Author: dlende

Brain Reading for $299

I was at a talk yesterday on anthropology and genetics, where the presenter argued persuasively that molecular anthropology really took off when the methods of accessing genetic information became easy and cheap enough to use for anthropology–the ability to collect data in the field, the ability to process the genetic sequences quickly and cheaply, and so forth.  Even though brain imaging has gotten a lot more inexpensive, it’s still brain imaging–sticking people in a big tube.  Not the most natural of situations.

I just ran across this article, Brain-reading headset to sell for $299.  Here’s one relevant excerpt about the NeuroHeadset: “The headset’s sensors are designed to detect conscious thoughts and expressions as well as “non-conscious emotions” by reading electrical signals around the brain… The company, which unveiled a prototype last year, says the headset can detect emotions such as anger, excitement and tension, as well as facial expressions and cognitive actions like pushing and pulling objects.”

The headset has been developed by Emotiv Systems primarily for gaming.  So it’s not quite research-ready.  But the price and the portability might soon open the collecting of real-time functional brain data in the near future, permitting us neuroanthropologists to get some important data in the field.

Anger and Healing

“Anger slows healing process after injury: study” is one of today’s headlines.  Here’s the main point:

Researchers at the University of Ohio inflicted minor burns on the forearms of 98 volunteers who were then monitored over eight days to see how quickly the skin repaired itself… The results were startlingly clear: individuals who had trouble controlling expressions of anger were four times likelier to need more than four days for their wounds to heal, compared with counterparts who could master their anger.

 Anger, not surprisingly, is more nuanced than an on/off state.  “Subjects described as showing ‘anger out’ (regular outbursts of aggression or hostility) or ‘anger in’ (repressed rage) healed almost as quickly as individuals who ranked low on all anger scales.”  

Indeed only one group had significantly slower healing:

Only those who tried but failed to hold in their feelings of upset and distemper took longer to heal. This same group also showed a higher secretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which could at least partly explain the difference in healing time, the study noted… High levels of cortisol appears to decrease the production at the point of injury of two cytokines crucial to the repair process, suggests the study. Cytokines are proteins released by immune-system cells. They act as signallers to generate a wider immune response.

 So, it is not so much “anger” that matters, but anger management.  Trying and failing is the key variable, not so much anger itself.  That appears to be what is stressful, the lack of control and the uncertainty, rather than experiencing anger itself. 

Here’s the abstract of the original article.

Poverty & Programs

This article, A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders, strikes me as relevant to our earlier discussion on poverty and the brain.  While I think the emphasis on “therapy” places too much weight on psychology and the individual, nonetheless I admire the overall idea, as related here:

The basic idea is to reach and help borderline youths at a moment of crisis, and turn them away from a more serious criminal path. By treating them in the context of their families and environments rather than in isolation, officials found that recidivism was usually less than half that of residential correction programs. The city says that it hopes its program will be as successful, but that it will take many years before it can be sure. Still, at roughly $17,000 per child, such in-home therapy programs cost a fraction of the annual expense of keeping a child in secure detention, which can be $140,000 to $200,000. 

My hope is that anthropology can and will add to this sort of work.  Still, I am not sure anthropology has developed enough as an applied science where it can point to clear and specific ways to make a difference in these social and material environments (please comment if you do have some specific ideas or programs).  So the recognition of individual differences (including moments of crisis), the importance of life pathways, and the focus on social context strike me as quite a good start. 

Taking Play Seriously

When I lived in Nigeria, I used to cross the city of Calabar to visit the defunct zoo, taking food for the animals—a constrictor snake, some crocodiles, a male drill monkey—still trapped in cages.  Jacob, a large juvenile chimpanzee, lived in that zoo in a cage roughly ten feet by ten feet.  As I walked onto the zoo grounds, Jacob would greet me with an exuberant pant-hoot and I would respond back (my Intro to Anthro students are endlessly amused when I demonstrate my pant-hooting skills).  Though I carried food for him, what Jacob most wanted to do was play with me. 

Jacob loved to play tag first, swinging back and forth across the front of his thickly barred cage, sticking a hand out to see if I could catch it.  We would rush back and forth together, Jacob generally favoring the role of being chased.  Then we’d settle down for some tickling.  Believe me, being tickled by a chimpanzee is, I am sure, rather what my boys feel when I get overly excited about tickling them. 

Jacob’s fingers were powerful, and his arms more so, but I made myself laugh in the chortling sound of chimpanzees.  If he got too strong, I could simply let out a sound of pain and he’d stop.  Then we’d get started again, because of course I loved to tickle him back.  I remember times, our heads together, pressed against the bars, his hand at the back of my neck, my fingers digging into his ribs.  It was such fun, yet I never could quite shake the thought in that moment that he could crush my head so easily against the bars. 
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Poverty Poisons the Brain

Paul Krugman writes today that “Poverty Is Poison,” building off an article from the Financial Times that discussed last Friday’s session, “Poverty and Brain Development” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Krugman writes: 

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life. So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

The Financial Times article, “Poverty mars formation of infant brains,” provides some more detail about the impact of poverty through stress, inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins: “Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.  Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s centre for cognitive neuroscience, said: ‘The biggest effects are on language and memory. The finding about memory impairment – the ability to encounter a pattern and remember it – really surprised us’.” 
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Pattern #2

The current issue of Harvard Magazine has a cover article on autism.  In reading through the piece, I was struck by this one line about Asperger’s syndrome: “they shared key impairments in social interaction, reciprocal communication, and imagination (i.e., repetitive behaviors and interests).”  It many ways this description struck me as presenting a similar dichotomy to addiction, where the repetitive behaviors and interests are linked diagnostically with failed social roles, family difficulties and “denial” in communication. 

I am not saying that addiction and autism are the same, or that biologically or phenomenology they come from similar causes or problems.  But I do wonder if the rush to focus in on singular brain circuits leads us to overlook the human dimensions of imagination, sociality, and behavior.  These abilities and practices are linked in profound ways in everyday life, and thus will drive biology in profound ways. 

Sandy G, who linked to us (thanks!) through his post on The Rat Park, has several posts on autism.  In one on joint attention, he relates Tomasello’s recent work: “The authors concluded that, at least at this developmental period, children with autism seem to understand the social components of situations that call for “helping” behaviors and engage in helping behaviors, but only when such help does not require interpersonal cooperation. However, when cooperation is required to complete the task, these children are less likely to correctly engage with another partner, possibly because the unique “shared” component of cooperation. That is, cooperation requires shared goals, shared attention, and a shared plan of action, processes that seem to be affected in children with autism.” 
Continue reading “Pattern #2”