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.” 
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The Neurobiology of Play

Taking Play Seriously, by Robin Marantz Henig, appears today in the New York Times Magazine.  Henig draws on ethology, neuroscience, and developmental psychology to highlight advances in research on play.  Play strikes many of us as deeply essential, but what the heck is it for?  It’s not precisely clear. 

Today I’ll cover some of the interesting developments about the neurobiology of play mentioned in Taking Play Seriously.  So John Byers first.  Byers is a zoologist at the University of Idaho who noticed that the developmental trajectory of play looks like an inverted U across many species, increasing during the juvenile period and dropping off during puberty.  This pattern corresponded quite well with the growth curve of the cerebellum.  The article summarizes the implications: 

The synchrony suggested a few things to Byers: that play might be related to growth of the cerebellum, since they both peak at about the same time; that there is a sensitive period in brain growth, during which time it’s important for an animal to get the brain-growth stimulation of play; and that the cerebellum needs the whole-body movements of play to achieve its ultimate configuration.

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Neuroimaging and Max Coltheart

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchPsyBlog has a post, “Can Cognitive Neuroscience Tell Us Anything About the Mind?” which starts out with a skeptical stance.  There is an opening feint, that scientists throw out theories about the brain and mind (and by this, we’re really talking about hypotheses).  It’s an important point, in my mind, that the focus on testing relatively small and specific hypotheses, while adding bricks and mortar to the edifice of knowledge, does little to capture the holistic nature of the mind and often runs afoul the mind-body (or brain) dichotomy.

 Basically the post then provides a quick look at some general work by Max Coltheart, Director of the Macquarie Center for Cognitive Science (Macquarie is Greg’s home institution, so just had to do that shout-out).  Coltheart has his own statement on cognitive neuropsychology on Scholarpedia (first time I’ve run across that), the peer-reviewed version of Wikipedia.

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Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is right… sort of?

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchI’ve been away from Neuroanthropology for a few days, typing my fingers numb working on a grant application for the Australian Research Council. I won’t go into it too much here (maybe later), but I will say that I have NEVER seen a more complicated, bureacratized, byzantine system than the ARC grant competition. I felt semi-conscious when I finished the ‘interactive’ budgeting section alone (I put ‘interactive’ in quotes only because the system would have to give the applicant something back to call it ‘interaction’). Many thanks, especially to Daniel, for covering my absence while I was ‘away,’ or at least pulling out clumps of hair trying to figure out what the instructions on the application were asking me to do.

But I’ve been wanting to post a number of things, including a recent article by Ashley Newton and Jill de Villiers that appeared in Psychological Science. Special thanks to Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily whose posting about this article drew it to my attention. (And Prof. Munger is also responsible for creating the ‘Blogging about refereed research’ system that we’re trying to work with on Neuroanthropology.)

Newton and de Villiers ran experiments in which subjects were asked to solve ‘false-belief’ problems, questions about how individuals would act when it was likely that they had developed false beliefs; for example, if the subject see Max watch Sam put food in one place, then Max leaves the room, only to have Same move the food to a new location. Will Max believe the food is in the first place, or in its actual location, when he returns to the room? These problems test the subject’s ability to reason about another person’s beliefs, even when they are false. Young children tend to get these problems wrong, saying that Max will look for the food in the new location because the child knows the food is there. Very young children do not recognize that Max will have a ‘false belief.’ (Alright, so ‘false belief’ problems aren’t that hard, but the researchers made the tasks a bit more difficult…)

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Exercise that brain

US News and World Report has a recent article on “Keeping Your Brain Fit.”  An initial point: “”Some of the myths about the brain—that it was not changeable, that there was nothing you could do about cognitive decline—have really been dispelled in the past 10 years,” says Lynda Anderson, director of the Healthy Aging Program at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

What to do?  Keep using your brain, which means keeping active mentally and physically.  Stay curious and engage in learning and novelty, which will hopefully help your brain generate new synapses, recruit neurons to new activites, avoid selective pruning and perhaps (perhaps!) promote neuro-genesis.  And stay involved socially–as social creatures, our relationships have a generous impact on our brain, from stress to protection to fun to hope. That’s about the best I can say, but a lot of it is opinion–the research is still fairly new and tentative, as the article admits, so I am channeling my inner anthro Dr. Phil.

I also touched on this topic earlier in “Keeping Brains Agile,” so check that out if you’re interested.

Mimicry and Persuasion

Greg, I had to put this up for you–mirroring others, salesmen, and the brain?  Couldn’t be a better combination, unless we also stick some no-holds-barred fighting or choke techniques in there when mimicked persuasion fails…

The NY Times has an article today, “You Remind Me of Me,” whose basic point comes to this: “subtle mimicry comes across as a form of flattery, the physical dance of charm itself.”  Subtle mimicry is not immediate and seemingly deliberate, but is a shadowing that happens a couple seconds later.  In one study, supposedly on a new sports drink “Vigor,” some study participants were subtly mimicked in the lab, legs crossed a couple seconds later, body position copied, and so forth.  The result: “None of the copied participants picked up on the mimicry. But by the end of the short interview, they were significantly more likely than the others to consume the new drink, to say they would buy it and to predict its success in the market. In a similar experiment, the psychologists found that this was especially true if the participants knew that the interviewer, the mimic, had a stake in the product’s success.”
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