September 10, 2007
Category: Animal Psychology
Tonight, I'm holding my own private Irish wake for Alex, the extraordinary parrot. (Pass the Bushmill's, folks. This is going to be a tearjerker.)
Alex, an African Gray parrot, whose linguistic prowess put many-a-kindergartner to shame, is dead at the tender age of 31 of unknown causes. (In case you haven't been studying up on avian lifespan, large parrots can live to be over 80.) If this strikes you as less than tragic than I'm willing to bet that a) you have a heart of stone, or b) you were unaware of Alex's intellectual gifts. If you fall into the latter category, allow me to get you up to speed . . .
Alex was no ordinary parrot. He had a job. He worked with Brandeis Psychology Professor Irene Pepperberg trying to unravel the mysteries of animal cognition. And he managed quite a lot in his short time on earth, including mastering over 100 words. He accomplished so much, in fact, that he earned a spot on Wikipedia. That's more than you can say for most grad students, let alone parrots.
What did he do exactly? I think Temple Grandin tells it best in her book "Animals in Translation:"
[Alex's] achievements are nothing short of revolutionary, because up until Alex came along no one had ever been able to teach birds much of anything at all. It wasn't because they hadn't tried, either. Bird researchers had spent hours and hours trying to teach birds concepts like color, and no bird had even come close . . . Birds seemed like real birdbrains.
So it was a huge shock when Irene Pepperberg succeeded where every single person before her had failed. Not only could Alex learn categories like color and shape . . . once he'd learned categories, he could spontaneously answer questions like 'What color?' and 'What shape?' about brand-new objects he'd never seen before.
And that's not where Alex's talents stopped. He was also a real cut up, as evidenced by the following story:
Not very long ago, Dr. Pepperberg began trying to teach Alex and another gray parrot, Griffin, to sound out phonemes, which are the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent. English has forty phonemes altogether. She and her colleagues wanted to see if the birds understood that words are made out of letters that could be recombined to make other words, so they started training the birds with magnetic refrigerator letters.
One day their corporate sponsors were visiting Dr. Pepperberg's lab, and she and her staff wanted to show off what Alex and Griffin could do. So they put a bunch of colored plastic refrigerator letters on a tray and started asking Alex questions.
"Alex, what sound is blue?"
Alex made the sound "Sssss." That was right; the blue letter was 'S.'
Dr. Pepperberg said, "Good birdie," and Alex said, "Want a nut," because he was supposed to get a nut whenever he gave the right answer. But Dr. Pepperberg didn't want him sitting there eating the nut during the limited time she had with their sponsors, so she told Alex to wait, and then asked, "What sound is green?"
The green example was the letter combination "SH" and Alex said, "Shhhh." He was right again.
Dr. Pepperberg said, "Good parrot," and Alex said, "Want a nut."
But Dr. Pepperberg said, "Alex wait. What sound is orange?"
Alex got that one right, too, and he still didn't get his nut . . . Alex was obviously getting more frustrated by the minute.
Finally, Alex lost patience.
Here's the way Dr. Pepperberg describes it: Alex gets very slitty-eyed and looks at me and states, 'Want a nut. Nnnn, uh, tuh."
Well, Alex, all I can say is thanks for having patience with us hardheaded humans. You will be missed.
And, at the risk of being accused of sappiness, I'd also like to send out my condolences to Dr. Pepperberg. Parrots mate for life and my hunch is that Dr. Pepperberg was Alex's chosen mate. I came to this conclusion after reading about an interchange between the two of them in "123 compute:"
"Calm down," Alex, an African Gray parrot, told Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the scientist at the University of Arizona who owns him. "Don't tell me to calm down," Dr. Pepperberg snapped. Sometimes Dr. Pepperberg and Alex squabble like an old married couple. He even says, "I love you."
That kind of devotion tends to cut both ways. So Dr. Pepperberg, I raise a glass to you too.
Posted by Neurontic at 5:48 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 10, 2007
Category: Antidepressants • Armchair Sociology • Ask a ScienceBlogger • Big Questions
My gut response after reading this question was: Well, duh--obviously, summer is more conducive to happiness. I mean, you can make a good case for the virtues of spring and fall, but they're really less seasons than they are opening acts. And apart from Christmas and skiing, winter doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it. Nope. If you're ranking seasons, summertime is the clear winner. Summer=hot sun, slow, quiet afternoons, and water-logged family vacations. What more does a human being need to be happy, apart from an air-conditioner and an ample supply of snacks?
Proving my theory seemed simple enough. All I had to do was find out the "happiness ratings" of people lucky enough to live in the handful of politically stable locales that enjoy perpetual summer. It stood to reason that the happiest people on earth would live in places like Hawaii, Belize, and the Bahamas, right?
Not so much, as it turns out. In fact, researchers at the University of Leicester recently performed a meta-analysis of surveys on well-being and satisfaction, and after totaling up 80,000 responses from people across the globe, they found that the four happiest places on earth are: Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and - wait for it - Iceland. Viewed through this lens, it appears that happiness has far less to do with sun than it does with beer consumption and good healthcare.
Now, I'm a fan of both beer and state-subsidized medicine, but this just seems wrong. The sun has to have something to do with well-being, doesn't it? The answer is: Sort of. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the sun makes people happier--but only if they're depressed to begin with. For instance, exposure to the sun or other sources of light does wonders for people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a syndrome that causes 4 percent to 6 percent of the general population to go into a deep funk in the winter months.
Sidenote: I know what you're thinking. If you buy the argument that a lack of sun contributes to SAD, wouldn't people in places like Switzerland and Denmark be more prone to SAD and therefore-well, you know . . . sadder? Again, the answer is frustratingly inconclusive. If you look at the world as a whole, people at higher latitudes, who experience fewer hours of daylight in winter, do as a rule have higher rates of SAD, but there's a huge amount of variation from country to country.
Denmark, for instance, has a relatively high rate of SAD, 12.4 percent, as do the northern reaches of New York State, 12.5 percent. But the Swiss oddly have a rate of only 2.2 percent and they aren't much lower than Denmark latitude-wise. Iceland, which is extremely far north, has a rate of just 3.6 percent. Scientists speculate that Icelanders have developed a genetic immunity to SAD, but the truth is that no one really knows what the heck is going on. (Want to tie your brain in a knot? Here's the source of these stats.)
The question remains: Why does sunlight, and thus summer, do wonders for some of us? When sunlight hits your skin it triggers the production of Vitamin D. Some scientists speculate that a small portion of the population depends on Vitamin D to stay emotionally afloat, because several studies have shown that a deficit of Vitamin D is correlated with a dip in mood. (See here and here.)
But sunlight's no one-trick pony. In addition to spurring the production of Vitamin D, it also suppresses the production of melatonin, the chemical that regulates our body clocks when the seasons change. (For more on this read SciBlogger Nick Anthis's recent piece " A Sun Ray A Day . . .) Some researchers theorize that in winter months, the lack of sunlight screws with people's internal clocks, compromises their sleep patterns, and leaves them vulnerable to depression.
But that's not all. Still other researchers claim that sunlight ups the amount of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin - for those of you who've managed to blip over the media hype - is the neurotransmitter many scientists believe to be the culprit behind depression. According to this theory, some people's depressive symptoms are alleviated when the sun is out, because their serotonin-manufacturing system kicks into a high gear.
So which is it? At this point, researchers are confident that melatonin plays a role in Seasonal Affective Disorder, but beyond that, we don't know. SAD might be a genetic vulnerability activated by a combination of all of the above. Science is still figuring that out.
In meantime, if you find yourself falling into an emotional morass come winter, it's safe to say a vacation in the tropics won't hurt. As for the rest of you, might I recommend a frosty beer and some socialized medicine?
Posted by Neurontic at 1:10 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 4, 2007
Category: In the press
I thought Neurontic readers might be interested in this profile I recently did of Radio Lab Host Jad Abumrad.
If you don't know about WNYC's cult "science" show yet, you should take the time to listen to it. Why? Because as Jad says: "The people who listen to Radio Lab like that feeling of thinking that they know something and then suddenly having their perspective just shift." And I'd be willing to bet that describes most of you.
**For the uninitiated, here are links to a couple of my favorite episodes of the show. (Note: Fellow Seed Blogger Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex is a contributor!):
Who Am I? (Featuring the one, the only: V.S. Ramachandran.)
Emergence (Featuring Stephen Johnson.)
Posted by Neurontic at 4:15 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 2, 2007
Category: Silly Science
Late Breaking News
*Orangutans Communicate As If They Were Playing Charades
Hmmm, so let me get this straight. It looks like he's saying: "Give me a banana." But what he's really saying is: "It's Boogie Nights, you f%$#ing moron." Okay, got it.
*Also, you'll be thrilled to know that researchers at the University of Austin have finally done the math and it turns out that there are not 100 . . . not 200 . . . but 237 distinct reasons that people have sex.
Yeah. For reals: 237. It's science, people.
Posted by Neurontic at 7:31 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 24, 2007
Category: Neuroscience
"We saw that the group with high level of leisure activities presented 38% less risk of developing Alzheimer's symptoms."
Dr. Yaakov Stern, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York.
Read this interview with Dr. Stern on Sharp Brains, to learn more about building up your "cognitive reserves."
Posted by Neurontic at 6:29 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 18, 2007
Category: Book Review
This week I think we could all use a brief reprieve from me and my opinions, so I'm running a review of Phillip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect, written by the wickedly smart (and just plain wicked) writer Carey Bertolet.
Bio
Kid-friendly version: Carey Bertolet is an avid reader because she enjoys challenging concepts and sitting on her caboose. When not at work, Carey is the host of her own imaginary cooking show as well as the co-producer of "the Boo Radley Show," her miniature pinscher's imaginary late night talk show. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband who is recapturing his youth by wearing edgy t-shirts.
Adult version: Carey Bertolet is the Founding Managing Director of BCG Attorney Search, a legal recruitment agency dedicated to placing attorneys in private law firms. A graduate of Vanderbilt University and Emory Law School, Carey is a frequent speaker and writes often about hiring trends, the New York marketplace, and the life and work styles of private practice attorneys.
*Note: I can personally attest to the fact that both are equally true.
Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Evil and a Whole Lot More
By Carey Bertolet
In the 2006 book The Lucifer Effect, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, designer and "master of ceremonies," of the Stanford Prison Experiment, finally takes pen to paper and describes the ins and outs of his landmark study, which took a group of ostensibly sane Stanford undergraduates, consigned them to a mock prison as inmates and guards, and watched their psyches unravel over the course of their short stay.
Having spent the better part of the last 35 years contemplating the debacle he almost single-handedly engineered, Zimbardo has not shortage of thoughts on the subject. What results is a long-winded, seemingly unedited book that is less a treatise than a jumble of absolutely fascinating stuff. I was resolute in learning everything I could from The Lucifer Effect, but my experience of reading the book was mixed: At the end of the day, it felt a little like eating cheese fries in the middle of a dodge ball tournament. I loved everything I could internalize, but I was too over-stimulated to concentrate.
For the uninitiated, I'll do my best to sum up the purpose and eventual fallout of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The SPE was designed to study the social psychology of individuals in a prison environment. Zimbardo, a Stanford University psychologist, recruited a group of college students to participate in what he and his team hoped would be a 2-week paid experiment. As Zimbardo points out at every opportunity, these students were intelligent, law-abiding young men, who were carefully screened and chosen because they were deemed well-adjusted citizens. After passing their psych evaluations, half of the participants were randomly assigned the role of prisoners; the other half were made guards.
Once plunked down in the prison, the students quickly started exhibiting--well--let's just say "troubling" behavior. Without being given any direction to speak of, those assigned to the guard role became authoritarian, abusive, and in some instances, extremely creative in their cruelty. The prisoners, in contrast, fell relatively easily into submissive roles, allowing their individual identities to completely disappear into the prisoner "stereotype." (The researchers also got a little too enthusiastic about their roles as administrators and insisted on keeping the prison open even after the behavior inside it qualified as dangerously unhealthy.)
Zimbardo is quick to point out that the subjects were typical, healthy students before entering the SPE. And, in what seems an overly defensive postscript, he points out that these subjects returned to 'normal' once the study was over. (We get it, Dr. Zimbardo, no undergraduates were harmed in the making of the SPE.) But regardless of how transient the moral turpitude was, the SPE got ugly in a hurry. Some of the subjects assigned to the guard role decided on their own in less than a week to run a prison where sleep deprivation, verbal abuse, and solitary confinement were de rigeur. And while some of the guards were uncomfortable with the environment of escalating abuse, no one tried to stop it.
Here's the thing: Sometimes an author just doesn't have the knack for subtlety. Sometimes an author puts on an orange safety vest and jumps up and down until you are forced to acknowledge him. Yes, Dr. Zimbardo? You have something to say?
It's abundantly clear that Zimbardo wants us to be reminded of Nazi Germany and the human race's capacity to sit by silently while atrocities are committed. You know how I know? Because he told me--a lot. This is just like Nazis! he says. And Abu Ghraib! It's eerily like the pictures from Abu Ghraib. These aren't bad apples, Zimardo tells us, they're good apples in bad barrels.
To be clear, Zimbardo isn't linking bad apples and oranges. He argues that the environment created in his mock prison caused otherwise good people to go bad. And he makes a compelling case that the behavior of the SPE participants is not unlike the transgressions of the Abu Ghraib soldiers who have been universally condemned. Zimbardo makes clear that the road to perdition is shorter than we'd like to think. We all come pre-equipped with an EZ pass. Still, even after 500 pages (yeah--500 hundred), I couldn't shake the feeling that there is something too simplistic about creating a laundry list of human atrocities and chalking them all up to "bad barrels."
I picked up The Lucifer Effect because I've always wanted a definitive answer to the question: Can a human being be innately evil or is evil a byproduct of experience? Unfortunately, Zimbardo didn't get me any closer to answering the question. (To be fair, that wasn't his goal.) What he did do is convince me that even the best among us are corruptible given the right set of circumstances.
One of the biggest problems with The Lucifer Effect is that Zimbardo understands how important his work is. He's fully aware that his musings are destined to become a part of the historical record. The result is that he tries to make too many important points too loudly and too often for the casual psychology enthusiast to enjoy the experience of reading his book.
I frankly wish Zimbardo had written several books. The SPE is a worthwhile topic on its own. (I would even buy tickets to a dramatization starring Henry Rollins as the tough talking prison warden, with me in a minor role as an unassuming inmate. But I digress.) And I would dutifully head over to Barnes and Noble to purchase his follow-up book on the parallels between his experiment and Nazi Germany and Abu Ghraib. What I don't want is a book about all of the above and that's what I got.
Still, even though Zimbardo gives us too much, too sloppily in The Lucifer Effect, the book is brimming with truly interesting material. I find myself talking about what I learned all the time. For all the criticism I have of the book, I wouldn't have finished it if Zimbardo hadn't convinced me that he knew something I needed to know.
I'm putting Philip Zimbardo on my list of people I'd invite to my house for dinner. I just hope he gets the hint when it's time to leave.
Posted by Neurontic at 6:38 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 8, 2007
Category: Armchair Sociology
Having been raised in California - birthplace of est, vegan bacon, and aerobics - I grew up thinking of life less as an "adventure" than as a relentless self-improvement campaign. Oh, don't get me wrong, I got more than my fair share of personal affirmation at home, but no matter how special my parents insisted I was, the prevailing message of the culture around me was that with a little work I could be "specialer"--or at the very least skinnier, healthier, and more well-adjusted.
I figured out relatively early on that this was a losing battle, but it has still left me with irrational feelings of guilt at failing to meet my "optimum potential," which is why this article - Does self-help breed helplessness? - immediately caught my interest.
The article is an interview with Jennifer Niesslein, an otherwise sane woman who spent two years dutifully following the advice of a smorgasbord of self-professed self-help experts only to come out the other end ten pounds lighter and markedly more jaded. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll tell you that: a) I haven't read the book, and b) I don't intend to. Not because it doesn't look like an entertaining piece of armchair scholarship, just because the review was enough to clear my conscience. Yet another author has dipped her toe into the self-improvement pond and come away feeling more psychically damaged and exhausted than improved. (See. I was right all along.)
Still, one passage in the article did get me to thinking. I'll quote the section here:
Interviewer: I found it interesting that you mention in both your marriage chapter and your housecleaning and organizing chapter that most of the burden of improvement tends to fall on the woman.
Niesslein: Self-help is very old-school in that way. I think it's changing, in the same way that our culture is changing -- women are moving into the traditional men's realm, but it's taking a lot more time for men to move into the traditional women's realm, into the domestic stuff . . . But housecleaning and relationship advice is still very much targeted to women."
This idea may seem blindingly obvious to the female readers out there, but it isn't one that you see written about very often, and I'm glad to see it finally being introduced into the public discourse. Because it's true: In recent decades, women have successfully moved from the private to the public sphere, but the reverse doesn't seem to be happening as quickly as it should.
Modern men are now perfectly content to see their wives become breadwinners in their own right--but the majority of them seem loath to accept an equal share of responsibility for the "domestic duties," traditionally assigned to women. The result is that most of the professional women I know spend a good chunk of their leisure time trying to motivate the "enlightened" men in their lives to pick up their socks, do the dishes, and take out the garbage. And when they're not haranguing their men about the chores, they're often performing what I call "relationship upkeep duties,"--hounding their partners to talk about their feelings, and address the small resentments building up in the relationship.
Now, call me a militant feminist if you want, but does this sound "leisurely" to you?
When you keep this domestic imbalance in mind, it seems clear why a recent study of married couples, conducted by Iowa State University researchers, found that: "Wives, on average, exhibit greater situational power [at home]."
On its face, this may sound like good news, but I'd argue that it's just more evidence of the fact that the onus for relationships and home life is placed squarely on the shoulders of women. Consider this statement by Assistant Professor Megan Murphy, the woman who spearheaded the research: "Women are responsible for overseeing the relationship -- making sure the relationship runs, that everything gets done, and that everybody's happy."
If this is true, it's no wonder that women tend to "dominate" the home. After all, if they didn't, who would ensure that "everything gets done" and that "everybody's happy?" Hmmm? I'm willing to bet that most women would be more than willing to relinquish this "power" given the opportunity.
I'm not looking to vilify the modern American man here. Hell--I love the modern American man (particularly the one I live with). But I think that this imbalance is taking its toll on women's well-being and I do wonder whether being overburdened is one of the many factors contributing the high rate of depression among women.
Posted by Neurontic at 5:41 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 2, 2007
Category: Late Breaking News
Check out the latest edition of Encephalon at Neurophilosophy and note his new home! Welcome to the fold, Mo. We're happy to have you.
Posted by Neurontic at 7:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 25, 2007
Category: Today's Crackpot Theory
I'm a firm believer in the idea that the world can be broken up into two kinds of people: Those who purchase motivational posters festooned with baby animals and those who laugh at them. I've always placed myself firmly in the latter category. Does this make me a misanthropic killjoy? Maybe. But I'm willing to live with that, which is why I find it so odd that I've become completely and utterly addicted to Cute Overload.
Given that the site won this year's Best American Weblog Award, I'm guessing you've heard of it. But perhaps, you (unlike me) have better things to do with your time than croon at the computer screen, so here's the deal: Cute Overload is a clearing house for all things cute, namely puppies, kittens, gamboling lambs, bunnies with floppy ears, thumb print-sized turtles and the like. What do you do there, you ask? You luxuriate in warm, fuzzy feelings, while admiring the unrelenting cuteness of it all, of course.
Read on »
Posted by Neurontic at 8:00 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Neurontic covers breakthroughs in neuroscience and psychology and is designed to give laypeople a window into the inner workings of the human mind. Orli Van Mourik is a freelance journalist in New York City. Her work has appeared in Psychology Today Magazine .
