Breathe In, Breathe Out

Monkey See, Robot Do

One of the cool things about the human nervous system is that we can learn to manipulate objects as if they were part of our own bodies. Stuff like shovels, rakes, skis, tennis rackets, golf clubs, what have you.

And this is not some pie in the sky theory: experiments on primates have demonstrated how objects get incorporated into those little monkey brain's body maps. Science writers Matthew and Sandra Blakeslee include a description of at least one such experiment in their book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own.

Now in a stunning new experiment involving a small monkey and a large further demonstrates how potentially useful that idea might become. In Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans - New York Times Blakeslee describes the experiment.

The monkey learned to control the walking motions of a robot half a world away, using thoughts. It seems the monkey actually formed body map areas in her brain that represented the robots leg movements. Amazing what a bribe of raisins and Cheerios can accomplish!

It's not hard to extrapolate this idea to prosthetic-like devices that would have all sorts of therapeutic, athletic or military uses. The Times article discusses some of them, and it's well worth reading.

But there's one big problem here. The whole model hinges on electrodes being implanted inside the brain's body maps. Opening up the skull and putting in things that weren't there before always has its risks, even if technology is shrinking the electrodes and connecting them wirelessly.

I'm still quite amazed with the whole notion of body maps and how quickly and profoundly they can change.

Technorati Tags: body_schema, brain, feldenkrais, plasticity

Not So Personal Genomics?

An article on personal genomics in the New York Times caught my eye earlier this week.

At first, I thought the idea of being able to purchase your very own genetic information might be cool, one more technological service for the early-adopting curious to venture into. Mind you, I don’t think I’d want to invest a grand in finding out things I might not want to know about. But, it was cool that people who did could simply spit into a cup and subscribe to their own genetic information.

But then I ran across Nicholas Carr’s column in the Guardian. Carr talks about one of the companies mentioned in the Times article, 23andMe. What I hadn’t really thought much about was the implications that Carr points out.

23andMe has deep ties to Google. As Carr points out, it’s not much of stretch to imagine the kind of databases that might ultimately collect lots of personal genetic information.

It does kind of follow that commercial data bases will come out of this, and you gotta think the insurance companies, potential employers and who knows who else will be interested in getting their hands on the information. And despite any privacy safeguards that exist now, we’ll have to think long and hard about whether and how we want that to happen. Anybody heard a political candidate addressing this?

Now I realize that a Feldenkrais Practitioner writing the occasional blog post isn’t the first to have these sorts of questions about genomics and policy.

Even the 23andMe website includes a policy forum. And a simple Google search turns up a number more. But as this combination of technologies develops, I’d hope the number of those concerned with the policy implications of all this grows as well.

Who's the Dummy Now?

It's not hard to figure out how ventriloquism works: a performer supplies the movement and speech of a wooden puppet. But knowing why the illusion fools us into thinking the dummy might really have something to say, that's another thing. A recently identified part of the brain might explain it all.

I've been accused of being a dummy. I don't know about that, but I've always enjoyed watching dummy acts, the kind with a ventriloquist attached to the little wooden guy. When I was a kid I'd have sworn the dummy was actually talking, making sound with those wooden lips.

But have a look at this You Tube clip and you can clearly see Edgar Bergen moving his lips to provide Charlie McCarthy's smart assed remarks.

You have to make a little effort to catch Bergen in the act of moving his lips - watch him and not the dummy, for instance. But clearly, the act is an illusion. And it makes you wonder why it works. How can the intelligent human brain be taken in by some glued-together sawdust and a guy moving his lips?

A recent brain study done of monkeys suggests an answer. In a very small and primitive area called the inferior colliculus, the brain processed vision and hearing simultaneously. And it does it before the combined sensory information hits the upper parts of the brain:

"This means that visual and auditory information gets combined quite early, and before the 'thinking part' of the brain can make sense of it," (study team member Jennifer) Groh (of Duke University) said.

It's also interesting to note that Bergen's act wasn't confined to the silver screen. He and McCarthy also had a radio show.

Ventriloquism on the radio seems at first a little odd. But I guess it was like any other voice character show of the time. And you definitely couldn't see Bergen moving his lips.

Radio shows are available here.

Quitters Can Be Winners

In (the original)  Rocky movie, Sylvester Stallone plays a fighter who never gives up - even when the champ is beating the crap out of him. The Rocky character's dream was to "go the distance" with the champ, and seemingly gave everything he had to get there.

But is it always a great idea to never give up, no matter what? Probably not, according to some psychological research cited in Psychology: Why Quitting is Good for You  - Newsweek Mind Matters - MSNBC.com .

The study divided its subjects into Bulldogs (who never give up) and Quitters (who ... you know.) It seems the Bulldogs run into more problems with stress and health than the Quitters.

But is giving up really the bugaboo that society sometimes makes it? Writer and blogger Wray Herbert puts a different spin on it:

It’s said that depressed people have a more realistic view of the world, and in fact some evolutionary psychologists now believe that depression may have had survival value when we were evolving on the savannahs. Depression is what told our bodies to slow down and take stock of the situation, be cautious, don’t dis the silverback. Today a little melancholy might help us give up on that Olympic gold, and in the long run avoid killers like diabetes and heart disease.

Don't get me wrong here; taking on a challenge is usually a good motivator. But when the goal becomes realistically unattainable, it may be time to reassess. That doesn't alway make for a great story though.

Eyes (and Other Senses) in the Back of the Head

Ever heard of peripersonal space? It's "the bubble of space around a person's body that his brain as part of him in its map of his body."

Body map? Yeah, it turns out that the human brain is filled with representations of the body and the environment it finds itself in. The maps are for both sensing and for moving. It's these maps that you use to move your arm or leg, and not the muscles that reside there, at least not directly.

Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee beautifully and clearly describe the ideas of body brain maps in The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. I just finished an initial reading yesterday, and I plan to have much more to say about this wonderful book. Lots of very rich Feldenkrais-related material here.

But what reminded me of it was this New Scientist post on an experimental headband that helps its wearers sense physical stuff around them when blindfolded. There are even some video illustrations. And the New Scientist post mentions other sources of information about this sort of contraption.

It's not hard to predict that these sorts of haptic devices will be widely available, probably pretty soon. What'll be really interesting is when they hit the consumer market. All sorts of athletic applications, I'd think.

But most interesting to me is what kind of effect it'll have on kids as they develop. Maybe the term "eyes in the back of the head" will be more than a metaphor in the future.