Mindframe

What makes the human brain so, well, human? It’s not purely a matter of size—from studying the cranial cavities of Neanderthals, we know that our bygone genetic cousins sported more gray matter than us. But seemingly that wasn’t enough to put them in the same ecological niche, or even just to keep them from extinction. After close examination and a lot of theorizing, researchers at Oxford have suggested that the main brain difference between them and us was more a matter of function, that Neanderthal brains prioritized muscle control and eyesight while ours focused more on developing the social skills necessary to form a tight-knit group. In other words, maybe the human brain’s main asset is the ability to foster teamwork.  It’s a nice thought, even if it is unprovable: other scientists have proposed many other theories for the disappearance of the Neanderthal, including interspecies breeding that simply blended them into humans, or even a matter of simple geography. And ...

Given that a good reporter is supposed to be both truthful and balanced, how should journalists cover an issue when opposing camps refuse to agree on the very nature of the truth? (In other words, in this current political climate, how should journalists cover literally any issue at all?) As psychology professor Derek J. Koehler  explained last year in a piece  for  New York Times Sunday Review , “standard journalistic practice” is to represent both sides of an issue, but when the vast majority of qualified experts share one stance on a topic, while only a tiny minority disagree, giving equal weight to each viewpoint can be extremely misleading. The BBC has adopted “weight of evidence” reporting, which attempts a compromise by giving airtime to experts with both perspectives, while also being careful to inform the public that one school of thought is far more widely accepted. However, Koehler had his suspicions about how effective this really was, so he decided t...

When he was in his early teens, Albert Einstein received a gift from a family friend: a series of illustrated science books with the catchy title of Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher ( People’s Books on Natural Science ), by Aaron Bernstein. In Einstein: His Life and Universe , Walter Isaacson quotes Einstein as having later described it as “a work which I read with breathless attention." In the first volume of Bernstein’s popular science series, he asked the reader to imagine a bullet shot through the window of a fast-moving train. Bernstein postulated that anyone examining the bullet’s exit on the opposite side of the train would conclude the bullet must have been shot at an angle. Bernstein’s point was that, because the earth is hurtling through space, light would exhibit the same refracting properties going through a telescope lens as the bullet passing through the train windows. And that this outcome would always be the same regardless how fast the source of the ligh...

Scientists trying to get to the core of creativity encounter a very basic problem at the outset. Unlike, say, size, or time, creativity is extremely difficult to measure. It’s even difficult to define. Frequently, people searching for a creativity-judging metric focus on what’s called “divergent thinking”. This is the ability to come up with a large number of solutions to a given problem. It’s the “no wrong answers” school of brainstorming. Divergent thinking is all about casting the widest possible net, and then gauging success from overall net size. There are arguably some benefits to this approach. For one thing, since divergent thinking concerns itself with the sheer amount of ideas generated, measuring it is as simple as counting.  What do these experiments look like? Imagine someone hands you a paper cup and asks you to think of as many uses for that cup as you can. Someone with a knack for divergent thinking would be off and running: a drinking vessel, a fly ...

Even if you from time to time think about your neurons, those little chemical-electrical switches that dictate your mental and physical activity, you probably don't give much thought to your transposons. And yet transposons don't just play a crucial role in neural application; in a very real sense, they define who you are. A transposon is a fragment of DNA that inserts itself into another cell. Research suggests that about half our DNA sequence is made up of these fragments, these interlopers. In the cells of, say, your lungs, heart, or kidneys, transposons have no real effect. They don't behave like viruses, which sneak into cells and multiply like crazy. They're more like very mellow hitchhikers: once they've found their way in, they're usually content to fall asleep and enjoy the ride. The exception is the brain. Once transposons get inside neurons, they can alter the very nature of the cell. It's like a troupe of improv actors that show up unexp...

The human brain is one of the true wonders of the world; after all, it contained the source material for building each of the seven famous Wonders.  From Twinkies to arugula, just about any scrap of digestible matter can power it: a machine that runs nonstop for an average of seventy years, somehow composed largely of fat. So it's no wonder that we're fascinated. Understanding how the brain works is front and center for the scientific community. In April of 2013, President Obama announced that the U.S. government had budgeted a hundred million dollars to begin a project to map the human brain, his call to action nearly an echo of Kennedy's imperative to land on the moon some fifty years before. Brain exploration leads us to Michael Gazzaniga. Not exactly a household name—and no, he's not latest new Republican candidate for presidency.) He is, however, one of the founding fathers of cognitive neuroscience, a field which seeks to find the connection betwee...

Have you ever wondered how your brain and your smartphone's operating systems compare? After all, people commonly draw analogies between computers and the brain. Given how a smartphone really is just a very small computer, these days, you're likely lugging around one of each.  Of course, a smartphone differs from your brain in many ways. For one thing, your brain's carrying case is generally more durable.  For another thing, a smartphone processes in a series format, a couple of bits of information at a time. Imagine a light switch connected to a lamp in your bedroom. The switch only controls that single light circuit. It has no effect on, say, the lights in your kitchen. In much the same way, your phone's silicone processing chips are essentially a collection of tiny switches, each creating a single and separate cause and effect. Combined in sufficient numbers, you get the cool little apps we rely on. They're perfectly configured for computing the s...

Imagine waking up in a hospital room, unable to move. You can hear the doctor telling someone that they're not sure what level of brain function you have, since you appear to be totally unresponsive. You try to speak but your throat is frozen. Your fingers and toes won't move. You can't even control your eyes. It's the worst kind of nightmare: totally conscious but with no way to communicate, a prisoner in your own body. Although situations like this are rare, they have occurred. In most cases, if you found yourself in this kind of personal hell you were doomed to a life of mental torture.  That's until one very intrepid neuroscientist, Martin Monti, found a way to communicate.  The debate about the nature of the mind is, of course, a long and storied one in the world of philosophy. If science tells us that we're made of flesh and bone, what are thoughts made of? How separate is a person's animating mental force from the muscle, blood, an...

The American Heart Institute estimates that 1 in 6 Americans currently have metabolic syndrome—and it's likely almost none of them know it. In his book Your Brain on Food , Gary L. Wenk explains that metabolic syndrome, sometimes called X syndrome, happens when your body stops regulating your glucose and fat metabolism, which in turn throws off your sensitivity to insulin production. It's characterized by high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and storing additional fat. Any one of these conditions is bad news for your health, but all three put together double your risk for heart disease and leave you five times more likely to end up with diabetes. Other than bad luck, what puts some people more at risk for developing the syndrome? There are a number of factors. Here's one. The brain relies on six different types of taste buds on your tongue, which prompt your dopamine receptors to send you a little reward when they sense sugar and fat. Unfortunately, some of us ...

What do you and your cat have in common? Well, one possibility is a unicellular organism called Toxoplasma gondii. There are roughly 7 billion people on the planet and in a recent Scientific Mind article, Gustavo Arrizabalaga and Bill Sullivan suggest as many as 3 billion of us are carriers for Toxoplasma. It’s estimated that just in the U.S., one in five people are infected. In less industrialized countries, estimates are as high as 95%. Up until recently, the protozoan known as Toxoplasma was considered largely harmless,  just one of the millions of parasites we humans play host to every day. But recent research by Charles University parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr and others indicates there is reason for concern. Flegr’s work suggests that if your first experience with Toxoplasma occurs while you’re pregnant, the parasite can reach the fetus, moving through tissues and organs, spreading from cell to cell. Possible results include birth defects or miscarriage.  ...

Western medicine prides itself on the ability to diagnose and treat a variety of maladies that a very short time ago were considered fatal. Part and parcel of the extension of treatments is the idea of specialization. We’ve become accustomed to specialty medicine. It seems to make sense: someone gaining expertise and mastery over one specific body part, the sum of those parts equaling your aunt Betty. But what if the template for modern medicine, this very concept of the human body, was fundamentally flawed? What if your body is not a tally of parts but one giant complex system with many subsystems operating in tandem? Perhaps you can see where this is going. Scientists are beginning to discover that the body is governed by not just the brain in our heads, but multiple auxiliary sub-brains, located in other organs, connected by neurons, and all carefully timed to operate with each other. The analogy might be a symphony, where musicians must listen to each other to blend into...

Ants are amazing. They can carry 50 times their body weight. Their total biomass worldwide equals the total biomass of humans. Fungus ants started farming 50 million years before agriculture was even a glint in early human eyes. When it comes to teamwork, humans can't compare. There may be no "I" in team, but there are plenty of ants. Collectively, a colony of ants is capable of a variety of sophisticated actions—building intricate nests ( out of their own bodies if they're army ants ), fighting wars with other colonies, raising livestock , and yes, even raiding that picnic basket. All this despite the long-established fact that ants are just not that smart. It's not unusual to see two ants struggling to carry a crumb in opposite directions. Although the number varies from species to species, the average ant has something like 250,000 neurons. To be fair, that's more than double the neurons of a lobster (100,000), but even a humble cockroach puts it to ...