Thinking Outside Your Brain Box

It's about eight in the morning, and I hear the front door of our office open. I hear the click-clack sound of the derailleur of a co-worker's bicycle, and then the bean grinder in the office kitchen, and then sound of the cofee mahcine itself warming up. And then a face appears in the doorway of my office. we've got about five minutes before the coffee is ready.

Idle small talk (how was your evening, good, how was yours, good, did you see the game, etc) for a few seconds until a key word is hit upon. Today, it's happens to be "cat." We begin to discuss how cats are, more or less, pointless. And yet, so essential to the human experience. That thing about strapping a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat comes up- the idea that, since cat's always land on their feet, and buttered toast always lands butter-side down, you can break the laws of physics by creating a floating, spinning, cat-toast machine.

From there we consider Schroedinger's box, the thought experiment where a cat is placed in a box along with a poison that is triggered by a randomly decaying isotope. So long as the box stays closed and unobserved, that cat is both alive and dead. We, my coworker and I, decided this is not a silly metaphor, and that if we trap out floating cat-bread machine in such a box, the cat will be both alive and dead and right side up and upside down at the same time.

Then we start talking about USB plugs, and how there should be a fifty-fifty chance of getting them plugged in correctly on the first try, but it always takes three tries. We realize that if we were to attach such a cat to a USB plug, since it would be at all times both right-side up and upside down, it would balance out the three-times plug phenomena, and the order of the universe would be restored.

Because things are always in the last place you look for them, simply because once you find them, you stop looking. If you start making a practice of still looking for something after you find it, the law of averages would start to swing towards your eventually finding things in the first place you look. You'd have to keep looking, but you wouldn't have so much anxiety.

By hooking up a Schroedinger's cat-bread-box to a usb plug, we'd be essentially tipping the law of averages back to getting the plug right the first time— the cat would do the spinning we'd have to do to ensure the average was always on our side.

Then the coffee machine went ding, and we were ready for work. Had an incredibly productive day. Socializing, Creativity, Caffeine: all are excellent ingredients to a super-productive brain.

The Once a Week Brain

We freely admit we may not be getting enough sleep. We certainly don’t feel as creative as we used to. But then, back when this blog started a few months ago, we were very excited. The excitement has died down. And here’s a bit f rationalization: we’re glad it’s died down. Now we can let dedication to the subject at hand be our prime motivator.

Rationalization, but it’s out story and we’re sticking to it. While The Great Brain Robbery was once a twice-a-day blog, and then once a day, and then four times per week or so, we’re switching to once per week. We have not decided what that day is (yet—maybe it should be Tuesdays) but we’re hopeful that it will result in better-written posts. Or at least more thorough. More discerning?

In the meantime, here’ what’s we’ve been reading about lately:

• Wake Up: “6 Ways a Poor Night's Sleep Messes with You”
• Meditate: “Why You Should Meditate: Become a Multitasking Master”
• Eat Breakfast: “Eat More of These Four Things For A Stronger, Healthier Brain”
• Get Some Exercise: “35 Year Study Finds Exercise Reduces Risk of Dementia”
• Don’t Think Too Hard: “Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in humans”

We know you’ll forgive for this small change, since forgiveness is good for your brain anyway. Thanks for reading and keep looking forward to more!

 

Alcohol and the Brain

Alcohol is good for your heart, they say. It’s also good for your brain. Sort of.

All things in moderation. A study performed by a team of Swedish researchers found that small amounts of alcohol fed to mice led to the growth of extra brain cells. They pointed out, however, that these cells may have taught the mice to be dependent on alcohol. After they were given alcohol, the mice preferred it to water. The researchers also suggested that while neurons that grew were normal, alcohol may simply have facilitated their growth through a tranquilizing effect that reduced stress.

A calm mind grows neurons more healthfully than a stressed mind, for the most part, although research has shown how certain high-stress experience can enhance particular memories. And while alcohol’s effect on growing neurons is being studied, ample evidence shows how excessive alcohol intake can be damaging to existing neurons.

As social creatures, humans have integrated alcohol consumption into a variety of activities. Getting black-out drunk is certainly bad, but even the placebo effect of feeling relaxed with a pint glass in your hand can be beneficial to the brain. This is not to say you should insist everyone must imbibe for their own good. Rather, by drinking in moderation, damage, if any, is minimized, and its possible actual physical growth can occur. In the meantime, pleasurable interaction with family and friends is good for both your brain and your heart.

And therefor it is important that drinking, even in moderation, be done in safe environments with considerable awareness for the effects it can have. If alcohol can be good for the brain, the damage it does in other ways can be mitigated by 

• Making sure you’re well fed before having a drink
• Making sure you stay well hydrated before, during, and after any drinking

Special cases aside, there’s nothing wrong with having a drink now and again. Consider the analogy of driving car: there’s always the potential of getting into a crash, but driving the speed limit and wearing your seat belt will decrease the risk to a point low enough to tolerable, allowing for all the conveniences that driving affords. Go careening around corners at high speed and wreck is inevitable, and doesn’t even afford any real convenience. 

Your Brain Wants You to Eat Dirt

What’s fun about the title to this blog post is the very idea that your brain “wants” you to do anything. As if your brain had a separate will from “your” will. It smack of Karl Pilkingtonism, from which we get the utterly wonderful quote “is my brain in charge of me or am I in charge of my brain?” 

Actually, if you Google the phrase: “Who’s in charge, me or my brain?” You’ll get millions of hits, and links to familiar news and science sites. So it’s not a stupid question at all. But the very idea of you brain “wanting” something belies a belief that your brain “knows” what’s good for it—even if “you” don’t.

Ever have a craving for something odd? Could that be your body “knowing” that a key nutrient you lack is in that food you’re hungry for? Or is that your body remembers not lacking in some capacity the last time you at that food? Is this what we mean when we sat your brain wants you to eat dirt?

No, it’s not, this time. We’re not talking about pregnancy and geophagy, where women will sometimes crave eating dirt, either because their bodies are mineral deficient or they want to boost toxin immunity (scientists aren’t exactly sure). We’re not talking about pica, the psychology (and probably pathological) desire to eat non-food items. We’re just talking about mycobacterium vaccae.

It seems that ingesting this bacteria has been shown to have a positive effect on learning and memory. Mice who were given the bacterium showed increased levels of serotonin and were able to navigate mazes faster and with less anxiety. Further tests showed this to be a temporary effect.

However, before you go outside and start adding real ground to you coffee grounds, be aware that the tests cited were not performed on humans, and that there’s no guarantee the dirt in your front yard contain the bacterium at all. You’d be better of simply go for a vigorous hike in the a natural area, and simply breathe deep the loamy aromas of the wilderness.

And what’s great about using yourself in such an experiment is that even if you don’t inhale any mycobacterium vaccae, or not enough to do anything, you’ll still reap benefits from the hike itself.

While it’s “fun” to say your brains wants you to eat dirt, we can promise your brain really does want you to exercise and immerse yourself in tranquility. So go for the hike and let us know how it makes you fell.

When in Doubt, Blame the Brain

On Sunday December 1st, a commuter train in New York derailed, resulting in 67 injured and 4 dead. The train was going 82 mph when it came upon a curve rated for only 30 mph. This is a curve trains have taken thousands of time without incident.

What happened this time? Why didn’t the train slow down? The engineer who was driving the train claims the brakes failed. If this is the case, the tragedy has to be chalked up to simple dumb luck. All machines fail eventually, which is why we have safety checks—but even those checks can’t catch everything every time. Misunderstood circumstances can lead to machine failure, and the only thing to do is study those circumstances after the fact and add findings to the checklist.

But there’s evidence that the brakes did not fail, that it was the engineer himself who was responsible. He claims he did not fall asleep, that he had a full night’s rest. No drugs or alcohol were detected, either. And safety devices on the train, such as a “dead man’s switch” would have engaged if the engineer had fallen asleep and his hands had fallen from the controls.

So, if it wasn’t the brakes, or sleep, what would keep a man at the controls but not aware of the coming curve? His brain, if course. Enter Automaticity.

You can walk without thinking about it, ride a bicycle, even tie your shoes or a hundred other seemingly complicated tasks. Ever drive a car from home to work, lost in thought, and arrive with no memory of the journey whatsoever?

Unfortunately, the engineer, having become so efficient at operating the train, was able to do so without requiring any vigilance. He simply “zoned” out, and his brain did not register the landmarks indicating the curve was approaching. He may have been lost in thought, or in a simple meditative state, both of which would allow him to be “awake” without being aware.

Can anything be done about this? Of course. Add to that checklist measures to keep the engineer engaged in his activities. Driving several hundred people with several hundred tons of steel should never be done automatically. Invest every trip with novelty and purpose, and automaticity can be thwarted.

Pink Brains vs. Blue Brains

There’s nature and then there’s nurture. Nature builds you from the ground up and leaves you there. Nurture shapes you. Nature uses blueprints that were evolved over millennia, nurture further molds you to fit your environment. If your environment shapes you in such a way that your blueprints are especially fit for the environment, those blueprints further evolve. But nature can’t make your blueprints so adaptable that nurture can make you into any old shape, nor can nurture be so aggressive that it breaks the original blueprints into something unrecognizable. More or less, no matter what nurture has done to you, you can always look back at where nature started you off.

So, at any given moment, it would be all too easy to confound nature and nurture unless we’re looking at your very beginning. A series of articles popping up all over the world today are claiming that men and women have different brains. But they’re not studying men and women at their very beginning—so is what’s being seen nature or nurture?

On the one hand, it’s a moot question. Who cares. If men and women are different, then they’re different, and no need to ask why. But the problem is, the strictest definition of one’s sex is determind by nature, at the moment of conception. At this point it’s just a label, devoid of connotations, and useful only to predict how the developing zygote, and fetus will shape itself.

But “being a man” and “being a woman” for anyone over the age of a few seconds is full of connotations, and those are connotations everyone holds in their heads… and as social creatures, we tend to reinforce those connotations on developing people i.e. children. And so we, the nurturers, shape and mold those who have been given certain natural characteristics until they are fit for their environments.

Or, not to put too fine a point on it, we reinforce existing stereotypes by using those stereotpyes to identify people with particular characteristics. We dress little girls in pink. We might be able to prove that girls are born with a natural preference for pink, but the point is, when people see pink, they treat the person “like a girl.”

Surrounding all of these articles about the differences between male and female brains are even more articles about brain plasticity, that is, the way the brain literally changes shape over time. The brain is plastic because of nature; the brain’s plasticity allows it to change by way of nurture. 

Therefore, all of these articles that are pointing out that “men and women have different brains” are essentially saying “men and women are different.” That’s as a determinant statement as ‘the word ‘man’ and the word ‘woman’ are different words.”