Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

Suicide as a disease and the space between

Interesting piece in this week's New Scientist on the attempts by psychiatrists (particularly those with advanced neuromania) to explain suicidal behaviour through primarily biological means (in terms of brain abnormalities, genetics and epigenetics)

Shame really that the conversation starts off from such a poor premise:  "Until the 1980s, people who committed suicide were considered, by definition, to be depressed" (i.e. to be a function of individual pathology).

As we wrote early on in the history of this blog, the outbreaks of suicide that many populations see are often better explained by social means than as a function of individual agents.

In other words, by what happens in the space between us rather than the space between our ears.

Just striking how wilful psychiatrists and their like are in ignoring the social perspective. Shame - Durkheim is very beautiful and clearly written.

 

Related articles

Is Suicidal Behavior A Disease?

Why be suspicious of claims made by neuro-imaging vendors

I know we've talked about this a lot but here's a nice neat quote saying much the same thing...

"the unit of analysis is individual, yet humans are social animals with brains that have evolved to enable their owners to survive in complex social environments, not to solve abstract problems"

From Genes, Cells & Bones

Science, Science Club and the brain

Been pondering recently how and why (and just the surprise of) science becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon.

Not just the CERN Hadron Collider (much of the tabloid conversation around which was more Sci-fi than science, more crazy physics professors trying to destroy the structure of reality...etc etc)

But also the more general excitement and enthusiasm around science and science-based content - BBC Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage, the irrepressible Prof Brian Cox's Astronomy shows and Dara O Briain's Science club

Some of this is clearly to do with the rise of the geek as a cultural identity, some of it a reaction to the terrible wibbly wobbly irrationality and superstition of the vaccine refusniks, homeopathy proseltysers and the religious fundamentalists.

But let's be honest, little of it has anything to do with actual rational & independent choice. 

Most of this - as yesterday's post about Alex & Mike's NYT piece suggested - is likely shaped by people copying each other, not by them making rational decisions based on the evidence. That said, it's a welcome development given the times.

How strongly this shift in attention to science and scientific work compares with the "personal opinions" on abortion and premature birth survival rates that certain UK ministers have expressed (which are clearly contradicted by the evidence).

And in our own part of the forest, with the over claimed certainties and inappropriate precision of so many vendors of what some call "neurononsense", "neuromania" or just plain "brain porn" (aka Neuromarketing).

How delightful then to watch Prof Uta Frith and other neuroscientists on the latest episode of Dara's show (particualry Frith) with their humour, humility and honesty remind us that we're really on at the beginning of understanding how individual brain activity relates to behaviour.

As my old headmaster would say, "mark and note".

 

Social neuroscience: games and social hurt (Amended)

Lovely feature in this month's NS which uses "Cyberball" (see above) - a game for 3 players (actually only 1 and 2 computer stooges) to explore the neuroscience of ostracism.

Yes, that's right, HERDmeister is recommending a piece of neuroscience...ring out those bells

Social neuroscience is the coming thing: it's one thing to understand the neurophysiological basis of individual responses but to understand better how our interactions with each other effect us....

Folk like Marco Iacaboni whose excellent work on mirror neurons and John Cacioppo's fab Loneliness book which traced the real physiological (including neurophsyiological) impact of chronic loneliness are among those laying a great path.

Given how important we know that social influence is and the centrality of social to the diffusion of ideas and behaviour, this seems like the beginning of something really exciting.

Watch this space...

 

NB AMENDED December 5th: I inadvertently elided the eminent Iacaboni and Cacioppo. Apologies to you and them.

Science as a social not an individual game

Really lovely piece in London's Evening Standard today on the importance of science as a way of learning and understanding the world - prompted clearly by the extraordinary work done at CERN and elsewhere to discover the Higgs-Boson particle.

Couple of thoughts:

First, science isn't primarily an individual activity. Of course, individuals are involved (and those that get lucky get to have stuff named after them and have stories told about their heroic efforts).

Most scientific research is a team game in two or three really important ways: in experimental science most studies are carried out with other people and in analytic and theoretical science most papers are jointly authored.

Equally, scientific breakthroughs don't tend to come out of the blue - the product of crazed loners or isolated teams. Most modern scientists are part of a larger conversation - that's what e.g. journals and conferences are about. 

And of course, the point about the scientific method as opposed to other non-fiction research is that the measurement (and thus the findings) should be replicable by those other than the key authors (otherwise the findings are of little use). Or as Popper suggested, open to falsifiability.

Not forgetting Newton's famous "On the shoulders of giants" dictum: each generation's breakthrough work harnesses the work of many previous studies - often of people long dead.

All of which is curiously designed to stop the individual scientist or research team merely following the accounts of respected authorities (as ancient and medieval science was prone to) - another different social kind of thing.

So when the Standard sub-editor choose to stick the headline "The hunt for Higgs boson shows what our wonderful minds can achieve" don't be mislead: the author's not talking about neurononsense and what the individual human brain is capable of.

Rather he's referring to what our minds are capable of when they're harnessed together (albeit in very strict ways).

Nonetheless, like the man says.

"the bigger point is that it is the most effective way we have to answer some of the biggest questions of all. Science should be cherished for that alone. This great human endeavour has given us the most grand and compelling glimpse of the universe. Enjoy the view."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typical explanations of mass behaviour

 

 

Typical piece today in WSJ seeking to explain the mass phenomenon of Biebermania via neuroscience.

Typical inappropriate: mass phenomena really are not best explained by micro descriptions (as we've consistently argued).

Unless of course, all of these kids really are deciding independently on their behaviour (which the "mania" & "hysteria" tags point away from - all very I'll Have What She's Having, I suspect)

And typically lazy: neuroporn/neurononsense is just today's source of faux insight - "sciency" without having to think too hard.

Come on, will you WSJ? Try just a little bit harder, please...

Neuroscientism and neuroporn (updated)

Am feeling for Jonah Lehrer this weekend, following Steven Poole's review of his latest book, Imagine - How Creativity Work in the Guardian. I've met Jonah a couple of times and read his work frequently and - as is often the case - feel for the real person I've construed in my head.

Unflattering reviews are never pleasant to receive (I've had a few in my time and much as I'd like to pretend they don't hurt, they genuinely do) but at the heart of this one is a critique that I have a lot of sympathy with, if it's true - namely Imagine's overwhelming neuroscientism.

"...(The term has been employed by the philosopher Colin McGinn and the critical neuroscientist Raymond Tallis, among others.) Scientism is the confidence that science can explain all aspects of human life; neuroscientism is the more specific promise that brain-scans (using the limited current technologies of fMRI and EEG) can explain the workings of the mind"

In recent posts, I've talked about neurocartography and brain-porn: others - such as the ineffable David Penn - have used the term neuromania. All of us share a concern at the very reductionist approach that sees brain activity (and groovy pictures of brains in action - which btw are reconstructed as-if they were based on a clear view of what goes on inside the skull rather than being a reconstruction of readings of changes in the electro-magnetic field in different parts of the brain) as essentially the "truth" about mind and decision-making; a rhetoric that defaults to the synaptic without further thought.

Some - like Poole? - primarily resist the reduction of the mental and cultural to the physiology of the grey matter between our ears on the grounds that these phenomena are much richer than these pictures - this brain porn - suggest. A fair point, you might think, given the relative youth of neuroscience as a discipline - we're far from the claimed precision in understanding the functionality, let alone from understanding the relationship between specific brain activity and specific action.

Me, I have another - additional - problem with looking to the individual brain for answers: most human life is lived in the company and under the influence of others - looking between the ears of an individual is only going to get you so far in understanding our fundamentally socially-shaped behaviour. It's just the wrong place to look for much beyond general principles - however well one reads the literature.

And - let's be clear - our biology is only part of our evolutionary success: for sure, it's our biology that has enabled us to develop, share and exploit culture but that culture itself is the same thing as our biology. Focusing on the biological roots - as if they are the ultimate grounding - seems to me myopic at best.

Trying to understand human behaviour through the lens of individual brain activity in the lab is like understanding dolphin behaviour by dragging individuals away from the pod and out of the water: it tells you somethings but misses the key contextual pieces.

PS The notion so widely trumpeted in support of what I'm sure is a very enjoyable book - that we are all creative - also found its way into the heart of a tome call Welcome To The Creative Age (which I published a decade ago)...and I certainly wasn't the first to suggest it!

UPDATE: John points out the fascinating debate (including Jonah's comments) around this post

Habit and the HERD (I)

Am ploughing my way through Charles Duhigg's new book on Habits at the moment and - the basic point about habits and our tendency default to low-level cognitive activity aside - am finding it all rather disappointingly and over familiar territory. 

Not just in terms of the overkill of neuro-cartography ("we know that this is important because there's something going on in the brain here...") but in terms of the ideas of habits being shaped by rewards and repetition (in what way is this not classical conditioning?).

Add to that the lionising of dead Mad Men and their supposed magical abilities to change habits among the larger population (highly overstated, as it happens).

And let's be honest, the relentless invididualist & materialist perspective: presenting human behaviour as the product of fundamentally isolated individuals and their biology....

I've been promised that it gets better later - as Neil spotted:

“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.”

Now, that's more like it. I'm hoping we get there sooner rather than later.

 

 

 

Neurononsense revisited: a new dawn?

Last night at a reception in memory of the late and great Ginny Valentine, an old buddy of mine asked me what I thought about the proliferation of neuromarketing techniques and the general air of "brain is best" in market research communities.

Perhaps I should have just referred him to David Penn of Conquest who is delighting in being the continuing scourge of snake-oil neuro-research sales persons: his "neuromania" schtick is coming to the MRS in March. Always good value.

Regular readers will know that - like David - I'm deeply suspicious of the willing misrepresentation of the science - of what is currently understood about brain activity and its relationship with behaviour (for example here and here)

Sure, we've got some general principles in place, we've far from the precise, mechanical descriptions that many vendors suggest.

What's more the reality of most human life - and most consumer choices - is social (whether or not the choice is made in the company of others): in much of modern life, we defer to the choices and enthusiasms of others. Trying to predict the behaviour of an isolated individual from the activity in his/her brain is missing the key variable shaping that choice.

Our brains are not - as we tend to think - just independent decision-making muscle - but rather evolved specifically as social organs (as Dunbar and Humphrey  long ago demonstrated - you might remember this more recent paper, too)

This is why this kind of research is so interesting: it explores the neuroscience of social interaction. Dare I suggest put neuromarketing on hold until the academics have got to grips with these - rather more important - factors in influencing behaviour?

 

Neurononsense (again): hemispheric differences

  

My chum Huw (always a scourge of ill-read neurononsense) has pointed out this vicious review in New Scientist of a new book which drags out the old left brain/right brain silliness across human history

I like this summary:

"The fact is, hemispheric differences are not well understood. Neither are patterns over 2500 years of western history. Trying to explain the ill-understood latter with a caricature of the former does little to illuminate either."

My chum is even more trenchant:

"A nice ["tribute"?] to the 'I know a bit about neuroscience so would you like to pay a lot of money for my company that's drawn some erroneous conclusions" crowd"

So let's go easy out there with our received wisdom, shall we?

Neuromarketing: another health warning

Nice quote from Wellcome Trust Director Sir Mark Wolpert on this morning's Today Programme (1hr 33mins plus)

"the toughest challenge of all, which is to understand how we think, how the brain controls behaviour...that is very, very difficult and not entirely clear we can do that now"

UPDATE: Later on Wolpert suggests "we are just scratching the surface"