Neurofuture

Encephalon 30: The Retirement Party

2007-08-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

This is edition number 30 of the brain science blog carnival Encephalon, and it's also my final Neurofuture post. Let's go!

Eric Michael Johnson presents The Feeling of What Happens at The Primate Diaries (above image is from his post). Using the examples of phantom limb syndrome and religious experiences stemming from temporal lobe epilepsy, he characterizes spirituality as a "trick of the mind." The post was inspired by an editorial in Nature which included a scientist's religious views, and Eric opines, "Perhaps a return to reasonable arguments based on solid evidence would be a wiser course for the future."

Would that everyone would heed that, Eric.

Pure Pedantry's Jake Young offers criticism of science writing in the New York Times with his post Article on exercise and cognition has correct facts, wrong interpretation. The NYT journalist extrapolated from a study on a spatial memory task in mice by reporting that exercise prompted neurogenesis in the hippocampus which in turn made the mice smarter, when instead what the research concluded was improved performance only in the one task. Jake says, "While it is not necessary to go into the nitty-gritty details of hippocampal neurogenesis, I think that a sentence of caveat that said, 'The link between exercise, neurogenesis, and memory has not been mechanistically established,' would make this article much more accurate."

Stephanie West Allen of Brains on Purpose illustrates a good example of inaccuracy and extrapolation in Anatomy of a telephone game applied to a neuroscience study. Research was reported in a news item, someone blogged about it, someone else write a blog post based on that blog, and…go see where it led. I don't want to add more inaccuracy by writing about the blog post about the blogging of the blog about the news based on the research article. Heh.

Paul Baxter writes an overview of Hemispheric Specialisation in Memoirs of a Postgrad. Refreshingly, he cites five papers and humbly asks readers, "Hopefully, people who know more can fill in some of the gaps by leaving some comments."

In Omni Brain, some chick writes about ACHOO syndrome (autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst syndrome) a.k.a. photic sneeze syndrome a.k.a. sun sneezing (a.k.a. AAICS contest winner). With the single comprehensive review article that was only available in hard copy from a medical library forgotten in another city while she travels, she relies on memory, abstracts and a 1968 paper to describe the basics of this curious but common neurological syndrome. Fine, but then she wrecks it by rambling about the trigeminal nerve, migraines, horses and seasonal affective disorder when there is no empirical evidence whatsoever linking them.

"Perhaps a return to reasonable arguments based on solid evidence would be a wiser course for the future." Thank you again, Eric.

However, since there's no solid evidence about the nature of consciousness, what is a reasonable argument? Here unreasonable is more entertaining, as vlog Channel N features a video with experts from varied disciplines spiritedly arguing Is Consciousness Definable?. (Image: Morning Consciousness (2004), Dionisio Ceballas.)

The Neurocritic mocks outlandish headlines and bad neuro-journalism with A Single Gene Controls Emotional Recall! T.N. would definitely echo Eric's, "Perhaps a return to reasonable…"

Cognitive Daily reliably writes reasonable things based on solid peer-reviewed research, so when Dave Munger asks Why are Visual Memories so Vivid? the answer is conservative. He summarizes an experiment on memory of visual scenes relative to length of exposure in an article by David Melcher, Accumulation and persistence of memory for natural scenes. Journal of Vision, 6, 8-17. Melcher found that increased exposure time led to increased retention but not necessarily a long-term memory, and proposed something intermediate.

Cog Daily is also leading the development of Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting, now holding a logo design contest. Entries are accepted until September 10th.

The inimitable Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks writes some compelling criticism in the post The psychology of behavior detection officers. America's latest plan to harass its airport users [my words, not Vaughan's] is based on Paul Ekman's research on facial micro-expressions. Ekman has apparently sold officials on a deception detection system despite unproven effectiveness. He concludes, "One difficulty with all deception research is that participants told to lie in the lab are not necessarily good models for 'real-life' deception, with all its complex motivations and emotional force. Lab-based lies are likely to be a poor substitute in an actual covert terrorist situation."

Alvaro Fernandez of Sharp Brains links to some newly published and newly announced research on cognitive training, in Cognitive training research: MindFit, Lumosity, Posit Science, Cogmed. As well, The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains is a list of actionable habits for brain fitness (with over 1200 Diggs!). I'm not exactly sure what he means by "don't outsource your brain" but have a feeling I'm doing it right now.

"Perhaps a return to reasonable arguments based on solid evidence would be a wiser course for the future." Oh yeah.

Jeremy Burman of Advances in the History of Psychology submitted five posts, which is against the Encephalon rules, but I'm not so uptight I'll insist on enforcing that. Here's Exemplars in the history of psychology, “Punitive psychiatry” still practiced in Russia?, History of Psychology Conferences for 2007-2008, Conceptions of Giftedness, in light of DVD finding, and Ten things we don’t know about the brain.

From an ad-clogged blog barely distinguishable from a splog, Out of Body Experiences: Medical Mysteries or Scientific Explanation? is posted at FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog. Whoever wrote it didn't link the source they've regurgitated, but I've seen posts about this Science study spewed all over the blogosphere. I briefly debated whether or not to read the original journal article in order to correct FitBuff's misinterpretations (like that a VR avatar is a hologram), but decided that if I'm going to waste my time I'd rather do it playing Scrabble in Facebook than outsourcing my brain to them.

My emotion-schmotions (quote from FitBuff) run a little high around this final contribution. The Neurocritic writes about The Luxury of Neurobranding, which includes a link to a post from the early days of Neurofuture. Anyone else remember the neuroword contest, a invitation to people to coin their own neuro-prefixed word describing a (potentially) new discipline in brain science? It was great fun with 50 entries, lots of chuckles and beginnings of friendships cherished to this day.

A little unfinished business, on retiring. The winner was "neurologism: a word created by prefixing 'neuro' to almost any normal word." After announcing it, Jake Dunagan told me he'd coined the word some time before, in his paper Neuro-Futures: The Brain, Power and Politics. He asked me merely to mention his paper and solicit reader opinions. Lamely, procrastination stopped me. Please do check it out, it's an interesting hypothetical look at a future of cognitive enhancements. What do you think? (I think it's FTW, Jake.)

That, then, is all. May you all have happy neurofutures. Thanks for reading.

The next edition of Encephalon (make submissions here) is scheduled for September 10th, to be hosted by Dr. Deborah Serani.

Waning

2007-08-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

It's time to retire Neurofuture. I'm not deleting it and may conceivably post something in future, but for now, it's being shelved.

Encephalon, then, marks the end of Neurofuture. Please submit your entries ASAP (via that linked form, or email encephalon.host at gmail.com) and join me in making it a smash farewell party.

Anticipatory

2007-08-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

Encephalon 29 is now up at Memories of a Postgrad. I'll be hosting the next edition of the neuroscience blog carnival on August 27.

Send your links to encephalon dot host |at| gmail dot com or use the submission form to be a part of it. Further info here.

Transrobotism

2007-08-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

Image: the best-in-show bot at Robogames 07. When I blocked its path, it stopped moving forward and asked my name. I didn't answer but took this photo.

Relationships with robots are examined in this interesting video (or listen to audio alone).

Transrobotism (Human-Robot Bonds). "When a humanoid robot successfully mirrors human emotion and evokes an emotional response from us, what happens to our understanding of ourselves and our emotional reality? This provocative panel discussion on the emerging new realities of human-machine relationships is guaranteed to change the way you think!" Moderated by Pia Lindman, the panel consisted of Rodney Brooks, Joy Hirsch, Sherry Turkle, Peter Galison, and David Rodowick. WGBH Lectures. 01:51:36
link http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3413
direct audio link http://forum.wgbh.org/content/forum/3413-2007_04_24.mp3

Brief clip of a child interacting with the robot above:

x-posted to Channel N

The Shapes of Thought

2007-06-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

An interesting sci-art collaboration between University of Calgary researchers and artists Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow, attempting to visualize thought in 3D space. They completed a number of projects under the umbrella of the Einstein's Brain Project; this one titled The Shapes of Thought.

The project asked participants to recall traumatic events from their past. They were asked to emote anger, and other primary emotions. Each participant was wired to EEG and EKG sensors and monitored [for as long as 8-14 hours]. The resulting information was visualized as still images using Iris Explorer and visualized in realtime, interactive space using specially developed data acquisition modules.

Other images on the site include that of a man repeatedly asked to recall an incident in which he was severely injured, including a period of agitation, and couple of animations.

See more.

RoboGames

2007-06-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I went to RoboGames. There were many squee moments (PLEN was there! so cute! etc.), many pictures taken (which are trapped on my phone for the moment), and many things learned while wandering around among the room full of dads and their kids.

Maybe the most important lesson was that although some robots are designed with nice goals like helping the elderly, mixing cocktails or enabling the paralysed to walk, what the crowd was most interested in was watching robots tear each other apart in combat. I'm not sure what this says about humanity - or me, since I admit to cheering when they crashed into each other and parts went flying. At least I had a conversation with an engineer about cognitive robotics as well (he wasn't applying it though). And observed that a good way for artists to make money nowadays is to make their creations coin-operated.

More later, when I get my photos, but here's a pic from the web site of the superheavyweights (300 lbs or so) in combat. Yay robots!

x-posted to Omni Brain

Artificial Brain Parts

2007-06-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

From Sensopac, who've announced plans to build an artificial cerebellum for robots:

Breakthroughs and Innovations at a Glance:
+ Developing a theoretical understanding of the basis of cognition
+ Building a machine that can explore its own environment under its own guidance
+ Understanding how to abstract cognitive notions through a self-discovery which can bootstrap cognitive development
+ Developing principles that are applicable to any sensorimotor system, even those that are not well understood.
+ Methodologies for building systems-level models that remain biologically relevant
+ Developing methodologies for reverse-engineering high-level function such as haptic cognition
+ Understanding the contribution of key brain areas such as the cerebellum in behaviour and finding application for that knowledge in artificial systems
+ Developing technologies to simulate large complex systems in real-time and so allowing these systems to be applied in artificial machines

Those are pretty amazing breakthroughs. Understanding cognition and simulating it in real time, wow. Only, that hasn't happened yet and there are many people trying to do similar things without success.

No matter, BBC News decided to report on one Sensopac goal of building an artificial cerebellum (nevermind that nobody can presently model that number of neurons and neural systems, but technology moves fast) for robots, with the future goal of improving their motor skills.

I do hope some of these breakthroughs are achieved in Sensopac's four-year quest. "A theoretical understanding of the basis of cognition" and an artificial cerebellum sound fab.

Read more.
Read more from BBC on the artificial cerebellum.
Read more from BBC on robot ethics. "Imagine if some people treat androids as if the machines were their wives," Park Hye-Young of the ministry's robot team told the AFP news agency. [What does that mean?] "Others may get addicted to interacting with them just as many internet users get hooked to the cyberworld."

Gr8 that the cyberworld delivers infomacnuggets like this. FTW and bring on the sensitive robots!

Prozac in a Riker Mount

2007-05-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

Riker mounts are science specimen display boxes used to display butterflies and other items of scientific interest (in disciplines like lepidoptery and coleopterology). Here, they are used by artist Steve Lodefink to display a blister pack of green and yellow Prozac capsules.

"PROZAC 20 mg capsules circa. 1995" declares a typewritten, yellowed label under the pills, looking as though it could be under a beetle or a shell. Critics say the pills in a Riker mount lend a [Douglas] Couplandesque sensibility of pop culture as art. I don't know, I'm all for industrial design and packaging, but would prefer it promotes medication adherence. Science meeting art, though, is great.

Either way, the Prozac capsules are a contentious art and mental health conversation piece, simply by hanging on a wall in the older scientific context of a Riker mount. "With the addition of a Riker mount, a packet of pills becomes a commentary on late 20th century excesses in cosmetic psychopharmacology."

More
Art criticism

Glowing pill caps

2007-05-28T23:47:00.001-07:00

A glowing light embedded in a pill bottle cap alerts users to take their pills at assigned times. The caps can also send email or call a cell in an urgent situation, and can automatically alert the consumer's pharmacy of refills when they are due. All that, plus they create monthly progress reports, and even better they look funky (something your ailing loved ones are very, very concerned about). The ad says they'll also be able to say, "It's so easy I don't have to do anything different." That's progress!

Read more, or even easier, watch the video.

Via Infosthetics.

Neurosurgery via mobile

2007-04-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

"The goal of this is to make difficult surgeries easier, or impossible surgeries possible," says robotics engineer Alex Greer, who demonstrated the controls to the gathered media.

The NeuroArm was media-launched by University of Calgary researchers who'd once launched the space shuttle's robotic CanadArm. NeuroArm is a robot computer assisted surgery (CAS) system enabling remote neurosurgery. Exciting; the link is a few days old now and I wrote about teleneurosurgery a while back, but it's getting closer to what will be more exciting: clinical trials this summer.

Unrelated, but... what comes up in a search for "teleneurosurgery" includes this blog post from a Nokia mobile medical specialist. Neurosurgeons and radiologists (and cognitive neuroscientists?) can now receive MRI and CT images on mobile phones. Blogger Arto Holopainen explains the varying resolution of grey scale:

Since the images might contain theoretically 4096 different shades of grey it is obvious that smart phone displays can not handle that. But even the human eye cannot accurately distinguish between that amounts of different shades of grey. Therefore to allow the observer to interpret the image, only a limited number of greyscales are displayed at once. Clinically useful grey scale is achieved by viewing suitable range of grey scales depending on the tissue being studied.

Though it wouldn't assist in a NeuroArm surgery, images may be sent to cell phones and discussed live.

Computational vision

2007-03-29T02:02:00.000-07:00

The new study A Feedforward Architecture Accounts for Rapid Categorization, Serre, T., A. Oliva and T. Poggio, PNAS 2007, in press [not online yet] reveals the success of a computational version of vision modeled on the visual cortex processes of immediate recognition of objects. The feedforward model is based on what our vision perceives in the first 100-200 milliseconds of exposure in the ventral stream before cognitive feedback loops kick in. It recognized objects in a database of street scenes with reasonable accuracy and uses a learning algorithm to become better at categorizing new objects. In this study, their system was trained by exposure to images then pitted against human vision and both performed nearly the same, with over 90% accuracy for close-ups and 74% for distant views.

Thomas Serre, Tomaso Poggio and others at the Center for Biological and Computational Learning in the McGovern Institute, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT collaborated on the system. Another new paper, Robust Object Recognition with Cortex-Like Mechanisms, Serre et al., IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol 29 No 3, March 2007 [free PDF], describes the development. The feedforward model uses four layers:

Visual processing is hierarchical, aiming to build
invariance to position and scale first and then to
viewpoint and other transformations.
Along the hierarchy, the receptive fields of the neurons
(i.e., the part of the visual field that could potentially
elicit a response from the neuron) as well as the
complexity of their optimal stimuli (i.e., the set of
stimuli that elicit a response of the neuron) increases.
The initial processing of information is feedforward
(for immediate recognition tasks, i.e., when the image
presentation is rapid and there is no time for eye
movements or shifts of attention).
Plasticity and learning probably occurs at all stages
and certainly at the level of inferotemporal (IT)
cortex and prefrontal cortex (PFC), the top-most
layers of the hierarchy.

Poggio said, “We have not solved vision yet, but this model of immediate recognition may provide the skeleton of a theory of vision. The huge task in front of us is to incorporate into the model the effects of attention and top-down beliefs.”

Their next goal is research on the 200-300 milliseconds after the feedforward process of immediate recognition, and a larger one is to incorporate cognitive feedback loops. The feedforward model may ultimately be useful as a front end to more complex processing systems. Bigger implications:

This new study supports a long–held hypothesis that rapid categorization happens without any feedback from cognitive or other areas of the brain. The results also indicate that the model can help neuroscientists make predictions and drive new experiments to explore brain mechanisms involved in human visual perception, cognition, and behavior. Deciphering the relative contribution of feed-forward and feedback processing may eventually help explain neuropsychological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. The model also bridges the gap between the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and neuroscience because it may lead to better artificial vision systems and augmented sensory prostheses.

Read more.
Download the open source software with StreetScenes dataset.
More research from the MIT CBCL lab.

x-posted to Omni Brain

"The brain is the wildcard"

2007-03-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

An eye prosthesis implant has gained FDA approval for clinical trials aiming to restore vision to people blinded by retinal degenerative diseases. Second Sight produced a 16-electrode implant device a few years ago, which five patients are still using with success thanks in part to an ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) film protecting its parts from body fluids. Their new Argus II device with 60 electrodes is an improvement researcher Mark Humayun says, "is like a train and a plane, they're that different."

The device consists of a tiny camera and transmitter mounted in eyeglasses, an implanted receiver, and an electrode-studded array that is secured to the retina with a microtack the width of a human hair. A wireless microprocessor and battery pack worn on the belt powers the entire device.

The camera on the glasses captures an image and sends the information to the video processor, which converts the image to an electronic signal and sends it to the transmitter on the sunglasses. The implanted receiver wirelessly receives this data and sends the signals through a tiny cable to the electrode array, stimulating it to emit electrical pulses. The pulses induce responses in the retina that travel through the optic nerve to the brain, which perceives patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to the electrodes stimulated.

While the implant doesn't restore full vision, patients interpret the light patterns as useful images to interface with the world. As Science Daily reports:

Exactly how much improvement can be achieved won't be clear, he says, until testing is underway. "The brain is the wildcard," [Hunayan] says, noting that his team was surprised by the extent to which the brain was able to "fill in" visual information from the limited number of pixels in the first model.

600 to 1000 pixels are the expected requirement to restore full vision such as facial recognition and reading, and this device doesn't have that capacity. Read Visual Prosthesis in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 2005, for a survey of the challenges involved. Though engineering advancements are needed, the Argus II appears to be an important visionary step towards full artificial sight.

Other implant devices in development include the Retina Implant from Germany, hoping to be on the market in 2009, and the Optobionics Artificial Silicon Retina chip using 5,000 microphotodiode cells. Both are subretinal implants that stimulate remaining healthy retinal cells. The Argus II, in contrast, is an epiretinal device that stimulates the optic nerve with external signals from the camera.

Tagged

2007-03-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Shrink Rap tagged me for a Thinking Blogger "award" and so in turn, here are five thoughtful blogs I recommend.

The Neurocritic
Brain Ethics
Positive Technology Journal
Doc Gm Splash Fly
Machines Like Us

Brain Awareness Week 2007

2007-03-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

During last year's Brain Awareness Week I was full of vim and enthusiasm, but this time I've got a flu virus and am feeling listless. Links are the better way to go.

The Dana Alliance for the Brain is the BAW umbrella organization worldwide, and the Society for Neuroscience sponsors many events (like a Brain Bee for young students) in turn. Here it's NeuroScience Canada spearheading celebrations, such as a presentation on neurobiology and psychology in space: Functioning with a Floating Brain by Dr. Luchino Cohen, Program Scientist, Space Life Sciences, Canadian Space Agency. A free, bilingual event at the Montreal Planetarium on March 12. To find goings-on in your area, check the international calendar.

Online, the Encephalon neuroscience blog carnival, hosted this time around at Pharyngula, features a variety of links to intriguing, funny, and informative original writing.

Then there are many, many links compiled at The Neurophilospher's list of neuro/psych blogs. My brain science vlog Channel N was demarcated by an asterisk of recommendation, woot. The number of subscribers soared from 14 to 30 as a result.

I don't do this for fame, y'know. Rather, the prestige and the glory.

Happy Brain Awareness Week!

Neuroethics for Barbie

2007-03-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

My Three Shrinks podcast #13: Lost It In Space features psychiatrists ClinkShrink, Dinah and Roy discussing a few questions on neuroethics I'd sent along to ClinkShrink, a forensic psych currently working in a prison. What's the line between the insanity defense and criminal responsibility, considering neuropsychiatric advances? What do they think about forced treatment of offenders, specifically chemical castration of sex offenders?

The trio offers some fun banter, and commentary based on their professional experience with the issues. ClinkShrink also followed up by writing the post Heads, You Lose in their blog, Shrink Rap. Thanks for taking on the topic!

For another view on neuroethical issues check out the excellent new blog The Situationist. There's a great three part series on Situational Sources of Evil by Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University.

cross-posted to Omni Brain

Stroke Recovery in Stained Glass

2007-03-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist and spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital, suffered an AVM stroke seven years ago that left her without math, language, and other left-hemisphere processing skills. With grittiness, family support and her professional knowledge about the brain and its plasticity, she regained capabilities in innovative ways beyond traditional stroke rehabilitation methods.

By creating stained glass brains art became both a means of expression and a logical therapeutic tool. Their beauty is almost a byproduct - except that understanding the value of being immersed in moments of appreciating beauty was another major lesson.

I asked her a few questions about her art prior to the release of her memoir, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, a fascinating and inspiring account of how and what she recovered and even gained from the experience.

---

In your designs, how much were you drawing from experience looking at and handling brains, compared to images in neuroanatomy books [which she referred to for refreshment after the stroke]?

I have a 3 dimensional picture of the brain in my mind's eye and the stained glass brain image is my artistic impression of the different parts of the organ and how they intersect. It is a composite of how others depict the brain in 2 dimension and what I know to be true about the brain in 3 dimension from dissection.

How much is science, how much is art, and how do they intersect for you?

I am an artist in my heart and chose to apply my art to science in order to make a living. All of my scientific projects are aesthetically beautiful - wait till you see my triple immunofluorescence study where we visualized 3 neurotransmitter systems in the same piece of tissue! Art is beauty to me, the brain is beautiful to me, therefore the brain is beautiful art to me whether in glass or in our heads.

In the photo you sent, your design seems a mix of the two. I recognize some brain structures but some (like the multicoloured areas along the top of the cerebellum) seem to represent something else? Symbolism?

The texture of the glass of the cerebellum is different than any other glass in the brain. I chose a feathered looking glass because the cerebellar tissue looks feathered when viewed under the microscope. The brain is anatomically correct from the level of the cingulate gyrus (orange band) down, the blue is the induseum griseum - the band surrounding the fibers of the corpus callosum (red/orange opaque piece). I chose opaque for the corpus callosum to indicate its density of fibers. Each of the nodules represents something specific - the RED for the amygdala (rage and fear), green for hippocampus (memory and learning), two purples - the pineal (third eye) and the pituitary (hormones). In my newer brains I always make the most posterior portion of the brain in a black/white stripe for the visual cortex V1 of blobs and interblobs, V2 Stripes and interstripes.

This was a form of art therapy; what differences did you notice between your recovery and others who didn't benefit from it? Were certain abilities re-established more easily or quickly?

I cannot compare this project to anyone else's recovery. All I can do is speak to what it helped me with.

1. Balance and equilibrium to stand still in front of a workspace and manipulate the project.
2. Gross motor movement, handling glass is very delicate and dangerous, I was highly motivated to be very careful for both the glass and myself.
3. Fine motor dexterity, cutting glass is a precise activity, grinding glass requires holding my body firm - equilibrium, pushing into the grinder - gross motor and then lining all of the pieces up - fine motor.
4. Cognitive development - this type of a project is a long term project with lots of steps. It helped me in my linear thinking.
5. Cartoon development of the original image required a combination of intuition and sensory organization.
6. Focus and concentration balanced with sleep.
7. Artistry - how does one tweak it all to make it remarkable and beautiful.

What about your creative thinking?

When I lost my left hemisphere I lost all of the normal 'in the box' thinking. When we think about shifts in the brain it is inadequate to focus on the loss because with every loss there is a gain. As a society we do not focus on what someone has gained in the absence of something they have lost. When I lost the ability to define, organize and categorize information, I gained the ability to be intuitive and creative. In the absence of the left mind and its dominating inhibition, I gained a completely uninhibited right mind which processes information in a completely unique way when compared to
the left mind.

---

Thank you Dr. Bolte Taylor! Abject apologies for the inexcusable delay in my posting this interview. It is, however, a timeless testament to resilience and creative spirit.

NOTE: The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center is in urgent need of brain tissue from America. Please call 1-800-BRAINBANK to learn more. Also, read My Stroke of Insight for the story of how that toll-free number helped save Dr. Bolte Taylor's life.

Cellular automata

2007-02-22T01:40:00.000-08:00

Jonathan McCabe is an Australian digital artist and systems engineer I'm so keen on that I've done two previous posts about his generative art 2D images and videos. He recently sent me a nice email with a link to more of his work so I had to share.

click image for full size

These images were generated using a cellular automata program he authored. He describes the process:

Each pixel represents the state of the 4 cells of 4 cellular automata, which are cross coupled and have their individual state transition tables. There is a "history" or "memory" of the previous states which is used as an offset into the state transition tables, resulting in update rules which depend on what has happened at that pixel in previous generations. Different regions end up in a particular state or cycle of states, and act very much like immiscible liquids with surface tension. The resulting structures remind me of cells under a microscope.

click image for full size

They remind me of microscopy too; check out these stones. Obviously very different, but…

He's just added 28 new images to the archive, explaining that "these have 8 coupled cellular automata and a different function generating the state transition tables, so they look a little different. I'm guessing the larger number of automata might lead to more interesting behaviour, but it makes it slower to compute."

My brain was a bit slow to compute the concept of cellular automata (I'm so not a mathematician), but in Googling to learn I found another cellular automata art project. Visit Artificial Life and Other Experiments by Ariel Dolan for that and more online, interactive works. Enter nucleotide DNA sequences to find palindromes, woot!

Meanwhile, McCabe has more images available online in the form of tiles/coasters sold at CafePress. At $4.50 apiece, art doesn't get much more affordable than that. Also a bargain are signed prints and more signed prints.

Future Scent

2007-02-20T02:14:00.000-08:00

Lavender essential oil aromatherapy carries a long list of pseudoscience claims, and though some are outrageous, it seems aromatherapy for relaxation may have some science to back it up. Smelling lavender and rosemary increases free radical scavenging activity and decreases cortisol level in saliva, Atsumi and Tonosaki [who are dentists, not psychiatrists], Psychiatry Research, Feb 2007 (epub). "Our study may be the first to report the cortisol-lowering effect of smell in human saliva," they said, concluding that lavender and rosemary scents may provide protection against oxidative stress.

Does this justify my rosemary mint shampoo and lavender soy moisturizer as medical expenses? I wonder what Ben Goldacre would say.

The handful of other aromatherapy studies include Ambient odors of orange and lavender reduce anxiety and improve mood in a dental office, Lehrner et al., Physiol Behav. 2005 Sep 15;86(1-2):92-5, and Aromas of rosemary and lavender essential oils differentially affect cognition and mood in healthy adults, Moss et al., Int J Neurosci. 2003 Jan;113(1):15-38. The latter reported:

... lavender produced a significant decrement in performance of working memory, and impaired reaction times for both memory and attention based tasks compared to controls. In contrast, rosemary produced a significant enhancement of performance for overall quality of memory and secondary memory factors, but also produced an impairment of speed of memory compared to controls. With regard to mood, comparisons of the change in ratings from baseline to post-test revealed that following the completion of the cognitive assessment battery, both the control and lavender groups were significantly less alert than the rosemary condition; however, the control group was significantly less content than both rosemary and lavender conditions. These findings indicate that the olfactory properties of these essential oils can produce objective effects on cognitive performance, as well as subjective effects on mood.

The Reebok Zan Chi Aromatherapy tank top is designed to release lavender or peppermint scent from heat-sensitive fabric but has yet to be studied empirically. Maybe it'd be useful for anxiety-provoking situations beyond yoga, but there's no FDA approval for it or any other of the vast range of aromatherapy products for mental health.

One neuroimaging study, EEG asymmetry responses to lavender and rosemary aromas in adults and infants, Sanders et al., Int J Neurosci, 2002 Nov;112(11):1305-20., recorded a shift from left frontal activity to right frontal (indicating a calmer emotional state), could blossom into a whole new subtype of neuromarketing (neuroperfumery?) for products like Smiley.

Touting itself as an "olfactive antidepressant," Smiley is a perfume containing "micronutrients to activate happiness." Theobromine and phenylethylamine are mixed into extrait de parfum ("maximum dose"), eau de toilette ("normal dose"), and a tanning simulator lotion (dose unspecified). The "pharmacodynamic action" of those neurochemicals is usually delivered via chocolate - ingested - not perfume - an ambient whiff. You could dip yourself in melted chocolate and still not feel elation from phenylethylamine transdermally.

But Smiley doesn't take itself or its scientific claims entirely seriously (being a chic concept from a French parfumier) so at least some consumers won't either. Visual designer ora-ito said, "I was immediately seduced by the idea of taking part in the creation of the very first perfume-treatment! For the Damien Hirst fan that I am, it's a kid's dream coming true to develop an ironic clinical universe." There's a photo of 50 Cents (sic) hyping the brand at Cannes. Ironic is key.

No word from Clinique, manufacturers of Happy.

Makers of lavender and rosemary essential oils must be thrilled by this latest study, but buyer beware. Though hawked by the Discovery Channel, Lovey the Lavender Lamb hasn't been in a lab.

[Cross-posted to Omni Brain]

Bacteria culture

2007-01-30T05:16:00.000-08:00

The artist hostprods describing Autoinducer_Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) (2006), robotic arms tending a rice paddy, controlled by AI modelling software interacting with synthetic and organic bacteria:

Both the organic and synthetic bacteria are aware of the state of their symbiotic partner via traditional chemical detection methods. As a denizen of an electronic environment, GCS [Generalized Cellular Signaling] bacteria signals are converted into signals that control various actuators and thus the regulated environment in which the bacteria are being cultured. Through this interface, the synthetic bacteria are fully integrated into the ecosystem and exert an equal influence on the system equilibrium. In addition to producing a chemical response, certain GCS signals are translated into sound and light rounding out the environmental stimuli of the ecosystem. The sum effect is a system in flux, one that teases the Anabaena and Azolla into behaviour distinct from the natural. ‘Autoinducer_Ph-1’ employs a pair of robotic arms to deliver Azolla to the growing rice as and when the GCS/Anabaena symbiotic brain decides. Although starting out with basic behaviours the arms evolve a more and more expressive mode of operation as the piece continues.

There's video at the site. Examine some other projects too, like Phumox (2005).

A crucial part of Phumox is the recognition of emergent behaviour in organic and artificial systems and how these organic and artificial systems can be juxtaposed to produce emergent behaviour through symbiotic or parasitic activity. Exploring these boundary conditions is the focus, as the most dramatic events occur not in equilibrium but in change [emphasis mine].

That's a truth in just about any context.

The Potential of Potentials

2007-01-19T19:08:00.000-08:00

Brendan Allison, Ph.D. gave a presentation to a Microsoft Research audience in June 2006, titled Brain Computer Interface Systems: Progress and Opportunities, covering some exciting R&D.

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) use neuroimaging systems (most commonly EEG) to measure brain activity and process signals to control software. Research is underway on implants/neural prosthetics, but EEG is non-invasive and getting more accessible. The familiar bulky array of 8 to 256 electrodes with conductive gel stuck to a user's head, impractical for portable consumer use, is changing as companies develop caps, glasses and similar small devices that allow freedom of movement and no professional assistance to hook up.

For people with locked-in syndrome from ALS, who cannot move any muscles in their body but remain conscious and alert, BCIs can be their sole means of communication with the world. Thought Translation Devices (it's not quite thought, rather ERPs) are used to write, and patients can even browse the web with Neural Internet. Researchers have created a robot controlled by BCI to function as an assistant for the disabled, and no doubt there are other human-liberating projects in development and refinement.

Games tend to get awed attention (see this clip on YouTube of Pong). There's Mindball, a competitive ball game, a video game purports to treat ADHD, and other neurofeedback games make various claims.

In the arts they've been used for performance drawing, artifact imaging, there's a proposal to create live video, and other nifty creative works.

Then there's the controversial Brain Fingerprinting lie detection method, and other applications too numerous to list in just one post.

Back in the Microsoft Research lecture video, Brendan Allison says electrode arrays cost as little as $1,000 readymade, and can be used with an ordinary computer (even a PDA). Mix in some DIY creativity and who knows what may result? If Make magazine/blog meets the OpenEEG wiki, it's really unpredictable. The future seems wide open.

EEG does have limitations. It takes considerable training to operate a BCI with a biofeedback-type method in which the user relaxes into different states; or to set up an interface based on recognizing objects. The process and interface can be cumbersome.

Considering electroencephalography has been around since the early 20th century, and growing more sophisticated, it seems we'll continue to invent applictions. Allison outlines much of the progress in his talk, so do watch his presentation.

Note that Microsoft has considerately limited viewing of the video to users with Explorer and Windows Media Player. How unfuturistic of them.

---

Journal refs:

Review Brain-computer interfaces--the key for the conscious brain locked into a paralyzed body. Kübler and Neumann,
Progress in Brain Research 2005.:513-25.

Neural Internet: Web Surfing with Brain Potentials for the Completely Paralyzed, Karim et al., Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, 2006, 508-515 (free PDF)

Jonathan McCabe videos

2007-01-10T01:06:00.000-08:00

Recently I featured Jonathan McCabe's two dimensional artwork, stills of patterns generated by neural nets in his exhibit Nervous States.

More and better: animations! Videos document the processes behind the stills taken for the Origami Butterfly Technique show. Fascinating to watch the changes.

[The YouTube conversion is not as good as the Quicktime, which you can get from archives.]

Jonathan McCabe is interested in theories of biological pattern formation and evolution and their application to computer art. He likes to write computer programs which measure statistical properties of images for use in artificial evolution of computer art.

Detail of an image from Origami Butterfly Technique; click for an amazing full size image.

Archived minimally; although McCabe is a digital artist, he's hasn't made a web site. Perhaps the neural nets could generate a design?

Read more from Generator.x.
Read even more from Data Is Nature.
Direct video link (.mov) Ten videos in total archived here.

Remote control cyber cockroach transformations

2007-01-09T02:42:00.000-08:00

Click image for full comic from Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North.

The cockroach wouldn't be aware of the transformation as its consciousness changed form and function. Ideally. Ethics, right?

I'm not one to weigh ethics, that's something transhumanism is mandated for. I'm a salon transhumanist as defined by Michael Anissimov, blending into arts and culture. Read the Transhumanist FAQ to find out why I realized I was already a transhumanist (yay SRL); perhaps you are too. Or perhaps you're someone at the top who reads my little blog but doesn't require links. Either way, hope the comic made you smile.

Diseased transgenic robots

2007-01-04T01:17:00.000-08:00

Transgenic dog/cows made of hacked I-Cybie robots, in performance art about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a.k.a. Mad Cow Disease, and issues in cow cloning (newly approved by the FDA). Part of Dog[LAB]02 by France Cadet.

Suddenly these pathological symptoms start to appear and invade the whole pack. One animal, then two, then three… the whole pack seems touched by this epidemic. The animal shake, stumble, fall down, get up painfully.

Then the pack of clones starts to exhibit an uniform and synchronous behaviour: all the robots start to shake and bleat all together at the same time. They can't stand up any more on their feverish paws. The mad cow disease seems to be here!

The tremors become more and more intense, then suddenly, they all fall down at the same time. Once lying on the floor, they groan with quavering bleats which seem to be insignificant when they are alone, but when we hear the 30 cries of the dying clones, they become frightening.

This is the end... The clones become clones again. The pack is dying in unison.

The artist notes, "By using a whole pack of robotic dogs, the aim is to create a much more frightening impression than was possible with the single dog of Dog[LAB]01, which often inspired amusement – something the artist did not intend. [LOL] The use of multiple robots also evokes contemporary anxieties about cloning, the spread of new diseases, and genocide. The dramatic death of the robots challenges the utopian dreams of transhumanists in which robotic technology is seen as a means of overcoming our mortality. As Luciana Parisi emphasizes, the novelty of Dolly, the cloned sheep, was not that you could clone an adult mammal, but that our genes and organs can be designed and shaped. The point is not solely that it is now possible to reproduce artificially, but that human beings can be reproduced from scratch."

Also burgers. Researchers funded by Kirin (the brewery) claim to have bred mad-cow-disease-resistant cows by knocking out prion protein genes. [Article epub ahead of print but Nature appears not to have put it online yet.]

Which is great since the alternatives of people ceasing to eat beef, modifying factory farm feeding methods (and laws), and/or international trade restrictions seem to have been too hard to do. Instead of vegetarianism, here's genetic engineering. Simple. But:

"By knocking out the prion protein gene and producing healthy calves, our team has successfully demonstrated that normal cellular prion protein is not necessary for the normal development and survival of cattle," [said] James Robl.

Prions are now optional? I must investigate further. Perhaps toward cyborg transgenic cows; robots with cloned prion-free muscle tissue, and...

Neurotechnosocioeconomic impact

2006-12-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

Neurotechnosocioeconomics is a fantastic new neuroword coined by Zack Lynch of Brain Waves in a post proposing a study on that very thing.

"What does it mean?" I was asked while spreading the new word. Just what it sounds like. The social and economic impact of neurotechnology (neurostimulators, brain-computer interfaces, etc.). Zack would like to further research the market and its social impact as regards the cost and treatment of neurological and psychiatric illnesses. He is seeking $2M in funding to quantify these trajectories.

Not the first person I've seen sort-of-seeking research funding on a blog. Does that work? Further study is required about this apparent trend, so I too will ask. I'd like a large grant for a project. Please comment with an enthusiastic "yes, I'm in!"

Various studies have compiled research on the economic impact of depression in the workplace, in developing countries, etc. One major report related to neurosocioeconomics from the WHO, The World Health Report 2001 - Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope, is oft-cited, and smaller studies also point to treatment deficits and directions. No shortage of depressing statistics on depression, for example. Unfortunately, there's been little socioeconomic impact as hospitals continue to close psychiatric beds and cut services, laws to require US health insurers to provide equity for mental illnesses languish and stall, and treatments remain inaccessible to many people suffering from brain illnesses.

Stigma is very strong. I hope Zack will have more success in swimming against the current.

Generative Art

2006-12-26T22:11:00.000-08:00

Nervous States by Jonathan McCabe is data visualization using a process that resulted in a material gallery show of six digital prints. Neural nets generated patterns processed further by the artist/programmer; entirely new, generative art. When it's based on a neural net and mixed down further, what similarities may remain with human systems? Interesting questions re the emerging art form of data aesthetics. I'm really just learning how much creative potential there is, not being a programmer myself. Two of my favourite sites on info vis are Information Aesthetics, and Data as Nature (hat tip for this very post); they feature a tantalizing variety of original ideas and images.

McCabe's Nervous States was distilled with a novel process:

Each image is essentially a visualisation of the output state of a small neural network. The X and Y coordinates correspond to two variables in the connections of the network; the colour of the pixel at that point is a representation of the network's behaviour for those parameters. So the image is a map of system states; coherent colours show areas of relative stability or gradual change; edges show sharp jumps in the output; marbled swirls show complex oscillations.

Got that? The teeming void's review continues, and sums up the intriguing essence of this work:

This work also makes me wonder about communication, meaning and generative art. As McCabe explains them, and in the context of the "nervous" metaphor, the generative system is poetic in itself; the images can be read in that context, as mysterious maps of complex dynamics - or they can function on a more "retinal" level, as sheer visual stimulus - or perhaps both. But how comprehensible is the generative system for a wide audience? Does it matter? Understanding the images as state maps, rather than physical (or even simulated physical) traces and gestures, is a considerable leap of abstraction. And at a time when open-source tools are drawing more and more artists and designers to generative techniques, McCabe's work issues a similar challenge: underneath the initial challenge of learning to code is the conceptual process of understanding, designing and visualising generative systems, and it's those systems that (I'd say) are at the core of the work.

Read on: teeming void's review of Nervous States.