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Scientific American Mind 29.5 (September-October 2018)
Scientific American Mind 29.5 (September-October 2018)
Scientific American Mind 29.5 (September-October 2018)
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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2018 | MIND.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM
The Art
of Lying
One of humanity’s
PLUS
How
Teens
Think
most vilified behaviors
is a sophisticated Mental
feat of the mind Navigation
on the Fly
Your Brain
on Social
Media
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Elsewhere in this issue Kerri Smith details the fascinating research on how
Andrea Gawrylewski
Collections Editor, editors@sciam.com
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CONTENTS
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JO M C RYAN GETTY IMAGES
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How does the brain
CONTENTS
know where it is?
Nachum Ulanovsky
hopes his flying
friends can help him
find the answer
Features
18 The Art of Lying
Lying has gotten a bad rap. In fact, it is among the
most sophisticated accomplishments of the human
DAVID VAAKNIN FOR NATURE
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NEWS
The Despondent Mind: Are Our Brains
Wired for Doom and Gloom?
I
f it seems the state of the world is on an
endless downward trajectory these
days, take heart. Things might not be
“As we solve problems, we also unknowingly
quite as bad as you think. New research,
published in June in Science, suggests that
as social problems such as extreme poverty
expand our definitions of what counts as
or violence become less prevalent, people
may be prone to perceive that they linger—
and are perhaps even getting worse.
them.” —Daniel Gilbert
Led by psychologist Daniel Gilbert at abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, highlights another intriguing player. “This
Harvard University, the researchers found addiction and prejudice—to include cases is the first time someone has actually said
people readily and unconsciously change previously judged benign or inoffensive. there’s a cognitive mechanism that could
how they define certain concepts—ranging In some cases, the expansion of con- account for that,” Haslam says.
from specific colors to unethical behav- cepts such as aggression (and more recent- In one of its experiments Gilbert’s team
ior—based on how frequently they run into ly, “microaggressions”) in the public con- showed volunteers a series of 1,000 dots,
them. “On almost every dimension, the sciousness has sparked heated debate; ranging in color between very purple and
world is getting better. And yet when peo- some critics argue these shifts reflect po- very blue. Participants had to judge wheth-
ple are asked, they consistently say it’s not litical correctness run amok, whereas oth- er each dot was blue or not. Partway
getting better, and in fact it’s getting ers claim they signal growing social aware- through the test, researchers began show-
worse,” Gilbert says. “As we solve prob- ness. Gilbert is emphatically agnostic on ing fewer blue dots (and more purple or
lems, we also unknowingly expand our the issue. “Expanding a concept isn’t nec- purplish dots) to some participants. By the
definitions of what counts as them.” essarily good or bad,” he says. “Science end of the experiment, these study partic-
Concept expansion itself is not a new doesn’t weigh in on whether it’s a good or ipants were more likely to say “blue” to
observation. In 2016 social psychologist bad thing.” He and others are simply inter- hues in the middle of the spectrum, includ-
Nicholas Haslam at the University of Mel- ested in understanding how the phenome- ing some dots they had previously seen
bourne in Australia introduced the term non happens. and judged “not blue.”
“concept creep” to describe the broaden- A number of factors likely contribute to The change was involuntary—it even
ing of modern psychological terminolo- these changes, among them political, so- occurred when volunteers were warned the
gy—especially negative examples such as cial or economic forces. But the latest study frequency of blue dots would decrease. In-
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NEWS
Use of “Smart Drugs”
T
he use of drugs by people hoping to But the largest increases were in Europe:
boost mental performance is rising
worldwide, finds the largest ever
use in France rose from 3 percent in 2015 to
16 percent in 2017; and from 5 percent to 23
The use of drugs
study of the trend. In a survey of tens of thou-
sands of people, 14 percent reported using
stimulants at least once in the preceding 12
percent in the United Kingdom. An informal
reader survey by Nature in 2008 found that
one in five respondents had used drugs to
by people hoping
months in 2017, up from 5 percent in 2015.
The nonmedical use of substances—of-
ten dubbed smart drugs—to increase mem-
boost concentration or memory.
The latest analysis is impressive in its
size, says Barbara Sahakian, a neuroscien-
to boost mental
ory or concentration is known as pharmaco-
logical cognitive enhancement (PCE), and it
rose in all 15 nations included in the survey.
tist at the University of Cambridge, who
was not involved in the work. There is an
increasing lifestyle use” of cognitive-en-
performance is
The study looked at prescription medica-
tions such as Adderall and Ritalin—pre-
scribed medically to treat attention deficit
hancing drugs by healthy people, which
raises ethical concerns, she says.
Cultural factors, the prevalence of
rising worldwide.
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—as well as ADHD diagnoses and availability all influ- The study suggests that the spread of
the sleep-disorder medication modafinil ence which drugs are used for PCE and the U.S.-style practices in ADHD treatment is
and illegal stimulants such as cocaine. rate of use, says Larissa Maier, a psycholo- driving the trend and making drugs more
The work, published in the International gist at the University of California, San available: countries with higher rates of
Journal of Drug Policy in June, is based on the Francisco, who led the study. ADHD diagnoses, such as the United States,
Global Drug Survey—an annual, anonymous In the United States, where ADHD diag- Canada and Australia, have higher rates of
online questionnaire about drug use world- noses are high and medication is a com- nonmedical prescription-drug use for cog-
wide. The survey had 79,640 respondents in mon treatment, 22 percent of respondents nitive enhancement.
2015 and 29,758 in 2017. said they had used amphetamine-combi- “The increased diagnoses of ADHD and
U.S. respondents reported the highest nation drugs such as Adderall for PCE. their prescription drug use are creating a
rate of use: in 2017, nearly 30 percent said Those drugs are not approved in the Euro- substantial population of young pharma-
they had used drugs for PCE at least once pean Union, where methylphenidate—sold cologically medicated persons whose un-
in the preceding 12 months, up from 20 under various trade names, including Rit- derlying problems may very likely be lo-
percent in 2015. alin—is more commonly used. cated in their social world,” says Steven
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NEWS
“Traveling” Brain Waves
May Be Critical for Cognition
Physical motion of neural signals may play a more
GETTY IMAGES
important role in brain function than previously thought
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T
he electrical oscillations we call
brain waves have intrigued scien-
tists and the public for more than a
Scientists have proposed numerous possible
century. But their function—and even
whether they have one, rather than just re-
flecting brain activity like an engine’s hum—
roles for brain waves.
is still debated. Many neuroscientists have scalp. Researchers have noted activity over cetera). A related idea is they facilitate the
assumed that if brain waves do anything, it a range of different frequencies, from delta transfer of information among regions.
is by oscillating in synchrony in different (0.5 to 4 hertz) through to gamma (25 to 140 But such hypotheses require brain waves
locations. Yet a growing body of research Hz) waves. The slowest occur during deep to be synchronous, producing “standing”
suggests many brain waves are actually sleep, with increasing frequency associated waves (analogous to two people swinging
“traveling waves” that physically move with increasing levels of consciousness and a jump rope up and down) rather than trav-
through the brain like waves on the sea. concentration. Interpreting EEG data is dif- eling waves (as in a crowd doing “the wave”
Now a new study from a team at Co- ficult due to their poor ability to pinpoint at a sports event). This is important be-
lumbia University led by neuroscientist the location of activity, and the fact that cause traveling waves have different prop-
Joshua Jacobs suggests traveling waves passage through the head blurs the signals. erties that could, for example, represent
are widespread in the human cortex—the The new study, published in June in Neuron, information about the past states of other
seat of higher cognitive functions—and used a more recent technique called elec- brain locations. The fact they physically
that they become more organized de- trocorticography (ECoG). This involves propagate through the brain like sound
pending on how well the brain is perform- placing electrode arrays directly on the through air makes them a potential mech-
ing a task. This shows the waves are rele- brain’s surface, minimizing distortions and anism for moving information from one
vant to behavior, bolstering previous re- vastly improving spatial resolution. place to another.
search suggesting they are an important Scientists have proposed numerous pos- These ideas have been around for de-
but overlooked brain mechanism that sible roles for brain waves. A leading hy- cades, but the majority of neuroscientists
contributes to memory, perception, at- pothesis holds that synchronous oscilla- have paid little attention. One likely reason
tention and even consciousness. tions serve to “bind” information in differ- is that until recently most previous reports
Brain waves were first discovered using ent locations together as pertaining to the of traveling waves—although there are ex-
electroencephalogram (EEG) techniques, same “thing,” such as different features of a ceptions—have merely described the waves
which involve placing electrodes on the visual object (shape, color, movement, et- without establishing their significance. “If
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were prompted to recall information. The shown they are evoked during working different brain regions,” Jacobs says. “This
waves changed from moving in various di- memory tasks,” he says, pointing to a 2002 opens key new areas of research, such as
rections to mostly moving in concert. Im- EEG study that found the timing of a rever- understanding what exactly this coordina-
portantly, the extent to which they did this sal in direction of theta waves correlated tion consists of.” He thinks the waves prop-
varied with how quickly participants re- with memory performance. Interestingly, agate information, at least in the context of
sponded. “More consistent waves corre- an EEG study Alexander himself published the current study.
spond to better task performance,” Jacobs in 2009 found fewer waves moving from the Another idea holds that waves, by re-
says. “This suggests a new way to measure front to the back of the head during a work- peatedly moving across patches of cortex,
brain activity to understand cognition, ing-memory task in people who had experi- modulate the sensitivity of neurons so as
which can perhaps give rise to new, im- enced their first episode of schizophrenia, to sweep a “searchlight” of attention across,
proved brain–computer interfaces.” (BCIs compared with healthy individuals, sug- say, the brain’s visual-processing area. “The
are devices that connect a human brain to a gesting differences in traveling wave be- concept of a traveling wave is closely tied
machine that performs some task, like mov- havior can be related to psychiatric symp- up with the issue of how you maintain the
ing a prosthetic limb.) toms. He also claims the methods the team cortex in the sweet spot where it’s maxi-
These findings should help dispel some used to assess traveling waves are similar to mally sensitive to other inputs and able to
researchers’ lingering doubts about the im- those he used in a 2016 study. “Alexander’s function optimally,” Sejnowski says. Inter-
portance of such waves. “The article is a work is really interesting, but it’s not clear est in traveling waves will undoubtedly
strong contribution to the study of cortical his findings involve the same signals as our continue to increase. “What you’re seeing
traveling waves, adding to previous work on paper,” Jacobs notes. “He reported patterns right now is a transformation from one
their role in human cognition,” says psy- that literally involve the entire brain, conceptual framework to a completely new
chologist David Alexander of the University whereas our findings were limited to par- framework,” he adds. “It’s a paradigm shift.”
of Leuven in Belgium who did not take part ticular regions.” Jacobs also points to dif- —SIMON MAKIN
in the work. “This really will put to rest any ferences in recording techniques and the
worries that the waves are an artifact of blur- nature of recorded signals.
ring of signal passing through the skull.” He Confirming the importance of traveling
also says the authors make unjustified claims waves creates new horizons in neurosci-
about the novelty of the findings and fail to ence. “Finding that such a wide range of os-
acknowledge some previous research, how- cillations are traveling waves shows that
ever. “Previous work on traveling waves has they involve coordinating activity across
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NEWS
Early Life Experience:
It’s in Your DNA
Surprising study suggests experiences while young
GETTY IMAGES
cause the brain to experience changes to the genome
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W
e normally think that every cell genome contained in brain cells. This is a dance of maternal care provided by mice
in our body contains the same fundamentally new and unexplored way in based upon measures of time they spent
genome, the complete set of ge- which experience can alter the brain. It is grooming and nursing their pups. They
netic information that makes up the bio- of great scientific interest because it re- identified groups of animals that provided
logical core of our individuality. There are veals the brain to be pliable, to its genetic either high or low maternal care. They then
exceptions where the body contains cells core, in response to the world. examined brains of their pups for differ-
that are genetically different. This happens The genome is the molecular signature ences in markers of genomic change.
in cancers, of course, which arise when mu- of identity. The sequence of DNA contained Many of the differences in the genomes
tations create genetically distinct cells. in our genomes distinguishes each of us as of nerve cells are due to the presence of
What most people do not realize, however, unique individuals, and changes in that se- mobile genetic elements called retrotrans-
is that the brain has remarkable genetic di- quence are relatively rare. Genomic chang- posons. These are stretches of DNA that
versity, with some studies suggesting there es typically arise from rare errors during can be copied and, as the name suggests
may be hundreds of mutations in each cell replication, or from exposure to carcin- transposed or incorporated into other areas
nerve cell. In the developing brain, muta- ogens or radiation. Here, experience has an of the genome. This study measured the
tions and other genetic changes that occur equally powerful capacity to change the accumulation of these mobile genetic ele-
while brain cells divide are passed down to genome, but only in cells of the brain. The ments in the brain as a consequence of ma-
a cluster of daughter cells. As a result, the care that a newborn receives in early life ternal care. Mobile genetic elements accu-
adult brain is composed of a mosaic of ge- can have profound effects on psychological mulated in specific regions of the brains of
netically distinct cell clusters. and intellectual growth. Attentive nurtur- mouse pups if the pups had poor maternal
We know that the activity and organiza- ing, feeding and grooming can reduce stress care. If a pup was born to a mother animal
tion of the brain changes in response to ex- and anxiety and enhance psychological that provided low maternal care but raised
perience. Memories and learning are re- well-being. On the other hand, indifference by a mother animal that provided high ma-
flected in the number and strength of con- can lead to increased anxiety and impaired ternal care, that accumulation of mobile
nections between nerve cells. We also know psychological adjustment. This study re- genetic elements was eliminated. This sup-
that the brain is genetically mosaic, but a veals that one way the quality of early care ported the idea that the accumulation of
new study makes a remarkable connection could cause lifelong changes in behavior is genetic elements was due to the care pro-
between experience and the genetic diver- by changing the brain’s genetic nature. vided by the mothers rather than some in-
sity of the brain. It suggests that experi- In this study researchers identified nat- herited difference. Most of the excess was
ence can change the DNA sequence of the ural differences in the quality and abun- found in the hippocampus, a region of the
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GETTY IMAGES
By Theodor Schaarschmidt
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A
51-year-old man I will call Mr. Pinocchio’s plight demonstrates children is a sign that they have mastered
“Mr. Pinocchio” had a the far-reaching consequences of even mi- some important cognitive skills.
strange problem. When he nor changes in the structure of the brain.
tried to tell a lie, he often But perhaps just as important, it shows To Lie or Not to Lie
passed out and had convul- that lying is a major component of the hu- Of course, not everyone agrees that some
sions. In essence, he became a kind of Pin- man behavioral repertoire; without it, we lying is necessary. Generations of thinkers
occhio, the fictional puppet whose nose would have a hard time coping. When peo- have lined up against this perspective. The
grew with every fib. For the patient, the ple speak unvarnished truth all the time— Ten Commandments admonish us to tell
consequences were all too real: he was a as can happen when Parkinson’s disease the truth. The Pentateuch is explicit:
high-ranking official in the European Eco- or certain injuries to the brain’s frontal “Thou shalt not bear false witness against
nomic Community (since replaced by the lobe disrupt people’s ability to lie—they thy neighbor.” Islam and Buddhism also
European Union), and his negotiating part- tend to be judged tactless and hurtful. In condemn lying. For 18th-century philoso-
ners could tell immediately when he was everyday life, we tell little white lies all pher Immanuel Kant, the lie was the “rad-
bending the truth. His condition, a symp- the time, if only out of politeness: Your ical innate evil in human nature” and was
tom of a rare form of epilepsy, was not only homemade pie is awesome (it’s awful). No, to be shunned even when it was a matter
dangerous, it was bad for his career. Grandma, you’re not interrupting any- of life and death.
Doctors at the University Hospitals of thing (she is). A little bit of pretense seems Today many philosophers take a more
Strasbourg in France discovered that the to smooth out human relationships with- nuanced view. German philosopher Bettina
root of the problem was a tumor about the out doing lasting harm. Stangneth argues that lying should be an
size of a walnut. The tumor was probably Yet how much do researchers know exception to the rule because, in the final
increasing the excitability of a brain re- about lying in our daily existence? How analysis, people rely on being told the truth
gion involved in emotions; when Mr. Pin- ubiquitous is it? When do children usually in most aspects of life. Among the reasons
occhio lied, this excitability caused a struc- start engaging in it? Does it take more they lie, she notes in her 2017 book Deci-
ture called the amygdala to trigger sei- brainpower to lie or to tell the truth? Are phering Lies, is that it can enable them to
zures. Once the tumor was removed, the most people good at detecting untruths? conceal themselves, hiding and withdraw-
fits stopped, and he was able to resume his And are we better at it than tools designed ing from people who intrude on their com-
duties. The doctors, who described the for the purpose? Scientists exploring such fort zone. It is also unwise, Stangneth says,
case in 1993, dubbed the condition the questions have made good progress—in- to release children into the world unaware
“Pinocchio syndrome.” cluding discovering that lying in young that others might lie to them.
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is consistent and does not contradict the (fMRI) brain scanner, they answered ques- University conducted an ingenious experi-
observable facts. At the same time, we must tions about their daily routine by pressing a ment in which the participants had a mon-
suppress the truth so that we do not spill yes or no button on a screen. Depending on etary incentive to behave dishonestly. As
the beans—that is, we must engage in re- the color of the writing, they were to answer subjects lay in an fMRI scanner, they were
sponse inhibition. What is more, we must either truthfully or with a lie. (The research- asked to predict the results of a comput-
be able to assess accurately the reactions of ers knew the correct answers from earlier er-generated coin toss. (The cover story
the listener so that, if necessary, we can interviews.) The results showed that the was that this study was testing their para-
deftly produce adaptations to our original participants needed appreciably more time normal abilities. Even neuroscientists
story line. And there is the ethical dimen- to formulate a dishonest answer than an sometimes have to employ misdirection in
sion, whereby we have to make a conscious honest one. In addition, certain parts of the the name of a higher scientific goal!)
decision to transgress a social norm. All prefrontal cortex were more active during If the volunteers typed the correct re-
this deciding and self-control implies that lying (that is, they had more blood flowing sponse, they were given up to $7. They lost
lying is managed by the prefrontal cortex— in them). Together the findings indicated money for wrong answers. They had to re-
the region at the front of the brain respon- that the executive part of the brain was do- veal their prediction beforehand for half of
sible for executive control, which includes ing more processing during lying. the test runs. In all the other runs, they
such processes as planning and regulating Several follow-up studies have con- merely disclosed after the coin toss wheth-
emotions and behavior. firmed the role of the prefrontal cortex in er they had predicted correctly. Subjects
lying. Merely pointing to a particular re- were paid even if they lied about their ad-
Under the Hood gion of the brain that is active when we tell vance conclusions, but not everyone ex-
Brain-imaging studies have contributed an untruth does not, however, reveal what ploited the situation. Greene was able to
to the view that lying generally requires is going on up there. Moreover, the situa- read the honesty of the participants sim-
more effort than telling the truth and in- tions in these early experiments were so ply by looking at the hit rates: the honest
volves the prefrontal cortex. In a pioneer- artificial that they had hardly anything in subjects predicted correctly half the time,
ing 2001 study, the late neuroscientist common with people’s everyday lives: the whereas the cheaters claimed to have come
Sean Spence, then at the University of subjects probably could not have cared less up with the correct answers in more than
Sheffield in England, tested this idea us- whether they were dishonest about what three quarters of the runs—a rate too high
ing a rather rudimentary experimental they ate for breakfast. to be believed. After the study was over, a
setup. While Spence’s participants lay in a To counter this last problem, in 2009 few liars were bothered by a bad conscience
functional magnetic resonance imaging psychologist Joshua Greene of Harvard and admitted that they had cheated.
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a wallet in a jacket pocket. They were told those who received the stimulation were any case, no instrument has yet been devel-
that some participants in the study would simply better at it; their mix of truthful an- oped that can test such a hypothesis.
be innocent. After the theft, they were sub- swers and lies made them less likely to get
jected to an interrogation. If they got through found out. Their response times were also Challenges of Lie Detection
the interrogation without getting tangled considerably faster. On the other hand, devices that supposed-
up in contradictions, they could keep the The researchers ruled out the possibili- ly measure whether a person is telling the
money. They were advised to answer as ty that brain stimulation had elevated the truth—polygraphs—have been in use for
many trivial questions as possible truthfully cognitive efficiency of the participants decades. Such tools are desirable in part
(for example, giving the correct color of the more generally. In a complicated test of at- because humans turn out to be terrible lie
jacket) because nonguilty people might re- tention, the test subjects did no better than detectors.
member such details just as easily as thieves the control group. Apparently Karim’s In 2003 DePaulo and her colleagues sum-
did but lie at decisive moments (for exam- team had specifically improved its test marized 120 behavior studies, concluding
ple, when questioned about the color of the subjects’ ability to lie. that liars tend to seem more tense and that
wallet). The electrodes were applied to ev- One possible interpretation of the find- their stories lack vividness, leaving out the
eryone before questioning, but electrical ings is that the electric current temporarily unusual details that would generally be in-
impulses were administered to only half of interrupted the functioning of the anterior cluded in honest descriptions. Liars also
the participants (the “test” subjects); the prefrontal cortex, leaving participants with correct themselves less; in other words,
other half served as the control group. fewer cognitive resources for evaluating the their stories are often too smooth. Yet such
ethical implications of their actions; the in- characteristics do not suffice to identify a
More Effective Deception, terruption allowed them to concentrate on liar conclusively; at most, they serve as
Thanks to Brain Stimulation their deceptions. Two follow-up studies clues. In another analysis of multiple stud-
In Karim’s study, the electrodes were ar- conducted by other teams were also able to ies, DePaulo and a co-author found that
ranged to minimize the excitability of the influence lying using direct current, al- people can distinguish a lie from the truth
anterior prefrontal cortex, a brain area that though they used different experimental about 54 percent of the time, just slightly
earlier studies had associated with moral setups and target brain regions. But all the better than if they had guessed. But even
and ethical decision making. With this re- test subjects in these studies lied at essen- those who encounter liars frequently—such
gion inhibited, the ability to deceive im- tially the press of a button. Whether electri- as the police, judges and psychologists—can
proved markedly. Subjects in the test and cally stimulating selected brain areas would have trouble recognizing a con artist.
control groups lied about as frequently, but work outside the laboratory is unknown. In Polygraphs are meant to do better by
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C
ole Skinner was hanging from she says. “It’s a pervasive stereotype.” But ample, or the punishments they receive for
a wall above an abandoned how Alex and Cole dabble with risk—con- violent crimes. Understanding how the
quarry when he heard a car pull sidering its social value alongside other teenage brain evaluates risk could even re-
up. He and his friends bolted, pros and cons—is in keeping with a more veal predictors of mental-health condi-
racing along a narrow path on complex picture emerging from neurosci- tions such as schizophrenia and depres-
the quarry’s edge and hopping over a barbed- ence. Adolescent behavior goes beyond sion, which often emerge in adolescence.
wire fence to exit the grounds. impetuous rebellion or uncontrollable In more ways than one, there is a lot go-
The chase is part of the fun for Skinner hormones, says Adriana Galván, a neuro- ing on in a teenager’s head. “In fact, it’s
and his friend Alex McCallum-Toppin, both scientist at the University of California, just beautiful,” says B. J. Casey, a neurosci-
15 and pupils at a school in Faringdon, Los Angeles. “How we define risk-taking is entist at Yale University. “It’s amazing that
U.K.. The two say that they seek out places going through a shift.” it unfolds correctly most of the time.”
such as construction sites and disused Adolescents do take more risks than
buildings—not to get into trouble, but to adults, and the consequences can include Rebel with a Cause
explore. There are also bragging rights to injury, death, run-ins with the law and Adolescence is a perilous period. The death
be earned. “It’s just something you can say: even long-term health problems. But lab rate among 15- to 19-year-olds worldwide
‘Yeah, I’ve been in an abandoned quarry’,” studies in the past decade have revealed is about 35 percent higher than that among
says McCallum-Toppin. “You can talk about layers of nuance in how young people as- 10- to 14-year-olds. And risky behaviors
it with your friends.” sess risks. In some situations, teenagers are linked to many of the major threats to
Science has often looked at risk-taking can be more risk-averse than their older life during this time (see graphic on next
among adolescents as a monolithic prob- peers. And they navigate a broader range page). Road injuries are the biggest cause
lem for parents and the public to manage of risks than has typically been considered of death for adolescents globally. Self-
or endure. When Eva Telzer, a neuroscien- in the lab, including social risks and posi- harm and other forms of violence also rank
tist at the University of North Carolina at tive risks—such as trying out for a sports highly. Plus, some practices that can lead
Chapel Hill, asks family, friends, under- team. These types of behavior seem to have to poor health in adulthood—such as use
graduates or researchers in related fields different effects on the brain. of tobacco or alcohol, or sedentary life-
about their perception of teenagers, How adolescents interact with risk is styles—often stem from poor choices made
“there’s almost never anything positive,” important. Work on the neural underpin- in the teenage years. So, risky behavior has
nings of risky behavior can inform guide- been a preoccupation for scientists.
Kerri Smith works for Nature magazine. lines and laws for teens who drive, for ex- “Risk-taking has driven a lot of the early
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FROM: “SEX AND DRUGS AND SELF-CONTROL: HOW THE TEEN BRAIN NAVIGATES RISK.” KERRI SMITH IN NATURE, VOL. 554, PAGES 426–428; FEBRUARY 21, 2018, SOURCE: WHO
10–14 15–19
“It was a route to successful fund- there is risk in relatively benign
ing, so it was emphasized.” Lower respiratory infections
FEMALES experiences, such as standing up
Diarrheal diseases
Early theories focused on a per- Meningitis for a friend or asking someone on
HIV/AIDS
ceived imbalance in the develop- Congenital anomalies a date. “Taking a social risk—
ing brain. Areas linked with im- Maternal complications those feel more salient.”
Self-harm
pulsivity and heightened sensi- Road injury
tivity to reward, especially in the Diarrheal diseases
Lower respiratory infections
The Social Whirl
social realm, get an early boost in In recent years, studies have be-
activity, whereas those governing Road injury
MALES
gun to characterize how social el-
cognitive processes such as work- Drowning
Lower respiratory infections
ements influence risk. In 2009,
ing memory develop smoothly Diarrheal diseases Laurence Steinberg, a psycholo-
Meningitis
throughout adolescence. Road injury
gist at Temple University, got
Neuroscientists likened the Interpersonal violence teenagers to lie in a functional
Self-harm
emerging picture of the teenage Drowning magnetic resonance imaging
Lower respiratory infections
brain to that of a car with a revving (fMRI) scanner and play “the
accelerator and faulty brakes. This 0 5 10 15 20 25 chicken game”—a video game in
Deaths per 100,000
fit the developmental data, but not which they drive a car, passing
the fact that many teenagers show through an implausible 20 traffic
no proclivity for risk-taking, says Ted Sat- Most neuroscientists now acknowledge lights in 6 minutes. As the first lights change
terthwaite, a psychiatrist and neuroimaging that neural systems developing at differ- to amber, some teenagers choose to carry
researcher at the University of Pennsylva- ent rates do not mean that the brain is un- on; others wait for green. Sometimes speed-
nia. A 2016 survey of more than 45,000 U.S. balanced. “It’s a vulnerable period, but it’s ing ahead pays off, but sometimes the car
teenagers found that 61 percent had not not vulnerable just because there’s some- gets hit.
tried cigarettes by age 17–18, for example; thing going wrong with their brains,” says When teenagers played this game alone,
some 29 percent had never drunk alcohol. Satterthwaite. they took risks at about the same frequen-
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Bat Man
GETTY IMAGES
How does the brain know where it is? Nachum Ulanovsky hopes his flying friends can help him find the answer
By Alison Abbott
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O
n a sun-parched patch of igates a more natural environment. In par- like an artificial lab environment. Up next
land in Rehovot, Israel, two ticular, he wanted to know how brains deal is a giant maze that will allow his team to
neuroscientists peer into the with a third dimension. ask even more advanced questions about
darkness of a 200-meter-long The tunnel, which Ulanovsky built in how the brain copes with making deci-
tunnel of their own design. 2016, has already proved its scientific val- sions—such as which way to turn—on the
The fabric panels of the snaking structure ue. So have the bats. They have helped Ula- wing. “If we want to really understand how
shimmer in the heat, while, inside, a study novsky to discover new aspects of the com- the brain works, we need to study animals
subject is navigating its dim length. Finally, plex encoding of navigation—a fundamen- doing more natural tasks,” says Dora An-
out of the blackness bursts a bat, which ex- tal brain function essential for survival. He gelaki, a neuroscientist at Baylor College
ecutes a mid-air backflip to land upside has found a new cell type responsible for of Medicine. “More of us are finally start-
down, hanging at the tunnel’s entrance. the bats’ 3D compass, and other cells that ing to realize this.”
Nachum Ulanovsky, the study leader, keep track of where other bats are in the
looks affectionately at the creature as his environment. It is a hot area of study—nav- Armed for Science
graduate student offers it a piece of ba- igation researchers won the 2014 Nobel When Ulanovsky opened his lab at the
nana—a reward for the valuable data it has Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the Weizmann Institute in 2007, he was com-
just added to their latest study of how field is an increasingly prominent fixture at pleting a circular flight path of his own. His
brains navigate. every big neuroscience conference. family emigrated from Moscow to Israel in
The vast majority of experiments prob- “Nachum’s boldness is impressive,” says 1973, when he was just four months old,
ing navigation in the brain have been done Edvard Moser of the Kavli Institute for Sys- and settled in Rehovot. As a child, Ula-
in the confines of labs, using earthbound tems Neuroscience in Trondheim, Norway, novsky played in the Weizmann’s subtrop-
rats and mice. Ulanovsky broke with the one of the 2014 Nobel laureates. “And it’s ical gardens and attended science events
convention. He constructed the flight tun- paid off—his approach is allowing import- for local children and young people.
nel on a disused plot on the grounds of the ant new questions to be addressed.” Once they turn 18, most physically fit Is-
Weizmann Institute of Science—the first of And for brain scientists hitting the lim- raelis enter compulsory military service. But
several planned arenas—because he want- its of what they can learn from highly sim- Ulanovsky didn’t want to lose academic mo-
ed to find out how a mammalian brain nav- plified behavior in the lab, Ulanovsky is a mentum when he graduated from high
pioneer of natural neuroscience.” Over school at 16, so he enrolled in a three-year
the years, his arenas and tunnels have been physics course at Tel Aviv University—even
Alison Abbott works for Nature magazine. getting larger, more sophisticated and less though that meant starting his military ser-
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vice late and, as a result, serving for is not by chance that memory and Flight Trackers
Several groups of cells in the hippocampal
a longer period. navigation are processed in the brain region help bats to navigate. They provide
information on where the bats are, the
His service proved productive. same brain area). The field was direction their heads are facing and whether Bats are fitted with
other bats are present.
In addition to getting general mil- dominated by studies in ground- brain-activity recorders,
each of which also holds
itary training, he was put in a re- based rats and mice, whose navi- Navigating a red light. An array of
through space cameras tracks the bat by
search and development division gational experience is relatively Grid-cell its light.
because of his physics background. easy to measure as they scuttle receptive field
Over five years, he learned techni- around small boxes in labs. But the
cal skills such as designing high- question of how different animals
tech instruments and program- perceive the world as they move
Place-cell
ming that would later prove in- vertically—swimming, climbing field
Social
sensing
valuable in designing arenas and trees or flying—had not been seri-
Place cells fire only when
sensors for his bats. The army al- ously addressed. Ulanovsky decid- the bat is in a specific
Grid cells fire multiple Head
lowed him time off to take courses ed that to study the brain’s com- times in the same space, in
area. Their receptive fields
overlap to create a mental orientation
a regular, lattice-like
that supported his growing inter- plex navigational code more holis- pattern. They act like the
map of the environment.
est in biology. He left the army in- tically, he needed a mammal whose cross points of graph paper,
providing a coordinate
tent on becoming a neuroscientist, route-finding experience is mostly system.
Second
and launched into a PhD at the He- 3D, which led him to the only fly- bat
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Space Odyssey
Neuroscientists have been mesmerized by
how the brain encodes its spatial environ-
ment ever since the 1970s, when John
O’Keefe at University College London found
that the rat brain had a neat way to know
where the animal is. When he placed elec-
trodes in a region of the brain called the
hippocampus, O’Keefe found neurons that
fired only when a rat was in a particular lo- ranged in a hexagon. These cells make up a Nachum Ulanovsky with one of his research bats.
cation in its enclosure, creating a sort of brain code that allows the animal to keep
cognitive map. He called them place cells.” track of its relative position in space, much tion, or to a border such as a cage wall.
Nearly three decades later, Edvard Moser like a tiny Global Positioning System (GPS). Almost all of these discoveries came
and May-Britt Moser, also at the Kavli Insti- The Mosers shared the 2014 Nobel Prize from rats: animals that—aside from, say,
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tored rats with implanted electrodes in Bat Cave bat, and the species Ulanovsky studied when
weightless conditions during a 1998 flight Before Ulanovsky could put his ideas to he was at Maryland. Instead, he settled on
on a NASA space-shuttle, but the result the test, he had to find the right sort of using the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus ae-
was inconclusive. bat, check how it explored its natural en- gyptiacus). It’s ten times larger, approaching
For Ulanovsky, the virtues of bats ex- vironment and, most challengingly, de- the size of an average laboratory rat, and
tended beyond the animals’ suitability for sign instruments to collect data from the common in Israel. “That was the low-tech
understanding 3D mapping: he wanted to bat and its brain. part of my approach to miniaturization—
work with a wild animal, to build a better Data from the brains of rats running choose a bigger bat,” says Ulanovsky.
picture of natural behavior. He started to around small enclosures are generally Some bats can be vicious, but Egyptian
think that highly controlled lab experi- picked up by implanted electrodes and fruit bats, he says, “are easy to tame and
ments, so crucial to understanding some transferred to computers using cables. very nice to work with.” A couple of times a
basic properties of neurons, needed a real- “Clearly, that won’t work in flying bats,” says year, he picks up a giant net and heads out
ity check. “We don’t know nearly enough Ulanovsky. He set about designing wireless on a bat-catching safari, collecting speci-
about how all these cells work together to GPS and electrophysiology devices that are mens from colonies that inhabit abandoned
map the environment that animals inhabit small enough for a bat to carry. It was a tech- buildings, or caves in the Judean hills.
in the wild,” he says. So he reasoned that nical challenge, and he might not have suc- One of his earliest experiments, started
bats caught from the wild and flown in less ceeded without his army training in instru- in 2008, aimed to find out how far his bats
constrained environments would be the mentation and software, he says. chose to fly when left to their own devices.
ideal subjects. Moreover, Ulanovsky was His GPS logger is a 5-square-centimeter Very little was known about the natural be-
convinced that studying the system in device tipping the scales at 8 grams. His havior of bats, he says, so he needed to gath-
something other than a lab rodent would neural logger, with 16 spindly electrodes— er some basic information. He armed 35 bats
help to identify which aspects of behavior each thinner than a human hair—weighs in with GPS loggers and discovered that they
cut across species. at just 7 grams. It is sensitive enough to re- flew 15 kilometers or more each night to
Edvard Moser agrees that studying the cord several individual neurons firing, and find dinner—remembering the exact loca-
same skill in many species is important. it can store many hours’ worth of data. tion of a particular heavily fruited tree.
“Knowing the different ways it is possible Tiny as they are, these loggers are too He also built flight rooms in his labs. The
to solve the same problem will help us learn heavy for many bats to carry—including the largest is about 6 × 5 × 3 meters—close to half
in general terms how brains, including the delicate 20-gram bat Eptesicus fuscus, com- the size of a squash court—and is decked out
human brain, work.” monly known, ironically, as the big brown with cameras, landing balls for the bats to
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vate sponsor provided half of the 9 million monitor more natural rodent behavior, memorized. He has questions about how
shekels needed to build a kilometre-long such as foraging for food scattered in their bats choose between several goals, or re-
tunnel with more densely positioned, wired enclosures. She predicts that more re- compute a path, or how cells respond when
antennas. This will allow measurement of searchers will start setting up their experi- a bat loses its way. “Do the vectors in the
even larger place fields, with more precise ments with an eye on the natural world. brain start rotating wildly?” he wonders.
3D localization. This tunnel will have a “Over the next five years or so, results will “These are all fascinating questions to
15-metre side branch to allow the scientists start to emerge and there will be a big which we have no answers.”
to study how the same neurons respond to change in neuroscience practice,” she says. And the bats are obliging subjects. On a
short and long flights, and how the brain However, as Moser notes, Ulanovsky’s good day in the tunnel, a bat can soar and
stitches together these two scales. Air con- bats aren’t yet doing anything as clever as wheel for thousands of meters before tak-
ditioning will allow experiments to run finding a fruit tree in the wild. “It doesn’t ing a break for its banana. “They are mis-
throughout the blistering summer. take much thought to fly up and down a understood creatures,” says Ulanovsky,
The tunnel and its once-wild bats rep- tunnel,” he says. So Ulanovsky is nursing standing at the end of the tunnel and gaz-
resent a useful halfway house between the an even bigger mind-reading ambition. He ing at a just-landed bat with obvious ten-
real world and the lab, says Angelaki, who is seeking funding for a maze 40 meters derness. “And they will help science.”
researches spatial navigation and deci- wide and 60 long—a little under half the This article is reproduced with permission
sion-making in the brains of mice and size of a football pitch—to test how bat and was first published in Nature on July
monkeys. brains represent more complex environ- 11, 2018. M
“Behavioral neuroscientists like myself ments, then plan and make decisions about
are increasingly realizing how important it how to navigate them.
is to move away from overtrained lab-ani- The maze will be made up of intercon-
mal brains,” she says. In typical lab experi- nected tunnels in which the bat won’t al-
ments, animals are trained in a very specif- ways be able to see its goal (usually a food
ic, usually unnatural, task. “That may not treat such as a piece of banana). It will in-
have anything to do with how that animal stead have to rely on memory in its cogni-
has evolved brain connectivity to optimize tive map. Ulanovsky has a series of increas-
foraging in the wild,” she says. ingly complex experiments in mind—set-
Like others around the world, Angela- ting up multiple goals, for example, or
ki’s lab is starting to use neural loggers to suddenly blocking a path that the bat had
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OPINION
Yes, Make
Psychedelics
Legally Available,
but Don’t Forget
the Risks
Psychedelics have
psychological and spiritual
benefits, as a new best seller
claims, but they’re far from
a panacea
By John Horgan
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L
ast spring, I descended into the base- my investigation of psychedelics, medita- Pollan serves as an ideal guide, especial-
ment of a suburban home with two tion and other mystical technologies (and ly for those who are curious about magic
dozen people and swilled fluid from I’ll tell you my answer below). That same mushrooms and LSD but haven’t dared try
a plastic cup. It was ayahuasca, a tea brewed year, 2003, I proposed in Slate that psyche- them. Far from being a thrill-seeker, Pollan
from two South American plants, which delics be dispensed by “licensed therapists, is nervous about psychedelics’ ill effects—
contains the psychedelic compound di- who can screen clients for mental instability with good reason, because he’s had heart
methyltryptamine, DMT. and advise them on how to make their expe- trouble. He’s an atheist skeptical of all su-
Ayahuasca has the viscosity of spit, it riences as rewarding as possible.” pernatural claims, but he’s also curious and
tastes like beer dregs into which someone This scenario seemed far-fetched at the open-minded. And he’s an exceptionally
has dropped a cigar, and it is nauseating, time, but it is looking a lot more likely late- clear writer, even when describing experi-
literally. Our guides gave each of us a plas- ly. One reason is that researchers have con- ences that defy description. He reminds me
tic pail in case we vomited (which I did). tinued producing evidence of psychedelics’ of another hyper-rational explorer of spiri-
The brew induces visions that can be bliss- psychological and spiritual benefits. Per- tuality, Robert Wright, author of last year’s
ful, excruciating, terrifying, sometimes all haps more important, journalist Michael best seller Why Buddhism Is True.
at once. As our guides played music and Pollan—author of the best sellers The Bota- Pollan recounts the discovery of LSD’s
sang, we groaned, retched, cried, laughed, ny of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma— effects by chemist Albert Hofmann in
stared open-mouthed into space, retched has become an advocate of the drugs. 1943, the subsequent surge of scientific
again. A young man beside me oscillated Pollan wrote a surprisingly enthusiastic interest in psychedelics and the backlash
between giggles and sobs. We each paid article about psychedelics for The New York- against them in the 1960s, often blamed
$200 for this experience, which lasted about er in 2015. That was a preview of his new on aggressive proselytizing by psycholo-
five hours. best seller How to Change Your Mind: What gist-turned-guru Timothy Leary. This his-
Why, you might ask, would anyone in his the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us tory provides the backdrop for Pollan’s in-
right mind want to do this? I raised this about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, De- vestigation of sanctioned studies at uni-
question 15 years ago in Rational Mysticism, pression, and Transcendence. I’m a fan of versities in the U.S. and Europe and of the
psychedelic literature, including the writ- underworld of psychedelic psychotherapy.
ings of Aldous Huxley, Terence McKenna To supplement this third-person re-
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the and Alexander and Ann Shulgin, but I hav- porting, Pollan ingests psilocybin, LSD
Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of en’t read a more eloquent defense of psy- and ayahuasca and smokes toad venom
Science and The End of War. chedelics than How to Change Your Mind. (which like ayahuasca contains DMT).
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Drug tales are often tedious, but Pollan’s ports on a psychedelic-research meeting *Far from making you wiser and nicer,
accounts of his trips are my favorite parts attended by Thomas Insel, former head of psychedelics can make you an arrogant,
of his book. He doesn’t see the God he the National Institute of Mental Health. In- narcissistic jerk. It can be hard distinguish-
doesn’t believe in, but he is fascinated by sel was impressed by evidence of psyche- ing an ego that has vanished from one that
what happens to his self. “Of all the phe- delics’ mental-health benefits but warned has expanded to infinity. As Pollan notes of
nomenological effects that people on psy- researchers, “Don’t screw it up!” Timothy Leary, “It is one of the many para-
chedelics report,” he writes, “the dissolu- Pollan seems to have taken this message doxes of psychedelics that these drugs can
tion of the ego seems to me by far the most to heart. He could have derailed the psy- sponsor an ego-dissolving experience that
important and therapeutic.” chedelic movement by being too critical or in some people leads to massive ego infla-
We see ourselves and the world more evangelical, so he finds a sensible middle tion.” This problem plagues Buddhism and
clearly, Pollan suggests, as our fears, de- ground between these extremes. He rec- other spiritual paths, too.
sires and self-absorption diminish. (Wright, ommends not total legalization but a re- I spent a lot of time hanging out with
in Why Buddhism Is True, makes the same gime in which people take psychedelics psychedelicists while researching Rational
claim about meditation.) Pollan felt more with a trained guide. This is essentially the Mysticism and for a while thereafter. I start-
compassionate and attuned to nature’s same scheme I advocated in 2003. ed pulling back from this community be-
wonders after his trips, and less anxious Like Pollan, I hope to see the day when cause some members struck me as self-righ-
about death. “After a month or so, it was people can take psychedelics safely and le- teous zealots. And as Pollan points out,
pretty much back to baseline,” he adds with gally, especially given the limits of current psychedelics boost suggestibility—or, to
typical candor. “But not quite, not com- treatments for mental illness. I nonethe- put it less kindly, gullibility, which means
pletely.” He can recapture feelings of less have misgivings about the populariza- that trippers are susceptible to bizarre
self-transcendence in meditation, and he tion of psychedelics, misgivings that I sus- claims, such as apocalyptic predictions.
realizes that “the mind is vaster, and the pect Pollan shares. Here they are: *As William James notes in The Varieties
world ever so much more alive, than I knew *Just as most meditation researchers be- of Religious Experiences, mystical experi-
when I began.” lieve in meditation, so most psychedelic ences can be hellish as well as heavenly. Af-
His trips, plus the growing peer-re- researchers believe in psychedelics. In oth- ter a wild trip in 1981, I suffered from de-
viewed literature, have convinced Pollan er words, psychedelic science, like most pression and frightening flashbacks for
that psychedelics can help the mentally fields, is rife with bias (although probably months. Supervision can’t eliminate the
troubled and enhance the lives of the less than, say, psychiatric-drug research risk of hellish trips. As I note in Rational
healthy. Toward the end of his book, he re- funded by the pharmaceutical industry). Mysticism, in the early 1990s psychiatrist
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Rick Strassman injected DMT into 60 vol- just to find a little happiness! We live in par- 1994). Just as important, Richards seeks to
unteers, and almost half experienced “ad- adise, but we can’t see it, because we’re so render their adverse effects innocuous.
verse effects,” including terrifying halluci- trapped in our petty schemes and troubles. Contrary to the universal practice of ex-
nations of “aliens” that took the shape of But these feelings lacked force. They cluding prepsychotic or formerly psychotic
robots, insects or reptiles. [See Addendum.] seemed familiar, even trite, like postcards individuals from psychedelic drug admin-
Why, given these misgivings, did I take from old trips. Within a few days, I was as istration studies, he casually suggests that
ayahuasca recently? Well, I just finished a self-absorbed as ever. I think I’ve gotten psychedelics may actually help such peo-
book on the mind-body problem (which I what I can from psychedelics, so I’m going ple. Psychedelics may hasten their entry
plan to self-publish online soon), and I’ve to try something more dramatic, a silent into treatment (through precipitating a
been feeling restless. I wanted a jolt, meditation retreat. No talking for eight psychotic break?) or prevent psychosis
something to knock me out of my cogni- days, no phone, laptop, email, Twitter, Face- through uncovering relevant psychic con-
tive rut. My best trips have helped me book, Kindle, New York Times. I’m much flicts (p. 185).” M
see—really see—life’s jaw-dropping im- more nervous than I was before my aya-
probability, which I like to call “the weird- huasca session. My digital self feels more
ness.” I wanted to glimpse the weirdness real to me lately than my flesh-and-blood
again. When I heard about a local ayahuas- self. When I’m disconnected from the Inter-
ca session, I signed up. net, will I still exist?
We were a diverse bunch, black and white, Addendum: Strassman has accused oth-
young and old, male and female. At the be- er researchers of inappropriately down-
ginning of the session, we expressed our playing psychedelics’ risks. See for exam-
hopes for the evening. We wanted to heal ple his stinging review of a 2016 book by
old wounds, to feel less fear and anger and psychologist William Richards, who is as-
self-loathing and more happiness and love. sociated with psychedelic research at Johns
I had moments of what might be called Hopkins. Strassman writes: “It is important
transcendence, during which the world to refrain from glorifying the psychedelic
seemed heartbreakingly beautiful. My drug state. Simply look at how Charles
strongest emotion was pity for those retch- Manson used LSD’s meaning-enhancing
ing and moaning around me, and for all effects in those similarly predisposed to
humanity. I thought, Look at how far we go particular goals and aspirations (Bugliosi,
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OPINION
What Your
Facebook Network
Reveals about
How You Use
Your Brain
If your friends mostly know
each other only indirectly,
through you, you're likely
to be a better problem
solver and to be more
successful overall
By Emily Falk and
Michael Platt
YUICHIRO CHINO GETTY IMAGES
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I
f I asked you roughly how many Face- acter “Finn” on Glee, who as a football play- while they made social decisions (about
book friends or Twitter followers you er who also sings serves as a bridge between whether to recommend different products
have, you might be able to give me a two different worlds; or someone you work to their peers). We found that information
good answer. But what about the shape of with who knows people from every depart- brokers use their social brain networks
your social network? For example, do the ment who don’t all know each other. At more when making choices about what to
friends in your social network know each workplaces, Ronald Burt and his colleagues recommend to others than people whose
other independently or are they only indi- have shown, information brokers come up friends all know one another.
rectly connected through you? with better solutions to problems, poten- This may come about because informa-
Decades of research have shown that tially because they are exposed to more di- tion brokers have more opportunities to
having more numerous and stronger con- verse perspectives. practice using their social brain when trans-
nections predicts better health and well-be- They also receive faster promotions and lating ideas between different groups of
ing, but the shape of your social network higher pay. More broadly, being a good people. More broadly, people who are better
matters too. People who are “information friend, teacher or manager often requires at selling their ideas, literally and figura-
brokers” connect people who wouldn’t oth- taking the perspective of others—seeing tively, also tend to engage these brain re-
erwise know each other. Think of the char- the world through their eyes and under- gions more than people who are less suc-
standing their joys and sorrows. These ca- cessful. Considering another individual’s
pacities depend on a social brain network, point of view more deeply (for example,
Emily Falk is an associate professor of communication, psy- which is a neural circuit activated when we what will the person I’m going to share with
chology and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, and connect with others. A new series of stud- think about this idea?) helps the sharer tune
director of the Penn Communication Neuroscience Lab. She ies shows that the structure and function her message to resonate more clearly with
studies persuasion, behavior change and how ideas spread, of your social brain network is tied to the the mental state of the listener.
using tools from social and brain sciences. structure of your social network. Genetic studies in people and monkeys
In one study, we asked teens (with their indicate that the brain hardware supporting
Michael Platt is the James S. Riepe Penn Integrates Knowl- parents’ permission) to give us access to social interactions is at least partially inher-
edge university professor of neuroscience, marketing, and psy- their list of Facebook friends. This allowed ited. Although the tendency to be social is
chology and director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative at us to see whether teens who are informa- hardwired into us, our genes are not our des-
the University of Pennsylvania. He studies decision making and tion brokers use their social brain networks tiny. Studies of monkeys also show that the
social interaction using tools from neuroscience, psychology, differently than teens whose friends all social brain network responds like a muscle
economics and anthropology. know one another. We scanned their brains as a function of use. When monkeys are
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OPINION
Why We Need
to Take Pet
Loss Seriously
How to handle grief after
a pet’s death—and why we
all need to change our
attitudes about it
By Guy Winch
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D
oug’s amateur soccer team had just Losing a beloved pet is often an emo- have found that social support is a crucial
lost its playoff game and he need- tionally devastating experience. Yet, as a ingredient in recovering from grief of all
ed a pick-me-up. So he decided to society, we do not recognize how painful kinds. Thus, we are not only robbed of cru-
stop by the local animal shelter on his way pet loss can be and how much it can impair cial support systems when our pet dies, but
home. He was by no means looking to adopt our emotional and physical health. Symp- our own perceptions of our emotional re-
an animal, but puppies always put a smile toms of acute grief after the loss of a pet sponses are likely to add an additional lay-
on his face. “Rookie mistake,” he told me can last from one to two months with symp- er of emotional distress. We may feel em-
in our psychotherapy session. “You set foot toms of grief persisting up to a full year (on barrassed and even ashamed about the se-
in one of these places and no way you’re average). The New England Journal of Medi- verity of the heartbreak we feel and
not leaving with a puppy.” Delia, the pup- cine recently reported that a woman whose consequently, hesitate to disclose our dis-
py in question, was a five-month-old mutt. dog died experienced Broken Heart Syn- tress to our loved ones. We might even
“I had her for seventeen years,” Doug said, drome—a condition in which a person’s re- wonder what is wrong with us and question
wiping tears from his eyes, “Almost my en- sponse to grief and heartbreak is so severe, why we are responding in such dispropor-
tire adult life. I knew it would be rough they exhibits symptoms that mimic a heart tional” ways to the loss.
when she died but I had no idea…I was a attack, including elevated hormone levels Feeling intense grief that is then lay-
total wreck. I cried for days. I couldn’t get that can be 30 times greater than normal. ered with shame about these feelings not
any work done. And worst of all, I was too While grief over the loss of a cherished only makes pet loss a bigger threat to our
embarrassed about it to tell anyone, even pet may be as intense and even as lengthy emotional health than it would be other-
my old soccer teammates who loved Delia. as when a significant person in our life dies, wise, it complicates the process of recov-
I spent days at work crying in private and our process of mourning is quite different. ery by making it more lengthy and com-
muttering allergies” whenever someone Because pet loss is disenfranchised, many plex than it should be.
glanced at my puffy eyes.” of the societal mechanisms of social and Further, given our societal attitude that
community support are absent when a pet invokes responses such as “It’s just an ani-
dies. Few of us ask our employers for time mal” and “You can just get another one” we
Guy Winch is a psychologist, speaker and author. His books off to grieve a beloved cat or dog as we fear are likely to overlook the variety of ways our
have been translated into 25 languages and his two TED Talks doing so would paint us as overly senti- lives are impacted by pet loss (both real,
have been viewed over 10 million times. His new book, How to mental, lacking in maturity or emotionally practical and psychological), which can
Fix a Broken Heart (TED Books/Simon & Schuster, 2018), cov- weak. And few employers would grant such blind us to steps we need to take in order to
ers both pet loss and romantic heartbreak. requests were we to make them. Studies recover. Losing a pet can leave significant
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voids in our life that we need to fill: It can Losing a pet thus disrupts established rou- We also need to fill the voids the loss has
change our daily routines, causing ripple ef- tines that provide us with structure, sup- created in our lives, and there are more of
fects that go far beyond the loss of the actu- port our emotional well-being and give our them than we might realize. We might need
al animal. actions meaning. This is why, in addition to to reorganize our routines and daily activi-
For example, whether they are trained to emotional pain, we feel aimless and lost in ties so we don’t lose the secondary benefits
or not, all pets function as therapy animals the days and weeks after our pet dies. we derived from having our pet. For exam-
to some extent. Cats, dogs, horses and other Lastly, we often consider ourselves par- ple, if our exercise came from walking our
cherished pets provide companionship, they ents to our pets and are even known as dog we need to find alternative ways to reach
reduce loneliness and depression and they such in our communities. Everyone who our daily step goals.” If our social media
can ease anxiety. Thus when we lose them owns a dog knows that neighbors on the reach was built on our cat’s starring Insta-
we actually lose a significant and even vital street are far more likely to know our dog’s gram popularity we need to find other ways
source of support and comfort. name than they are to know ours. When to remain relevant social-media wise. If we
Caring for our pet also lets us develop our dog dies we can become invisible and spent most Saturday mornings with our
routines and responsibilities around which lose a meaningful aspect of our identity. Vizsla meetup group, we need to find other
we often craft our days. We get exercise by We post images and videos of our animals outlets through which we can socialize and
walking our dog and we socialize with oth- on social media and are followed for that enjoy the outdoors. If we were known in our
er dog owners at the dog runs/parks/beach- reason. Losing a pet can impact many as- neighborhood as “Delia’s dad” as Doug was,
es. When our dog dies we might experience pects of our own identities. we need to find other ways of feeling con-
a significant drop in casual social interac- Recovering from pet loss, as in all forms nected and involved in our community.
tion and feel left out of the unofficial com- of grief, requires us to recognize these Doug suffered far more than he should
munity of dog owners to which we be- changes and find ways to address them. We have because of the shame and isolation he
longed. We awake early every day to feed need to seek social support from people we experienced. It’s time we gave grieving pet
our cat (or we are woken by them if we for- know will understand and sympathize with owners the recognition, support and con-
get), but we get a lot more done because of our emotional pain and not judge us for it. sideration they need. Yes, it is up to us to
it. Without our cat we might experience a Our best bet is to reach out to people we identify and address our emotional wounds
real drop in productivity. Or we spend hours know who have also lost pets, as they are when our pet dies, but the more validation
over the weekend out of the city so we can likely to understand our anguish and offer we received from those around us, the quick-
ride our horse, and find ourselves going stir the best support. Many animal clinics offer er and the more complete our psychological
crazy when our horse is no longer around. bereavement groups for pet owners. recovery would be. M
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