From the archives - Neural Buddhists by David Brooks

Neural Buddhists, last year's greatest piece by David Brooks, was the sole reason which propelled my interest into Neuroscience and million thanks to him for introducing me the great neuroscience books.

Inspiration for this article was Tom Wolfe's essay "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died"

"To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists." 

I don't believe the argument about existence of God is going to go away but the debate is going to take a new stage. Basically the its going to force the so called "messengers" of God into abyss and God might take the center stage sans the "messengers". To deliver the message of God, the new "messengers" should scientifically savvy. In a way, its going to get rid of the unnecessary "middle man" between the believer and God.

"The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism."

"In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects."

Moments

We both are creatures of habit. Thanks to the gusty wind last night, I decide to wall in circles around the community few times instead of habitual route. The moment we took the different turn, Max gave this bewildered look and after reliazing I am going to proceed anyways, he simply stopped and refused to walk. I pretty much had to drag him explaining the wind situation. I dont think he got the message since he kept looking at me with an expression which pretty much nailed the message "you have gone insane and need serious help". Everything in life seems to be mudane when I get lost in his gaze and those expressive eyes are loaded with healing power.

Obviously, there is a catch to everything he does - faster we finish the walk, the sooner he gets to play frisbee.

IBM planning for $100 personal genome!!

The old gaint IBM after wetting its feet in the Blue Brain project, nows aiming to bring down cost of the personal genome to $100.

"More and more of biology is becoming an information science, which is very much a business for I.B.M.,” said Ajay Royyuru, senior manager for I.B.M.’s computational biology center at its Thomas J. Watson Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.


DNA sequencing began at academic research centers in the 1970s, and the original Human Genome Project successfully sequenced the first genome in 2001 and cost roughly $1 billion.

Since then, the field has accelerated. In the last four to five years, the cost of sequencing has been falling at a rate of tenfold annually, according to George M. Church, a Harvard geneticist. In a recent presentation in Los Angeles, Dr. Church said he expected the industry to stay on that curve, or some fraction of that improvement rate, for the foreseeable future.

At least 17 startup and existing companies are in the sequencing race, pursuing a range of third-generation technologies. Sequencing the human genome now costs $5,000 to $50,000, although Dr. Church emphasized that none of the efforts so far had been completely successful and no research group had yet sequenced the entire genome of a single individual.

The I.B.M. approach is based on what the company describes as a “DNA transistor,” which it hopes will be capable of reading individual nucleotides in a single strand of DNA as it is pulled through an atomic-size hole known as a nanopore. A complete system would consist of two fluid reservoirs separated by a silicon membrane containing an array of up to a million nanopores, making it possible to sequence vast quantities of DNA at once.

The company said the goal of the research was to build a machine that would have the capacity to sequence an individual genome of up to three billion bases, or nucleotides, “in several hours.” A system with this power and speed is essential if progress is to be made toward personalized medicine, I.B.M. researchers said."


Its getting obvious now that Carlson curve is way ahead of its peer Moore's law .
Capitlism getting into neuroscience and genome is always a welcome sign(might not true always but the non-capitlist option is worst unless we find a new radical approach), since government, insurance companies and people knowledge of prevention never works (and rightly called "utopian" dream). The biggest rescuer   will be the biotech.

Malcontent vs Schadenfreude

In my hypothetical world, I am forced to choose between a Malcontent or Schadenfreude as friend to spend rest of the life in a island (ofcourse in real world, I rather die and there is no place to go without Max).Its a tough choice but picking the choice depends on knowing thyself.

I probably have very active mirror neurons which would lead Malcontents to be very contagious and eventually a perceptual downhill cycle of depression. Schadenfreude on the other hand cannot have same contagious effect since mirror neurons is loaded with empathy but the bad news is  Schadenfreude probably lack active mirror neurons.

Considering different logic, sometimes Schadenfreude can have some fun outside their defined boundaries of "fun" and worst case they might have some normal time by faking it. Malcontent definitely cannot have fun which goes against everything they "believe" and best case scenario might be a Sisyphean effort recovering from an episode.

Equation changes if it gets physical but nevertheless Malcontent can be a slow poison  and can be suicidal.Well, at-least excesses of one can be considered unlawful and other kind at the best can pop bills but still living in the society.
 
Yeah, lately I have been having the pleasure of exposed constantly with both types but I am probably biased by the intensity difference. I cannot begin to explain who grateful for Max saving me from being contaminated.

"Because they feel unhappy, men cannot bear the sight of someone who is happy." - Arthur Schopenhauer

The flood of thirst

I was expecting this for a long time now and kinda relieved (lament) to find this yesterday - India's thirst making us all wet

"One nation's thirst for groundwater is having an impact on global sea levels. Satellite measurements show that northern India is sucking some 54 trillion litres of water out of the ground every year. This is threatening a major water crisis and adding to global sea level rise.
Virendra Tiwari from the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, India, and colleagues used gravity data from the GRACE satellite to monitor the loss of continental mass around the world since 2002. Regions where water is being removed from the ground have less mass and therefore exert a smaller gravitational pull on the satellite.
The data revealed that groundwater under northern India and its surroundings is being extracted exceptionally fast. Tiwari and colleagues calculate that between 2002 and 2008 an average of 54 cubic kilometres - enough to fill more than 21 million Olympic swimming pools - was lost every year. Boreholes in the region show the water table is dropping by around 10 centimetres a year.
Agriculture is the primary culprit, says John Wahr of the University of Colorado at Boulder. If the trend isn't reversed soon, the 600 million people living in the region could face severe water shortages in the next few years.
The "lost" water doesn't just disappear, though. Most of it runs into the oceans. The team calculates that it could be pushing up global sea levels by as much as 0.16 millimetres each year. That's 5 per cent of total sea level rise."

The worst part of this news is that the data is for only northern India!! Its been 20 years but I do vividy remember the cacophony of borewell drilling by every neigbour who could afford in every city I have lived in Southern India.

Anyone who was bought up with ubquitous water scaricity might gape at the American Lawns. I was no exception their. Here's an old article by Micheal Pollan:

"NO WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE LAWNS AS PRIZED AS IN America. In little more than a century, we've rolled a green mantle of grass across the continent, with scarcely a thought to the local conditions or expense. America has more than 50,000 square miles of lawn under cultivation, on which we spend an estimated $30 billion a year, this according to the Lawn Institute, a Pleasant Hill, Tenn., outfit devoted to publicizing the benefits of turf to Americans (surely a case of preaching to the converted)."

The Lawn: A History of American Obsession, is a great book for the much needed wake up call and a good cure. To paraphase some I read last year, says it all:
"Someday we might look back with a curious nostalgia at the days when profligate homeowners wastefully sprayed their lawns with liquid gold to make the grass grow, just so they could then burn black gold to cut it down on the weekends. Our children and grandchildren will wonder why we were so dumb."

Here's one country pouring water into earth for decor which makes no ecological sense and another which is sucking every drop from earth to quench the thirst of billion people.
There are great ongoing debates about the coming water wars. 
Its impossible to appreciate and relish the simplest pleasure of having abundant water until one's body hasn't experienced the lack of it.

This is not someone else's problem - its a human problem and its already in this country slowly creeping into California , Nevada , Carolina/Georgia et al and famous ongoing Indian Cauvery controversy for decades.

Having seen the politics of thirst, this quote sounds naive but I hope it comes true in future.

“I think water hits us at a profoundly different level than other resources. People are willing to do horrible things to each other. What they seem not willing to do is turn off each other’s water.” —Aaron Wolf

Eschewing hypothesis, I am optimistic about the evolving pragmatic solutions, check out this recent demo by Michael Pritchard.

What I've been reading

Helen Fisher new book Why Him? Why Her?. I was dicey about this one since the title sounded like one of those Linda Goodman books but picked it up after reading this review/interview (thro' Jonah Lehrer's blog) since it was talking about  chemistry/neuroscience behind our personalities.

Its a good book, the four types might sound like a reductionist view of love and our personalities but it is very broad view. Its fascinating to find out how the difference in  Dopamine, Serotonin, Testosterone and Estrogen defines who we are. Well, my Oxytocin theory came true again!!

The book sometimes gets repititive but worth the read for its novel approcah and have some great quotes.

"Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulders." - Henry David Thoreau

Last lines from Origin of Species

The contagious nature of Steven J Gould's books made me fell in love with these last lines from Darwin's Origin of Species:

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Damn!! there is indeed grandeur in this view of life.

Oxytocin driven life

It's been a while since I have self diagnosed my Oxytocin surpluses and yes, I am aware this theory could be my argumentum ad ignorantiam too.

Let me put it this way, I am not sure how to test for Oxytocin level in my body or to be bland, I don't think my insurance company would gleefully agree to the test just full fill my curiosity. So for the time being, I am left without any solid proof for my theory.

Oxytocin is the hormone of love and boast's the empathy rating in an individual.
Thanks to Olmert's book Made for each other : The Biology of human animal bond , Oxytocin explained my surreal relationship with Max. I call it surreal only because I was afraid of dogs all my life until Max came to my life. I could see myself talking to the younger me and asking what the heck were you thinking all your life? Max oozes with Oxytocin as well, five minutes with him will change any agnostic. Our bond was one of the simplest explanation and Oxytocin fits perfectly to the theory. Also, It's a no brainer when Oxytocin explains the romantic libran inside me.

Growing up in India, romanticized by "Robinhood-Bollywood" movies, I had this profound feeling of helpness on how to help the needy. Well this could be easily explained as a teenagers idealistic view of the world and flirting with socialism. Its been a long time now since I have shed the quixotic memories and understand Adam Smith's theories (and its limits) but still every time I visit India, the omnipresent booming economy doesn't impress me. What I see instead is the other side of India which I saw all my life, unchanged. There comes this overwhelming empathy for those people who live like what humans aren't supposed to live and my rational mind consoling my empathy as this is "civilization in process". There lies the dangers of my Oxytocin to flirt with irrationality and having know its shortcoming (depending on how we use it), I despise socialism, understand the limits of capitalism and the free-riders among the people whom I empathize.


My biggest shortcoming was trust. People can sweet talk (the right way), their way into my heart and I get blind sighted even when something is obviously wrong. I don't trust everyone like an moron but the people I trusted most in life, in hindsight turned out to be someone I wouldn't have trusted if I was aware of the obviousness of some facts. At the same time, the greatest benefit in trusting people is trust becomes mutual. Oxytocin's effect on trust is beautifully inferred from this trust game study:


"The amygdala is a region of the brain involved in emotion and fear learning, and is rich in oxytocin receptors, whereas the caudate nucleus has been previously linked to reward-related responses and learning to trust . Thus, the authors hypothesized that oxytocin decreases both fear mechanisms associated with a potential aversion of betrayals (via the amygdala) and our reliance on positive feedback that can influence future decisions (via the caudate). This in turn facilitates the expression of trust even after breaches of trust have occurred."


Last time I checked I am still a social animal and I cannot simply stop trusting people which will be a ridiculous extremity. Science exposed my flaws and changing it on the surface its looks like a sisyphean task but its upto me to be prudent and vigilant.



So far Oxytocin lead to a self justification hypothesis of my goodness and even its short comings portrayed me as an innocent victim. Recently, my theory put me in spot !! I read this new research :

"Breathing in the hormone oxytocin has been shown in recent years to trigger all kinds of feel-good emotions in people, such as trust, empathy and generosity. Now scientists find it might have a dark side: Snorting oxytocin might also incite envy and gloating.
Past studies have shown that oxytocin plays a wide role in social bonding in mammals—between mates, for instance, or mother and child—and recent work suggested the hormone was linked with pro-social behavior in people, such as altruism."

That was one heck of study which bought my self justification to its toes. Not every one is a monk and we succumb to envy. To be fair, I don't get envy very easily though but there are things close to my heart leads to envy when irrationality thinks it's endangered. In retrospect, I was possessive of my Dad (and sharing his affection) and it some times reflects even to this day. About Max, there is no question I get jealous, when he avoids me to play with guest at home. Max is no saint either, he is driven by Oxytocin too, I cannot touch any another dog and for that matter, no one can touch me either. No wonder, we get along so well!! As far as gloating, I loathe it but flamboyance is inbred in me. I always adored humility and only people I look up to are the humble ones.
Oxytocin explained so much of my idiosyncrasies, my strengths and weakness but I am not blindly in love with Oxytocin, it simply answers who I am and why I am, the way I am.I am not going to be driven by confirmation bias and open to alternatives if my Oxytocin theory becomes a fallacy.

"Man will become better when you show him what he is like." - Anton Chekhov

Happy Birthday Gandhiji

Not sure when, how and why it started, I never forget Gandhi Jayanthi  and I am so glad my memory helps me out. I admire this man inspite of his innate human flaws.

Last night, I remembered a great blog I read last year - "Admiring a flawed Gandhi"

"The flaws don’t diminish these men, they make them more interesting, revealing their complexities. Ignoring that and seeing them only as icons is our flaw."

He never had the pristine philosophy we phantasmagorically created but he was the quintessential man portrayed in Robert Frost's poem Road less traveled.

What I've been reading

Freedom's battle : the origins of humanitarian intervention  by Gary J Bass.
Picked up this book after reading mixed reviews (here & here) and also driven by the curiosity by the books title. Did it full fill my curiosity? Yes and No. I was little disappointed not because of the fault of author but because of my own expectations. It was naive of me to expect people raising to revolt against the slaughtering of thousands in an another country which doesn't happen to this day. The philosophy of recusing the strangers in far away land started in 1800's although it was instigated by religiousity. Yes, it all started with Christian/Muslim animosity but there is more to it than that in this book. It fills all the historical gaps which the quintessential history books miss out.


Does everyone feels empathy for a strangers in a far away land? This question has been asked for generations with no precise answer. Adam Smith wrote in his famous (& lesser read) book, Theory of Moral Sentiments - "If he were to lose his little finger tomorrow, he wouldn't sleep tonight but provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of this own."

David Hume wrote before Adam Smith - "The Breaking of a mirror gives us more concern when at home, than the burning of a house, when abroad, and some hundred leagues distant." 

Neuroscience agrees with Hume and Smith about our nonchalance but at the same time, having equipped with mirror neurons, we drool with empathy. I think, mirror neurons play one of the most crucial role in feeling empathy for strangers or not. There is no point being the most intellectually equipped creatures and feeling no empathy, when even a mice can feel it. (Having read this book, it makes me wonder if Peter Singers philosophy of expanding our circle of morality to animals, is ever possible.) One thing that stands out prominently is its the people of arts were the surrogate voice for the suffering strangers, starting for Poet Lord Bryson to current day Bono and George Clooney et al.

It's a historically enduring  coincidence but obviously they have fame their side to make their voices heard. To be fair, as the book reveals that the adversaries of humanitarian intervention weren't lacking empathy but were pragmatic about the political intricacies, which in hindsight makes them look bad. This vacillating debate is carried since the Greek genocide to till date in Dar-Fur. This book enlightens us that there is no right answer since international politics is not naive as we expect it to be and inveils the power of media to drive the cizitens and policy makers alike.


The end of US humanitarian ideology started with Black Hawk massacre in Somalia, which made us question the cost of sacrificing American lives for a civil war in a far away land. This debate is going to carried on for generations to come but my guess is science can stop it. With Robotics, American lives need not be sacrificed in vain. Drones and the other futuristic devices (PW Singer's eyeopener Wired for war), lot of civil wars can be stopped right in their roots. Omnipresent tools like google earth can be used to increase the awareness of the people and even if governments refused to intervene, humanitarian organizations can even rent Drones etc to act with assertiveness. The greatest beneficiaries of this fascinating technological advancement in next few decade might turn out to be the voiceless strangers under a despotic state.


To sum it all up, these lines from Victor Hugo,  tells us what makes this world a special place and why goodness prevails in the end.


"There are hours when human conscience speaks and orders governments to listen. The governments stammer a reply… To quibble with public indignation, nothing more miserable. The attenuations aggravate. It is subtlety pleading for barbarism. It is byzantine excusing Stamboul. Let us call things by their name. To kill a man at the corner of a wood called a Forest of Bondy is a crime; to kill a people at the corner of that other wood called Diplomacy is a crime also - a greater one. That is all the difference. Does crime diminish in proportion to its enormity? Alas, that is indeed an old law of history. Kill six men you are Troppmann, kill 600,000 yopu are Caesar. To be monstrous is to be acceptable.. "But," we are told, "you forgot that there are questions!" To murder a man is a crime, to murder a people is a question! Each government has its question, Russia has Constantinople, England has India, France has Prussia, Prussian has France. We reply, "Humanity also has its question," and that question is this. It is greater than India, England, and Russia. It is the infant in it's mother womb. Let us supersede political question by the human question."