of balance is so important, she suggests a traditional rocking cradle, and for older children those bouncing and swinging games are developmentally vital. They help children to gain mind-body co-ordination. Old-fashioned swings and roundabouts are probably better than adventure playgrounds.

Goddard Blythe’s recommendations include music and singing, reading, conversation, optimum nutrition and family meals. In fact, she concludes, the classic Enid Blyton childhood, with country picnics, nursery rhymes and cod-liver oil, had an awful lot going for it.

The Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology; 01244 311414. http://www.inpp.org.uk/

The Well Balanced Child by Sally Goddard Blythe (Hawthorn Press)

Source: Times Online

Extreme Empathy - Experiencing others' physical feelings

We feel your pain: Extreme empaths

Horror films are simply a disconcerting watch for the majority of us, but for Jane Barrett they are literally torturous. She writhes in agony whenever the actors on the screen feel pain. "When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction," she says. "I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply."She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to "extreme empathy".

Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings - whether it's the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can't help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations.

Far from being mere curiosities, understanding these conditions could have many pay-offs for neuroscience, such as illuminating conditions like phantom pain. They may even help answer the age-old question of whether empathy really is linked to compassion.There is a general consensus that empathy-linked conditions arise from abnormalities in the common mechanisms for empathy found in all humans: although few of us experience sensations as powerful as Barrett's, we all wince at a brutal foul on the football field and feel compassion for someone experiencing grief. Many studies have suggested that our capacity for empathy arises from a specific group of neurons, labelled mirror neurons. First discovered in macaque monkeys, they are situated in and around the premotor cortex and parietal lobe - regions that span the top of the brain near the middle of the head.

These neurons fire both when you perform an action and when you see someone else perform that action.Although the challenges inherent in placing electrodes in people's brains have so far made it difficult to prove convincingly that individual neurons also act like this in humans, fMRI scans have supported the idea that certain populations of neurons do seem to behave in this mirroring fashion.

More ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527511.700-we-feel-your-pain-extreme-empaths.html?full=true&print=true

Voice Movement Therapy (VMT)

Voice Movement Therapy arrives in South Africa

What is Voice Movement Therapy (VMT)?

The human voice reflects both physical and psychic states and has the ability to convey both cognitive meaning and affective expression simultaneously. It is our primary mode of communication for both ideas and feelings and can move us with words and beyond words. It is the only instrument wherein player and played upon are contained within the same organic form and therefore can achieve its fullest expression when firmly grounded in the body. It has two main channels of communication: the words we say - the symbols we use to convey our cognitive message, and the way we say them - the tones and qualities of voice which express the affective or feeling message underlying what we speak or sing.

The development of language, both in terms of the evolution of the human species and in the progression of individuals from infancy to adulthood, originated in vocal gestures without words and then became joined to acoustic and written symbols. This has often led to a de-emphasis on the emotions behind the words, an essential ingredient which we seek to recapture through the act, and art, of song, and speech which is congruent with feelings. To do this to the fullest extent possible, VMT practitioners believe it is necessary to re-embody the voice, not just from the diaphragm up but through a holistic engagement of body, mind and soul. The more we can connect our vocal output to our physical selves - the more flexible, durable, versatile and responsive we can make it to life as we experience it - the more we can ground ourselves in the reality of our whole being. Working with a particular set of vocal components, breathing and massage techniques, images, ideas, and the sounds and characters that emerge when engaging with one’s own story through the embodied voice, we seek to bring that voice into the world.

This work is currently being applied and expanded by registered members of the International Association for Voice Movement Therapy (IAVMT)

info@iavmt.org or www.iavmt.org

Virtual Embodiment

Virtual Embodiment

Posted by Magellan Egoyan on Embodied Research Group blog December 9, 2007

The notion of "virtual embodiment" requires a little thought since to many people it sounds like a contradiction in terms. The concept of virtual embodiment derives from our ability to separate "embodiment as performance" from "embodiment as (proprioceptive) sensation". In today's world, our experience of direct bodily sensation (called "proprioception") is mostly the result of our encounter with the physical world and not with virtual environments, although certain technologies currently under development contain the potential of modifying this. On the other hand, our embodied experience of the world also includes the ways in which our actions bring about changes in our understanding of ourselves, our emotional makeup, and our conscious and unconscious behaviours. The performative characteristic of embodied experience is not necessarily associated with our physical body. If we act within virtual spaces, especially in a way that is mediated by a virtual body, then we may have a variety of experiences that are experienced as embodied. Hence we can meaningfully talk about "virtual embodiment" in this way.

What do we know about embodiment in virtual worlds? First of all, our performative definition of embodiment implies that it is how we act that determines our embodied experience. While each of us may act differently as individuals, resulting in a rather different embodied experience for each of us, we can generate a list of the types of actions one can perform in any given virtual world, and hence generate a common portrait of embodiment. Note that our possible actions derive not just from our (virtual) body's capabilities, but also from the actions that are supported by the (virtual) environment.

Let us form a list of possible actions, using Second Life as a case example. We shall separate the list into actions that are shared with embodiment in the real, physical world (that is, between our physical bodies and the physical world) and actions that are unique or distinct in the virtual world (that is, between our virtual body and the virtual world).

Embodied actions common to both physical and virtual worlds:

(1) We can change how we move and our overall body posture;

(2) We can change clothes and accessories;

(3) We can communicate by voice with other people or machines;

(4) We can change the social networks with which we are engaged ;

(5) We can construct mobile, changing, communicating objects (albeit not so easily in the physical world);

(6) We can change our modes of communication and the forms of expression;

(7) We can go through the motions of eating, sleeping, and sexual activity;

(8) We can form binding emotional relationships with other people;

(9) We can access information in a vast variety of forms and

(10)We can work and earn a living.

Embodied actions that are only possible in the virtual world :

(11) We can change our basic body structure and avatar appearance (e.g. from a human to an animal, a robot, a box, etc.);

(12) We can change our avatar's gender and hence modify the gender expectations of others;

(13) We can change and/or multiply our virtual identity (e.g. have several different avatar bodies);

(14) We can readily change or modify or construct major parts of the environment;

(15) We can examine the world from a viewpoint that is semi-independent from our avatar's position;

(16) We can act and communicate with much less fear for our safety;

Embodied actions that are only possible in the physical world (as of today) :

(17) When we engage in activities with our bodies, these actions change our physical states (hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, fatigue, muscle tone, body structure, get pregnant and give birth);

(18) We can lose body function or have it degrade over time, injure it, and so forth - hence safety is a constant preoccupation;

(19) We can have physical and physically proximal contact with other persons/bodies;

(20) We grow and change physically and are subject to bodily rhythms and cycles;

(21) We have access to the full sensory input of which our bodies are capable;

(22) We can die, and hence must take care of our physical survival and well-being.

So our next question is, so what? What, if any, effects does virtual embodiment have on our everyday behaviour?

Here, then, is another list of the effects or impacts of virtual embodiment:

(1) Can generate a sense of physical and/or social empowerment - this derives from the observation that we can do a variety of things within virtual environments that are difficult for us to do or to explore in real environments;

(2) We may learn new movements and postures via the engagement of mirror neurons, motor imagery and mental practice;

(3) We can improve our overall ability to learn using embodied forms of learning;

(4) We can affect our unconscious attitudes and behaviours;

(5) We can affect the unconscious attitudes and behaviours of other people;

(6) We can modify the way we understand and enter into social engagements;

(7) We can change how we understand and interact with real (physical) environments;

(8) We can modify how we access information in the real world;

(9) We can change our relationship to our own creativity;

(10) We can distract from or endanger our own physical survival;

(11) We can overcome phobias and other emotional barriers to certain forms of behaviour;

(12) We can explore the nature of the self and our identity in a relatively safe environment;

(13) We can exacerbate access to and use of inappropriate behaviour (e.g. certain forms of griefing);

(14) Virtual embodiment may exacerbate tensions or strengthen power inequalities between social groups in real life;

(15) Virtual embodiment may promote certain forms of violence.

Many of these points are supported by research results, albeit still rather partial at this point in time. A great deal of work remains to be done to determine not just that we can modify behaviours, but exactly how and under what circumstances such modification may take place. Furthermore, much of this list presents benefits - only a few items clearly present forms of danger. However, it is likely that there are more dangers to virtual embodiment than are presented here. Research needs to be undertaken to determine more precisely what these dangers are.

Finally, we may ask, given the list of effects and impacts, what actions might we take to enhance the positive benefits of virtual embodiment?

Here's a short list of possible actions :

(1) Increase the range of movements and animations available or used within the virtual world ;

(2) Increase awareness of the benefits (and dangers) of virtual embodiment ;

(3) Develop virtual learning environment that take more full advantage of virtual embodiment ;

(4) Improve our understanding of virtual embodiment and its benefits and dangers ;

(5) Develop more mixed reality events ensuring a stronger transfer of benefits from virtual experience to everyday life.

Narrative bodies: toward a corporeal narratology

Narrative bodies: toward a corporeal narratology

By Daniel Punday

Book overview

Although the body has recently emerged throughout the humanities and social sciences as an object revealing the power and limits of representation, the study of narrative has almost entirely ignored human corporeality. As this book shows, attention to the body raises uncomfortable questions about the historicity of basic narrative concepts like character, plot, and narration--questions that critics would often prefer to ignore. Daniel Punday argues that narrative itself is a concept constructed by modern-day critics based on assumptions about identity, desire, movement and place that depend on modern ways of thinking about corporeality.

Google Books

What causes chest pain when feelings are hurt?

When people have their feelings hurt, what is actually happening inside the body to cause the physical pain in the chest?

— Josh Ceddia, Melbourne, Australia on Scientfic American http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Robert Emery and Jim Coan professors of psychology at the University of Virginia, reply:

Terms such as “heartache” and “gut wrenching” are more than mere metaphors: they describe the experience of both physical and emotional pain. When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath. In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected.

But how do emotions trigger physical sensations? Scientists do not know, but recently pain researchers uncovered a possible pathway from mind to body. According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade. During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen. When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea.

Heartache is not the only way emotional and physical pain intersect in our brain. Reent studies show that even experiencing emotional pain on behalf of another person—that is, empathy—can influence our pain perception. And this empathy effect is not restricted to humans. In 2006 a paper published in Science revealed that when a mouse observes its cage mate in agony, its sensitivity to physical pain increases. And when it comes into close contact with a friendly, unharmed mouse, its sensitivity to pain diminishes.

Soon after, one of us (Coan) published a functional MRI study in humans that supported the finding in mice, showing that simple acts of social kindness, such as holding hands, can blunt the brain’s response to threats of physical pain and thus lessen the experience of pain. Coan implicated several brain regions involved in both anticipating pain and regulating negative emotions, including the right anterior insula (which helps to regulate motor control and cognitive functioning), the superior frontal gyrus (which is involved in self-awareness and sensory processing) and the hypothalamus (which links the nervous system to the endocrine system).

Although the biological pathways underlying these connections between physical and mental pain are not well understood, studies such as these are revealing how intricate the connection is and how very real the pain of heartache can be.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-chest-pains

Neuroanthropology - A collaborative weblog on brain, body and culture

For a greater understanding of the encultured brain and body

Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. The aim is to explore the implications of new findings in the neurosciences for our understanding of culture, human development, and behaviour. What is neuroanthropology? Sometimes it’s straight-up neuroscience, sometimes it’s all anthropology, most of the time it’s somewhere in the middle. It is about intersections and convergences, about meshing the insights of neuroscience and anthropology into a more cohesive whole. Often with some psychology, philosophy, evolution and human biology thrown into the mix.

In general, according to the web contributers, cultural anthropology has not kept abreast of new research in the neurosciences so that our theories of culture do not sufficiently take into account what we now know about the brain. A more open exchange is likely to produce a cultural anthropology that is not only more scientifically plausible, but also much more scientifically engaged with those interested in cultural variation (although they might not call it that) in a host of fields. We may find new evidence to work with on cultural theory, but we may also find new collaborators and new audiences, as long as we learn to speak their languages.

They also believe that neuroanthropology will help shape biological anthropology, where scholars have become increasingly interested in biocultural and integrative approaches. A firm grounding in neuroscience aids in the examination of behavior; in understanding how the environment, including culture, impacts people; and in developing novel approaches to human evolution. With links to social, cultural, and psychological anthropology, neuroanthropology also brings a critical perspective on how biological ideas are often used to essentialize and naturalize what are largely sociocultural processes.

"Neuroanthropology is a broad term, intended to embrace all dimensions of human neural activity, including emotion, perception, cognitive, motor control, skill acquisition, and a range of other issues. Unlike previous ways of doing psychological or cognitive anthropology, it remains open and heterogeneous, recognizing that not all brain systems function in the same way, so culture will not take hold of them in identical fashion. Although we believe that human neural structure is biological and the product of evolution, we also recognize that the development processes shaping each individual include a host of other forces as well, so that we cannot privilege any single cause over all others."

Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally

By Natalie Angier Published: February 1, 2010 in The New York Times

The theory of relativity showed us that time and space are intertwined. To which our smarty-pants body might well reply: Tell me something I didn’t already know, Einstein.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore. The deviations were not exactly Tower of Pisa leanings, amounting to some two or three millimeters’ shift one way or the other. Nevertheless, the directionality was clear and consistent.

“When we talk about time, we often use spatial metaphors like ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you’ or ‘I’m reflecting back on the past,’ ” said Lynden K. Miles, who conducted the study with his colleagues Louise K. Nind and C. Neil Macrae. “It was pleasing to us that we could take an abstract concept such as time and show that it was manifested in body movements.” (Summary of this study at end of post)

The new study, published in January in the journal Psychological Science, is part of the immensely popular field called embodied cognition, the idea that the brain is not the only part of us with a mind of its own.

“How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body,” said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. “We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

Research in embodied cognition has revealed that the body takes language to heart and can be awfully literal-minded.

You say you’re looking forward to the future? Here, Ma, watch me pitch forward!

You say a person is warm and likable, as opposed to cold and standoffish? In one recent study at Yale, researchers divided 41 college students into two groups and casually asked the members of Group A to hold a cup of hot coffee, those in Group B to hold iced coffee. The students were then ushered into a testing room and asked to evaluate the personality of an imaginary individual based on a packet of information.

Students who had recently been cradling the warm beverage were far likelier to judge the fictitious character as warm and friendly than were those who had held the iced coffee.

Or maybe you are feeling the chill wind of social opprobrium. When researchers at the University of Toronto instructed a group of 65 students to remember a time when they had felt either socially accepted or socially snubbed, those who conjured up memories of a rejection judged the temperature of the room to be an average of five degrees colder than those who had been wrapped in warm and fuzzy thoughts of peer approval.

The body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically. What is moral turpitude, an ethical lapse, but a soiling of one’s character? Time for the Lady Macbeth Handi Wipes. One study showed that participants who were asked to dwell on a personal moral transgression like adultery or cheating on a test were more likely to request an antiseptic cloth afterward than were those who had been instructed to recall a good deed they had done.

When confronted with a double entendre, a verbal fork in the road, the body heeds Yoggi Berra’s advice, and takes it. In a report published last August in Psychological Science, Dr. Jostmann and his colleagues Daniel Lakens and Thomas W. Schubert explored the degree to which the body conflates weight and importance. They learned, for example, that when students were told that a particular book was vital to the curriculum, they judged the book to be physically heavier than those told the book was ancillary to their studies.

The researchers wanted to know whether the sensation of weightiness might influence people’s judgments more broadly.

In a series of experiments, study participants were asked to answer questionnaires that were attached to a metal clipboard with a compartment on the back capable of holding papers. In some cases the compartments were left empty, and so the clipboard weighed only 1.45 pounds. In other cases the compartments were filled, for a total clipboard package of 2.29 pounds.

Participants stood with either a light or heavy clipboard cradled in their arm, filling out surveys. In one, they were asked to estimate the value of six unfamiliar foreign currencies. In another, students indicated how important they thought it was that a university committee take their opinions into account when deciding on the size of foreign study grants. For a third experiment, participants were asked how satisfied they were with (a) the city of Amsterdam and (b) the mayor of Amsterdam.

In every study, the results suggested, the clipboard weight had its roundabout say. Students holding the heavier clipboard judged the currencies to be more valuable than did those with the lightweight boards. Participants with weightier clipboards insisted that students be allowed to weigh in on the university’s financial affairs. Those holding the more formidable board even adopted a more rigorous mind-set, and proved more likely to consider the connection between the livability of Amsterdam and the effectiveness of its leader.

As Dr. Jostmann sees it, the readiness of the body to factor physical cues into its deliberations over seemingly unrelated and highly abstract concerns often makes sense. Our specific clipboard savvy notwithstanding, “the issue of how humans view gravity is evolutionarily useful,” he said.

“Something heavy is something you should take care of,” he continued. “Heavy things are not easily pushed around, but they can easily push us around.” They are weighty affairs in every tine of the word.

The cogitating body prefers a hands-on approach, and gesturing has been shown to help children master math.

Among students who have difficulty with equations like 4 + 5 + 3 = __ + 3, for example, performance improves markedly if they are taught the right gestures: grouping together the unique left-side numbers with a two-fingered V, and then pointing the index finger at the blank space on the right.

To learn how to rotate an object mentally, first try a pantomime. “If you encourage kids to do the rotation movement with their hands, that helps them subsequently do it in their heads,” said Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, “whereas watching others do it isn’t enough.”

Yesterday is regrettable, tomorrow still hypothetical. But you can always listen to your body, and seize today with both hands.

Source: The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html

Study mentioned in article:

Moving Through Time

By Lynden K. Miles, Loise K. Nind and C. Neil Macrae from the University of Aberdeen

Setting humans apart from other species is the ability to travel subjectively through time process termed chronesthesia. Mental time travel enables people to tailor their behavior to satisfy the challenges of daily life. Besides studies that show the neural basis of retrospection and prospection and those that document the effect of aging and mental illness on mental time travel (These insights aside, however, very little is known about the wider psychological characteristics of this pivotal social-cognitive activity. One intriguing question is, how is temporal information processed when one revisits the past or anticipates the future?

According to the authors, one possibility is that mental time travel may be represented in the sensorimotor systems that regulate human movement. Specifically, the metaphorical “arrow of time” may be grounded in a processing architecture that integrates temporal and spatial information in a directional manner (i.e., past = back, future = forward). Given that abstract mental constructs can be revealed motorically, or embodied, this viewpoint gives rise to an interesting hypothesis:

If chronesthesia entails a coupling of thought and action, episodes of retrospection and prospection may be accompanied by backward and forward motion, respectively. To explore this possibility, the authors measured spontaneous fluctuations in the magnitude and direction of postural sway while individuals engaged in mental time travel.

“ Our findings demonstrate that mental time travel has an observable behavioral correlate—the direction of people’s movements through space (i.e., retrospective thought = backward movement, prospective thought = forward movement). Thus, like other exemplars of embodied cognition and emotion chronesthesia appears to be grounded in the perception-action systems that support social-cognitive functioning. In this way, the embodiment of time and space yields an overt behavioral marker of an otherwise invisible mental operation.

Examination of the current effects at more precise temporal and phenomenological scales will be a useful task for future research. For example, it is possible that the magnitude of postural sway may be modulated by temporal distance (e.g., close events may produce less sway than distant events). In addition, systematically varying the sequential ordering or evocativeness of chronesthetic episodes may influence people’s movements when traveling mentally through time. “

Read the complete article in Psychological Science:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/01/08/0956797609359333.full

The Body of Knowledge: Understanding Embodied Cognition

The Body of Knowledge: Understanding Embodied Cognition

By Barbara Isanski and Catherine West, APS Staff Writers

The cold shoulder. A heavy topic. A heroic white knight. We regularly use concrete, sensory-rich metaphors like these to express abstract ideas and complicated emotions. But a growing body of research is suggesting that these metaphors are more than just colorful literary devices — there may be an underlying neural basis that literally embodies these metaphors. Psychological scientists are giving us more insight into embodied cognition — the notion that the brain circuits responsible for abstract thinking are closely tied to those circuits that analyze and process sensory experiences— and its role in how we think and feel about our world.

APS Fellow and Charter Member Art Glenberg (Arizona State University) says embodiment “provides a counterweight to the prevailing view that cognition is something in the head that is pretty much separate from behavior. We are animals, and so all of our biology and cognition is ultimately directed towards literal action/behavior for survival and reproduction.” And, he adds, “Explicitly recognizing this will help us to develop better theories.”

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

When someone is described as “chilly,” we understand it means “unfriendly” and not that they should put on a sweater. But using low temperature to capture social remoteness is more than just a convention of language. According to a number of studies, there may be a psychological reason for connecting temperature and social relationships.

In a 2008 study, when volunteers were asked to think about a time they felt socially rejected, they described the temperature in the room as being significantly colder than did volunteers who recalled an experience in which they felt socially included, even though the room temperature was actually the same for both groups. In a separate experiment, volunteers played an online version of a ball-tossing game with three other opponents (unbeknownst to the volunteers, they were the sole participants — a computer program controlled the throws). The game was rigged in a way that some of the volunteers never had the ball tossed to them while other volunteers were able to actively participate in the game. After the game, the volunteers were asked to rate the desirability of various foods and beverages. The volunteers who never had a turn in the ball-tossing game (that is, they were excluded) tended to desire soups and hot coffee more than did the volunteers who played a lot in the game. University of Toronto psychological scientists Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli, who conducted these experiments, suggest that the excluded volunteers craved warmer food and drinks because they felt cold (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008).

The link between social isolation and physical sensations of cold may work in the other direction, too. A study by APS Fellow Gün R. Semin and his Utrecht University colleague Hans IJzerman suggests that temperature can affect how we feel towards others. Volunteers were handed a hot or cold beverage at the start of the experiment and then were asked to think about their relationships with friends and family. The volunteers who had held a warm beverage tended to rate themselves as being closer to the important people in their lives, compared to volunteers who had been given a cold beverage (IJzerman & Semin, 2009).

Cleanliness = Godliness

Just as feeling distant from other people makes us feel cold, feeling immoral makes us feel physically unclean. Shakespeare dramatized this link vividly: Feeling guilty about the murders she had precipitated, Lady Macbeth scrubs her hands as though she literally had blood on them: “Out damn spot, out I say!” Zhong and Katie Liljenquist (Northwestern University) coined the term “the Macbeth effect” to describe people’s increased urge to wash themselves when their morals become threatened — in other words, an attempt to cleanse ourselves of our sins (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).

A recent study by University of Plymouth psychological scientists Simone Schnall, Jennifer Benton, and Sophie Harvey showed that just thinking about concepts related to cleanliness (words like “washed” and “pure,” for example) can influence moral decisions. When volunteers thought about clean concepts, they considered hypothetical moral transgressions to be more acceptable than did those volunteers who thought about neutral concepts. In a follow-up experiment, volunteers who washed their hands rated a moral dilemma as being less severe than did volunteers who didn’t wash their hands (Schnall, Benton, & Harvey, 2008).

Zhong says that the most surprising finding from the temperature and cleanliness studies “is the reciprocal relationship between physical and psychological experiences that are typically considered independent.” He adds, “Not only that our concrete experience of the physical world (e.g., cleanliness and coldness) can directly impact our conception of higher order, abstract constructs such as morality and social relations, but also that these abstract constructs can alter the way we experience the concrete and physical.”

Color My World

Studies have suggested that colors can be linked to morality as well. In a recent study conducted by APS Fellow and Charter Member Gerald L. Clore and Gary D. Sherman (University of Virginia), volunteers responded faster during a Stroop Test when words in black were associated with immorality (e.g., “greed”) than if they were associated with moral words (e.g., “virtuous”). Conversely, there were faster response times when words in white were linked with morality rather than immorality. A subsequent experiment revealed that study participants showing this moral Stroop effect also tended to desire cleaning products (e.g., Lysol disinfectant) over non-cleaning products (e.g., Post-it notes).

These results corroborate those of an earlier study by Clore and his colleagues APS Fellow Michael D. Robinson (North Dakota State University) and Brian P. Meier (Gettysburg College) finding that volunteers were much quicker to categorize positive words (e.g., “gentle”) when they were presented in white lettering than if they were presented in black lettering. The opposite was also true — responses toward negative words (e.g., “sloppy”) displayed in black were much faster than responses to negative words shown in white (Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004).

In addition to being connected with immorality, the color black and darkness more generally, are linked with danger and uncertainty (don’t movie villains and mysterious strangers always wear dark clothes?). We have evolved to be wary of what we cannot see, and adults are frequently scared of the dark, even if they consciously know there is nothing to be frightened of. However, a new study by Zhong, Vanessa Bohns (University of Toronto), and Francesca Gino (University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill) suggests that darkness is not just scary — skulking in dark corners may actually make us more prone to dishonest behavior. In their study, volunteers who were in a dimly-lit room were more likely to cheat (and end up with undeserved money) than were volunteers in a brightly-lit room. In addition, volunteers wearing sunglasses behaved more selfishly than did those wearing untinted glasses. These results suggest that when people are in the dark, they feel they are unnoticed by others, and therefore think that they have a better chance of getting away with bad behavior (Zhong, Bohns, & Gino, in press).

That’s Heavy, Dude

Everyday metaphors are not just linked to social relationships and issues of good versus evil — they can be “perceptually grounded” as well — that is, connected somehow to physical space. We “weigh” important objects or consider difficult topics to be “heavy.” In a recent study by Nils B. Jostmann (University of Amsterdam), Daniël Lakens (Utrecht University), and Thomas W. Schubert (Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon), volunteers holding a heavy clipboard assigned more importance to opinions and greater value to foreign currencies than volunteers holding lighter-weight clipboards did. A lot of physical strength is required to move heavy objects around; these results suggest that in a similar way, important issues may require a lot of cognitive effort to be dealt with (Jostmann, Lakens, & Schubert, 2009).

In addition to influencing opinions, heavy things (physically heavy, that is) can also play tricks with our visual perception. When participants in APS Fellow Dennis Proffitt’s lab at the University of Virginia wore heavy backpacks, they judged hills as being steeper than they really are. Heavy backpacks also made volunteers perceive distances as being longer. Keep this in mind next time you set out for a hike.

Do the Locomotion

Forward movement, weighed down or not, is typically associated with progress or achievement. We value “forward thinkers” and call visionaries “ahead of their time.” Our ancestors would have only moved forward if it were safe to do so; one glimpse of a threatening obstacle and they would retreat — that is, they would hasten backward. Over time, our brain has encoded emotions with these impulses to approach or retreat. According to Radboud University psychological scientist Severine Koch, “body locomotion constitutes the purest and most ecologically valid form of approach and avoidance behavior.”

We may not be running away from lions and tigers anymore, but is it possible that the very action of retreat triggers the same hypervigilance experienced by our ancestors ages ago? Koch and colleagues tested this possibility in a simple experiment. Hypothesizing that it would require significantly more cognitive control to walk backward than to walk forward, the researchers instructed students to walk backward and then perform the Stroop Test. The backward walkers were far more accurate with the test than those who took a few steps forward. Instead of conjuring up panic or uncertainty, it seems that our brains have prepared us for difficulty, rewarding us when we “take a step back” to think about a situation (Koch et al., 2009). Our bodies have also installed a buffer for extreme emotions. For example, when we are angry, our left prefrontal cortex — an area of the brain implicated in self-regulation — becomes more activated than the right prefrontal cortex. In an interesting experiment by Eddie Harmon-Jones at Texas A&M, volunteers were criticized as they sat in a chair or lay down. The participants who were lying down showed less left precortical activation than did those who were sitting (Harmon-Jones & Peterson, 2009). In other words, if you need to tell somebody bad news, make sure they are lying down when you talk to them.

The body-brain link doesn’t end there. Although we can’t technically travel through time (yet), when we think of the past we engage in a sort of mental time travel. It is a uniquely human ability to reflect on the past and look toward the future to help us act in the present. Researchers have recently looked at how this mental time travel is represented in the sensorimotor systems that regulate human movement. It turns out our perceptions of space and time are hardwired together.

University of Aberdeen psychological scientist Lynden Miles, did a simple study to measure this in the lab. He fitted participants with a motion sensor while they imagined either future or past events. He found that mental time travel actually has an observable behavioral correlate: the direction of people’s movements through space. Those who thought of the past swayed backward and those who thought of the future moved forward. “The embodiment of time and space yields an overt behavioral marker of an otherwise invisible mental operation,” explains Miles (Miles, Nind, & Macrea, in press).

Mind Readers

Humans are a social species. During interactions with others, our brain works ferociously to decode the other person’s intentions, behaviors, and emotions in hopes of shaping our own view of a situation. Our tendency to pool our experiences with others has served an important evolutionary role, making us uniquely adaptive and able to meet complex challenges. When we interact with others, our neural circuitry is engaged in a series of unconscious tasks, including mirroring the other person’s motor movements. Louis Armstrong sang, “When you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you.” Romantics everywhere may be surprised to learn that psychological research has proven this sentiment to be true — merely seeing a smile (or a frown, for that matter) will activate the muscles in our face that make that expression, even if we are unaware of it.

APS Fellow Piotr Winkielman ( UC San Diego) and Jamin Halberstadt (University of Otago) and colleagues revealed that the way we initially interpret the emotions of another person biases our subsequent perception and reaction to their facial expressions. Research volunteers looked at photographs of ambiguous facial expressions that had been labeled as either happy or angry. The, volunteers were later asked to identify the photos that they had originally seen while the researchers measured the volunteers’ facial movements. When viewing a facial expression they had once thought about as angry, people expressed more anger themselves than did people viewing the same face if they had initially recognized it as happy (Halberstadt et al., 2009). “The novel finding here,” said Winkielman, “is that our body is the interface: The place where thoughts and perceptions meet. Our corporeal self is intimately intertwined with how – and what – we think and feel.”

Avid readers describe “getting lost in a book,” and a new study suggests there may be some truth to this. As we read, our mind mentally simulates what we are reading about: As a character grabs something, areas of our brain involved in grasping objects become activated, and as a character is running, motor areas in our brain will light up. APS Fellow Jeffrey M. Zacks and his colleagues Nicole K. Speer, Jeremy R. Reynolds, and Khena M. Swallow from Washington University in St. Louis suggest that these mental representations may actually help us make sense of what we are reading. In addition, these representations are being updated in real-time (as we are reading), so that changes in our brain activation correlate to changes we are reading about (Speer, Reynolds, Swallow, & Zacks, 2009).

There is also evidence that these simulations may be tailored to how a specific individual would actually perform the actions — left and right handers show different patterns of activation. When left-handed individuals read manual-action verbs (e.g., throw, grasp), their right premotor cortex becomes activated. Conversely, when right-handed individuals read those verbs, there is activation in the left premotor cortex. According to Roel M. Willems (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands), Peter Hagoort (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands), these findings lend support to the body-specificity hypothesis: If our mental simulations are based on our own personal experiences, then those simulations should differ for individuals who act differently than we do (Willems, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2009).

Reading about emotions can affect our behavior and thought too. Semin and VU University Amsterdam psychological scientist Francesco Foroni examined this by testing whether emotion language has an influence on facial muscle activity. A group of students read emotion verbs (e.g., “to smile,” “to cry”) and adjectives (e.g., “funny,” “frustrating”) while the researchers measured the zygomatic major and corrugators supercilii muscles (the smiling and frowning muscles, respectively.) They found that when the students read the action verb “to laugh,” the smiling muscle was activated and there was no measured change in the frowning muscle (Foroni & Semin, 2009).

Can this innate bodily reaction to emotion verbs affect our judgments? In a follow-up experiment, volunteers were shown a series of cartoons with subliminal emotion verbs and adjectives spliced in. They were asked to rate how funny they thought the cartoons were. Here’s the catch: Half of the group held a pen with their lips, preventing them from smiling, while the others were free to move their mouths. The volunteers found cartoons to be funnier when they were preceded by smiling verbs, but this effect was only present in those who did not have their muscle movements blocked. By stifling their innate ability to smile — to connect with the material — researchers altered the viewer’s experience of the cartoon.

References

• Foroni, F., & Semin, G. (2009). Language that puts you in touch with your bodily feelings: The multimodal responsiveness of affective expressions. Psychological Science, 20, 974-980.
• Halberstadt, J., Winkielman, P., Niedenthal, P.M., & Dalle, N. (2009). Emotional conception: How embodied emotion concepts guide perception and facial action. Psychological Science, 20, 1254-1261.
• Harmon-Jones, E., & Peterson, C.K. (2009). Supine body position reduces neural response to anger evocation. Psychological Science, 20, 1209-1210.IJzerman, H., & Semin, G.R. (2009). The thermometer of social relations: Mapping social proximity on temperature. Psychological Science, 20, 1214-1220.
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• Willems, R.M., Hagoort, P., & Casasanto, D. (in press). Body-specific representations of action verbs: Neural evidence from right- and left-handers. Psychological Science.
• Zhong, C.B., Bohns, V.K., & Gino, F. (in press). A good lamp is the best police: Darkness increases dishonesty and self-interested behavior. Psychological Science.
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