In the “Miguel Nicolelis: Brain to brain communication has arrived” TED Talk, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis discusses his latest project, a method and device that can record and transmit brain waves to any electronic device. His real-world application, a brain controlled exoskeleton that will enable paraplegics and quadriplegics to walk again. As for why I chose this TED Talk, well, it’s actually pretty simple. This is some Professor Xavier stuff, being able to link minds and communicate, from half way around the world in fact, is amazing!

At the beginning of the talk, Dr. Nicolelis talks about the opening kick for the FIFA 2014 World Cup, performed by a paraplegic wearing an exoskeleton that is operated by simply thinking about what the operator wants to do. He describes the new technology as “Brain-Machine Interface”. As Dr. Nicolelis describes it, a special noninvasive helmet is worn by the subject that can read the electrical signals in the brain (I can only assume it works similarly to an EEG) and then rewrites the signals into command codes that a machine or computer can understand. This code is then interpreted as a specific movement which the exo performs, like walking or kicking a soccer ball. He then discusses various trials where the technology was tested between living things rather than a man and a machine, like seeing if two rats can learn while only teaching one, or if three monkeys can work together to control a dot on a grid and guide it into a circle on specific areas of the grid. Dr. Nicolelis says there are no limits to this technology’s applications, and I agree, and, hope that we can all see it one day.

The part that interested me the most was the exo and the almost miraculous effects it can have on people’s lives. Not only would it allow someone to walk again, but it would allow them to feel again. Dr. Nicolelis says there are special sensors on the exo that send feedback to a vest that essentially fools the brain into “feeling” a sensation, like feeling the ball as you kick it. This has the potential to completely change lives!

I find Dr. Nicolelis to be very trustworthy, despite his blasphemous claims that Brazilians achieved controlled flight first (‘Murica). After a little research (Google), I found that he is a professor at Duke University, and is even a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, appointed by Pope Benedict XVI!

As for my own research, well Dr. Nicolelis already covered what I would have done. I suppose I would take it a little further with human trials (since it is noninvasive) and test communication through thought with multiple subjects. My tests would include something like communicating what key to press on a number pad. Flash a number in a screen for one person, and see if the person in the other end of the link knows to press the same key. Another test I would like to try is to have a number of objects on a table and have the first subject pick one, and then in another room, have the same objects in different arrangement (or possibly even different objects, except for the one the first subject picked) on a table and see if the second subject will know to pick the same object. If these tests conclude that the thoughts can be shared, then I would want to move to tests that require more complex thoughts to be shared, like relaying answers to questions or maybe even holding a simple conversation, like favorite colors.

If this technology becomes more developed and produced to the point where it is available to those who need it the most, like paraplegics and quadriplegics, then the world as we know it could become a little better as everyone would be able to enjoy some of the simplest things in life, like a nice walk in the park, or kicking a soccer ball again, something I now relies I take for granted.

(sorry it’s so long, this is just really cool)

I’ve always thought the brain was so interesting and have been floored by the information and research that has been done on it finding out just how complex it is. I’ve also always wondered how they could possibly perform the research and test theories on actual human brains and this video seemed to call out to some of those concepts. Jocelyne Bloch is a neuroscientist who has dealt with patients with brain trauma and started research with another scientist on the possibility for the brain to repair itself. She started research when she had to remove pieces of people’s brains to reduce swelling and decided to try to grow cells from them. The cells they grew was similar to stem cells except they didn’t grow quickly and would die after a few weeks. These cells came from cells found in fetuses for brain development and were still present in adult brains. It’s not clear why these cells are still present in adult brains but there are theories that link it to brain repair. Once they found these new cells from the stem cell culture, they started experimenting on the effects on monkeys to see if they could contribute to brain repair. They first taught monkeys to get food pellets from slots, they then put a legion in the motor cortex that connected to their hand so they couldn’t move their hands anymore. After about a month of recovery time, the monkeys had to perform the task of getting food pellets, the monkeys with a month of recovery time without any help, they were quite slow at getting their pellets, but the monkeys who had ben injected with the cells were much faster. She then goes on to explain all of the obstacles to get this done with human testing to see if humans have the same reaction. If the cells are successful at brain recovery, diseases such as Parkinson’s could be lessened. I think it’s fascinating they the brain gives us the tools to be able to help it heal itself.  Bloch seems to have a lot of experience with brains since she was the chief resident working in the ER, she also worked on the research and experiments done to find the cells and the effects the cells had on the monkeys so she was involved in the research and knows a lot about how the brain works. I think it would be beneficial to see how far the repair could go from studying monkeys, simply monkey’s arms getting frozen seems less vital to the body, if there could be a way to test how far the repair could go, that would be very interesting.

Jim Fallon: Exploring the mind of a Killer

I am interested in how someone becomes a killer. Mostly because I am a fan of crime shows such as criminal minds, but also because people with this brain malfunction live among us. I want to know if it is genetic, environmental, or something else, maybe a multitude of factors that result in a psychopathic mind. Jim Fallon used scientific studying of the brain to analyze the differences between a normal mind and a psychopathic one and figure out what factors cause the mind to be corrupt. He evaluated that there is a gene that can be activated when a traumatic environmental event occurs to a person who has not yet hit puberty. The gene is sex-linked on the X chromosome and males are more susceptible of inheriting the gene. This is because males are hemizygous (containing an X and a Y chromosome) and they only inherit one X chromosome, from their mother. Therefore, there is not a second X chromosome to counteract the initial gene, like there is in girls. When a person expresses the gene, they release an immense amount of serotonin, more than a normal amount, which causes the brain to become insensitive to the chemical. Serotonin is the chemical in the brain that helps keep a person calm. When there is a problem involving serotonin, anxiety is increased which can lead to depression. Another key factor of develping the mind of a psychopath, is precise timing. During the development of a child before puberty, a trigger that turns on the gene, is a traumatic act of violence that they see in real life. As Fallen put it:

Having the gene + seeing a lot of violence = disaster

Before watching the video, I would have assumed that having the kind of brain damage to be a psychopath would have solely depended on environmental factors. I didn’t think that nurture had as big of an affect as nature, but after seeing the video I can tell that the environment is the trigger and the gene has the biggest cause of brain damage. I think that Jim Fallon was fairly trustworthy because he showed evidence of his research by showing the PET scans and comparing the varying types. He had a good argument for what he proposed and his presentation was clear and went in an order that was easy to follow.

Being a biology major who is interested in the genetics field, I am interested in investigating further about how the gene is inherited and triggered, especially how it affects girls. I would also investigate how much serotonin is too much and what happens if there is not enough and how those two differ. And finally, if the different types of psychopaths are caused by nurture or nature.

I chose to watch Rebecca Saxe’s talk because the title just caught my attention. I assumed her lecture would be about how we as people can assume how other people are feeling just by looking at their body language. My assumption wasn’t completely wrong, but it wasn’t quite right either.
Saxe’s lecture begins with the question of how are we able to think of other peoples’ thoughts. She introduces a module of the brain named the right tempero-parietal junction, which is what allows us to think about what others are thinking about. She explains that just like most other parts of the brain, this one is no different when it comes to how long it takes to develop. Saxe presents us videos of children ranging from ages three to seven doing a false belief test, showing that it takes time for children to develop the ability of children to recognize that other people can have false beliefs. She moves on to explain that adults are not equal in this ability either. She points this out by giving an experiment similar to the one she gave the kids. And showing that people disagree about how much a person should be blamed for doing something wrong on purpose or by accident. Saxe even found out that you can change the way this part of your brain functions by using a magnetic pulse to confuse the neurons in charge of this type of thinking. When applied to someone making a moral judgment, people decided that accidents are not as blameless and something done with harmful intentions is more blameless. In a short Q&A after her talk, Rebecca speaks about how there is no danger with this technology yet and hopefully this research will impact education further down the road.
The most interesting part of this talk was that we have a specific part of the brain just for thinking about other peoples’ thoughts. I think it shows just how much of social creatures we are and how important it is for us to understand what’s happening inside someone else’s mind.
After reading Saxe’s profile, I think she is trustworthy. She’s a Cognitive Neuroscientist and made these discoveries while she was in graduate school and continues to do research at MIT.
If I were to do research on this information, I would like to set up a cross-cultural analysis in order to see how this part of the brain functions in cultures all over the world and how they would place blame on accidental and intentional harm. I would basically come up with tests similar to the ones shown in the video, except I would work very hard to make them relevant to the society in which I am testing. I would then compare my results with the one’s that Saxe has produced.

What drew you to choose the talk you did?

The talk I chose was Trust, morality–and oxytocin? The title interested me because I’ve always had a fascination with why people display moral/immoral behavior, and why we ponder it so much. I have read too many books symbolically discussing the subject, but I have encountered very few true scientific talks embracing why humanity acts like we do.

Briefly summarize the talk.

Basically, Paul Zak, or “Dr. Love”,  experimented with oxytocin levels in people’s brains and found out our morality chemical in our brain that makes us feel good when we connect with people, donate to charity, receive hugs, and do other moral deeds.

What did you find most interesting about the talk?

Frankly, I did not find the talk as interesting as I thought I would. Another man’s own interpretation of morality kept periodically popping up into my head as I watched Dr. Love’s video. The man was George Price, one of the most brilliant minds of all time in my opinion. He expanded upon one biologist’s evolutionary equation to basically create a mathematical formula explaining how humans developed altruism–selfishness. The altruistic gene is passed on simply because the people who have the gene are more likely to have surviving offspring which is the goal of every natural creature. Basically, altruistic, moral behavior can be inherited and is passed on down through a family tree. I thought something along these lines of inheritance of oxytocin and how we’re not altruistic or moral because we choose to be would have been addressed, but barely a snippet of it was offered. I guess if I absolutely had to answer this question, Zak tested oxytocin levels at weddings, and the bride’s levels will sharply increase as well as her mother’s.

How trustworthy did you find the presenter and the information she or he presented? Explain why.

To be completely honest, this guy seems kind of…weird. First off, he describes himself as a neuroeconomist, and he’s apparently a pioneer in this field. I guess congratulations are in order for this achievement, but it seems like that field has already taken off (without the cool title unfortunately). Tons of stores and corporations already use psychology and neuroscience to persuade consumers to buy their products. So I’d like more information and details on that occupation. Second, I didn’t like how he didn’t provide concrete proof of studies and findings, but that’s mainly because it was a video and not an article I could easily look up. Third, if you go to page 128 in our psychology book, it implies that oxytocin is already being studied to influence social behavior in 2008 by two scientists named Donaldson and Young. This Ted Talk was released in 2011, and the presenter’s name is Paul Zak. Interpret all of this as you will, but Dr. Love was not the most compelling speaker, and I believe him on his research, but he still seems a little hokey.

Come up with a research idea of your own based on the information presented in the talk and briefly outline how you would conduct it.

Referring back to Price’s equation, I’d like to experiment on people’s inheritance of oxytocin levels. I’d also like to explore if there is a correlation between the evolution of altruism and oxytocin. This would be a long, drawn out experiment, and I honestly have no idea how to even go about conducting it, but I really would like to tie these two ideas together somehow because I think they can be.

Sources:

Psychology around Us. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013. Print.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/altruistic-equations-that-killed-a-good-man-1358399.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/george-price-altruism

How could any one see a video with a title like “How We Read Each Other’s Minds” and not be instantly pulled into watching it? While scrolling through my options of TED talks I saw this one and immediately had questions forming in my mind. Questions like “I can read minds?” and “can other people read mine?” Seeing a title like that made me think that there’s was clearly something going on in the brain that I had no clue about, and that’s why I picked this talk. This “mind reading” talk comes from Rebecca Saxe, cognitive neuroscientist from MIT. Rebecca tells us about her study which focuses on how we think about other people’s thoughts. Her TED talk used information she gathered in the Saxe lab at MIT including a couple different experiments with children and adults. Rebecca Saxe’s whole “mind reading” topic refers to how we able to judge and interpret what another human mind is thinking. Rebecca leads this talk with one main question for the audience to think about: Why is it so easy for humans to interpret what other brains are thinking? She starts about with the physical location responsible for this specific brain function, the rTPJ. The right temporo-parietal junction is a very tiny small on our brain that has all the responsibility for judging what others are thinking.
The next thing Rebecca showed us was the development of the human brain being able to “mind read” along with the development of this particular region of the brain with age. In order to show us this, she used three little boys of different ages: 3, 5, and 7. In the experiment, they put each of the kids in the same situation where a pirate had a sandwich and sat it down on a treasure chest then left, then the wind knocked that sandwich on the ground and a second pirate came and replaced it with his sandwich then left. When the first pirate returned, he took the sandwich sitting on the chest, not realizing that his sandwich was on the ground. They asked each kid to predict which sandwich the pirate would take and then after seeing the results they asked them to say why they took the sandwich they took. The 3 year old predicted the pirate to take his original sandwich laying on the ground, and when he didn’t, his explanation was that he had to take the other sandwich because his was on the ground and it was dirty. The 3 year old was not yet able to understand how the boy didn’t know about what had occurred. The 5 and 7 year old boys both predicted the correct sandwich would be taken then we’re able to explain that the pirate didn’t know that his sandwich was on the ground. When they asked the two younger kids if it was the first pirate who should be punished for eating the wrong sandwich, they answered yes, unable to see how the boy had no consciousness intentional of wrongdoing. Only the 7 year old boy was able to understand and explain that this situation was caused by the wind, therefore the wind is to blame. This experiment showed what she called the standard disbelief task. Brain scans used to monitor kids brains during this time showed that the amount of activity in the corresponding brain region was much less in kids ages three to eight compared to adults. Rebecca used this to show us how over the course of child development, cognitive system and mind reading slowly forms and develop.  
Another question Rebecca had was could differences among adults in how they think about other people’s thoughts and can they be explained in terms of this brain region. So they gave the adult a test similar to the test given to the kids while monitoring their brain patterns for data comparison. The test group was given three scenarios. In one scenario, a girl named Grace poured what she thought was poison, but turned out to be sugar, into her friends coffee and gave it to her to drink, attempting to poison her friend. In the second case, Grace pored what she believed was sugar but turned out to be poison, accidentally poisoning her friend. Then the third case was just Grace pouring in actual sugar that she though was sugar. Then they asked “How much should Grace be blamed?” In the “attempted column, numbers were doubled compared to how much blame Grace should get for the “accidental” scenario. Then the third column labeled “fine” remained very low. When they looked in the brains, it showed that the more activity in the region, the more people paid attention to her innocent belief and thought she should receive little blame. This showed how more activity meant more ability to feel and think inside other people’s brains and use feelings and judgement to make decisions. The last thing Rebecca did was use a specific machine to turn off the rTPJ in the brain to see if they could change people’s moral judgements. Transcranial magnetic stimulation machines are used to disorganize small regions of the brain and was able to temporarily “turn off” this part of each individual in the group’s brain. Results showed that without a functioning rTPJ, the severity of blame people thought they should put on the “attempted” situation lowered significantly while the blame on the “accidental” test raised up, narrowing the gap between the two. The test showed how this region of the brain, in fully developed adults, is very important in how we perceive other people thoughts and feelings.

She showed us how her research was conducted and different steps she used, but didn’t give us a lot of important background information that would have helped establish more credibility in her research. We were only told about 3 young boys specifically that she did the experiment on for the child portion of her research. We don’t know how these boys were selected or what results and answers we could have gotten from female children. In the adult portion, she tells us that there was a group of adults tested, but nothing else. For all we know, this could be a group of 20 elderly women in a retirement home in Arkansas. She gave us no secure verification that this experiment was done through random selection, therefore hurting the credibility of this video’s research and results.

It’s a subject that I did find very interesting because we talk about a lot to the things that go on in the brain in class, but never really get in depth on this particular subject. Through my high school anatomy class and with the neuroscience section of college psychology, I thought I had the parts of the temporal and parietal regions on the brain figured out for the most part. But I had never heard of this part or its function. I think it’s very rare that humans realize that we can actually use our senses, knowledge of the world, and different brain functions to predict and determine someone else’s thoughts and actions. It may be a different version that we had in mind, but it is still mind reading none the less.

For my blog post I watched the Ted Talk “Jim Fallon: Inside the Mind of the Killer”. I was drawn to this video, because I had heard the rumor that every murderer had something in common with their brains. I wanted to learn if there was actually any legitimacy to that claim and Jim explains what his knowledge of the subject very well.

To begin the talk Jim Fallon explains the tests that he has been apart of lately. He has been given scans of brains to look at and make deductions about, but he is not told anything about the brains. The brains are randomized and he merely points out everything he sees in the scans. Within the random scans are the brains of murderers as well as a pattern. The first pattern is that every last murderer’s brain he has evaluated had damage to the orbital cortex. Another repeating factor is that the murderers had high traces of the MAOA gene which correlates with how violent someone is. This seems odd since the extra amount of MAOA occurs because there is extra Serotonin during childbirth. Serotonin normally helps calm people, but in excess it is possible for your brain to become resistant to it.Now another key thing that can occur for those who become murderers is that they have a violent and traumatic experience in their childhood. When someone has the excess genes and has had a very violent experience early on in their life, it really can be just a few steps away from disaster.

I found this talk really interesting especially the part where Jim emphasized that the key part of a murderer is a traumatic experience in their youth. The idea that one experience could lead to something so terrible really made me think about a lot of the things people take for granted and the mistakes people make everyday.  One simple violent mistake could put some child onto this horrible path.

With knowing Jim’s background and how much he has worked with this material I am convinced that he has recorded his findings correctly. I believe Jim’s findings are sound because the examples were given to him randomly and he was just documenting issues he found with the brains, the patterns were determined after he had already evaluated the brains. If I were to do an experiment I believe that I would gather a group of volunteers who excel in evaluating the brain and any issues with it. The goal of the experiment would be to document any issues with the brains of murderers and whether or not there is a pattern. I would not tell them the experiment was focused on murderers, because that is just unnecessary and I would be afraid that by telling them it could skew the data. I would take random brain scans from all over the world and I would ask them to document anything unusual about the brains. I would hopefully have a group of at least 10 specialists to evaluate 50 scans each. A majority of the scans would be of people with different brain trauma or oddities, but each specialist would have 15 scans of murderers from different places around the world randomly mixed in for them to evaluate. By doing the experiment like this I would hope to find any patterns or similarities between the murderers without skewing the data.

The Talk

For my TED Talk, I chose to watch “Thomas Insel: Toward a new understanding of mental illness,” viewable here. I was drawn to this one because mental illnesses are an alarmingly widespread and misunderstood category of ailments affecting humankind which have taken their toll on those close to me as well as myself. As a result, any sort of new research regarding how we understand and—by extension—treat both the illness and the person are of natural interest to me.

Insel began his talk by discussing a relevant point: although medical advances in the last 50 years have drastically decreased mortality rates stemming from physical afflictions such as  leukemia, heart disease, stroke, and HIV, not much headway has been made in terms of psychiatric ones as evident by the constant suicide rate.  In addition, neuropsychiatric disorders account for nearly 30% of the total DALYs (disability adjusted life years) in the US and Canada in comparison to cardiovascular diseases and cancers, which individually fall into the ballpark of 13%. The speaker gives three reasons in particular for this: commonness, high likelihood of becoming disabling, and early onset. Mental illnesses, then, may be viewed as the chronic illnesses of youth as opposed to the chronic illnesses of the elderly.

Would  I Trust It? 

I would. For starters, Ibsen is a renowned researcher with decades of good work backing him and his claims. This is reasserted by his former position as head of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). There’s some validity to the argument that he could be exposing an overly optimistic view given the lack of technology and what might be perceived as his own failings, but the research in of itself appears to be relatively solid. I give this talk a thumbs up.

My Own Experiment

Inspired by the graph showing the decrease in cortical mass in schizophrenic patients, I’d like to do something similar. I would conduct a long term study to help determine if there’s any similar “warning” point for depression. To do this, I would accept volunteers from families with and without a history of clinical depression and measure neurotransmitter levels associated with depression at five year increments (10 years old, 15 years old, etc.). Additionally, I’d take into consideration environmental factors specific to each subject such as home life.

As I was looking through the list of TED talks, one in particular caught my attention. Its title read “Sarah Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain.” In most cases, adolescence is thought to be a dreadful period of time that is uncomfortable to the individual and the people surrounding the individual. When I read the title, however, I sensed a more positive outlook on why adolescents behave the way they do.

I have always teased my brother about going through puberty, but after watching the video, I realized that I am also still going through adolescence. Adolescence was defined as the period of life that starts with physical, biological, and hormonal changes of puberty and ends when that individual attains an independent role in society. The talk summarized what occurs in the brain when an individual is going through adolescence, and how being informed of this phenomenon can allow us to educate and shape adolescents, in a way that is beneficial to the individual and society, all around the world. The main areas of the brain the speaker focused on were the pre-frontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and the limbic system. The pre-frontal cortex is used for planning, inhibiting inappropriate behavior, social interaction, and self-awareness. A study showed that there was a significant decline in grey matter in the brain during adolescence, which is often thought as a negative affect. The decline, however, is due to synaptic pruning which strengthens the synapses that are used. This fine tuning of synapses allow individuals going through adolescence to become more efficient at decision making, self control, and engaging in social interactions. The speaker also talked about the medial frontal cortex and how its use decreases in adolescents when they make social decisions.

The main purpose of the talk was to inform the listeners on what exactly happens in the brain when an individual is going through adolescence. The speaker used distinct parts of the brain to explain actions and behaviors that many adolescents acquire. The speaker was very informative, speaking solely from a scientific point of view comparing it to traditional stereotypes of adolescents.

A research idea to test the differences in behavior of adolescents vs. adults in different situations could be to set up different staged scenarios and analyze how each group of individuals react to the various circumstances. One way to test this would be to create a questionnaire with different situations, and allow both populations to answer. The answers in the questionnaire will be written in a way that can tell the difference between the part of the brain they have to use and whether they used the part or not.