Oxytocin - Lesson 1

Evil Monkey (misnomer, I hope) promises multiple post's on Oxytocin and for someone like me who isn't a scientist, its gonna be an eye opener. So thank you Mr.Ape. Oxytocin has had a profound (self diagnosed of-course) effect on my life.

"Oxytocin is one of the two major hormones which are secreted from an area of the brain called the posterior pituitary (the other one is called vasopressin, and is involved in water regulation, though it also has been known to curl the toes of male voles).
The posterior pituitary is the one further toward the back of the head. But oxytocin is not made there, it's actually made ABOVE the pituitary, in the area of the brain called the hypothalamus (The supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei, if you want to be all particular about it), and the cells within the hypothalamus extend all the way to the posterior pituitary, allowing oxytocin to be made in one place and released in another.

So oxytocin is made, and when stimulated correctly, the brain releases it. Oxytocin has endocrine actions throughout the body. It plays a very big role in sexual arousal and orgasm in both sexes. In women, oxytocin is VERY important in stimulating uterine contractions prior to birth, so much so that oxytocin is given to induce labor, and drugs that antagonize oxytocin are used to suppress it if labor is premature. Oxytocin also plays a huge role in milk letdown in women, allowing them to nurse.
But oxytocin doesn't just act on the body, it also has some rather big impacts on the brain.Some studies have shown that oxytocin has strong effects on trust and generosity, making it an important chemical in human social interaction. In addition to these big effects, there may be roles for oxytocin in autism, in depression (particularly in females), and of course in things like social bonding."

This is awesome, I am not qualified to comment on this (still a student) and staying tuned.

Sea Urchins and our future

Fascinating research blogging post about the long life of Sea Urchins sans an innate adaptive immune system.

"Even though sea urchins are capable of reaching this old age, they do so without an adaptive immune system. Jawed vertebrates (that includes us) are the only species that have such an adaptive immune system. In a nutshell, this means that when we face a pathogen which we’ve never encountered before, our immune system ‘learns’ how to recognize the germ in future encounters, so that it can react faster next time. Because sea urchins don’t have this adaptive immunity, it is interesting to see how they evolved to deal with a wide variety of pathogens (them seas are full with bacteria and viruses!).
Scientists sequenced the sea urchin’s genome  in 2006. First analyses of the sea urchin quickly revealed the complexity of its immune system ². One of the most striking observation was the sheer amount of Toll-like Receptors (TLRs). In the sea urchin’s genome, 222 of these receptors could be identified, whereas most animals only have 1 to 20! TLRs are important for sensing different pathogenic signals. They can recognize bacterial cell wall components or viral RNAs, for example. In animals, TLRs only recognize the most conserved pathogenic signals. It has been suggested that this large expansion in TLR genes increases the spectrum of pathogens that can be recognized by the spiny fellow. This expansion is not exclusive to the family of TLRs, but also includes the NLR (203) and SRCR (218) gene families.
An interesting question would be if the expanded gene families in echinoderms (sea urchins, amongst others) resemble the Deuterostomian ancestor of Echinoderms (sea urchins and starfish) and Chordates. Maybe Chordates lost this expansion when they evolved an adaptive immune system? This seems to be supported by the fact that amphioxus, which is a closer relative to vertebrates but still lacks an adaptive immune system, also shows this expansion in immunologically related gene families.
So, there’s more to these globular animals than you might expect from their spiny first impression. I think this is another great example that shows us we can learn much about ourselves, evolution and how immunity works by the study of seemingly bizarre corners of the animal kingdom."

Soon one of these days, man will tinker our genome (for good) and increase the Toll-like Receptors or create another biomimicry so that we can reap the benefits. Well, all this possible only if people don't eat and convert them into excrement. In few centuries there is a good chance an exchange between a student and teacher might go like this:

"What do you mean our forefathers were gluttons and simply ate all biodiversity of the face of earth?"

What I've been reading

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World by Carl Zimmer is a must read for anyone interested in neuroscience. In some of the recent interviews, I have heard Nassim Taleb mention that he has been reading about the history of medicine, now I understand why he is hooked to it.

The book chronicles the life and works of world's first neuroscientist, Thomas Willis. Thomas Willis story doesn't start until the middle of the book and before that mostly is about English history. Yes, it feels like Zimmer is straying away from the central theme of the book but only way to explain the history neuroscience is to narrate at-least some historical facts which directly influenced science during that period. So if you are used to regular neuroscience books, then this one will come as a pleasant surprise or a boring history book. The books takes us away from the sleek fMRI, brain scans et al to grotesque scenes butchering animals to understand workings of the brain and those were the days when significance of the brain was grossly underestimated. Thomas Willis happens to be the person who changed that perspective and gave brain the right place it deserved. Its ironic it was the philosophers (like Aristotle) who put the heart at the center of the soul, instead of the brain and it was again philosophers (like John Locke) who finally vindicated the brain. In my view, the most important revelation from this book, is how the worlds first neuroscientist was one of the catalyst responsible for the "Idea of USA". John Locke was a student of Thomas Willis and was greatly influenced by Willis theories of Brain. In turn, John Locke influenced the founding fathers of this country.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It's safe to infer that the above words from the declaration of independence was one of the many ideas, resulted directly from understanding the importance of the brain, pioneered by Thomas Willis. The word self-evident sounds so simple today but self-evident wasn't an easy thing to "process" those days leave alone expressing self-evidence . (It's another matter that lot of things which are not self-evident to the current generation which will be self-evident for future generations)
Thomas Willis took a stance against Descartes theory of morality and soul being ("supposedly") uniquely human traist:

"who endeavoring as much as they could to discriminate the soul of beasts from the humane, affirmed them to be not only corporeal and divisible, but merely passive."

That was in 1600's, about 340 years ago but why even in the year 2009 lot of us think animals have no morality? One of the many obvious answers is its very convenient to look down on animals which makes the process of consoling the conscious pretty mundane task.

My interest in neuroscience felt nauseating after reading about the butchering of dogs and other animals to understand the anatomy of the brain. Worse, they even cut open dogs, keeping them live, to get a "live" view of the blood flow et al. In retrospect it seems like a necessary evil but these days hardly anyone (expect few) recognize the sacrifice made by millions of animals to make human lives better. Of all things in my life, the most important thing was always giving Max the best life possible and now I feel, whatever I do is not enough since one life time is not enough to pay gratitude to the slaughtered souls. But the worst thing to do is get angry about this lackadaisical attitude of the people and not getting angry is the hardest thing to do. The contagious forgiving nature of Max comes to my rescue and I am learning.

As a pay back, someday neuroscience might enlighten the people to change their perspective of animals. After all it was neuroscience which made our fore fathers realize the self-evident fact that "we are all born equal" and its time our generation enlarges that circle to include all living beings.

Yes, we are born with equal rights but that doesnt mean ...

I love this post by "Orac" and especially these lines are bang on target!!

"In the case of the anti-vaccine movement, what drives this arrogance of ignorance is an old-fashioned American distrust of authority (often good, but not always) combined with a democratic tradition in which every person is assumed to be equal. The problem is that equal under the law and possessing equal rights (which is he American ideal) does not mean equal abilities or knowledge. We as a people seem to conflate the two and assume all too often that, if Paul Offit can pontificate about vaccines, so can we, even though we don't have any special expertise in the relevant sciences. Too many of us assume that several hours (or even much, much less) spent in front of a computer studying at the University of Google renders our understanding equal to that of scientists and experts who have spent their entire lives studying a problem. Celebrities are no different, either. Indeed, fueled by ego and surrounded by yes-men and other enablers, celebrities seem even more prone to the arrogance of ignorance, be they Bill Maher, Oprah Winfrey, Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Billy Corgan, or Suzanne Somers. Worse, they have a much larger soapbox from which to spread their nonsense. But they're not alone. Whenever I want to demonstrate what drives this attitude, I like to quote anti-vaccine loon J.B. Handley:
I'm not intellectually intimidated by any of these jokers. Their degrees mean zippo to me, because I knew plenty of knuckleheads in college who went on to be doctors, and they're still knuckleheads (I also knew plenty of great, smart guys who went on to be doctors and they're still great, smart guys).I chose a different path and went into the business world. In the business world, having a degree from a great college or business school gets you your first job, and not much else. There are plenty of Harvard Business School grads who have bankrupted companies and gone to jail, and plenty of high school drop-outs who are multi-millionaires. Brains and street-smarts win, not degrees, arrogance, or entitlement.
Except that brains and street smarts count for nothing in science if they exist without an understanding of science."

This reminds of what happened in India few years ago with Polio Vaccine, some Muslim clerics spread myth that the vaccines are designed to sterlize Muslim kids. The sad consequence of that nonsense was Polio came back with vengeance after decades of struggle to eradicate and hundreds of kids got infected.

"India seemed to be on the verge of eliminating polio last year, when it reported just 66 cases of the disease, down from 1600 in 2002. This year, however, things have gone horribly wrong with India's polio elimination campaign; 325 cases have been reported already, and at least 23 of them have been fatal. What's caught people's attention is that 70% of those infected with polio this year are Muslim, even though Muslims account for only 13% of India's population. What's even stranger, and frightening, is the reason: some Muslims believe that the polio drops are part of a conspiracy to sterilize their children, and are refusing to let them be vaccinated.
This year's polio outbreak has been concentrated in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, home to over 170 million people. It is here, say health workers, that a few ultraconservative Muslim clerics have spread a myth that the polio vaccine is part of an underhanded campaign to sterilize Muslim children and lower the Muslim birth rate. Dr Hamid Jafari, the regional advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO) on polio eradication, says that the majority of Uttar Pradesh's Muslims have got their children vaccinated, but, "in certain places, fatwas have been issued against the vaccine." In those places, Muslims have stopped state health workers from entering their houses and administering the polio vaccine, which is administered orally, to their children.This year,  the Uttar Pradesh strain of the polio virus has leapt out of India and reinfected two polio-free neighboring countries: Bangladesh and Nepal. This shows that the continuation of polio in one country is a threat to all the world"

There seems to be no difference between these fanatical Muslim clerics and pseudo experts in the west expect geography and the reason behind the nonsense.

How to increase altruism in toddlers

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: How to increase altruism in toddlers

"Sixty 18-month-old infants were shown eight photos of household objects, such as teapots, books or shoes. Crucially, infants were divided into four groups, with each group shown one of four versions of these photos. One "affiliated" version featured in the background two dolls standing together side by side; another version featured a doll in the background on its own; the third version featured two dolls facing away from each other; and the final version merely had toy bricks in the background.
After they'd been shown these photos, another experimenter walked over to the infants and dropped a bunch of pens on route. Amazingly, the infants who'd seen the photos with the companionable dolls in the background were three times as likely as the other infants to help the experimenter by spontaneously picking up one or more sticks and handing it to the experimenter.
Further analysis showed it's not that the infants who'd seen the photos with companionable dolls were caused to be in a better mood, nor that they spent longer looking at the photos, than the other infants. Rather, according to the researchers, "the connections between affiliation to the group and prosocial behaviour are ... so fundamental that, even in infancy, a mere hint of affiliation is sufficient to increase helping."
Over and Carpenter said their finding has important implications for research - paving the way for future investigations of other non-verbal social influences on infants' behaviour - and also for real life. "Our data suggest that surprisingly subtle changes to our social environment may promote prosocial behaviour in our children." "


Sometimes the simplest of things have a profound effect, the social "butterfly effect". What makes these little things great is it doesn't feel like preaching or hardwork but paradoxically, we under estimate these little things since they don't seem to be mind boggling.

"Will" or "Grace" - Containing the devil inside the brain

I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Greene's on going research on "Morality". (Hoping some day they or someone else will start the same on other animals) 
Scientific American reports the latest study by Joshua Greene on how brain reacts to temptation:

"The power to resist temptation has been extolled by philosophers, psychologists, teachers, coaches, and mothers. Anyone with advice on how you should live your life has surely spoken to you of its benefits. It is the path to the good life, professional and personal satisfaction, social adjustment and success, performance under pressure, and the best way for any child to avoid a penetrating stare and a cold dinner. Of course, this assumes that our natural urges are a thing to be resisted – that there is a devil inside, luring you to cheat, offend, err, and annoy. New research has begun to question this assumption.
 A new brain imaging study by Josh Greene and Joe Paxton at Harvard University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what separates the well-behaved from the poorly-behaved might not be the ability to control your temptations but rather what kind of temptations you have. For example, foregoing the opportunity for short-term gain and satisfaction, whether it is a delicious slice of tiramisu or that wallet stuffed with cash you stumbled across in the empty parking lot, will depend more on the nature of your automatic urges than your ability to control them.

Greene and Paxton were interested in why people behave honestly when confronted with the opportunity to anonymously cheat for personal gain. They considered two possible explanations. First, there is the “Will” hypothesis: in order to behave honestly people must actively resist the temptation to cheat. In other words, returning the wallet depends on your ability to stifle your desire to take the cash and buy yourself something nice. Alternatively, there is the “Grace” hypothesis: honest behavior results from the absence of temptation. Returning the wallet requires no particular ability to control your treacherous urges – the urge simply isn’t there.
These two hypotheses make competing predictions regarding the brain regions activated when acting honestly as well as the time it should take participants to decide to act honestly. If “Will” is correct then people who choose to act honestly should exhibit heightened activity in brain regions responsible for cognitive control (presumably resulting from the struggle to ignore immediate desires). But if “Grace” is right then no such increase should occur. Furthermore, people should take a longer time to decide to act honestly if doing so requires a conscious act of “Will,” but a relatively shorter time to act if all you need is a bit of “Grace.” "

This is the neural representation of Walter Mischel's famous "Marshamellow test".

"In order to test these possibilities the researchers measured neural activity in an fMRI machine while participants played a computerized game wherein they could gain money by predicting the outcome of coin flips. Correctly guess heads or tails, you get some cash. In one condition, participants recorded their predictions before seeing any of the flips, precluding the opportunity to cheat. In the other condition, participants were rewarded based on self-reported accuracy after the flips, and therefore could fudge their predictions in accordance with the outcome of the flip. I got 100 percent correct, Mr. Experimenter, must be my lucky day!
Consistent with the “Grace” hypothesis, those who acted honestly (who guessed wrong and self-reported as much) showed no increased activity in control-related areas relative to others who guessed wrong but did not have the opportunity to cheat. Honest reporting of scores, then, didn’t require will-power, these participants simply did not feel the urge to cheat. Reaction time data further supported “Grace” showing that participants who acted honestly took no longer to do so, on average, when they had the opportunity to cheat than when they did not. The authors suggest that these findings demonstrate the human capacity to, at least temporarily, achieve a state of “moral grace” – a state devoid of selfish temptation.
But what good does this state serve? Why would we be averse, or even indifferent, to cheating when we could benefit from it? Perhaps because our automatic responses have evolved in social environments where self-interested behavior in the short-term has not always lead to personal gains over the long-term. Gaining a reputation as a cheat would be a one-way ticket to ostracism. Having intuitions sensitive to equity and the needs of others would promote the formation and maintenance of cooperative relationships that would ultimately be of benefit to the individual."

Great that they questioned the assumption of the devil inside us but the answer seems to be yes, there is devil inside us. Now the question is how to get rid of the devil? Currently neuroscience is in the process of discovering the "neural representations" of the human shortcomings (and strengths) but the remedies aren't there yet. I think the they are going to in the form of a "pill". I hope, I am wrong. (Well, there is always the good old self reflection and metacognition.)

Chinese challenge to 'out of Africa' theory

Latest Chinese challenge for supremacy, only this time they preferred to go way back in time.

"The discovery of an early human fossil in southern China may challenge the commonly held idea that modern humans originated out of Africa.
Jin Changzhu and colleagues of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, announced to Chinese media last week that they have uncovered a 110,000-year-old putative Homo sapiens jawbone from a cave in southern China's Guangxi province.
The mandible has a protruding chin like that of Homo sapiens, but the thickness of the jaw is indicative of more primitive hominins, suggesting that the fossil could derive from interbreeding.
If confirmed, the finding would lend support to the "multiregional hypothesis". This says that modern humans descend from Homo sapiens coming out of Africa who then interbred with more primitive humans on other continents. In contrast, the prevailing "out of Africa" hypothesis holds that modern humans are the direct descendants of people who spread out of Africa to other continents around 100,000 years ago.
The study will appear in Chinese Science Bulletin later this month."

As China and India are becoming economic super powers, they will be questioning every "assumptions" made by the West. I hope they start and stick to a rational debate. Chinese are right to support multiregional hypothesis as long as its backed by facts. Currently they have the money and brain power to do further research on this hypothesis.

An interesting thing I have noticed is everytime some one talks about Indian history, it usually starts with Indus Valley Civilization. Till date, I haven't come across any solid theories on what happened in India, after Homo sapiens came to India (assuming they came from Africa and genome proves it too) and before the start of Indus Valley civilization. What is the history of Dravidians? I think, we have to wait till the Indian GDP improves further (power of $$) but even then the Aryan / Dravidian divide is going to make this a Sisyphean task.

More and more truth will be dug out when paleontology moves in with Genetics and eventually leading to a marriage of necessasity.

Oh boy !! Rand Surplus

Jeez, if you haven't had enough of Ayn Rand lately then click here.

There is no scarcity of cognitive misers blindly following the bandwagon.

P.S. Stating the obvious - devouring Ayn Rand books while complaining about CEO bonuses, is ... cognitive dissonance.

What I've been reading

Superfreaknomics released last week, I got lucky and got the book from library last weekend. Is the book controversial? Yes, depending on who you are and how flexible are you with your "beliefs" when the facts change.

In their first book - Freaknomics, the duo faced the wrath of the Right with their crime reduction theory. This time, left are flaying them for proposing this simple fix to stop global warming. They chronicle story after story to back the theory on how sometimes the simplest solution are responsible for averting or fixing the greatest of disasters. All this buildup of-course was for the global warming chapter. Geo-engineering sounds like a great idea, Al Gore et al should stop critizing and put this theory to a rigorous test instead of exchanging sound bites since literally there is nothing to be lost (compared to trillion $$ proposal). The sad part if Geo-engineering works, then the bad habits of humans aren't going to change and worse it vindicates them.

The final chapter about Keith Chen's research was my favorite. Monkeys are people too chapter starts with Adam Smith's quote ("Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.), which I believe is very wrong (earlier post) but to my disappointment they finally deduce that Mr.Smith was right. It's about time we start thinking "outside the Ape". Mr.Smith might be right about Humans (and Apes) but his analogy (dogs) was wrong.

Levitt and Dubner are bully economists making tons of mullah but what makes them special is their positive externality called "Altruism".
The greatest discovery from this book is Nathan Myhrvold and his company Intellectual Ventures.

Cognitive Revolution

It's amazing how a powerful thought can be delivered in a humble and calm tone, as Frank Schirrmacher does in this edge talk.
He rightly quotes Daniel Dennett - "We have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them."

"Here European thought is quite interesting, our whole history of thought, especially in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, starting from Kant to Nietzsche. Hegel for example, in the nineteenth century, where you said which thought, which thinking succeeds and which one doesn't. We have phases in the nineteenth century, where you could have chosen either way. You could have gone the way of Schelling, for example, the German philosopher, which was totally different to that of Hegel. And so this question of what survives, which idea survives, and which idea drowns, which idea starves to death, is something which, in our whole system of thought, is very, very known, and is quite an issue. And now we encounter this structure, this phenomenon, in everyday thinking.
It's the question: what is important, what is not important, what is important to know? Is this information important? Can we still decide what is important? And it starts with this absolutely normal, everyday news. But now you encounter, at least in Europe, a lot of people who think, what in my life is important, what isn't important, what is the information of my life. And some of them say, well, it's in Facebook. And others say, well, it's on my blog. And, apparently, for many people it's very hard to say it's somewhere in my life, in my lived life."

Important hidden fact in what Dennett said is we have more than enough humans on this planet but their brains aren't used optimally. Best analogy I could think of is using a super computer exclusively to play solitaire. With the talk of coming cloud computing age, it would fantastic if the unused "Space" and RAM of the human brain(s) can shared optimally so that the "cognitive surplus" can be re-cycled and avoid the cognitive flush.

"Gerd Gigerenzer, to whom I talked and who I find a fascinating thinker, put it in such a way that thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that's the Internet and it's the cloud. And very soon we will have the brain in the cloud. And this raises the question of the importance of thoughts. For centuries, what was important for me was decided in my brain. But now, apparently, it will be decided somewhere else.
The European point of view, with our history of thought, and all our idealistic tendencies, is that now you can see — because they didn't know that the Internet would be coming, in the fifties or sixties or seventies — that the whole idea of the Internet somehow was built in the brains, years and decades before it actually was there, in all the different sciences. And when you see how the computer — Gigerenzer wrote a great essay about that — how the computer at first was somehow isolated, it was in the military, in big laboratories, and so on. And then the moment the computer, in the seventies and then of course in the eighties, was spread around, and every doctor, every household had a computer, suddenly the metaphors that were built in the fifties, sixties, seventies, then had their triumph. And so people had to use the computer. As they say, the computer is the last metaphor for the human brain; we don't need any more. It succeeded because the tool shaped the thought when it was there, but all the thinking, like in brain sciences and all the others, had already happened, in the sixties, seventies, fifties even."

"Now, in the twenty-first century, you have all the same issues, but now with the brain, what was the adaptation of muscles to the machines, now under the heading of multitasking — which is quite a problematic issue. The human muscle in the head, the brain, has to adapt. And, as we know from just very recent studies, it's very hard for the brain to adapt to multitasking, which is only one issue. And again with calories and all that. I think it's very interesting, the concept — again, Daniel Dennett and others said it — the concept of the informavores, the human being as somebody eating information. So you can, in a way, see that the Internet and that the information overload we are faced with at this very moment has a lot to do with food chains, has a lot to do with food you take or not to take, with food which has many calories and doesn't do you any good, and with food that is very healthy and is good for you.
The tool is not only a tool, it shapes the human who uses it. We always have the concept, first you have the theory, then you build the tool, and then you use the tool. But the tool itself is powerful enough to change the human being. God as the clockmaker, I think you said. Then in the Darwinian times, God was an engineer. And now He, of course, is the computer scientist and a programmer. What is interesting, of course, is that the moment neuroscientists and others used the computer, the tool of the computer, to analyze human thinking, something new started.
The idea that thinking itself can be conceived in technical terms is quite new. Even in the thirties, of course, you had all these metaphors for the human body, even for the brain; but, for thinking itself, this was very, very late. Even in the sixties, it was very hard to say that thinking is like a computer."

With over abundance of (great) information to be processed, I sometimes go blank, annoyed, incapacitated and overwhelmed with the lack of time and inefficient parallel processing by my brain. Clay Shirky is right when says there is never abundance of information but inability to filter information. Filtering information is not an easy task. It needs practice and patience. Trying to devour every available information will lead to insanity and exhaustion. I initiated the process of deleting some of book marks. It took a lot of courage since I deleted a major news site and swore never to visit on a daily basis.
Alternatively, dopamine might be someday driven to correct this imbalance. My loathing for dopamine had subsided after reading Jonah Lehrer's blog on this great article - A molecule of Motivation Dopamine Excels at its Task. Dopamine drives us to enjoy sex, food, drugs and other rewards but these neurotransmitter's are also responsible for the intellectual pursuits and great ideas. What if dopamine is made to focus on fueling the intellect instead of sports and sugar? Isn't this one of the greatest benefits of "neural plasticity"?
Finally, I think what propels an "informavore" is the drive to pack as many "Aha" moments in life as possible.

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo da Vinci.