An Unexpected "Back Door" Into the Brain?

The modal view in the cognitive and neural sciences holds that consciousness is necessary for abstract, symbolic, and rule-following computations. Hence, semantic processing of multiple-word expressions, and performing of abstract mathematical computations, are widely believed to require consciousness. We report a series of experiments in which we show that multiple-word verbal expressions can be processed outside conscious awareness and that multistep, effortful arithmetic equations can be solved unconsciously. _PNAS Abstract

Researchers at Hebrew University in Israel have discovered that the human brain is capable of unconsciously solving arithmetic equations, and unconsciously understanding multi-word expressions. This "extra-conscious" processing of both words and arithmetic equations caught many researchers by surprise.

To come to these conclusions, the team used a technique known as Continues Flash Suppression (CFS) to present target information to volunteer subjects subconsciously. The technique involves displaying target information to one eye while simultaneously displaying colorful images to the other. The colorful images demand so much attention that the target information is not noticed, at least in the conscious mind.

In the first exercise, volunteers were shown short word phrases during a CFS session; some of which made sense some of which were nonsensical. Afterwards, they were asked to recall the phrase. The researchers found that the volunteers were able to recall the nonsensical phrases faster than those that made sense, indicating they had been understood while still in a subconscious state.

In the second exercise, the researchers used CFS to flash a simple plus/minus type mathematical equation, minus the answer, to one eye, while the other received the colorful images. Afterwards, each volunteer was asked to say out loud a number that was presented to them. The researchers found that response times were shorter when the number shown matched the answer to the math equation they had been shown.

Thus far, CFS is only able to distract the mind from perceiving information for just a couple of seconds, thus, the types of data that can be tested is limited by the amount of information (or its mathematical complexity) that could reasonably be expected to be absorbed in such a short time period. But the results suggest that people might be processing a lot of information in their daily lives that they aren't aware of because their mind is elsewhere, a finding that the researchers suggest, means that views on subconscious awareness and thought processing, perhaps needs updating. _MXP

What the researchers discovered is one of the possible mechanisms for subliminal suggestion, hypnosis, and unconscious solving of problems -- when a solution suddenly "pops into the mind."

This sophisticated "unconscious" processing is certain to leave lingering effects -- particularly if the subject matter of this processing is emotionally relevant to the person.

This approach to unconscious learning and processing has long been utilised by scientists and clinicians who are now working on the Dangerous Child Method project. Because it is so important to lay the groundwork for future learning in a Dangerous Child's mind at as early a stage as possible, much of the earliest training takes place on a pre-verbal and quasi-unconscious level.

While it is never too late to have a dangerous childhood, it is similarly never too early to get started.

...All Zombies Now ....

Effective total brain control -- or zombification -- depends upon a fine enough level of control, or resolution, over the pertinent brain centers. Early methods of brain control depended upon the crude tools of pharmacology and macro-electromagnetic stimulation. But we are on the verge of a level of fine-grained brain control which puts us within reach of our goal: total world domination!

Quantum Dot Cell Controller

By harnessing quantum dots-tiny light-emitting semiconductor particles a few billionths of a meter across-researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new and vastly more targeted way to stimulate neurons in the brain. Being able to switch neurons on and off and monitor how they communicate with one another is crucial...

...Doctors and researchers today commonly use electrodes- on the scalp or implanted within the brain- to deliver zaps of electricity to stimulate cells. Unfortunately, these electrodes activate huge swaths of neural territory, made up of thousands or even millions of cells, of many different types. That makes it impossible [to achieve the level of brain control to achieve complete zombification. (Ed.)]

...An alternative, says the UW team, led by electrical engineer Lih Y. Lin and biophysicist Fred Rieke, is to use quantum dots-tiny semiconductor particles, just a few billionths of a meter across, that confine electrons within three spatial dimensions. When these otherwise trapped electrons are excited by electricity, they emit light, but at very precise wavelengths, determined both by the size of the quantum dot and the material from which it is made... The experiments, says Lin, show that "it is possible to excite neurons and other cells and control their activities remotely using light. This non-invasive method can provide flexibility in probing and controlling cells at different locations while minimizing undesirable effects." _SD

In other words, complete zombification is almost within our reach.

Of course we will continue to follow the progress of cruder tools such as deep brain stimulation, transcranial dc stimulation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. (Summary PDF review of earlier tDCS research)

And we will continue participating in the OpenEEG project, in order to perfect our remote EEG brain state viewer -- to use in conjunction with our remote quantum dot cell-level brain controllers.

Naturally, we expect our informants to keep their eyes and ears open for any news we may be able to utilise. We can make it worth your while, particularly if you have your eye on someone that you would like to zombify for your own personal use. ;-) But tell no one what you have read here!

We stand on the verge of a brave new world. A greener, cleaner, more orderly world, without all the confusion and cacophony of modern global capitalism, freedom of religion, rule of law, and free markets. Either you are with us, or you are a zombie.

Brain Hacking: Homebuilt tDCS and More

Stuart Gromley sits hunched over a desk in his bedroom, groping along the skin of his forehead, trying to figure out where to glue the electrodes. The wires lead to a Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab, a toy covered with knobs, switches, and meters. Even though he’s working with a kiddie lab, Gromley, a 39-year-old network administrator in San Francisco, can’t afford to make mistakes: he’s about to send the current from a nine-volt battery into his own brain.

Gromley’s homemade contraption is modeled on the devices used in some of the top research centers around the world. Called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the technology works on the principle that even the weak electrical signals generated by a small battery can penetrate the skull and affect hot-button areas on the outer surface of the brain. In the past few years, scholarly research papers have touted tDCS as a non-invasive and safe way to rejigger our thoughts and feelings, and possibly to treat a variety of mental disorders. Most provocatively, researchers at the National Institute of Health have shown that running a small jolt of electricity through the forehead can enhance the verbal abilities of healthy people. That is, tDCS might do more than just alleviate symptoms of disease. It might help make its users a little bit smarter. _Phoenix

Rob Zammarch

...tDCS [is] a way to tease apart the mechanisms of learning and cognition. As the technique is refined, researchers could, with the flick of a switch, amplify or mute activity in many areas of the brain and watch what happens behaviourally. The field is "going to explode very soon and give us all sorts of new information and new questions", says Clark. And as with some other interventions for stimulating brain activity, such as high-powered magnets or surgically implanted electrodes, researchers are attempting to use tDCS to treat neurological conditions, including depression and stroke. But given the simplicity of building tDCS devices, one of the most important questions will be whether it is ethical to tinker with healthy minds — to improve learning and cognition, for example. The effects seen in experimental settings "are big enough that they would definitely have real-world consequences", says Martha Farah, a neuroethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. _Nature

A very dangerous homemade hack for tDCS: Don't try this at home!

Ingredients:
One (1) brain, inside skull
One (1) 9-volt battery
Two (2) wires
Two (2) damp sponges

Instructions:

Attach battery to wires, attach wires to sponges, attach sponges to skull, one over each eyebrow. Simmer once a day until mental health reaches a firm consistency.

It sounds like something you dreamed up in the basement with your stoner friends in high school. (In fact, you may actually have done so.) But transcranial direct current stimulation is the hottest thing to hit the improvisational health management scene since acupuncture. A growing body of evidence suggests that sticking a battery onto your head could hack into your brain's operating system and make life generally more worth living. Think of it as Norton Utilities for the mind.

That's not an oversimplification of the process. tDCS is literally that simple. The total cost of a treatment is less than $5 of parts from Radio Shack and a sponge. No prescription needed. No needles, no pills, no insurance companies, no weird hormonal fluctuations, no commercials saying "I'm glad [drug of choice] has a low risk of sexual side effects!"

An analysis of the pros and cons of tDCS yields fairly impressive results.

PROS
Improved hand-eye coordination
Better memory
Less depression
Recover from brain damage
Less senility
Me talks nice like teacher
Better memory
Control seizures
Cure migraines
Become superior human, crush puny unenhanced inferiors, survive apocalyptic "rise of the machines"
Better memory

CONS
Could end up looking stupid
Small, but not entirely absent, chance of permanent brain damage _longecity

It would be smarter to use more sophisticated devices, following more practised protocols. People will need to proceed with caution, and share insights and mistakes, so that mind hackers can move ahead safely toward their goals.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London studied people with normal math skills using a noninvasive technique called transcranial direct-current stimulation, in which scalp electrodes emit current that modulates neural activity. The team focused on the right parietal cortex because it contributes to spatial and math­ematical thinking. This brain region shows abnormal re­sponses in children with developmental dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects math skills.

Over the span of six days the inves­tigators applied current over the volunteers’ right parietal lobe for 20 minutes at the beginning of training sessions in which subjects learned to associate numbers with arbitrary symbols, such as triangles or cylinders. After practicing, subjects were rapidly presented with pairs of symbols of different visual sizes (using larger or smal­ler fonts), and they had to choose the physically larger one as quickly as they could. In some of the pairs, the physically larger item rep­resented a smaller magnitude—for in­stance, a huge symbol meaning “two” was paired with a tiny symbol representing “five”—­and that mismatch could cause a delay in reaction time because subjects must override their impulse to choose the greater number.

By the fourth day subjects who had their right parietal cortex stimulated became slower for mismatched trials as compared with matched trials, just as adults are when they respond to real digits. But participants who did not receive the same pattern of stimulation showed no difference between these trials, suggesting they had not internalized the symbols’ meaning. The results indicate that right-hemisphere stimulation helps people learn numerical symbols.

The superior performance lasted for six months—a long effect that suggests the method may someday benefit those with developmental dyscalculia, says study co-author Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Oxford. _SciAm

Different locations for the electrodes should yield different results from tDCS. The science -- and the hacking -- has barely begun.

[Michael] Weisend, who is working on a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency programme to accelerate learning, has been using this form of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to cut the time it takes to train snipers. From the electrodes, a 2-milliamp current will run through the part of my brain associated with object recognition - an important skill when visually combing a scene for assailants.

The mild electrical shock is meant to depolarise the neuronal membranes in the region, making the cells more excitable and responsive to inputs. Like many other neuroscientists working with tDCS, Weisend thinks this accelerates formation of new neural pathways during the time that someone practises a skill. The method he is using on me boosted the speed with which wannabe snipers could detect a threat by a factor of 2.3 (Experimental Brain Research, vol 213, p 9).

Mysteriously, however, these long-term changes also seem to be preceded by a feeling that emerges as soon as the current is switched on and is markedly similar to the flow state. "The number one thing I hear people say after tDCS is that time passed unduly fast," says Weisend. Their movements also seem to become more automatic; they report calm, focused concentration - and their performance improves immediately.

It's not yet clear why some forms of tDCS should bring about the flow state. After all, if tDCS were solely about writing new memories, it would be hard to explain the improvement that manifests itself as soon as the current begins to flow. _NewScientist

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists are plodding along in the dark, far more than they will admit. The establishment would like to be able to control potentially transformative and disruptive technologies such as tDCS, and other possibly effective brain boosters. But that is not likely.

Humans, Apes, Addicts, and Microbes: Common Thread

The common thread that links life on Earth is the thin thread of DNA that coils, circles, and works its way through the generations, through the species, changing the face of the planet as it evolves.

Economist
Our brains are formed by our genes, working through the environment. Some genes control an entire platoon of other genes. The genes that determine how our brains grow and function are still evolving. If these "commander" genes evolve, remarkable changes can occur over a fairly short time span. The human species appears to be changing on a more rapid time scale than most scientists are willing to accept.

...human beings have suites of genes that probably cause their brains to be “plastic” and thus receptive to change far longer (to the age of about five) than is true for chimps or monkeys (whose brains are plastic for less than a year after birth). Moreover, Dr Khaitovich was able to work out how the expression of these modules of genes was co-ordinated, by looking at the switches, known as transcription factors, that turn them on and off.

Indeed, by comparing modern genomes with their discoveries about Neanderthals Dr Paabo’s group has found that the regulatory process for one of the modules came into existence after the modern human and Neanderthal lines separated from one another, about 300,000 years ago. _Economist

Of course, it does no good to have brains that are more plastic, if the caregivers of young children do not take advantage of that period of plasticity to give the children skills, competencies, wisdom, and knowledge that will serve them well throughout their lives.

Some people may be born at a tremendous disadvantage, genetically speaking. Addictive and criminal behaviour appear to be at least partially heritable. Societies deal with these problems in different ways. There is always room for improvement -- beginning with the acknowledgement of the genetic component.

Humans have turned a corner in understanding their own genetics. They can now re-program the genes of living humans, and are on the verge of re-programming the genes of embryos and zygotes. Artificial evolution, in other words.

Humans are also making progress toward understanding the complex genetics of their environments -- the microbial world in which they are immersed. We live in microbial soup, which is quite difficult to sort out with the old genetic tools that required culturing organisms before their genomes could be sequenced.

Now, scientists can extract individual genomes out of the common slurry, and sequence these mystery guests.

To extract individual genomes, Armbrust’s PhD student Vaughn Iverson exploited skills that had he gained as a computer scientist designing video compression technology at Intel in Portland, Oregon. He developed a computational method to break the stitched metagenome into chunks that could be separated into different types of organisms. He was then able to assemble the complete genome of Euryarchaeota, even though it was rare within the sample. He plans to release the software over the next six months.

It’s a different tack from that taken by early marine metagenomics efforts, which began in earnest with Craig Venter’s Global Ocean Sampling effort in 20032. “Our survey offered a broad-stroke picture of microbial diversity and the dominant players in the world’s oceans,” says Kenneth Nealson, director of the microbial and environmental genomics group at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California. “This clever approach demonstrates that they can pull out the sequence of uncultured organisms — information we need to get a clue as to how microbes share limiting resources in the ocean.” _Nature

We finally understand that it is necessary to understand the full complement and range of genomics, genetics, and epigenetics in which we live -- and how we interact with this milieu in order to work out our lives.

Genetics and evolution have been underrated and ignored by most human intellectuals. But no one -- including these neglectful intellectuals -- is ignored by the genetic universe we inhabit. Not one living thing.

Transcranial DC Brain Stimulation: Is It An Ethical Question for Elite Overlords to Settle?

Transcranial direct current stimulation (or TDCS), is a type of non-invasive brain stimulation in which weak electrical currents are applied to the head via electrodes for a short time (about 20 minutes). The effects of this brain stimulation can last up to 12 months and can elicit changes in neurotransmitter concentrations. Most research has focused on using this type of stimulation as a means to improve the cognitive capacities of people with certain psychological or cognitive disabilities. But recent research has shown that TDCS may also improve the cognitive capacities of those without such disabilities. Studies have shown that several aspects of cognition may be improved, such as motor skills, vision, decision making, mathematical cognition, language and memory. _Scince2

It sounds very promising.

If transcranial DC stimulation (TDCS) can truly help normal children and adults to learn better, and to develop better motor skills and decision making, does that make TDCS something which elitist academics, bureaucrats, and politicians should regulate according to their own peculiar calculus?

This has spurred researchers from Oxford University to write a brief essay, published in Current Biology, in which they address some of the ethical issues arising from this realization.

They highlight four characteristics of TDCS that result in some special ethical considerations.

The tools for TDCS, which are inexpensive, portable and (apparently) safe, can be used at any time, for any function, by anyone.

It is not restricted to clinics or laboratories (cheap and portable, remember…)

It is an external enhancement, which, for most people, is less of a problem than internal ones.

It can be applied to any cortical brain area and has potentially enduring effects.

Next, they focus on two issues in particular: premature use of TDCS and using it on the developing brain. While it seems promising, little is known about the ‘proper way’ to use this form of stimulation. Might promoting one capacity negatively affect another one? Can using TDCS early in development have adverse effects on brain development? Both questions still require research. _Sciencew

More: Neuroethics of non-invasive brain stimulation PDF Download

The downloadable essay by Oxford University researchers calls for more research, and warns of possible unforeseeable consequences of the application of this technology for children. This is prudent advice, if only it would stop there. But instead, what we are likely to see is a move to prohibit the use of TDCS and similar possible brain enhancement technologies outside of carefully controlled, government sanctioned facilities.

What this high level attention to brain enhancement in general and TDCS in particular suggests, is that private, non-governmentally attached or funded research into these fields is critically important.

The human brain as it currently exists, is in poor position to navigate the perilous current channels of the rapidly approaching future. Modern governmental educational systems are geared toward a "dumbing down" of children. The result of government education is an increasing dependency of graduates on the institutional structures of government and quasi-governmental organisations. All of this at a time when the powers of human intelligence and ingenuity are needed as never before.

Keep an eye on how government begins to treat mind enhancement research.

More: How to turn every brain into Spock's brain

How long before we develop a human superbrain?

Cognitive enhancers of today and tomorrow

Los Alamos Scientists Mimic Neuron Function to Help Computers to See More Clearly

The brain has an uncanny ability to detect and identify certain things, even if they’re barely visible. Now the challenge is to get computers to do the same thing. And programming the computer to process the information laterally, like the brain does, might be a step in the right direction.

...“This model is biologically inspired and relies on leveraging lateral connections between neurons in the same layer of a model of the human visual system,” said Vadas Gintautas of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and formerly a researcher at Los Alamos.

Neuroscientists have characterized neurons in the primate visual cortex that appear to underlie object recognition, noted senior author Garrett Kenyon of Los Alamos. “These neurons, located in the inferotemporal cortex, can be strongly activated when particular objects are visible, regardless of how far away the objects are or how the objects are posed, a phenomenon referred to as viewpoint invariance.” _HPCwire

The scientists want to create computer models of human vision that are capable of picking out complex objects from a cluttered visual field, and do it as well as humans -- except faster.

To quantify the temporal dynamics underlying visual processing, we performed speed-of-sight psychophysical experiments that required subjects to detect closed contours (amoebas) spanning a range of shapes, sizes and positions, whose smoothness could be adjusted parametrically by varying the number of radial frequencies (with randomly chosen amplitudes). To better approximate natural viewing conditions, in which target objects usually appear against noisy backgrounds and both foreground and background objects consist of similar low-level visual features, our amoeba/no-amoeba task required amoeba targets to be distinguished from locally indistinguishable open contour fragments (clutter). For amoeba targets consisting of only a few radial frequencies (), human subjects were able to perform at close to accuracy after seeing target/distractor image pairs for less than 200 ms, consistent with a number of studies showing that the recognition of unambiguous targets typically requires 150-250 ms to reach asymptotic performance [22], [23], [35], here likely aided by the high intrinsic saliency of closed shapes relative to open shapes [7]. Because mean inter-saccade intervals are also in the range of 250 ms [34], speed-of-sight studies indicate that unambiguous targets in most natural images can be recognized in a single glance. Similarly, we found that closed contours of low to moderate complexity readily “pop out” against background clutter, implying that such radial frequency patterns are processed in parallel, presumably by intrinsic cortical circuitry optimized for automatically extracting smooth, closed contours. As saccadic eye movements were unlikely to play a significant role for such brief presentations, it is unclear to what extent attentional mechanisms are relevant to the speed-of-sight amoeba/no-amoeba task.

Our results further indicate that subjects perform no better than chance at SOAs shorter than approximately 20 ms. _PLoS

The PLos link above allows access to the entire study.

These findings provide additional insight into the unconscious nature of neural processing, previously touched on in the previous posting here.

Researchers are attempting to take these profound insights and use them for devising computer models which simulate various unconscious brain functions. It will not be an easy task, but by approaching the problem in a system by system manner, limited success is quite possible within a reasonable time frame.

If computers ever learn to "see" and distinguish objects within complex and dynamically changing fields, as well or better than humans, there will be a number of profitable applications waiting.

When Will We Develop a Human Superbrain?

Pharmacological enhancers of cognition promise a bright new future for humankind: more focus, more willpower, and better memory, with applications ranging from education to military combat. Underlying such promises is a linear, more-is-better vision of cognition that makes intuitive sense. This vision is at odds, however, with our understanding of cognition’s evolutionary origins. The mind has evolved under various constraints and consequently represents a delicate balance among these constraints. Evidence of the trade-offs that have shaped cognition include (a) inverted U-shaped performance curves commonly found in response to pharmacological interventions and (b) unintended side effects of enhancement on other traits. Taking an evolutionary perspective, we frame the above two sets of findings in terms of within-task (exemplified by optimal-control problems) and between-task (associated with a gain/loss asymmetry) trade-offs, respectively. With this framework, psychological science can provide much-needed guidance to enhancement development, a field that still lacks a theoretical foundation. _Thomas Hills

The above is the abstract from a recent paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, titled: Why Aren’t We Smarter Already: Evolutionary Trade-Offs and Cognitive Enhancements. The authors suggest that we are not likely to develop enhanced intelligence for humans anytime soon, for a variety of reasons. More:

Just as there are evolutionary tradeoffs for physical traits, Hills says, there are tradeoffs for intelligence. A baby’s brain size is thought to be limited by, among other things, the size of the mother’s pelvis; bigger brains could mean more deaths in childbirth, and the pelvis can’t change substantially without changing the way we stand and walk.

Drugs like Ritalin and amphetamines help people pay better attention. But they often only help people with lower baseline abilities; people who don’t have trouble paying attention in the first place can actually perform worse when they take attention-enhancing drugs. That suggests there is some kind of upper limit to how much people can or should pay attention. “This makes sense if you think about a focused task like driving,” Hills says, “where you have to pay attention, but to the right things—which may be changing all the time. If your attention is focused on a shiny billboard or changing the channel on the radio, you’re going to have problems.”

It may seem like a good thing to have a better memory, but people with excessively vivid memories have a difficult life. “Memory is a double-edged sword,” Hills says. In post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, a person can’t stop remembering some awful episode. “If something bad happens, you want to be able to forget it, to move on.”

Even increasing general intelligence can cause problems. Hills and Hertwig cite a study of Ashkenazi Jews, who have an average IQ much higher than the general European population. This is apparently because of evolutionary selection for intelligence in the last 2,000 years. But, at the same time, Ashkenazi Jews have been plagued by inherited diseases like Tay-Sachs disease that affect the nervous system. It may be that the increase in brain power has caused an increase in disease.

Given all of these tradeoffs that emerge when you make people better at thinking, Hills says, it’s unlikely that there will ever be a supermind. “If you have a specific task that requires more memory or more speed or more accuracy or whatever, then you could potentially take an enhancer that increases your capacity for that task,” he says. “But it would be wrong to think that this is going to improve your abilities all across the board.” _MedXpress

Very disappointing, if true. But is it possible that the authors overlooked something? After all, a few million years ago, chimpanzee psychologists and philosophers must have been thinking and saying much the same about the prospects for superior chimp brains, yes?

But in fact, a chimpanzee superbrain did develop, which we call the "human brain."

Despite the minute genetic differences between human brains and their primate relatives, Homo sapiens cognitive ability is significantly more advanced, enabling us to “make complicated tools, come up with complicated culture and colonize the world,” said lead author Mehmet Somel, a postdoc studying human evolutionary genomics at the University of California, Berkeley. Because humans spend more than a decade developing into adults and learning, far more than the two or three years of chimpanzee adolescence, researchers have long suspected that developmental genes are involved in human brain evolution. “And the idea that brain gene expression profiles might be different between species was proposed 40 years ago,” Somel added. _Scientist

We are just beginning to learn the genetic and epigenetic specifics which led to the divergence of the human brain from the brain of the common ape ancestor. Fascinating changes in the details of gene expression in the brain created a whole new level of cognitive functioning. There is no reason to doubt that similar genetic and epigenetic changes could lead to even newer and higher levels of cognition.

The human brain has borrowed various hacks and kludges from brain and nerve evolution all the way back down the evolutionary tree. Some of these hacks and kludges are potentially limiting in terms of other, concurrent hacks and kludges that might otherwise be utilised. But there are potential hacks and kludges which might replace the limiting hacks, and some of these potential hacks might very well allow an entire train of further, enhancing hacks to follow.

That is a possibility that most mainstream psychologists and philosophers fail to understand -- generally because they have adopted groupthink as their modus operandi. This is a common failure of academics from the inbred world of the university culture. Perhaps that is why so many of the world-changing visionaries and billionaires of our day have been high school and college dropouts. They escaped before their brains could be gelded.

There are a number of ways in which we might approach the human superbrain. Simple pharmacologic cognitive enhancers, such as stimulants, are not likely to provide the broad spectrum enhancement we will need. But there are a number of prosthetic enhancements for the human brain which would give us near quasi-superbrain status, over time. Certainly the things that humans can do when empowered by modern computing and telecommunications tools would astound most humans of past eras.

But what we really want, are superbrains that continue working even if the power goes out or the batteries run down. For that, we will need genetic and epigenetic change. So how can we go about inducing these genetic changes without running into the problems that so many highly intelligent persons and breeding groups have run into?

That will be a topic of future articles.

What Would the Emergence of A New Human Species Look Like?

What if a new species of human emerged, with larger brains and higher neuron counts than the average human possesses? Would this new species have an advantage over regular homo sapiens sapiens? It depends upon whether the excess neurons were well integrated with the rest of the brain, and added additional functionality or thinking power. For this exercise you are encouraged to suspend judgment, and assume semi-whimsicality.

Consider a modern day example of a group of people with brains of higher neuron count:

The brains of boys with autism were heavier and contained two-thirds more neurons than similarly aged males without the disorder, according to a new, post-mortem analysis.

The study, while small, suggests that brain overgrowth may be occurring in the womb, according to the findings published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers examined the brains of seven autistic boys, age two to 16, most of which died from drowning. The 16-year-old's cause of death was undetermined and one eight-year-old died of muscle cancer.

When they compared them to a control group of six boys without autism who died in accidents, they found that the brains of autistic boys had 67% more neurons in the prefrontal cortex and were nearly 18% heavier than normal brain weight for age. _Cosmos

In conditions such as autism, the extra brain neurons do not typically provide a competitive advantage, and may represent a malfunctioning "pruning" mechanism of excess neurons sometime after birth.

Consider homo neandertalis, otherwise known as the neanderthal: At birth, the brains of neanderthals were of comparable size as the brains of modern humans. But by adulthood, the brains of neanderthals were larger.

Consider that new anthropological data places modern humans in Europe at a much earlier time than previously believed, allowing roughly 15,000 years of coexistence between homo sapiens sapiens and homo neandertalis in Europe. Over that time period, mating between sapiens and neandertal becomes somewhat likely.

Scientists believe that sapiens and neandertal did indeed interbreed. They further believe that neandertal dna persists in all modern humans except Africans. And these neandertal genes may even play an important role in sapiens' immune systems.

But what else are these neandertal genes doing? In fact, human genetics is still at such an infantile stage that geneticists have very little idea what effect neandertal genes have on the modern human phenotype. Could some rare neandertal genetic or epigenetic sequences play a role in the postnatal neuronal pruning of human brains? Could autistic brains with higher neuron counts indicate the influence of neandertal "gene ghosts" influencing the bodies of modern human children?

Or are these larger brains in some autistic children a sign of a new species trying to emerge?

If there is no advantage to the trait, it is not likely to go anywhere, evolutionarily speaking. But if the excess neurons were able to somehow integrate and add functionality and power to the brains of these autistics, an advantage might well exist in a modern society where food is plentiful and meeting mental challenges were more important to fitness than meeting physical challenges.

Am I Sirius? No, Sirius is a star, and I am but a mere human, and a whimsical one at that. The idea is to allow your mind to make associations, both narrow and wide. They can always be pruned down later. Unless, of course, your brain is autistic.

Impulsive Violence: Can Brain Implants Affect Poor Impulse Control?

Poor decision making and impulsive behaviour are hallmarks of youth, sociopathy, and the violent criminal.

Interestingly, Parkinson's Disease patients can also exhibit impulsive behaviours -- often as a side affect of treatment. Both drug treatment for Parkinson's and deep brain stimulation (DBS) via implants can increase impulsive and dysfunctional behaviours in Parkinson's patients. Researchers wanted to know why DBS was causing this impulsivity, and what they could do about it.

For their first experiment, the researchers designed a computerized decision-making experiment. They asked 65 healthy subjects and 14 subjects with Parkinson's disease to choose between pairs of generic line art images while their mPFC brain activity was recorded. Each image was each associated with a level of reward. Over time the subjects learned which ones carried a greater reward.

Sometimes, however, the subjects would be confronted with images of almost equal reward -- a relatively tough choice. That's when scalp electrodes detected elevated activity in the mPFC in certain low frequency bands. Lead author and postdoctoral scholar James Cavanagh found that when mPFC activity was larger, healthy participants and Parkinson's participants whose stimulators were off would take proportionally longer to decide. But when deep brain stimulators were turned on to alter STN function, the relationship between mPFC activity and decision making was reversed, leading to decision making that was quicker and less accurate.

The Parkinson's patients whose stimulators were on still showed the same elevated level of activity in the mPFC. The cortex wanted to deliberate, Cavanagh said, but the link to the brakes had been cut.

"Parkinson's patients on DBS had the same signals," he said. "It just didn't relate to behavior. We had knocked out the network."

In the second experiment, the researchers presented eight patients with the same decision-making game while they were on the operating table in Arizona receiving their DBS implant. The researchers used the electrode to record activity directly in the STN and found a pattern of brain activity closely associated with the patterns they observed in the mPFC.

"The STN has greater activity with greater [decision] conflict," he said. "It is responsive to the circumstances that the signals on top of the scalp are responsive to, and in highly similar frequency bands and time ranges."

A mathematical model for analyzing the measurements of accuracy and response time confirmed that the elevated neural activity and the extra time people took to decide was indeed evidence of effortful deliberation.

"It was not that they were waiting without doing anything," said graduate student Thomas Wiecki, the paper's second author. "They were slower because they were taking the time to make a more informed decision. They were processing it more thoroughly."

The results have led the researchers to think that perhaps the different brain regions communicate by virtue of these low-frequency signals. Maybe the impulsivity side effect of DBS could be mitigated if those bands could remain unhindered by the stimulator's signal. Alternatively, Wiecki said, a more sophisticated DBS system could sense that decision conflict is underway in the mPFC and either temporarily suspend its operation until the decision is made, or stimulate the STN in a more dynamic way to better mimic intact STN function. _SD

We know that the prefrontal cortices (PFCs) are crucial to good executive function and impulse control. But it appears from the experiments above that the PFCs need help from other brain centres, such as the sub-thalamic nuclei (STN). Understanding the interaction of the various brain nuclei in the control of complex behaviour and decision-making, can help designers of brain implants and brain stimulators to avoid unfortunate side effects of implant therapy, and to increase positive serendipitous effects of such therapies.

Given the importance of impulse control in the prevention of crime and violence, it is likely that brain stimulators and implants will take on a greater role in the penal system. An interesting historical example of the electrical control of violent behaviour, is the curious instance of Dr. Jose Delgado and the charging bull. Law enforcement officers and correctional officers would like to be able to stop a charging maniac in his tracks, like Delgado did with the bull. It is likely that someday they will have that power.

It would be best if society set about training its youth to possess sound executive function from the earliest age, so as to avoid that type of dystopian future.

Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training in the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Important Information for Would-Be World Dictators

By manipulating the activity of particular brain areas, scientists can now make people more vulnerable to marching in lock-step with the crowd. Controlling conformity will make it easier for would-be world rulers to capture the masses in one fell swoop.

Telegraph

Volunteers whose posterior medial frontal cortex, an area in the middle of the brain that is associated with reward processing, were exposed to the magnetic pulses suffered reduced levels of conformity.

The researchers believe this part of the brain dates back a long way in the evolution of animals and is responsible or automatically "correcting" our performance when we fall out of line with a group.

They say that by suspending this mechanism, it allows people to think and behave differently. They now believe it may be possible to develop drugs or behaviour changing techniques that could increase or decrease people's conformity.

..."Drug manipulation of dopamine could also affect conformity."

Such drugs would be controversial, however, as they could be used by companies hoping to make their employees more reliable or to help control rebellious individuals.

In the study, the researchers asked 49 female volunteers to take part in a study where they were asked to rate the attractiveness of 220 photographs of female faces, but they were allowed to change their ratings after seeing what others in the study had scored.

When Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation (TMS) was used to inhibit the activity of the neurons in the posterior medial frontal cortex, the participants did not change their ratings of the photographs so they were more in line with the rest of the group. _Telegraph

We already know that using TMS to stimulate the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has the effect of decreasing inhibition and increasing risk-taking behaviours. Further experiments will determine more specific areas of cortex involved in judgment and decision-making. TMS can be used to either reduce the activity of the part of the brain that is targeted, or to increase the activity.

The Telegraph article discusses the idea of using drugs to increase or decrease conformity. But a more effective method for would-be dictators would be to utilise targeted nano-capsules which contain genetic programming for more long-term alteration of outlook and allegiance to the collective.

The USSR collapsed because science had not developed far enough to provide these useful tools to the guardians of the collective. In the future, managing the loyalties of large collectives should become easier, using these new methods of brain control.

As far as world dictatorship, the main threat will be multiple stable regional dictatorships which refuse to assimilate into a central world collective. Al Fin cognitive scientists have been asked to provide solutions to this possible complication, but at this time we are maintaining a strict neutrality. We are, however, moving strategic labs and offices of the Al Fin Institutes to a secure, undisclosed, island location.

For those who remain in the population centres, resistance may very well become futile. The chances are growing, that you will be assimilated. Try to resolve yourselves to your likely fate. It will be easier that way.

Secrets of Sleep, Learning, and Renewable Brains

Levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of cells, in rats increased in four key brain regions normally active during wakefulness. Shown here is the energy surge measured in the frontal cortex, a brain region associated with higher-level thinking. Credit: Courtesy, with permission: Dworak et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010.
We spend roughly 1/3 of our lives in the state of sleep. Researchers are beginning to learn why we must do this, and are gleaning hints of possible technologies for bypassing at least part of the sleep imperative, and doing well on less sleep.

“For a long time, researchers have known that sleep deprivation results in increased levels of adenosine in the brain, and has this effect from fruit flies to mice to humans.” Abel said. “There is accumulating evidence that this adenosine is really the source of a number of the deficits and impact of sleep deprivation, including memory loss and attention deficits. One thing that underscores that evidence is that caffeine is a drug that blocks the effects of adenosine, so we sometimes refer to this as ‘the Starbucks experiment.’”

Abel’s research actually involved two parallel experiments on sleep-deprived mice, designed to test adenosine’s involvement in memory impairment in different ways.

One experiment involved genetically engineered mice. These mice were missing a gene involved in the production of glial transmitters, chemicals signals that originate from glia, the brain cells that support the function of neurons. Without these gliatransmitters, the engineered mice could not produce the adenosine the researchers believed might cause the cognitive effects associated sleep deprivation.

The other experiment involved a pharmacological approach. The researchers grafted a pump into the brains of mice that hadn’t been genetically engineered; the pump delivered a drug that blocked a particular adenosine receptor in the hippocampus. If the receptor was indeed involved in memory impairment, sleep-deprived mice would behave as if the additional adenosine in their brains was not there.

...To see whether these mice showed the effects of sleep deprivation, the researchers used an object recognition test. On the first day, mice were placed in a box with two objects and were allowed to explore them while being videotaped. That night, the researchers woke some of the mice halfway through their normal 12-hour sleep schedule.

On the second day, the mice were placed back in the box, where one of the two objects had been moved, and were once again videotaped as they explored to see how they reacted to the change.

“Mice would normally explore that moved object more than other objects, but, with sleep deprivation, they don’t,” Abel said. “They literally don’t know where things are around them.”

Both sets of treated mice explored the moved object as if they had received a full night’s sleep.

“These mice don’t realize they’re sleep-deprived,” Abel said.

Abel and his colleagues also examined the hippocampi of the mice, using electrical current to measure their synaptic plasticity, or how strong and resilient their memory-forming synapses were. The pharmacologically and genetically protected mice showed greater synaptic plasticity after being sleep deprived than the untreated group.

Combined, the two experiments cover both halves of the chemical pathway involved in sleep deprivation. The genetic engineering experiment shows where the adenosine comes from: glia’s release of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, the chemical by which cells transfer energy to one another. And the pharmacological experiment shows where the adenosine goes: the A1 receptor in the hippocampus. _MedicalXpress

Abel's is a sophisticated experiment which covers a lot of possiblities. Combining the findings of this experiment with findings of previous experiments gives one a fuller picture of what is going on.

The brain has evolved certain activity in N2 sleep (sleep spindles) which apparently promote the production of ATP from adenosine and phosphate groups. As ATP levels rise in N2 sleep, adenosine levels drop. So the sound sleeper receives both the benefits of higher ATP energy levels and the improved learning that results from lower hippocampal free adenosine levels.

More on sleep spindles (PDF)

Adenosine is a potent pharmacological agent, powerfully affecting heart rhythms. It also affects central nervous system activity in a largely inhibitory function, and also exhibits anti-inflammatory effects.

Adenosine and deep brain stimulation (DBS)

Why Do We Sleep? A brief look at stages of sleep, and possible benefits of sleep.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Longevity

Electromagnetic Brain Stimulation More Popular

Neuroscientists at the University of New Mexico asked volunteers to play a video game called “DARWARS Ambush!”, developed to help train American military personnel. Half of the players received 2 milliamps of electricity to the scalp, using a device powered by a simple 9-volt battery, and they played twice as well as those receiving a much tinier jolt. The DARPA-funded study suggests direct current applied to the brain could improve learning.

This type of brain stimulation, called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is controversial but could show promise for treatment of various neurological disorders and cognitive impairments _PopSci

ImpactLab
The wide field of electromagnetic brain stimulation is likely to prove to be a fertile area of research. Because the brain itself runs on electrical currents -- with it corresponding magnetic fields -- anything that might influence or interfere with these electrical and magnetic fields are likely to influence brain activity. But many of these researchers are discovering ways to selectively augment or inhibit particular parts of the brain, reversibly. Being able to do that safely provides an incredibly powerful research tool.

The technique, which has roots in research done more than two centuries ago, is experiencing something of a revival. Clark and others see tDCS as a way to tease apart the mechanisms of learning and cognition. As the technique is refined, researchers could, with the flick of a switch, amplify or mute activity in many areas of the brain and watch what happens behaviourally. The field is "going to explode very soon and give us all sorts of new information and new questions", says Clark. And as with some other interventions for stimulating brain activity, such as high-powered magnets or surgically implanted electrodes, researchers are attempting to use tDCS to treat neurological conditions, including depression and stroke. But given the simplicity of building tDCS devices, one of the most important questions will be whether it is ethical to tinker with healthy minds — to improve learning and cognition, for example. The effects seen in experimental settings "are big enough that they would definitely have real-world consequences", says Martha Farah, a neuroethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. _Nature

And certainly, the techniques will not be used only in research and therapeutic situations. They will also be used by students, bankers, lawyers, salesmen, recreational mind trippers, sex fiends, and a wide range of individuals wanting to make more or less of themselves, depending upon their particular inclinations and needs.

We live in a foolish and dysfunctional world. But there is no reason why parts of the world cannot wake up and discover how to make itself more rational, prosperous, and fulfilled.

Is AI Finally Acknowledging the Existence of Bio-Brains?

Randal Koene - Whole Brain Emulation from Raj Dye on Vimeo.
The above is a video from a conference on artificial general intelligence (AGI) held in Switzerland, last year. The speaker is a neuroscientist -- an outsider to the typical AI person who attends AI conferences. His appearance at the AGI conference indicates that the entire approach to AI is in a state of flux.

The attitude up until recently has been that intelligence does not rely upon any particular substrate, eg, a brain. AI researchers have boldly believed for several decades that intelligence could be built algorithmically inside machine architectures over a relatively short time span. "Sometime within 10 years . . ."

They have been saying the same thing -- "within 10 years" -- since the 1950s. Clearly not very much has happened in the way of significant breakthroughs since the 1950s. In fact, contemporary AI researchers themselves may well be growing less impressive, over time, than the pioneers of the field.

Hence the perceived need for possibly re-thinking the whole "substrate" approach. Another video in the series deals with the requirements of "cognitive architecture." An impressive phrase, although the reality is likely to prove far less impressive.  Another talk is entitled A General Intelligence Oriented Architecture for Embodied Natural Language Processing.   At least more thought is being devoted in the AI community toward the substrate of intelligence.   Late is better than never.

Adapted from Al Fin Potpourri

Smart Drugs? No, Just Quicker at Being Stupid

Update: A review of an array of "smart drugs" from a company that actually sells them.
A brief description of one instance of Provigil use from a Times reporter

Why Smart Drugs Don't Work Like NZT

What are smart drugs? Pills that are supposed to enhance a person's cognitive abilities in some way. Anything from Ritalin to Amphetamines to Provigil might qualify, as well as a wide range of lesser known "nootropics."

These pills are not only popular among university students, but also , truck drivers, and fast-paced professionals pushing every synapse to its limit. They can enhance attention, prolong attention span, help keep the mind on topic. All very important when facing a deadline for a research paper, a big work project, or when cramming for an exam.

In one sense, advanced societies run on smart drugs. Western societies embraced coffee, tea, and chocolate as quickly as they could -- and significant battles were fought over the rights to market these early smart drugs.

Fast forward to today, and the "stimulant smart drugs" are being pumped onto the markets -- both legal and illegal -- at prodigious rates. But newer, more advanced generations of smart drugs may be on the horizon.

This Al Fin posting from 2007 is still one of the best summaries of smart drug research I have found. Here is a more recent survey of the field from Gizmodo. Some of the newer drugs enhance attention, some enhance memory, some may enhance creativity.

But what about other approaches to getting smarter, besides drugs?

Instead of drugs, the first brain boosters to channel creativity could be electromagnetic devices designed to enhance cognitive skills. One fascinating proposal comes from Allan Snyder, director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney in Australia. He theorizes that autistic savants derive their skills from an ability to access “privileged, less processed sensory information normally inhibited from conscious awareness.” For normal people, tapping that sensory well might lead to deeply buried creative riches. To test the idea, Snyder and colleagues exposed subjects to low-frequency magnetic pulses (the technology is called transcranial magnetic brain stimulation, or TMS) that suppressed part of their brain function. The researchers found that the subjects acquired savantlike skills, including the ability to render more detailed, naturalistic art. _Discover

Electromagnetic stimulation of the brain probably has a great future ahead of it. But caution is always wise, when working in and around the brain.

All of these drugs -- past, present, and future generation -- are relative sledge-hammers compared to the intricate workings of the human brain. But the real reason smart drugs won't work like "NZT" (from the movie "Limitless") is because none of them can make the necessary changes in both function and structure, to turn mediocrity into brilliance.

But for some of us, not trying is not an option.

Building a Neo-Nano-Neuro-Brain from Scratch

Nanonerves
Human brains are amazing mental machines. As far as we know, there is nothing else quite like them in the universe. But we always wonder whether perhaps, we could build something just a bit better? Observe all the hoopla and expenditure over the past 60+ years in the field of "artificial intelligence." What a disappointment that has been so far.

It seems we may be taking the wrong approach to the problem. Why should we abandon the human brain -- the only working model of conscious intelligence that we know of -- and place all our hopes on digital silicon? Perhaps the human brain is not as intelligent as we thought -- at least human brains in academia, research, and research funding?

Here is an interesting twist on the conundrum: Why not design a neuronal scaffolding out of nanotubes made of germanium and silicon, then allow neurons to grow within the scaffolding? The neurons will naturally make networked connections with each other along the scaffold, but an added bonus may be the ability to interface the neurons with the silicon-germanium substrate of the scaffold itself.

Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, led by Minrui Yu, have published an ACS Nano paper, "Semiconductor Nanomembrane Tubes: Three-Dimensional Confinement for Controlled Neurite Outgrowth," in which they show that they have been able to successfully coax nerve cell tendrils to grow through tiny tubes made of the semi-conductor materials silicon and germanium. While this ground-breaking research may not portend cyborgs or even human brains enmeshed with computer parts, it does open the door to the possibility of regenerating nerve cells damaged due to disease or injury.

Yu and his team, led by Justin Williams, a biomedical engineer, created tubes of varying sizes and shapes, small enough for a nerve cell to glam on to, but not so big that it could fit all the way inside. The tubes were then coated with nerve cells from mice and then watched to see how they would react. Instead of sitting idly, the nerve cells began to send tendrils through the tunnels, as if searching for a path to something or somewhere else. In some instances they actually followed the contours of the tubes, which means, in theory, that the nerves could be grown into structures. _PO

Indeed. The nerves could be grown into structures along prescribed pathways. But the possibility of a functional and powerful brain-machine interface is also being considered.

The hope of course, in this type of research, is that a way can be found to connect a computer of some sort to a group of nerve cells to reestablish communication that has been disrupted. The computer in this case could serve as a relay of sorts, allowing those who can no longer walk, for example, due to spinal injury or disease, regain their former abilities. In that regard, this particular research is even more revealing than it might at first seem, due to the fact that the tiny tubes that have been created, very closely resemble myelin, the outer insulating sheath that covers parts of normal nerve cells. _PO

This is the actual goal of the researchers in Wisconsin: to grow a nerve:computer interface. But emergent phenomena are likely to grow from the humble beginnings of such an approach. If one can design a scaffolding according to the most advanced brain imaging, seed it with the appropriate proto-cells, and nourish it into an intricate, functioning, autopoietic neural:nano hybrid network, what fascinating phenomena may manifest themselves along the way?

Cyborg or Grobyc? You be the judge.

Lifehacker's Top 10 Tips and Tricks to Supercharge Your Brain

Lifehacker Top 10 is a service of Lifehacker.com for people who are in a hurry and want to jump to the heart of the matter quickly. Today's Lifehacker Top 10 deals with ways of building your brainpower.

Some methods seem like common sense -- good nutrition and exercise -- but others are less obvious. Make Lifehacker a regular stop on your daily internet tour.
Here is the link to the original Lifehacker article excerpted below:
While we're always using our brains, we're not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles.

10. Sudoku

By now you're probably familiar with Sudoku, but just in case it's a number puzzle game with the objective of filling up a grid of numbers. Check out these instructions to learn how to play. Most people find Sudoku a fun and addictive game, plus it can help improve your problem-solving skills (just not your overall brain health). You can play online, on your iOS device, on Facebook, Android, and pretty much any other platform you can think of.

9. Wikipedia:Random

Wikipedia:Random is simply a means of randomly stumbling on a Wikipedia article. Why is this good for your brain? You can use it to find a new topic to learn about every day. Qwiki, a visually rich, mini Wikipedia that reads to you, is another good starting point. Learning something new every day can keep your brain healthy, so grab a random article and make it a new way to start your morning.

Wikpedia:Random

8. Practice Simple Math Every Day

Perhaps you remember the Mad Math Minute from grade school, where you'd need to solve as many math problems as possible in 60 seconds. While it may have seemed annoying then, it was excellent practice that you can still make use of now. While it's easy enough to create your own Mad Math Minute worksheets, since you're basically just writing out a bunch of simple math problems on a piece of paper, I found a Mad Math Minute generator for Mrs. Boguski's 5th grade class. It probably wasn't intended for mass consumption on the web, so here are some alternative printable worksheets. The bottom line is this: a minute of simple math can help get your brain in shape and make you far less reliant on a calculator.

7. Write Instead of Type (More Often)

We love our keyboards. They're much more efficient at getting words on the page than your hand, a pencil, and a notebook. Nonetheless, you can learn more effectively by writing longhand and so you may want to ditch the laptop when you're acquiring new knowledge. This happens because your brain's filtering system (the reticular activating system, or RAS) processes what you're actively focusing on at the moment. Writing triggers the RAS and lets your brain know it's time to pay attention.

6. Act Like You're Teaching

You can utilize the skills you already have more effectively by acting like you're teaching. Rather than just recalling the steps needing to complete the task at hand, pretend as though you're teaching yourself how to do it. This will help you recall the necessary information better and avoid making stupid mistakes.
Photo by Renato Ganoza

5. Tell Yourself Stories

Storytelling cane be a good way to exercise your brain. First of all, it makes things easier to remember because it puts what you want to remember in a more compelling framework. It gives you a chance to focus on important details and associate emotion with what you're trying to remember. Even if you're not telling yourself a story to help retain the information, you'll still improve your memory just by telling stories in general. Storytelling has been used as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. If storytelling can help an Alzeheimer's patient improve their memory, chances are it can help you.
Photo by Stacy Z

4. Lumosity

Lumosity is a webapp that provides specialized brain-training activities. You can use it for free, but premium accounts (which you can try free for five days) have a wider range of training options. All the exercises are pretty simple to understand and are fun to play. All of my initial exercises had to do with memory, likely because I selected better memory as one of my goals when I signed up. That's to say that Lumosity's exercises may vary for you based on the information you provide. When you're done, you get a rating and your goal is simply to improve with each day you practice.

Lumosity

3. Meditate

Nothing kills your ability to use your brain effectively, as well as your brain's overall health, like too much stress. What's a great way to reduce your stress levels? Meditation—and you don't need to do it with incense and yoga pants. Check out our guide on meditation for the rest of us for some simple ways to get started.
Photo by Cornelia Kopp

2. Learn About Your Brain's Faults and Account for Them

In a previous top ten we've taken a look at ways your brain is sabotaging you and how to beat it. We've also looked at how to avoid burnout from addictive technology, how you can become a lot smarter by realizing you're not that great, how to use your natural inclination towards quitting to your advantage, how imagining eating more can lead to eating less, why it's okay that you and everyone else is an asshole, and many more. Basically, your brain does a lot of things very, very well but sucks at plenty of others. You may not be able to fix the things your brain is bad at in all cases, but at least being aware of your inherent faults can make sure you're taking advantage of your brain's full potential.

1. Exercise and Eat Well

While probably a little obvious (and something we've previously noted), I'd bet that the number of people who believe this is common knowledge is very close to the number of people who don't follow that common knowledge. If you're not exercising and eating right simply because you don't know how, well, check out this 15-minute daily workout from 1904 and structure your daily diet like a pyramid. If you're worried about spending too much money to eat healthy, there are plenty of great reader suggestions for eating health on the cheap. Anything you do to keep your brain sharp can be easily thwarted if you don't keep your body healthy. A little physical activity and a smart diet will make it much easier for you to your brain in top shape.
Photo by Lululemon Athletica

You have only one brain this time around. Make good use of it.

Pardon Me, Madame: Is That My Arm Up Your Dress?

How odd that Charlie would not know that it is his arm up Mrs. Randthorpe-Fitzgerald's dress. But we all remember that Charlie suffered an infarction of his right insular cortex following a stroke last spring. Yes, of course, Charlie must be suffering from left sided neglect -- he doesn't know that his left arm is actually his.

But wait a minute! It is Charlie's right arm that is up Mrs. R-F's dress. Charlie, you dog! And why is Mrs. R-F smiling?

This is where the insula is located -- hidden beneath the temporal lobe (cut away in the illustration). It is like an island into itself, and is in many ways like a separate brain. But the insula happens to be crucial to a person's sense of self, and to his consciousness. Here is how:

The insula has increasingly become the focus of attention for its role in body representation and subjective emotional experience. In particular, Antonio Damasio has proposed that this region plays a role in mapping visceral states that are associated with emotional experience, giving rise to conscious feelings. This is in essence a neurobiological formulation of the ideas of William James, who first proposed that subjective emotional experience (i.e. feelings) arise from our brain's interpretation of bodily states that are elicited by emotional events. This is an example of embodied cognition.

Functionally speaking, the insula is believed to process convergent information to produce an emotionally relevant context for sensory experience. More specifically, the anterior insula is related more to olfactory, gustatory, vicero-autonomic, and limbic function, while the posterior insula is related more to auditory-somesthetic-skeletomotor function. Functional imaging experiments have revealed that the insula has an important role in pain experience and the experience of a number of basic emotions, including anger, fear, disgust, happiness and sadness.

Functional imaging studies have also implicated the insula in conscious desires, such as food craving and drug craving. What is common to all of these emotional states is that they each change the body in some way and are associated with highly salient subjective qualities. The insula is well situated for the integration of information relating to bodily states into higher-order cognitive and emotional processes. The insula receives information from "homeostatic afferent" sensory pathways via the thalamus and sends output to a number of other limbic-related structures, such as the amygdala, the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex, as well as to motor cortices. ^[45]

A study using magnetic resonance imaging has found that the right anterior insula was significantly thicker in people whomeditate. ^[46]

_Wapedia

It is remarkable to think that such a small, hidden patch of cortex could be so pivotal to the "soul" of each human being. Al Fin has long championed the concept of "Embodied Cognition", the idea that a mind must have a body in order to be functionally conscious. Particularly when one's consciousness rests so crucially upon a sense of self.

The insula is also thought to be important in the act of decision-making including, perhaps, the making of moral decisions. That makes sense, given the importance of the insula to one's internal body sense, or "gut sense."

Many of our decisions are based upon gut instincts, as it were. Some acts and people "make us sick", while others leave us weak, strong, or make our heads hurt. The way our bodies feel about things can influence us far more than we realise.

And so we leave the insulae of one armed Charlie and Mrs. R-F in the parlour, performing an ancient "dance of the insular cortices."

Meanwhile we may contemplate how it would be possible to insert an insula-like processor into a machine brain, to give it a sense of embodiment. It would be but a bare beginning, of course. But it would be a rational beginning.