Day: August 12, 2008

Magic and Mind Tricks

Benedict Carey has a NY Times article today, While a Magician Works, the Mind Does the Tricks. Cognitive neuroscience and magic has been receiving a lot of attention lately. Mind Hacks has written extensively on magic and Neurophilosophy has a more general post.

Carey covers much the same ground, beginning with the recent paper “Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic: Turning Tricks into Research” (full paper) by Stephen Macknik and colleages in Nature Neuroscience Reviews. Carey writes about the visual and tactile tricks of magic, of a red flash that lingers in vision to hide the stripping away of a white dress or gripping the wrist to leave a “somatosensory afterimage” before neatly stealing a man’s watch.

Carey also links to an extensive collection of videos that accompanied the Nature article. That’s one of the things I definitely want to highlight. These are videos of magicians doing their tricks, as well as some talks at a recent conference.

Magic would make a great neuroanthropology research project, similar to the placebo effect or video games. Anthropologists have long studied “magic, witchcraft and religion” (a typical course title), and are well placed to understand the techniques and training of magicians, the cultural knowledge and biases that magic seems to subvert or surprise, and how audiences read intentions into actions by the magician.

Today in the NY Times: Interactions or Causes?

One can take the New York Times today to illustrate a basic dichotomy we frequently discuss on this site. To understand ourselves and the world, is it better to examine complex interactions and the mixing of human action and natural cause, or to draw on simpler explanations and the old cause-effect scientific model?

Given that this site is neuro-anthropology (which the Times has nicely illustrated), we obviously favor interdisciplinary over one-field approaches. Given today’s world, that matters.

Handle with Care by Cordelia Dean takes on technology, science and ethics. She specifically examines planet-level environmental engineering or “geoengineering”, but also mentions robotics and nanotechnology. We could add gene therapy and increasingly sophisticated pharmaceuticals to that list. Her basic point?

This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all.

As Dean notes, it is an extremely difficult proposal, contravening the way many scientists approach their work, highlighting necessity of global systems to manage our increasing technical power, and raising the specter of “knowledge-enabled mass destruction.”

Just one example of this appears in today’s Times with Surpassing Nature, Scientists Bend Light Backwards which points both to the potential impact on microscopes and on invisibility cloaks.

In Handle with Care, Dean highlights that science for science’s sake is not the answer. Rather, Prof. Sheila Jasanoff argues that the “first step was for scientists and engineers to realize that in complex issues, ‘uncertainty, ignorance and indeterminacy are always present.’ In what she described as ‘a call for humility’ [in her Nature essay], she urged researchers to cultivate and teach ‘modes of knowing that are often pushed aside in expanding scientific understanding and technological capacity’ including history, moral philosophy, political theory and social studies of science — what people value and why they value it.”

David Brooks in Harmony and the Dream brings us directly into that debate of what people value. He argues that “The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.”

Continue reading “Today in the NY Times: Interactions or Causes?”

Mental Health Tips

10 steps to better brain health:

 

 

1. A healthy diet. Glucose is the brain’s major source of energy, but a balanced diet is essential to body and brain function. Food with a low glycemic index (GI) like oats and bran as well as dark green leafy vegetables that are rich in magnesium are both believed to help brain function. Choline rich foods such as eggs and red meat are also thought to assist healthy communication between brain cells. Also, avoid substances that stress the brain and limit drugs like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.

 

2. Stimulate your brain. No, put the super-charged magnetic coil down! I’m not talking about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. I’m talking about involving yourself in new activities, playing an instrument, learning to speak a foreign language, solving brain teasers. Exercise the brain as you would the body. The Brain operates on a use-it or lose-it policy. So use it! Play sudoku, solve a crossword puzzle and test your skills at scrabble!

 

3. Keep a diary. A great way to deal with stress, emotional worries and to relax at the end of a hectic day or a busy week is to sit down and write. It’s a fantastic way to see what you have achieved, frame new goals and keep your emotions in balance. Also, writing notes for yourself helps convert information stored in your short-term memory to long-term memory. So get that creative energy flowing and put pen to pad!

 

4. Sleep well! Getting a good night sleep is essential for concentration. It has been shown that regular sleep-wake cycles are important in daily cognitive performance. Dreams may be important in the consolidation of memory. As we all know, it feels great to rise and shine after we have slept like a baby!

           

5. Regular exercise! It is important for your entire body. Exercise is believed to be important in maintaining neural plasticity in old age and aerobic fitness may in fact reduce the loss of brain tissue common in ageing. Exercise also releases natural hormones that lead to those ‘feel good’ sensations. Feeling good about your body is vital to brain health.

 

6. Regulate your couch-time. Too much TV weakens brain power. But a little TV is great mental stimulation. Balance is the key!

 

7. Socialise! Familiar smiles, friendly conversations and meaningful interactions are all part of a healthy lifestyle. The brain is the organ of society and socialisation is an integral part of brain health. Join a book-club, learn to dance, smile at a colleague!

 

8. Organisation. We all know the anxiety that misplacing the house-keys or forgetting an appointment creates. Avoid the stress and make a special place for items such as reading glasses, wallets/purses or the TV remote.

 

9. Relax. Spend time on a hobby, take your dog for a walk or just sit back in a comfortable armchair with a great book. Technique to relax are not only useful to reduce stress and enhance brain performance, relaxation methods have also been shown to play a positive role in emotional health. For example, mindfulness meditation has been shown to decrease the recurrence of depression. Find a stress-reducing practice that suits your lifestyle and personal taste and then devote a balanced amount of time each week to it.

 

10. Positive thinking. Always look on the bright side of life (someone should turn that into a song)!

 

 

 

Transcultural Psychiatrists would certainly have a few dilemmas with the above list. The serious Neuroanthropologist probably does too! But what the heck, I put them here just for fun! Mind you, the list might lead to some interesting questions about what could be considered the definitive TOP 10 FOR BRAIN HEALTH applicable across cultures!

 

And now for some links:

 

How Culture May effect depression diagnosis

Mental Health Resources

Mental Health

Mental Health news

Mental Health America

Neurological Examinations

Interactive Health Tutorials:

Brain, The world inside your head

Brain Fitness

Cognitive and Emotional Health

Mental Health Council of Australia

The Human Brain

Brain Food

Meditation and Depression

Brain Activity influences immune function

Food for the brain

Brain Health

The Healthy Brain Program

Feed Your Brain