Tag: Cognition

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Sentient Sea Play by Douglas J. Lanzo

sentient sea play
upside-down tentacles swirl
through schools of minnows

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Watching a common octopus in the movie ‘My Octopus Teacher’ harmlessly herd tide-surged minnows into a school and repeatedly maneuver its tentacles through it, harmlessly playing with it, I was astounded by its high level of intelligence. Despite interacting with the helpless minnows for an extended period of time, the recreational creature did not eat or catch a single minnow.

Further reading:

For additional information, besides watching the movie ‘My Octopus Teacher’, please take a look at a fascinating article on adaptive behavior in the March-April Issue of Harvard Magazine entitled ‘Inner Senses’ and a recent Harvard Law School article entitled ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ that chronicles the exploratory behavior and ability of octopi to individually recognize humans.

Author bio:
Doug is an international author whose Newbery-nominated novel, The Year of the Bear, won the 2023 Ames Award for Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the 2023 Hawthorne Prize and is a 2022 Firebird Award Winner. He has published 337 poems in 70 literary publications in 10 countries. He and his twin son poets enjoy nature, fishing, tennis, hiking and snorkeling. His Author’s website is at www.douglaslanzo.com . Check out another sciku by Doug here: ‘Ornamental Defense‘.

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Homo narrans

Once upon a time,
I heard science as stories.
I recall them well.

Storytelling and narrative are fundamental in almost every aspect of our lives. We are storytelling animals, narrative helps us to make sense of the world.

The ethnologist Kurt Ranke and communication scholar Walter Fisher both independently coined the idea that humans are “homo narrans” – storytelling animals who are persuaded to make decisions based on the coherence and fidelity of stories. Psychologist Jerome Bruner describes this ‘narrative mode of thought’ as being concerned with human wants, needs, and goals. Stories “help people make sense of the facts by framing them with particular narratives about how the world works” (Davidson, 2017).

The consequence of humans organising our thoughts through stories is that they tend to stick in the brain.

Numerous studies have shown that narrative and storytelling increase interest in and recall of information, and can be effectively employed in science communication. Hong & Lin-Siegler (2012) found that adding narrative to bare facts “increased student interest in science, increased their delayed recall of key science concepts”. Narrative “improves information processing, increasing recall of and interest in, the story” (Martinez-Conde et al. (2019).

Framing scientific information as stories increases the impact and power of the communication, but narrative can do more than just stimulate interest and improve recall. A study by Morris et al. (2019) found that “narratives framed as stories consistently outperformed factual narratives for encouraging action-taking in all audiences.”

Stories can change our behaviour.

In their 2002 book The Science of the Discworld II: The Globe, novelist Terry Pratchett and science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen conclude with this sentence:

“Plenty of creatures are intelligent but only one tells stories”

It’s a lovely statement that perfectly encapsulates the importance of narrative and storytelling to our place as a species. It’s also 17 syllables long.

Further reading:

Davidson (2017) Storytelling and evidence-based policy: lessons from the grey literature https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.93

Hong & Lin-Siegler (2012) How learning about scientists’ struggles influences students’ interest and learning in physics https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026224

Martinez-Conde et al. (2019) The storytelling brain: how neuroscience stories help bridge the gap between research and society https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1180-19.2019

Morris et al. (2019) Stories vs. facts: triggering emotion and action-taking on climate change https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02425-6

Pratchett et al. (2002) The Science of the Discworld II: The Globe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld_II:_The_Globe

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Technomancy by Debbie Lee

Fitbit in your skull,
neuroscience leap
Musk technomancy

by Debbie Lee

Neuralink is a brain implant with 1,024 5-micron-wide (very, very thin!) electrodes and includes sensors for motion, temperature and pressure. Ultimately, according to Elon Musk, the medical goal is for such implants to be able to control prosthetic limbs, alleviate memory loss, help with addiction and fix mental illnesses and vision and hearing impairments.

Musk has described it as “a Fitbit in your skull” and some of his more enthusiastic claims are that this technology could one-day record and replay memories and (due to the device’s wireless capabilities) enable telepathy – sending and receiving words, concepts and images.

All this sounds incredible and Neuralink is certainly a step up from what has currently been available to neuroscientists – the current Utah Array has 64 electrodes and installation can cause significant tissue damage on installation and removal.

Whilst Neuralink represents a huge step forward for neuroscientists, however, there are still plenty of unknowns to do with how neurons function and how this type of technology can remain in the brain for long periods of time without causing tissue damage or being damaged by the environment within the cranium and the human immune response. For all of Musk’s technomancy hype, Neuralink currently asks more questions than it provides answers to and there are still plenty of difficult barriers to overcome before any of the promised advantages are possible.

Further reading: https://www.wired.com/story/neuralink-is-impressive-tech-wrapped-in-musk-hype/

Debbie Lee (@lee_debbie):
Writing from places light and dark,
awkward data nerd,
elegant word nerd,
dreaming in colour,
clumsily balancing love, hope,
kindness with pragmatic realism.

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Aid pride

Got hearing aid shame?
No sense in letting age-pride
steal away your brain.

For many people the idea of needing a hearing aid is embarrassing, a sign of ageing that they don’t want to be reminded of or seen to need. Yet this shame may actually be harmful – a new study by Sarant et al. (2020) suggests that the use of a hearing aid may stave off cognitive decline.

The researchers assessed 99 adults aged between 60 and 84 before and after hearing aid use. After 18 months they found cognitive executive function (the higher level mental abilities used organise information, plan, and initiate and complete tasks) improved across the whole sample, especially in women.

Whilst sample sizes were small, the researchers also found that speech perception in quiet environments improved, as did participants’ self-reported quality of life and listening disability. This is an exciting development and, whilst further and larger studies are needed, it suggests that hearing aids may help to delay cognitive decline.

Further reading: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm9010254

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Chess-ing perfection

Take a breath and think:

What move to make? How to win?

Hope the air was clean.

Chess demands players think strategically about their next moves, the possible ramifications and the potential responses of their opponents. It’s a high cognitive load with a lack of randomness or hidden information, meaning that players succeed or fail based entirely on their mental performance.

But research by Künn et al. (2019) suggests that whilst players may take steps to ensure an optimal cognitive performance (such as being rested or mental training exercises) the air they breathe can also influence the quality of decisions made.

The researchers found that air quality affected player decisions during several tournaments held in Germany over 3 years. The researchers used a chess engine to evaluate the quality of around 30,000 moves made during 596 games and then compared this with measures of air quality at the tournaments. They found that:

“An increase in the indoor concentration of fine particular matter by 10 µg/m3 increases a player’s probability of making an erroneous move by 26.3%.”

Happily this finding should have little impact in most chess games, where players sitting across from one another will be exposed to the same levels of air pollution.

Original research: http://ftp.iza.org/dp12632.pdf

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How sad a solo?

Alone. How tragic.

Unless that’s what’s intended?

How sad a solo?

 

Orchestras have a vast array of instruments, yet composers frequently employ a solo instrument within orchestral passages. Hansen & Huron (2018) have investigated whether a solo is used to convey or enhance a sad effect.

By characterising orchestral passages as featuring a solo or not and then investigating the differences between they were able to assess the impact of a solo on the emotion of the piece. Whilst they acknowledge that composers might use a solo for a number of reasons, their results suggest that there is an association between sadness-related acoustic feature and solos. Indeed, pieces of music with sad characteristics are twice as likely to feature solos.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mp.2018.35.5.540

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When I talk about running

What I remember

when I talk about running:

Stress fading away.

 

Proponents of exercise have long sung its praises as a way of staying physically healthy, but there is increasing evidence that it has mental health benefits as well. Miller et al (2018) found that exercise (and specifically running) helped reduce the impact of chronic stress on the brain.

The scientists compared stressed and unstressed mice that either had access to a running wheel or not. Mice that were able to exercise mitigated some of the negative impacts of stress, whilst mice that were unable to exercise showed a reduction in the long-term potential of their hippocampal function (the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory).

In honour of World Book Day the poem references Haruki Murakami’s excellent meditation on running and life ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’, which itself was a play on Raymond Carver’s ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2018.01.008

 

 

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Cause and effect

They’ll blow your house down

as they grasp cause and effect

much better than dogs.

 

The process of domestication is thought to impact on a number of cognitive and physical properties as species adapt to the human environment. The close social ties between humans and dogs are an extreme example and comparing the cognition of dogs with wolves can reveal information about the impact of domestication.

Using animals housed under similar pack conditions and with prior experience of interacting with humans, Lampe et al (2017) found that whilst wolves and dogs can follow human-given communication equally well, wolves were better at understanding causal cues in the absence of humans (such as a rattling container indicating the presence of food). Domestication may have led to a reduction in the ability of dogs to solve some problems independently of humans.

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Gamma sabres by Hannah Hall

Gamma sabres slay

Alzheimer’s amyloid plaques

with disco lighting.

 

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition that worsens over time leading to problems with short-term memory, mood swings, behavioural issues and ultimately loss of bodily functions and death. But could flashing LED lights be a method of helping to treat the disease?

Exposing laboratory mice to LED strips flickering at 40Hz for an hour reduced beta amyloid plaque levels in the visual cortex by half, reduced Tau protein abnormalities and enhanced gamma oscillations (brain waves) – all of which are characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease. Iaccarino et al, 2016.

Hannah Hall is a Senior Consultant at Pragma Consulting Ltd in London. Though she studied Russian and French at university, she has broad interests and enjoys listening to the RadioLab podcast where she heard about this research.

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Bumblebee football

Bumblebee football:

Learning to score for sugar,

self-improvement – Goal!

 

Tool use is an indication of cognitive complexity and has been demonstrated in a number of species, including among primates, marine mammals and birds. Bumblebees trained to manipulate a ball to gain a reward were able to improve on their performance by taking shorter routes and moving the closest ball when presented with multiple balls. The bees were also able to learn socially by watching other bees solving the task. Together this shows a degree of cognitive flexibility that has not previously been recognised in an insect. Loukola et al, 2017.

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Crafty little goats

Crafty little goats –

watching humans solve problems.

See, they learn faster!

 

Many animals can learn how to solve tasks by watching how members of their own species solve the problem. Learning by observing other species is less common and few species have been shown to learn from watching humans. Goats struggle to learn how to solve a detour task (navigating around a ‘V’ shaped hurdle) by themselves but observing a human solve the task just once enables goats are able to solve the task much faster. Nawroth et al, 2016.