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SAm Mind - Sept-Oct 2021
SAm Mind - Sept-Oct 2021
SAm Mind - Sept-Oct 2021
COM
PLUS
CONFOUNDING NEW
ALZHEIMER’S DRUG
THE PARTICULAR
GRIEF OF WAITING
FOR BAD NEWS
HOW TO RAISE
KIND KIDS
IT’S
IN THE
EYES
A surprising new correlation
has been discovered between
pupil size and intelligence
WITH COVERAGE FROM
FROM
THE
EDITOR
editors@sciam.com.
2
WHAT’S September–
October
2021
INSIDE Volume 32 • Number 5
NEWS OPINION
4. Pupil Size Is a 33. The Neuroscience
Marker of Intelligence of Taking Turns
There is a surprising in a Conversation
correlation between Research in birds
baseline pupil size suggests that when one
and several measures partner speaks, the
of cognitive ability other partner’s brain is
5. Neck-Zapping inhibited from talking
Gadget Reduced over them
All-Nighter Fatigue 35. Psychiatry Needs
in New Study to Get Right with God
Yas Crawford
And the benefits of two By not making more of
four-minute sessions an effort to incorporate
Mario Tama Getty Images
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NEWS
Pupil Size Is
a Marker of
Intelligence
There is a surprising correlation
between baseline pupil size and
several measures of cognitive ability
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NEWS
We measured participants’ pupils at The letter would disappear within both a neurotransmitter and hormone
rest while they stared at a blank com- moments, so even a brief eye move- in the brain and body, and it regulates Neck-Zapping
puter screen for up to four minutes. ment toward the flickering asterisk processes such as perception, atten-
All the while, the eye tracker was re- could result in missing it. Humans are tion, learning and memory. It also Gadget Reduced
cording. Using the tracker, we calcu- primed to react to objects passing helps maintain a healthy organization All-Nighter Fatigue
lated each person’s average pupil size. through their peripheral vision—it’s of brain activity so that distant brain in New Study
To be clear, pupil size refers to the what once allowed us to spot a pred- regions can work together to accom- And the benefits of two four-minute
diameter of the black circular aper- ator or prey—but this task required plish challenging tasks and goals. sessions persisted for hours
ture in the center of the eye. It can participants to redirect their focus Dysfunction of the locus coeruleus,
range from around two to eight milli- from the flicking asterisk to the letter. and the resulting breakdown of orga-
meters. The pupil is surrounded by We found that a larger baseline nized brain activity, has been related Instead of reaching for a cup of coffee
the colorful area known as the iris, pupil size was correlated with greater to several conditions, including Alz- during a graveyard shift, workers
which is responsible for controlling fluid intelligence, attention control heimer’s and attention deficit hyper- might one day hold an electric-ra-
the size of the pupil. Pupils constrict and, to a lesser degree, working activity disorder. This organization of zor-sized device to their neck. After
in response to bright light, among memory capacity—indicating a fasci- activity is so important that the brain a couple of minutes, they would
other things, so we kept the laborato- nating relationship between the brain devotes most of its energy to main- emerge refreshed and awake from
ry dim for all participants. and eye. Interestingly, pupil size was tain it, even when we are not doing this experience, which could come to
In the next part of the experiment, negatively correlated with age: older anything at all—such as when we be known as a “vagus nerve break.”
participants completed a series of participants tended to have smaller, stare at a blank computer screen for The device, called gammaCore,
cognitive tests designed to measure more constricted, pupils. Once stan- minutes on end. sends a series of vibrating bursts of
“fluid intelligence,” the capacity to dardized for age, however, the rela- One hypothesis is that people who low-voltage electricity, each lasting
reason through new problems, “work- tionship between pupil size and cog- have larger pupils at rest have greater a millisecond, to the side of the neck.
ing memory capacity,” the ability to nitive ability remained. regulation of activity by the locus coe- It is meant to stimulate part of the
remember information over a period But why does pupil size correlate ruleus, which benefits cognitive per- vagus nerve, a connector between
of time, and “attention control,” the with intelligence? To answer this formance and resting-state brain brain and body, and cause the
ability to focus attention amid distrac- question, we need to understand function. More research is needed to release of wakefulness chemicals.
tions and interference. what is going on in the brain. Pupil explore this possibility and determine Research on a way to keep people
As one example of an attention size is related to activity in the locus why larger pupils are associated with awake and alert with electricity
control test, participants had to resist coeruleus, a nucleus situated in the higher fluid intelligence and attention began after scientists affiliated and
glancing toward a bold, flickering upper brain stem with far-reaching control. But it’s clear that there is contracted with the U.S. Air Force
asterisk on one side of a computer neural connections to the rest of the more happening than meets the eye. noted that participants who had
screen and instead rapidly look in the brain. The locus coeruleus releases —Jason S. Tsukahara and electrodes placed onto their scalps
opposite direction to identify a letter. norepinephrine, which functions as Alexander P. Burgoyne to deliver a current were able to
5
NEWS GammaCore device
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NEWS
reported their mood and level of vagus nerve stimulation has targeted “Much of what we do in Western
fatigue. Half of the participants used populations with chronic and often
gammaCore for eight minutes near debilitating conditions such as medicine is we try to help people
the beginning of testing, while the rheumatoid arthritis, migraine who have already got diseases.”
other half were given a sham device headaches and epilepsy. This new
that looked and felt like the real work is leading the charge to use —Peter Staats
deal but did not provide an electric this therapy on healthy people for
current. Those in the group that performance enhancement, Staats people happier, healthier and more research to examine effects in
received the real vagus nerve stimula- and the study’s authors say. focused on their tasks in space. people with milder sleep deprivation.
tion stuck more closely to their “Much of what we do in Western Eric Chang, a professor at the McIntire says future studies need
baseline performance as the night medicine is we try to help people who Feinstein Institutes for Medical to be done before gammaCore can
wore on and reported less fatigue have already got diseases,” Staats Research, who was also not involved be recommended to soldiers and
over time than the other group. says. “We spend less effort thinking in the research, says its findings may workers for off-label use, including
“It’s exciting to us that not only do about health regimens or ‘How do we not be generalizable to people who testing it against caffeine and other
they perform better, but they also avoid development of diseases?’ or are not continuously sleep-deprived conventional stimulants. McKinley
perceive that they’re performing ‘How do we optimize ourselves?’ ” for 34 straight hours, as the partici- adds that concurrent studies in
better and that they feel less tired,” Silberstein, who was not involved pants were. He adds that the study animals are double-checking the
says Richard McKinley, a co-author of in the study, says this device could reports a “specific, small result” in effect’s mechanism. He is also
the study and a biomedical engineer help a wide range of sleep-deprived line with other vagus nerve stimula- preparing to submit research on
at the Air Force Research Laboratory. individuals, from Air Force pilots to tion studies. vagus nerve stimulation to boost
He says that improvements in mood doctors to college students writing McIntire notes that differences in learning rates and retention.
and energy level could motivate the last-minute papers. performance between the gamma- GammaCore owes its invention to
soldiers to use a device like this Another group that might benefit Core and placebo groups that may the relatively new field of bioelectric
outside of a paid study. from the research is astronauts. Lind- appear small—such as in the multi- medicine, a discipline that uses
While the two groups performed sey McIntire, the paper’s first author tasking test—can have big implica- electricity to hack into the body’s
similarly over time on some portions and a scientist at the defense-con- tions. “Performance for the active signaling system to treat disease.
of the cognitive testing, hours later, tracted company Infoscitex, says that group declined 5 percent, but it Bioelectronic medicine has shown
the participants who used gamma- nasa provided some of the study’s declined to 15 percent for [the promise in treating autoimmune
Core showed less performance funding because astronauts often placebo group],” she says. “That’s diseases such as lupus through
decline in perception-related tasks— sleep in extreme and unfamiliar mistakes, and in certain fields like vagus nerve stimulation. Tiredness,
taking in and synthesizing audio, environments, leading to less restful medicine and the military and pain, inflammation—future “vagus
visual or other kinds of information. slumber. Finding a long-lasting transportation, that can equal lives.” nerve breaks” could target them all.
Past research on gammaCore and solution to fatigue would keep The authors are also planning —Maddie Bender
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NEWS
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NEWS
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NEWS
generous, honest, helpful and kind. feelings. That’s surprising—why would research shows we need to correct
She reviews studies on how to instill that have anything to do with how these misconceptions as children are
egalitarian beliefs and make sure generous children would become? It developing them. We need to talk
kids know how to stand up against became clear that helping our kids about it quite a lot, which is really hard
racism and sexism. And she talks to understand their feelings gives them for white parents; it’s hard for me.
scientists about perennial parental the capacity to understand others’ Some of these approaches I learned
struggles such as sibling rivalry, feelings and helps them make for the book are hard. They take prac-
teaching safe sex and moderating decisions to help their friends and be tice and are not instinctual, but the
screen time. Scientific American more generous toward them. This is research shows those difficult conver-
spoke to Moyer about science-based part of something called theory of sations help even if they’re not perfect.
strategies for raising good citizens. mind—how to understand others’
[An edited transcript of the inter- feelings. Research suggests that the I have a four-year-old daughter,
view follows.] more parents talk about their feelings and I don’t think she has any idea
the better, that feels important. I want and other peoples’, the more kids are yet that anyone thinks girls aren’t
I love that this book addresses this book to make parents’ lives easier, likely to be generous and helpful. just as good as boys. Is it really
so many questions and insecuri- to give them answers to questions helpful to introduce her to the idea
ties I have as a parent. Why did they might have had and to give them What does science tell us about of sexism?
you decide to write it? the science and tools they’ve been raising kids to be antiracist? I had the same question, and
I want my kids to be compassion- looking for. I don’t want to add to their Parents often think if we don’t talk I posed this to the researchers. My
ate, kind, generous antiracists and burdens or add to the judgment that about race, our children won’t see it, daughter and I were reading Good
antisexists. And I thought, “I can learn parents are under right now. won’t develop racism. That is, in fact, Night Stories for Rebel Girls, and
about how to raise my kids in these the opposite of what happens. Kids every story we read touched upon
ways and to instill values based on Were there any cases where you see race from a very early age and are the sexism these women experi-
science rather than just relying on my found the science went against very tuned in to social hierarchies. enced and overcame. I kept thinking
instincts.” I was surprised by just how what you previously thought and They are like little detectives trying to it was hitting my daughter over the
much research there was on these surprised you? figure out how social categories work head with the idea that she’d have to
questions and how little of it was One of the core questions I had in the world and why. They see that fight sexism. But I found that no,
being covered. was, “How do I raise my kids to be most American presidents have been actually, they are already perceiving it
There is already so much pressure generous and kind?” A lot of what we white and that a lot of the kids at often on some level, even if they’re
on parents these days. I don’t want to hear is about the importance of school who have the biggest houses, not bringing it up. They’re seeing the
tell other parents what to do. But if teaching giving and generosity. But their parents are white. They think the presidents are all men, all these
I could write a book that gives parents the research I kept coming across simplest explanation is that white powerful people are all men. They
Putnam
tools that could change the world for stemmed from how we talk about people are just better or smarter. The notice. When we do bring it up and
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NEWS
talk about it, it helps them work monster?” We all just want our kids to an Arkansas native who lives in New
through it. It is counterintuitive. do better and better. We’re worried News about Racial York. “It’s like a sadness, a hopeless-
about getting our kids into college, ness. Those images just keep coming
One of the interesting things you and our fears are grounded—it’s hard- Violence Harms like weeds. You pick one weed, and
write about is that parents often er than it used to be. But if we aren’t Black People’s two more sprout up. So you gonna set
worry their child will be bullied careful, we can actually seed the very Mental Health the whole yard on fire to kill the
and rarely worry their child will be problems we’re trying to avoid. If kids Awaiting the Derek Chauvin weeds? It wears on your psyche.”
a bully. are constantly questioning them- verdict, a singer and actor felt A growing body of research has
We have this idea that there is a selves because they feel our love is intense anxiety documented the detrimental effects
type of kid that is a bully. But it’s not contingent on how well they do and of both interpersonal and structural
just a bad seed who becomes a bully. their grades, they’re going to have so racism. The Centers for Disease
Anybody can bully. We need to have many issues with self-esteem. For months, Desmond Ellington Control and Prevention notes that
regular conversations with our kids assiduously refused to watch the centuries of racism have had a
about this. Some of the research Science is still trying to figure out videotaped killing of George Floyd. profound and negative impact on the
has found that kids who engage in how much nature and nurture When former Minneapolis police mental and physical health of people
bullying behaviors often don’t realize affect personality. Do parents have office Derek Chauvin went on trial for of color. Investigators at Columbia
their behavior is hurtful. It comes a lot of room to influence who their his murder, Ellington did not turn on University found that experiencing
back to the idea of talking about kids will turn out to be? the television until he saw a headline racism can result in traumatic stress
feelings. Sometimes they aren’t inten- I think genetics certainly play a role, on his smartphone that the verdict linked to negative mental health
tionally trying to hurt other people— but it’s clear that environment and would be announced within the hour. outcomes, such as depression, anger
they don’t understand the impact of parenting do, too. We might have kids It was not that he did not care about and low self-esteem. The American
what they’re doing. that start in different places with their what was happening; it was that he Public Health Association calls racism
propensity to be generous or have cared too much. a social determinant of health akin to
Another fascinating chapter is these other traits, but we can still For the 37-year-old Black singer housing, education, and employment
about the dangers of pressuring move them in the right direction and actor, the news accounts and and a barrier to health equity.
kids for academic success. through how we parent. I observe that social media videos of racial violence A study recently published in the
That was a chapter that blew me my two children have very different and the killings of unarmed Black Proceedings of the National Academy
away. I was surprised to find that our personalities and different inclinations people that too often go unpunished of Sciences USA adds a new layer to
well-meaning desires for our kids to toward generosity and empathy. But were not just demoralizing, they were an understanding of the pervasive
succeed and achieve can be so as I learned to parent through the traumatizing. “It gets to the point health effects of racism. Lead author
harmful to self-esteem. I was reading techniques I talk about in the book, where you decide, ‘I have to turn off David Curtis of the University of Utah
the research and thinking, “Am I doing I’ve seen both of them change. the television because I have my and his colleagues showed that
this? Am I turning my child into a —Clara Moskowitz sanity to take care of,’ ” says Ellington, widely publicized anti-Black violence
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NEWS
Getty Images
anyone accountable more than their mates wanted to be his lab partner, himself lucky to have encountered person?’ It’s a burden that I have to be
reaction to the initial wrong perpe- and they seemed shocked when he little overt and direct racism. Yet in that box so I can get back home to
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NEWS
Getty Images
exposure in the first place?” normal graying process, which our psychological well-being. in a multistep manner in which some
—Melba Newsome begins at the root. These findings suggest “that there of them begin to show signs of aging
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NEWS
at much earlier time points than they were able to find 14 people— This period, when graying has just turned white overnight just before
others. This patchwork process, he men and women ranging from nine to begun, is probably when the process her execution at the guillotine.
realized, was clearly visible on our 65 years old with various ethnic is most reversible, according to Paus. In a small subset of participants,
head, where our hairs do not all turn backgrounds (although the majority In those with a full head of gray hair, the researchers pinpointed segments
gray at the same time. “It seemed like were white). Those individuals most of the strands have presumably in single hairs where color changes
the hair, in a way, recapitulated what provided both single- and two-col- reached a “point of no return,” but the occurred in the pigmentation patterns.
we know happens at the cellular ored hair strands from different parts possibility remains that some hair Then they calculated the times when
level,” Picard says. “Maybe there’s of the body, including the scalp, face follicles may still be malleable to the change happened using the
something to learn there. Maybe the and pubic area. change, he says. known average growth rate of human
hairs that turn white first are the The researchers then developed a “What was most remarkable was hair: approximately one centimeter
more vulnerable or least resilient.” technique to digitize and quantify the the fact that they were able to show per month. These participants also
While discussing these ideas with subtle changes in color, which they convincingly that, at the individual provided a history of the most stress-
his partner, Picard mentioned dubbed hair pigmentation patterns, hair level, graying is actually revers- ful events they had experienced over
something in passing: if one could along each strand. These patterns ible,“ says Matt Kaeberlein, a bioger- the course of a year.
find a hair that was only partially revealed something surprising: In 10 ontologist at the University of This analysis revealed that the
gray—and then calculate how fast of these participants, who were Washington, who was one of the times when graying or reversal
that hair was growing—it might be between age nine and 39, some editors of the new paper but was not occurred corresponded to periods
possible to pinpoint the period in graying hairs regained color. The involved in the work. “What we’re of significant stress or relaxation.
which the hair began aging and thus team also found that this occurred learning is that, not just in hair but in In one individual, a 35-year-old man
ask the question of what happened not just on the head but in other a variety of tissues, the biological with auburn hair, five strands of hair
in the individual’s life to trigger this bodily regions as well. “When we saw changes that happen with age are, underwent graying reversal during
change. “I was thinking about this this in pubic hair, we thought, ‘Okay, in many cases, reversible—this is a the same time span, which coincided
almost as a fictive idea,” Picard this is real,’ ” Picard says. “This nice example of that.” with a two-week vacation. Another
recalls. Unexpectedly, however, his happens not just in one person or on The team also investigated the subject, a 30-year-old woman with
partner turned to him and said she the head but across the whole body.” association between hair graying and black hair, had one strand that
had seen such two-colored hairs on He adds that because the reversibili- psychological stress because prior contained a white segment that
her head. “She went to the bathroom ty only appeared in some hair research hinted that such factors corresponded to two months during
and actually plucked a couple—that’s follicles, however, it is likely limited to may accelerate the hair’s aging which she underwent marital separa-
when this project started,” he says. specific periods when changes are process. Anecdotes of such a tion and relocation—her high-
Picard and his team began search- still able to occur. connection are also visible through- est-stress period in the year.
ing for others with two-colored hairs Most people start noticing their out history: according to legend, Eva Peters, a psychoneuroimmu-
through local ads, on social media first gray hairs in their 30s—although the hair of Marie Antoinette, the nologist at the University Hospital of
and by word of mouth. Eventually, some may find them in their late 20s. 18th-century queen of France, Giessen and Marburg in Germany,
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NEWS
Barbara Ries
holds the memory of your past.” on July 14 in the New England using head movements, word produc- concept” that someone who has
—Diana Kwon Journal of Medicine, the man, who is tion is slow and tedious and often been unable to speak for more than
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NEWS
a decade and a half can still gener- device decoded Bravo-1’s messages on the pandemic, each person
ate speech signals to use with correctly 74.5 percent of the time It’s Not You, It’s ended up happier with their partner
these interfaces. (logging more than 90 percent despite the unprecedented burdens
“This was not like an overnight accuracy occasionally)—and it COVID: Couples Who brought on by the disaster.
kind of thing, where we just plugged produced a median rate of about Blamed Pandemic “Stress turns us inward and
it in,” says the study’s senior author 15.2 words per minute. for Tensions exhausts us,” says lead author and
Edward Chang, chair of neurosurgery That is, of course, nowhere near relationship researcher Lisa Neff
at the University of California, San the fluidity of a fast-talking teenager. Stayed Happier of the University of Texas at Austin.
Francisco. He and his colleagues first Achieving better performance and Pinning stress on the This exhaustion can indirectly harm a
spent many years sorting out how accurate message decoding will coronavirus helped couples romantic relationship, a phenomenon
the brain controls speech-related require combining the high accuracy cope and remain resilient called stress spillover. But the effects
muscles, pinpointing the messages of devices that signal through the of blaming stress on bigger prob-
and movements associated with upper limb and this “critical demon- lems—such as a natural di-
each vowel and consonant in the stration that the speech signals are Whether it’s a work deadline, traffic saster or a serious medical diag-
English alphabet. When they present and that they can be lever- jam, leaky roof or broken-down car, nosis—have long been unclear, Neff
launched the BCI Restoration of Arm aged,” Gilja says. everyday stressors can undermine says. Some studies show that stress
and Voice (BRAVO) study to test the Chang says that for his group, the relationships. Routine annoyances spillover occurs; others find that
128-electrode brain implant they had next steps are to see “if this is better, tend to weigh on people, using up couples actually report greater
developed, the first participant was worse or the same in more people,” energy and making them more likely satisfaction with their partners.
the man who had suffered a stroke while the researchers also use a larg- to lash out at a partner—even when Couples are much more aware
at age 20, who goes by the pseud- er vocabulary to train the machine the partner is clearly not to blame for of big stressors as they happen, Neff
onym “Bravo-1.” that decodes the brain’s output. The the problem at hand. explains. Such events are usually
He worked through 50 sessions vocabulary has already expanded But the COVID-19 pandemic is all-consuming and easy to point to
of a half hour or so each during 81 beyond the 50 words reported in this nothing like a demanding boss or as reasons for feeling irritable or
weeks of the study. In the sessions, study, he says, and “it’s exciting to a delayed train. It has upended the unhappy. “Under those conditions,
researchers would present a target see things grow in that kind of way.” world, hammered national econo- people might use the stressor as
word or sentence on a screen. When When asked about how Bravo-1 mies and dominated headlines for a scapegoat,” she says. Even though
Bravo-1 engaged his brain to send responded to the success he’s more than a year—making it a pretty the pandemic is a once-in-a-century
the related speech signals, the experienced so far, Chang says, conspicuous target for negative kind of event, Neff says, there are
processor picked them up through “I think he was really thrilled sentiments. Now a study published past analogues, such as the 2007–
the implanted electrodes and and excited, and this is really just in Social Psychological and Person- 2009 financial crisis. “During that
transmitted their message to a the beginning.” ality Science shows that when time, people tended to blame the poor
computer. The computer side of the —Emily Willingham couples blamed their daily stressors economy for the problems in their
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relationship,” she explains. A 2011 become too much,” she says. “But
study found that such people report- even in our follow-up wave, it was still
ed feeling happier with their partner beneficial.” Neff posits that because
than couples who blamed each other their follow-up occurred in November
for their day-to-day money problems. and December 2020, COVID-19 was
To test if a similar phenomenon still at the top of participants’ minds as
occurred in the time of COVID, Neff they considered how to travel for and
and her colleagues surveyed 191 celebrate the holidays.
participants for 14 days in April and “This is a really novel application to
May 2020. Members of the group, understanding relationships in the
which included 81 couples and 29 time of COVID,” says Arizona State
individuals who had a partner but University researcher Ashley Randall,
were participating without that who studies how couples cope with
person, answered questions about stress and was not involved with the
the sources of their stress and how new study. But she adds that this
satisfied they were with their relation- work does not present a complete
ship. The researchers then repeated picture. “There are important limita-
the two-week survey last November tions with respect to the study’s
and December and analyzed the demographics,” she says. For in-
responses. The team found that stance, the participants were mostly
people generally blamed the pan- white and well educated, and only
demic for their daily stress more than 16 percent reported a reduction in
they blamed themselves or their work hours and pay. People who lost
partner. When participants reported their job or could not pay their bills
that stress was caused by the might have experienced pandemic
pandemic, they also reported higher stress differently than those who
satisfaction with their relationship. remained financially secure. Concur-
Neff says she was surprised to rent events, such as high-profile
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➦ 18
Landmark
Alzheimer’s
Drug Approval
Confounds
Research
Community
Many scientists say there is not enough
T
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval in June of the first new that Alzheimer’s patients might start dropping out of
drug for Alzheimer’s disease in 18 years was welcomed by some patients ongoing clinical trials to take aducanumab. Others wor-
ry that drug developers might abandon other targets. If
looking for hope against an intractable condition. But for many research- demonstrating amyloid-lowering activity is enough to
ers it came as a surprise—and a disappointment. win regulatory approval, it might discourage developers
from focusing on the big cognitive benefits that patients
Aducanumab—developed by biotechnology company and co-director of the Penn Memory Center in Philadel- need, some scientists says.
Biogen in Cambridge, Mass.—is the first drug approved phia. Despite the dominance of the amyloid hypothesis “This is going to set the research community back 10
that attempts to treat a possible cause of the neurode- over the past decades, evidence that links reductions in to 20 years,” says George Perry, a neurobiologist at the
generative disease rather than just the symptoms. But plaque levels to improvements in cognition is “thin, at University of Texas at San Antonio and a skeptic of the
the approval has sparked a contentious debate over best,” Karlawish says. amyloid hypothesis.
whether the drug is effective. Many experts, including “Desperation should drive the funding of science, not
an independent panel of neurologists and biostatisti- drive the way we interpret the science,” he says. PROBLEMATIC DATA SET
cians, advised the fda that clinical-trial data did not Aducanumab, an intravenously infused antibody, is the
conclusively demonstrate that aducanumab could slow DESPERATE NEED latest in a long line of therapeutic candidates that aims
cognitive decline. But some patient groups are desperate for anything that to tackle amyloid plaques. But although every drug of
The fda instead relied on an alternative measure of might offset the effects of the incurable, progressive dis- this type has so far failed to improve cognition, ques-
activity, which sets a dangerous precedent, some re- ease. Estimates suggest that 35 million people world- tions have persisted about whether amyloid-β was the
searchers warn. wide have this form of dementia. right drug target, as well as whether researchers were
Current Alzheimer’s drugs address only disease symp- “History has shown us that approvals of the first drug testing the optimal therapeutic candidates, the correct
toms, for instance, delaying memory loss by a few in a new category invigorates the field, increases invest- doses or the appropriate patients.
months. Aducanumab clears out clumps of a protein in ments in new treatments and encourages greater inno- “The problem with most of the amyloid trials is that they
the brain called amyloid-β, which some researchers vation,” said Maria Carrillo, chief science officer for the didn’t disprove anything,” says Bart De Strooper, director
think is the root cause of Alzheimer’s. This theory is patient advocacy group Alzheimer’s Association in Chi- of the U.K. Dementia Research Institute. “They just proved
known as the amyloid hypothesis. The fda approved the cago, in a statement. “We are hopeful, and this is the that a drug, in the way it was applied, didn’t work.”
drug on the basis of its ability to reduce the levels of beginning—both for this drug and for better treatments Researchers’ concerns now center on aducanumab’s
these plaques in the brain. for Alzheimer’s.” tumultuous passage through clinical trials and the result-
“This is a very slender reed on which to hang an Others worry that the approval will have the opposite ing data set, which is incomplete and unpublished.
approval decision,” says Jason Karlawish, a geriatrician effect—stymieing research efforts. Karlawish suspects The fda’s approval is based on data from two phase III
20
trials. In March 2019 researchers peeked at interim data
while these trials—which were conducted in early-stage
“My personal view RIPPLE EFFECTS
Biogen is now in line for a major windfall with aducanum-
Alzheimer’s patients—were ongoing. They concluded is that aducanumab ab; its share price jumped by 40 percent on the approval.
that these were unlikely to succeed, and Biogen halted is an effective therapy. Some experts had expected the fda to approve the anti-
both trials early. body only for patients with early-stage disease, but the
But months later the biotech firm brought the antibody But this was a regulator has not limited its use—any Alzheimer’s patient
back from the brink, after inspecting the data more close- problematic data set. can receive it. Biogen says that it will charge around
ly. Cognitive decline slowed in a statistically significant $56,000 a year per person for the drug. If 5 percent of the
way in the subset of patients who received the highest
It was a very U.S.’s six million Alzheimer’s patients receive the treat-
dose of aducanumab, Biogen’s reanalysis showed. Adu- fraught situation.” ment, the drug’s revenue would reach nearly $17 billion a
canumab did not show the same benefit when used at a year. This would make it the second top-selling drug, by
—Paul Aisen
lower dose in this trial, and it didn’t show a benefit at any current revenues.
dose in the other trial. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a non-
For Paul Aisen, director of the University of Southern sidered as evidence of aducanumab’s effectiveness; profit organization, estimates a cost-effective price is
California’s Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute, the other abstained. In June the fda reached the oppo- $2,560 to $8,300 a year.
the totality of the data supports approval. “My personal site conclusion. The approval is also likely to shake up the development
view is that aducanumab is an effective therapy,” says of future Alzheimer’s drugs, researchers say.
Aisen, who consults for Biogen. “But this was a problemat- POSTAPPROVAL TRIAL With a pathway to approval established, drug devel-
ic data set. It was a very fraught situation,” he concedes. As a condition of the fda’s approval—which relied on the opers are likely to double down on antiamyloid drugs.
These tensions were on display last November at an agency’s accelerated approval program—Biogen now Drug companies Eli Lilly, Roche and Eisai are already in
fda meeting to discuss the trial data. An independent must run a postmarketing trial to confirm that the drug phase III trials with antiamyloid antibodies. They, too,
panel of experts advising the fda evaluated the data and can improve cognition. It has yet to release details on might now be able to secure approvals with evidence
argued strongly against Biogen’s assertion that the par- when and how this trial will take place. Biogen has up toof amyloid-lowering activity, regardless of their effects
tial positive trial results carried more weight than the nine years to complete the trial. on cognition.
negative ones. Scott Emerson, a biostatistician at the Uni- This worries industry watchers. “Experience shows Before the approval, the research community had
versity of Washington who was on the panel, called the that relying on accelerated approval to gather timely, started to shift toward other drug targets associated with
approach akin to “firing a shotgun at a barn and then high-quality postapproval evidence is not necessarily a Alzheimer’s. For instance, more than 10 drug candidates
painting a target around the bullet holes.” given,” says Aaron Kesselheim, who studies pharma- now in clinical trials are designed to clear another toxic
The data also showed that aducanumab also has non- coeconomics at Harvard Medical School and is a member protein from the brain, called tau.
negligible side effects. Around 40 percent of treated of the fda panel that discussed aducanumab. David Knopman, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in
patients in the two phase III trials developed brain swell- The fda’s choice to grant accelerated approval to adu-Rochester, Minn., hopes that these and earlier-stage
ing. Most of these patients don’t suffer any symptoms canumab—after a roller coaster of a clinical-trial pro- efforts won’t falter as a result of aducanumab’s win, based
related to the swelling, but they need regular brain scans gram—could have broader implications, too. “This opens on amyloid-lowering activity. “We need to look at other
to avoid dangerous complications—a burden for patients, the door to drug companies seeking to use the accelerat- targets,” he says.
neurologists and health-care systems. ed approval program as a way of getting drugs on the
At the November meeting, 10 out of 11 panelists ulti- market based on extremely low-quality evidence or post This article is reproduced with permission and was first
mately voted that the presented data could not be con- hoc data fishing,” Kesselheim says. published in Nature on June 8, 2021. M
➦ 21
A person adds flowers to
a memorial that has pictures
of some of the missing from
the partially collapsed
12-story Champlain Towers
South condo building on
June 28, 2021, in Surfside,
Fla. The pictures were placed
on the fence as the search
for loved ones went on.
Ambiguous Loss
from Miami-Area
Condo Collapse
Makes Grieving
Harder
23
hope of finding more survivors. (Humans can their tolerance for ambiguity, which is not easy because
typically only survive for a few days without we want certainty in things. And we can do that best by
water.) Is it helpful or harmful for people to keep using both-and thinking: “He’s probably dead—and may-
hoping that their loved ones will still be found alive be not.” And so the rest of us need to have patience with
even when the evidence begins to mount that the people who may say, “I saw him walking in a crowded
worst is likely true? street.” That seems to happen a lot with people who have
It’s a balancing act at first: if there’s a reality of some people loved ones who are missing. And that’s what they do
still being alive, then it’s correct for officials to say they’re instead of grieving. They’re not ready to grieve until they
holding out hope. But then there comes a time when one know for sure.
must say, “There probably is no one living anymore.” And it’s
tough for officials to decide when that is. But families can Has the pandemic made ambiguous loss
handle the truth. And they do better over time if they hear more common?
the truth. That can help them give up the old hope—which Yes. And the general public named it themselves because
is that this person will be found—and formulate a new hope, there were many losses—such as loss of trust in the
a new purpose. For example, that could be making sure this world, a loss of being able to see their loved ones except
doesn’t happen to someone else or doing something in hon- on video calls, loss of being able to be with someone in
or of the missing person. the hospital or in a nursing home. There really was
We also need to be patient with these families. We want nothing we could do. We just had to learn how to live
closure, but “closure” is the most cruel word that could be with being out of control, being surrounded by uncer-
used. I hear it already on the news: “They need closure. tainty. [Editor’s Note: Boss’s forthcoming book The Myth
They need to find the bodies.” When they find the bodies, of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and
people still won’t have closure. They will remember this Change covers this subject in more detail and will be
person and this trauma forever. And so we’ve got to give released this fall.]
up on that word. What we really want instead of closure is
certainty: “We would like some certainty about our loved How could public officials—and the media—better
ones and where their remains are or if they’re dead or handle these sorts of events in the future to reduce
alive.” Closure is a misnomer. the harm to those who might be experiencing this
type of loss?
How is grieving different for those whose loved one’s First of all, and most important, do not use the word
remains are not found? “closure.” It is painful for people to hear. Second, be
The grief is very different. And in fact, grief therapy doesn’t patient with their reactions, which may include anger.
work. It’s more a stress-management intervention, manag- It’s a normal outcome of not knowing. And finally, I
ing the ambiguity and managing the not knowing. It is very would say educate yourself about ambiguous loss,
different from when you have an elderly grandfather who because it’s more common than you think. M
dies. That’s sad, too, but you have the facts in front of you.
These people may not have it until there’s DNA evidence.
And until that time, what they need to do is try to increase
➦ 24
How Did Neandertals and Other
Ancient Humans Learn to Count?
Archaeological finds suggest that people developed numbers tens of thousands of years ago.
Scholars are now exploring the first detailed hypotheses about this life-changing invention
By Colin Barras
F. d'Errico
Prehistoric accounting? Markings made on
a hyena bone by a Neandertal might have
recorded numerical information.
25
Colin Barras is a science journalist in Ann Arbor, Mich.
26
Researchers think that people cut notches into this baboon
Núñez, a cognitive scientist at the University of Califor- in which quantities are processed in the brains of non- bone some 40,000 years ago as an early form of counting.
nia, San Diego, and one of the leaders of QUANTA, human animals and how the human brain processes
accepts that many animals might have an innate appre- numbers. He says that it is misleading to draw too firm the same sort of regularity seen when modern volunteers
ciation of quantity. He argues, however, that the human a line between the two behaviors, although he agrees are given a similar bone and asked to mark it with equal-
perception of numbers is typically much more sophisti- that human numerical abilities are much more advanced ly spaced notches. But this type of analysis also shows
cated and can’t have arisen through a process such as than those of any other animal. “No [nonhuman] animal that the marks on the Les Pradelles bone lack such regu-
natural selection. Instead many aspects of numbers, is able to truly represent number symbols,” he says. larity. That observation—and the fact that the notches
such as the spoken words and written signs that are D’Errico’s analysis of the Les Pradelles bone could were generated in a single session—led d’Errico to con-
used to represent them, must be produced by cultural help to provide some insights into how the earliest stag- sider that they might have been merely functional, pro-
evolution—a process in which individuals learn through es of number systems took shape. He studied the nine viding a record of numerical information.
imitation or formal teaching to adopt a new skill (such notches under a microscope and says that their shapes,
as how to use a tool). depths and other details are so alike that all seem to MARKS OF SOPHISTICATION
Although many animals have culture, one that have been made using the same stone tool, held in the The Les Pradelles bone is not an isolated find. For
involves numbers is essentially unique to humans. A same way. This suggests that all were made by one indi- instance, during excavations at Border Cave in South
handful of chimpanzees have been taught in captivity to vidual in a single session lasting perhaps a few minutes Africa, archaeologists discovered an approximately
use abstract symbols to represent quantities, but neither or hours. (At some other time, eight much shallower 42,000-year-old baboon fibula that was also marked
chimps nor any other nonhuman species uses such sym- marks were carved on the bone, too.) with notches. D’Errico suspects that anatomically mod-
bols in the natural world. Núñez suggests that a distinc- D’Errico, however, doesn’t think that this individual ern humans living there at the time used the bone to
tion should therefore be made between what he has intended to produce a decorative pattern because the record numerical information. In the case of this bone,
27
eries over the past 20 years show that ancient humans challenging to interpret. Karenleigh Overmann, a cogni- relatively simple number systems. But she wondered
began producing abstract engravings, which hint at tive archaeologist at the University of Colorado Colorado whether such societies might provide clues about the
sophisticated cognition, hundreds of thousands of years Springs, highlights those difficulties by citing the exam- social pressures that drive the development of more elab-
earlier than was once thought. ple of message sticks used by Aboriginal Australians. orate number systems.
In the light of these discoveries, D’Errico has developed
These sticks, which are typically flattened or cylindrical
a scenario to explain how number systems might have lengths of wood, are adorned with notches that might COUNTING ON POSSESSIONS
arisen through the very act of producing such artifacts. look as though they encode numerical information—but In a 2013 study, Overmann analyzed anthropological
His hypothesis is one of only two published so far for themany do not. data relating to 33 contemporary hunter-gatherer soci-
prehistoric origin of numbers. Piers Kelly, a linguistic anthropologist at the Univer- eties across the world. She discovered that those with
It all started by accident, he suggests, as early hominins
sity of New England in Armidale, Australia, who con- simple number systems (an upper limit not much high-
unintentionally left marks on bones while they were ducted a review of message sticks, agrees with Over- er than “four”) often had few material possessions, such
butchering animal carcasses. Later, the hominins made a mann’s point. He says that some message sticks are as weapons, tools or jewelry. Those with elaborate sys-
cognitive leap when they realized that they could deliber-carved with tallylike marks, but these often act as a visu- tems (an upper numeral limit much higher than “four”)
ately mark bones to produce abstract designs—such as al memory aid to help a messenger recall details of the always had a richer array of possessions. The evidence
those seen on an approximately 430,000-year-old shell message they are delivering. “They call to mind the act suggested to Overmann that societies might need a vari-
found in Trinil, Indonesia. At some point after that, anoth-
of recounting a narrative rather than accounting a quan- ety of material possessions if they are to develop such
er leap occurred: individual marks began to take on mean- tity,” Kelly says. number systems.
ing, with some of them perhaps encoding numerical infor- Wunyungar, an Aboriginal Australian who is a mem- In societies with complex number systems, there were
mation. The Les Pradelles hyena bone is potentially the ber of the Gooreng Gooreng and Wakka Wakka commu- clues to how those systems developed. Significantly, Over-
earliest-known example of this type of mark making, says nities, says that the sticks might transmit one of any num- mann noted that it was common for these societies to use
d’Errico. He thinks that with further leaps, or what he ber of distinct messages. “Some are used for trading—for quinary (base 5), decimal or vigesimal (base 20) systems.
dubs “cultural exaptations,” such notches eventually led foods, tools or weapons,” he says. “Others might carry This suggested to her that many number systems began
to the invention of number signs such as 1, 2 and 3. messages of peace after war.” with a finger-counting stage.
D’Errico acknowledges that there are gaps in this sce- Overmann has developed her own hypothesis to explain This finger-counting stage is important, according to
nario. It isn’t clear what cultural or social factors might
how number systems might have emerged in prehisto- Overmann. She is an advocate of material engagement
have encouraged ancient hominins to begin marking ry—a task made easier by the fact that a wide variety of theory (MET), a framework devised about a decade ago
bones or other artifacts deliberately or to then harness number systems are still in use around the world. For by cognitive archaeologist Lambros Malafouris of the
those marks to record numerical information. QUANTA example, linguists Claire Bowern and Jason Zentz of Yale University of Oxford. MET maintains that the mind
will use data from anthropology, cognitive science, lin- University reported in a 2012 survey that 139 Aboriginal extends beyond the brain and into objects, such as tools
guistics and archaeology to better understand those Australian languages have an upper limit of “three” or or even a person’s fingers. This extension allows ideas to
social factors, says d’Errico, who is one of the project’s“four” for specific numerals. Some of those languages use be realized in physical form; thus, in the case of counting,
four principal investigators. natural quantifiers such as “several” and “many” to indi- MET suggests that the mental conceptualization of num-
cate higher values. There is even one group, the Pirahã bers can include the fingers. That makes numbers more
BONES OF CONTENTION people of the Brazilian Amazon, that is sometimes claimed tangible and easier to add or subtract.
But QUANTA researcher Núñez, along with some not to use numbers at all. The societies that moved beyond finger counting did
researchers who are not involved in the project, cautions Overmann and other researchers stress that there’s so, Overmann argues, because they developed a clearer
that ancient artifacts such as the Les Pradelles bone are nothing intellectually lacking about societies that use social need for numbers. Perhaps most obviously, a soci-
28
ety with more material possessions has a greater need to Others are more enthusiastic. Karim Zahidi, a philos- This doesn’t prove that the numbers from “one” to
count (and to count much higher than “four”) to keep opher at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, says that “five” derive from ancient cognates that were first spoken
track of objects. although Overmann’s scenario is still incomplete, it has tens of thousands of years ago, but Pagel says it’s at least
Overmann thinks MET implies that there is another real potential to explain the development of the elabo- “conceivable” that a modern and a Paleolithic Eurasian
way in which material possessions are necessary for the rate number systems in use today. could have understood one another when it came to such
elaboration of number systems. An artifact such as a tal- number words.
ly stick also becomes an extension of the mind, and the LINGUISTIC LEADS Pagel’s work has its fans, including Gray, another of
act of marking tally notches on the stick helps to anchor Overmann acknowledges that her hypothesis is silent on QUANTA’s leaders, but his claims are challenged by some
and stabilize numbers as someone counts. These aids one issue: when in prehistory human societies began scholars of ancient languages. Don Ringe, a historical lin-
could have been crucial to the process through which developing number systems. Linguistics might offer guist at the University of Pennsylvania, says it isn’t clear
humans first began counting up to large numbers. some help here. One line of evidence suggests that num- that the stability of lower-number words can just be pro-
Eventually, Overmann says, some societies moved ber words could have a history stretching back at least jected far back into prehistory, regardless of how stable
beyond tally sticks. This first happened in Mesopotamia tens of thousands of years. they seem to be in recent millennia.
around the time when cities emerged there, creating an Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel of the University That all adds up to a slew of open questions about
even greater need for numbers to keep track of resourc- of Reading in England and his colleagues have spent when and how humans first started using numbers. But
es and people. Archaeological evidence suggests that by many years exploring the history of words in extant lan- despite the debate swirling around these questions,
5,500 years ago, some Mesopotamians had begun using guage families, with the aid of computational tools that researchers agree it’s a topic that deserves a lot more
small clay tokens as counting aids. they initially developed to study biological evolution. attention. “Numbers are just so fundamental to every-
According to Overmann, MET suggests that these Essentially, words are treated as entities that either thing we do,” Gray says. “It’s hard to conceive of human
tokens were also extensions of the mind and that they remain stable or are outcompeted and replaced as lan- life without them.”
fostered the emergence of new numerical properties. In guages spread and diversify. For instance, English Numbers might even have gained this importance
particular, the shapes of tokens came to represent differ- “water” and German “wasser” are clearly related, mak- deep in prehistory. The notched baboon bone from Bor-
ent values: 10 small cone tokens were equivalent to a ing them cognates that derive from the same ancient der Cave is worn smooth in a way that indicates that
sphere token, and six spheres were equivalent to a large word—an example of stability. But English “hand” is dis- ancient humans used it over many years. “It was clearly
cone token. The existence of large cones, each equivalent tinct from Spanish “mano”—evidence of word replace- an important item for the individual who produced it,”
to 60 small cones, allowed the Mesopotamians to count ment at some time in the past. By assessing how fre- d’Errico says.
into the thousands using relatively few tokens. quently such replacement events occur over long peri- Not so for the Les Pradelles specimen, which lacks this
Andrea Bender, a psychologist at the University of ods, it is possible to estimate rates of change and to infer
smooth surface. If it does record numerical information,
Bergen in Norway and another leader of the QUANTA how old words are. that might not have been quite as important at the time.
project, says that the team members plan to gather and Using this approach, Pagel and Andrew Meade, also In fact, although d’Errico and his colleagues have spent
analyze large amounts of data relating to the world’s at Reading, showed that low-value number words (“one” innumerable hours analyzing the bone, he says it’s possi-
numeral systems. That should allow them to test Over- to “five”) are among the most stable features of spoken ble that the Neandertal who chipped away at that hyena
mann’s hypothesis that body parts and artifacts might languages. Indeed, they change so infrequently across femur some 60,000 years ago spent very little time using
have helped societies to develop number systems that language families—such as the Indo-European family, it before tossing the bone aside.
ultimately count into the thousands and higher. But which includes many modern European and southern
Bender says she and her colleagues are not presuppos- Asian languages—that they seem to have been stable for This article is reproduced with permission and was first
ing that Overmann’s MET-based ideas are correct. anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years. published in Nature on June 2, 2021. M
➦ 29
T H E
A R T
O F
N E U R O S C I E N C E
Inspired by Chronic
Illness, She Made
Award-Winning Art
about the Brain
Scientific American presents the winner and honorable mentions
of the 11th annual Art of Neuroscience contest
Yas Crawford
By Maddie Bender
30
Maddie Bender is a 2021 AAAS Mass Media
T H E Fellow at Scientific American. She recently
received an M.P.H. in microbial disease epidemi-
A R T
ology from the Yale School of Public Health.
O F
N E U R O S C I E N C E
Cognition IX,
Winner from the series
The 8th Sense.
ford, who has a background in geology snake around one another on the outside history. Her studio art degree and neuro-
and microbiology and a master’s degree of the beanlike shape and shoot out in science minor have informed her other
in photography. That title inspired her to near parallel closer to its center. work, too, including a steel brain-shaped
make an eponymous collection of art- Crawford says her art is meant for oth- sculpture that is big enough to encircle a
work. Cognition IX, an image from that ers with chronic illnesses who resist being viewer’s head.
when yas crawford started feeling the collection, recently won the 2021 Art of defined by them. Intertwining the inter- Another honorable mention piece is
effects of her chronic illness, she says she Neuroscience competition held by the nal and external lives of a person is a The Brainwave Project, by Qi Chen, an
felt as if her body and mind were at war. Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. theme in her work. instructor at Wuhan Textile University,
“When you’re ill for a long time, your Now in its 11th year, the Art of Neuro- Honorable mentions of the competi- which explores the artist’s project to
body takes over,” she says. “Your brain science showcases the intersection of art tion represent a variety of formats and stimulate the brains of people in a mini-
wants to do one thing, and your body and neuroscience through multimedia. media: a sculpture, mini documentary, mally conscious state and communicate
does something else.” Static images make up the works recog- mapping installation and scored video. the results to their family with artwork.
Crawford has myalgic encephalomyeli- nized in the competition’s early years, The sculpture Change of Heart (변심), She created a device to convert brain
tis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome. but more recent submissions have in- by recent Davidson College graduate waves into images and make an other-
She says her illness made her ruminate on cluded videos, sculptures and even inter- Adrienne Lee, tackled the theme of neu- wise sterile readout accessible and mean-
interoception, the perception of the body’s active online poetry. ral degeneration with a metal-and-paper ingful to onlookers. Chen synthesized
internal state. People with this condition, Cognition IX showcases Crawford’s representation of Purkinje cells, which her journey designing and testing the
particularly those who are afflicted for a experience in film photography and digi- are specialized neurons that play a role devices in a five-minute documentary,
long time, report heightened awareness of tal editing with a black-and-white image in coordination, learning and move- calling it an integration of “functional
their body’s inner workings—such as their of a seascape in the approximate shape of ment. Degenerative diseases are “akin to art and art therapy.”
heartbeat and temperature. a brain. From the rough region of where an act of betrayal against the beauty of Independent artist Guihan Lu created
We commonly think of five senses— the brain stem meets the thalamus—the one’s accumulated life experiences,” Lee Self Evolution, an installation that plays
sight, sound, smell, touch and taste—and structure that relays sensory signals to the writes in her artist’s statement. The met- with theater and self-portraiture by pro-
we have the senses of balance and body cerebral cortex—individual fibrils appear alwork forming the dendrites of the Pur- jecting images recorded from a brain-
Yas Crawford
position as well. But interoception could to explode outward. The image is in equal kinje cells incorporates letters from the wave kit that slowly morph into a recog-
be called an “eighth sense,” argues Craw- parts ordered and disordered: the fibers Korean alphabet, a nod to Lee’s personal nizable representation of the viewer. She
31
T H E
A R T
O F
N E U R O S C I E N C E
Honorable Mention
Change of Heart (변심).
Adrienne Lee
ed the brain’s response to fractal
animations. M
32
Melissa J. Coleman is a professor of neuroscience at
OPINION the W. M. Keck department of science at Scripps College.
Eric Fortune is a neurobiologist at the New Jersey Institute
of Technology's department of biological sciences.
NEUROSCIENCE
The Neuroscience
of Taking Turns
in a Conversation
Research in birds suggests that when one
partner speaks, the other partner’s brain
is inhibited from talking over them
A
fundamental feature of vocal communication
is taking turns: when one person says some-
thing, the other person listens and then re-
sponds. Turn taking requires precise coordination of
the timing of signals between individuals. We have
all found over the past year using Zoom that disrup-
tions of the timing of auditory cues—like those an- White-browed
noying delays caused by poor connections—make sparrow weavers
effective communication difficult and frustrating. in Kenya
Alamy
ordinate relies on sensory cues from one partner duet singing, we flew to Ecuador where we load- called syllables, so rapidly it sounds as if a single
33
OPINION
bird is singing. These wrens live in dense bamboo blocks inhibitory neurotransmission in the brain.
on the slopes of the Andes. To study the neural With inhibition blocked, hearing the partner’s sylla-
basis of duet singing, we flew to Ecuador where bles produced an increase in the number of action
we loaded up a truck with equipment and drove to potentials in HVC. This experiment gave us more
a remote field site: the Yanayacu Biological Field evidence that auditory cues from the partner, re-
Station and Center for Creative Studies. Much of vealed under anesthesia, inhibit the song premotor
our equipment required electricity, so we brought circuitry in HVC when the birds are awake.
car batteries for backup and a six-meter copper Inhibition is an interesting mechanism for turn
rod that we drove into the mountain earth for our taking because it prevents the two birds from sing-
electrical ground. Our “lab bench” was a door we ing over each other. In addition, similar to bouncing
placed on two Pelican suitcases. on a trampoline, the inhibition creates the ability to
First, we had to catch pairs of wrens, so we “rebound,” or respond more quickly, which may con-
hacked through bamboo with machetes and set up tribute to the rapid alternation of syllables. Taken
mist nets. We then attracted pairs to the nets by together, the alternating activity between the two
playing the duets of wrens. To see how neurons birds is driven by an auditory link between the two.
responded during duets, we surgically implanted That is, there is an increase in activity in the female
very small wires into a specific region of the brain, HVC that produces her syllable. This signal is per-
called HVC. Neurons in this region are responsible ceived by the male and inhibits activity in HVC, pre-
for producing the song—that is, they are premo- venting him from singing. HVC activity then re-
tor—and they also respond to auditory signals. To bounds, producing the male syllable, which in turn
transmit the neural signals (that is, action poten- is perceived by the female and inhibits her brain.
tials) to a computer, a small wireless digital trans- Similarly, during a Zoom call with auditory delays,
mitter was connected to the wires. We then had to our brains are inhibited when we finally hear what
wait for the birds to sing their remarkable duets. someone is saying. This disrupts our speech pat-
During duet singing, the number of action po- tern and makes taking turns difficult.
tentials increased when each bird sang its part of This study also suggests that when individuals
the duet. A similar finding has been made in anoth- are interacting in a shared behavior they act as
er duetting bird from Africa, the white-browed spar- a single entity. This concept is important for any
row weaver. But we found that when each bird group of organisms cooperating to produce a
heard its partner, the number of action potentials shared behavior that is more than the sum of its
decreased below baseline: the brain was inhibited. parts; for example, several people playing in a band.
In a final set of experiments, as an indirect test To coordinate their behavior, the brains of all partici-
that HVC was inhibited while hearing the partner, pants must link together to become a single unit.
the birds were anesthetized with a substance that
➦ 34
OPINION David H. Rosmarin is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School
and director of the McLean Hospital Spirituality & Mental Health Program.
He received his Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University and certification
in clinical psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology.
MENTAL HEALTH
Psychiatry
Needs to Get Right
with God
By not making more of an effort to
incorporate spirituality in treatment,
we are doing a disservice to patients
I
n the early days of the pandemic, economist
Jeanet Bentzen of the University of Copenhagen
examined Google searches for the word “prayer”
in 95 countries. She identified that they hit an all-
time global high in March 2020, and increases
occurred in lockstep with the number of
COVID-19 cases identified in each country.
Stateside, according to the Pew Research Center,
55 percent of Americans prayed to end the
spread of the novel coronavirus in March 2020,
and nearly one quarter reported that their faith
increased the following month, despite limited
35
OPINION
Massachusetts indicate that attention to it is a criti- zation of religion as a “mass delusion” nearly 100 include spirituality in their treatment.
cal aspect of mental health care. years ago, mental health professionals and scien- Recently one of my patients—an ostensibly sec-
In 2017 my multidisciplinary team of mental tists have eschewed the spiritual realm. Current ular 22-year-old woman—presented with an uptick
health clinicians, researchers and chaplains created efforts to flatten the COVID-19 mental health curve in depression and anxiety. She reported feeling
Spiritual Psychotherapy for Inpatient, Residential have been almost entirely secular. The American “defeated” and stated that she was losing hope of
and Intensive Treatment (SPIRIT), a flexible and Psychological Association’s extensive set of con- ever getting better. My research has taught me that
spiritually integrated form of cognitive-behavioral sumer resources makes no mention of spirituality. many secular individuals believe in something, and I
therapy. We subsequently trained a cadre of more And the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- therefore assess for spirituality with all patients irre-
than 20 clinicians, stationed on 10 different clinical tion’s only spiritual recommendation is to “connect spective of their religious affiliation or lack thereof.
units throughout McLean Hospital, to deliver SPIRIT with your community- or faith-based organizations.” In that context, this particular patient shared with
and evaluated the approach. Since 2017 SPIRIT Of more than 90,000 active projects currently me that she believed in God and also believed that
has been delivered to more than 5,000 people. Our funded by all 27 institutes and centers within the she was brought to this earth for a specific pur-
results suggest that spiritual psychotherapy is not National Institutes of Health, fewer than 20 men- pose. Over the course of just three sessions fo-
only feasible but highly desired by patients. tion spirituality anywhere in the abstract, and only cused on these ideas, she came to a sense of in-
In the past year American mental health sank to one project contains this term in its title. Needless creased hope that she could overcome her life
the lowest point in history: Incidence of mental dis- to say, a lack of funding for research on spirituality challenges, and her symptoms of depression start-
orders increased by 50 percent, compared with hamstrings clinical innovation and dissemination. ed to abate.
before the pandemic, alcohol and other substance This situation goes beyond separation of church In another case, a devout Christian man in his
use surged, and young adults were more than and state. Health-care professionals falsely discon- mid-60s came to McLean Hospital with severe
twice as likely to seriously consider suicide than nect common spiritual behaviors and experiences depression and acute levels of suicidality. His treat-
they were in 2018. Yet the only group to see im- from science and clinical practice. As a result, we ment team was aware of his faith but unclear about
provements in mental health during the past year ignore potential spiritual solutions to our mental how to address it in therapy. I was asked to consult
were those who attended religious services at least health crisis, even when our well-being is worse with the patient, who reported to me that he was
weekly (virtually or in-person): 46 percent report than ever before. struggling to pray and think about God in the
“excellent” mental health today versus 42 percent My own research has demonstrated that a throes of his depression. We scheduled times for
one year ago. As former congressional representa- belief in God is associated with significantly bet- prayer and religious study, and I encouraged con-
tive Patrick J. Kennedy and journalist Stephen ter treatment outcomes for acute psychiatric pa- versations with his pastor. Within one month his
Fried wrote in their book A Common Struggle, the tients. And other laboratories have shown a con- depression began to remit for the first time in more
two most underappreciated treatments for mental nection between religious belief and the thick- than a year.
disorders are “love and faith.” ness of the brain’s cortex, which may help protect Countless anecdotes of this nature occurred
It’s no wonder that nearly 60 percent of psychi- against depression. Of course, belief in God is during a recent year-long clinical trial of SPIRIT that
atric patients want to discuss spirituality in the con- not a prescription. But these compelling findings my research team completed with funding from the
text of their treatment. Yet we rarely provide such warrant further scientific exploration, and patients Bridges Consortium (supported by the John Tem-
an opportunity. Since Sigmund Freud’s characteri- in distress should certainly have the option to pleton Foundation). More than 90 percent of pa-
36
OPINION
➦ 37
Yasser Abu Jamei is a psychiatrist working in Gaza and
OPINION director of Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
MENTAL HEALTH
A New Mental
Health Crisis Is
Raging in Gaza
Recent bombings by Israel have caused more
than just physical trauma
38
OPINION
experience we adults were used to, and of course by the crisis teams were referred to our community both clinics was partial, and the Rimal clinic soon
something that children, even the very youngest, centers for further assessment and therapy. The resumed service. But a young physician, Majed
also had to live with. United Nations. Children’s Emergency Fund Salha, was severely injured on his head, and his
Thinking about those mothers and babies, (UNICEF) reported then that more than 370,000 condition was critical.
I then asked myself about the likely psychological children were in need of mental health and psy-
consequences of this 11-day offensive on the chosocial intervention. Would these figures predict ONGOING MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES
people of the Gaza Strip and how it is going to be anything for after the 2021 offensive? Only weeks before, COVID was the main concern
different from 2014’s Gaza war which lasted for in Gaza as in any other place in the world. People
seven weeks through July and August, including ELEVEN DAYS calling our telephone counseling line at GCMHP
a ground invasion into Gaza. There were then We know now the physical effects: at least 242 or people we were meeting either in the commu-
2,251 Palestinians killed and 11,000 wounded. people were killed in Gaza, including 66 children, nity or at the community centers presented with
38 women (four pregnant) and 17 elderly people. two main and interlinked complaints or challeng-
AFTER THE 2014 WAR The injured are around 1,948 people—an iconic es. One was how deeply the economic conditions
In 2014 we formed in the Gaza Community Men- figure for every Palestinian. It includes 610 chil- were affecting their lives. The unemployment rate
tal Health Program (GCMHP) what we called cri- dren, 398 women and 102 elderly people. Moder- in Gaza, even before the bombings, was 43.1 per-
sis response teams, which were usually composed ate to severe injuries affect 25 percent of the in- cent, and for people under 30 it was 65.5 per-
of a man and a woman, both psychologists. Their jured. During the offensive 107,000 people were cent. Even among those working, many are in ca-
main task was to provide Psychological First Aid: internally displaced with about two thirds of them sual employment, living from hand to mouth. Taxi
to give some psychological support and detect seeking shelter at United Nations Relief and drivers or those who sell vegetables at the open
and refer cases in need of further interventions to Works Agency schools. markets were badly affected by the COVID-related
our three community centers. Parents often were We saw six hospitals and 11 clinics damaged, restrictions on movement and other measures
talking about changes that their children had be- and there are some ironic stories. It was on May such as social distancing and closing of some of
gun experiencing. Children were having poor con- 17 that the Rimal primary health-care center situ- those open markets. Depression and high anxiety
centration, sleeping difficulties and night terrors, ated within the Ministry of Health (MoH) com- were rife as men were unable to provide either
bed-wetting and irritability. Younger children were pound in Gaza city was attacked. The center in- sanitizers or simply food for their families.
clinging to their parents. cluded the main laboratory for COVID-19 tests The second fear was always how to deal with
During the four months that followed the at- and was partially affected. The MoH had to stop their children under such restrictions and with
tacks in 2014, 51 percent of children visiting our the testing and asked people who were supposed schools closed. We have on average five children
centers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress to get their second shot of vaccine to go to Al- per household, and we live in one of the most
disorder (PTSD), and another 11 percent were Daraj primary health-care center across Gaza City. crowded areas in the world with more than 13,000
diagnosed with bed-wetting. For adults, 31 percent That center, too, came under attack, however, as persons in one square mile. Those children, not
were diagnosed with PTSD, while 25 percent were there was a house in the area that was bombed in being allowed to leave their homes because of
diagnosed with depression. During those months, an air strike. The Rimal clinic was also the place to COVID restrictions, were badly in need of support.
almost 20 percent of the people who were visited get vaccinated in Gaza City. Luckily the damage to Two weeks before the offensive the MoH was
39
OPINION
dealing with the second wave of COVID with area. You could hear continuous bombing in your their knees and abdomen, and parents report
about 35 to 40 percent of the people being tested own city, in your own small geographical area, that clinging sons and daughters. Men and women
showing positive results. Suddenly, those continued for about 25 to 40 minutes. In all that alike complain of joint pains, low back pain and
COVID-related concerns were overshadowed by time neither you nor your children nor your wife difficulty in concentration. Many say that they are
the fears related to the air strikes, the bombing nor any other family member would feel that they not sure if they are living a big dream or a reality.
and survival. How is that going to impact the psy- could take even a single breath. And the worst-affected people show severe psy-
chological well-being of the population? The continuous bombardment and shelling chological effects, including dissociative symp-
that continued in different cities on different toms. In any case, we will need more time to have
AN UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE nights meant that no one really could feel any a better understanding of the impact.
In one night, it was reported, 160 warplanes at- moment of safety. All of us had our nervous sys- One might think that this will be our only con-
tacked 450 targets in less than 40 minutes in tem at its very highest alarm level for more than cern, but that is not the case. In the first few days
northern areas of the Gaza Strip. The strikes hap- 25 and up to 40 minutes. I can say that this is the after the ceasefire with COVID testing resumed,
pened at the same time as 500 artillery shells were most fearful experience that I have had through- only a few hundred tests were made, but on aver-
fired. People from outside Gaza asked us if this out four large offensives over the years. age one third of the results were positive. Tens of
experience was similar to what happened in 2008 This type of attack caused extreme fear thousands of people were displaced and stayed in
when the first strike took place. On Saturday, De- in the population of two million, traumatizing school classes or at their relatives’ homes, making
cember 27, 2008, at around 11:20 a.m., suddenly almost everyone. the whole community inevitably much more mixed
people in the whole Gaza strip were overwhelmed Another key difference to keep in mind is that and crowded. As you may imagine, COVID mea-
with the sounds of bombardment and the view of a most of the areas that were attacked were in the sures were not all carried out.
huge mushroomlike smoke plume that was all over heart of the cities. We witnessed the flattening of Our hospitals are already full of injured people,
the place. It was a moment where children were 13- or 14-story towers and many other buildings. and the health system is struggling. And it seems
either going to schools (afternoon shift) or return- Some families were just eliminated during those that we are on the verge of a third COVID wave.
ing from schools (morning shift), and everyone re- attacks. In Al-Shati camp one family had 10 peo- A wave where out of the two million people only
ally was in a state of shock. At that moment about ple killed, including eight children and two women. 40,000 have been vaccinated. We have just es-
60 fighter planes carried the first attack in less Fourteen families lost more than three members, caped the hell of air strikes to find the hell of
than one minute. People asked us whether this felt and some of them were killed outright. COVID-19 at our doors. We are moving from liv-
the same. Perhaps it looks the same, but there is The fear and terror that we lived with through ing under occupation and offensive to life under
a critical major difference. the 11 days was something unprecedented. So do occupation and blockade, with COVID.
In 2008 the bombing was a single minute or we expect to see more people and with a similar Ours is a life that you will never understand
two minutes, and it was across the whole Gaza diagnosis to 2014, or 2012, or 2008? Maybe, but unless you are a resident of Gaza. Outsiders love
strip (140 square miles). But what happened in definitely the lower number of people who were to call us resilient human beings rather than see
these 11 days is entirely different. The strikes con- killed or injured does not indicate a lesser psycho- our reality. As English poet T. S. Eliot wrote in
tinued for about 25 to 30 minutes or sometimes logical impact on the population. We already see 1936, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
up to 40 minutes in the same city or geographical children presented with night terrors, and pains in
➦ 40
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings
OPINION at the Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include
The End of Science, The End of War and Mind-Body
Problems, available for free at mindbodyproblems.com.
For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog
Cross Check for Scientific American.
A
n edgy biography of Stephen Hawking has
me reminiscing about science’s good old
days. Or were they bad? I can’t decide.
I’m talking about the 1990s, when scientific hubris
ran rampant. As journalist Charles Seife recalls
in Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific
Celebrity, Hawking and other physicists convinced
us that they were on the verge of a “theory of
everything” that would solve the riddle of existence.
It would reveal why there is something rather than
nothing and why that something is the way it is.
In this column, I’ll look at an equally ambitious become consistent with science, our supreme of Knowledge, Wilson prophesizes that science will
and closely related claim, that science will absorb source of truth. The most eloquent advocate soon yield such a compelling, complete theory of
other ways of seeing the world, including the arts, of this perspective is biologist Edward O. Wilson, nature, including human nature, that “the human-
Getty Images
humanities and religion. Nonscientific modes of one of our greatest scientist-writers. ities, ranging from philosophy and history to moral
knowledge won’t necessarily vanish, but they will In his 1998 best seller Consilience: The Unity reasoning, comparative religion, and interpretation
41
OPINION
of the arts, will draw closer to the sciences and ience between science and the humanities in his ers would discover how physical processes in the
partly fuse with them.” Wilson calls this unification 2018 best seller Enlightenment Now. The major brain and other systems generate consciousness.
of knowledge “consilience,” an old-fashioned term difference between Wilson and Pinker is stylistic. Since then, mind-body studies have undergone
for coming together or converging. Consilience Whereas Wilson holds out an olive branch to a paradigm explosion, with theorists espousing
will resolve our age-old identity crisis, helping us “postmodern” humanities scholars who challenge a bewildering variety of models, involving quantum
understand once and for all “who we are and why science’s objectivity and authority, Pinker scolds mechanics, information theory and Bayesian math-
we are here,” as Wilson puts it. them. Pinker accuses postmodernists of “defiant ematics. Some researchers suggest that con-
Dismissing philosophers’ warnings against obscurantism, self-refuting relativism and suffocat- sciousness pervades all matter, a view called pan-
deriving “ought” from “is,” Wilson insists that we ing political correctness.” psychism; others insist that the so-called hard
can deduce moral principles from science. Sci- The enduring appeal of consilience makes it problem of consciousness is a pseudoproblem be-
ence can illuminate our moral impulses and emo- worth revisiting. Consilience raises two big ques- cause consciousness is an “illusion.”
tions, such as our love for those who share our tions: (1) Is it feasible? (2) Is it desirable? Feasibil- There are schisms even within Wilson’s own
genes, as well as giving us moral guidance. This ity first. As Wilson points out, physics has been an field of evolutionary biology. In Consilience and
linkage of science to ethics is crucial because especially potent unifier, establishing over the past elsewhere, Wilson suggests that natural selection
Wilson wants us to share his desire to preserve few centuries that the heavens and earth are promotes traits at the level of tribes and other
nature in all its wild variety, a goal that he views made of the same stuff ruled by the same forces. groups; in this way, evolution might have be-
as an ethical imperative. Now physicists seek a single theory that fuses queathed us a propensity for religion, war and oth-
At first glance you might wonder: Who could general relativity, which describes gravity, with er social behaviors. Other prominent Darwinians,
possibly object to this vision? Wouldn’t we all love quantum field theory, which accounts for electro- notably Richard Dawkins and Robert Trivers, reject
to agree on a comprehensive worldview, consis- magnetism and the nuclear forces. This is Hawk- group selection, arguing that natural selection op-
tent with science, that tells us how to behave indi- ing’s theory of everything and Steven Weinberg’s erates only at the level of individual organisms and
vidually and collectively? And in fact, many schol- “final theory." even individual genes.
ars share Wilson’s hope for a merger of science Writing in 1998, Wilson clearly expected physi- If scientists cannot achieve consilience even
with alternative ways of engaging with reality. cists to find a theory of everything soon, but today within specific fields, what hope is there for consil-
Some enthusiasts have formed the Consilience they seem farther than ever from that goal. Worse, ience between, say, quantum chromodynamics and
Project, dedicated to “developing a body of social they still cannot agree on what quantum mechan- queer theory? (Actually, in her fascinating 2007
theory and analysis that explains and seeks solu- ics means. As science writer Philip Ball points out book Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum
tions to the unique challenges we face today.” Last in his 2018 book Beyond Weird: Why Everything Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Mean-
year poet-novelist Clint Margrave wrote an elo- You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is ing, physicist-philosopher Karen Barad finds reso-
quent defense of consilience for Quillette, noting Different, there are more interpretations of quan- nances between physics and gender politics; how-
that he has “often drawn inspiration from science.” tum mechanics now than ever. ever, Barad’s book represents the kind of post-
Another consilience booster is psychologist The same is true of scientific attempts to bridge modern analysis deplored by Wilson and Pinker.) If
and megapundit Steven Pinker, who praised Wil- the explanatory chasm between matter and mind. consilience entails convergence toward a consen-
son’s “excellent” book in 1998 and calls for consil- In the 1990s it still seemed possible that research- sus, science is moving away from consilience.
42
OPINION
So, consilience doesn’t look feasible, at least premature closing of our accounts with reality.” well on the page. But his consilience project stems
not at the moment. Next question: Is consilience Wilson disagrees. He thinks mystical experienc- from excessive faith in science, or scientism. (Both
desirable? Although I’ve always doubted whether es are reducible to physiological processes. In Wilson and Pinker embrace the term “scientism,”
it could happen, I once thought consilience should Consilience, he focuses on Peruvian shaman-artist and they no doubt think that the phrase “excessive
happen. If humanity can agree on a single, rational Pablo Amaringo, whose paintings depict fantastical, faith in science” is oxymoronic.) Given the failure
worldview, maybe we can do a better job solving jungly visions induced by ayahuasca, a hallucino- to achieve consilience within physics and biology—
our shared problems, like climate change, inequali- genic tea (which I happen to have taken) brewed not to mention the replication crisis and other
ty, pandemics and militarism. We could also get rid from two Amazonian plants. Wilson attributes the problems—scientists should stop indulging in fan-
of bad ideas, such as the notion that God likes snakes that slither through Amaringo’s paintings to tasies about conquering all human culture and at-
some of us more than others or that racial and natural selection, which instilled an adaptive fear of taining something akin to omniscience. Scientists,
sexual inequality and war are inevitable conse- snakes in our ancestors; it should not be surprising in short, should be more humble.
quences of our biology. that snakes populate many religious myths, such as Ironically, Wilson himself questioned the desir-
I also saw theoretical diversity, or pluralism, as the biblical story of Eden. ability of final knowledge early in his career. At the
philosophers call it, as a symptom of failure; the Moreover, ayahuasca contains psychotropic end of his 1975 masterpiece Sociobiology, Wilson
abundance of “solutions” to the mind-body compounds, including the potent psychedelic di- anticipates the themes of Consilience, predicting
problem, like the abundance of treatments for can- methyltryptamine, like those that induce dreams, that evolutionary theory plus genetics will soon
cer, means that none works very well. But increas- which stem from, in Wilson’s words, the “editing of absorb the social sciences and humanities. But
ingly, I see pluralism as a valuable, even necessary information in the memory banks of the brain” that Wilson doesn’t exult at this prospect. When we can
counterweight to our yearning for certitude. Plural- occurs while we sleep. These nightly neural dis- explain ourselves in “mechanistic terms,” he warns,
ism is especially important when it comes to our charges are “arbitrary in content,” that is, meaning- “the result might be hard to accept”; we might find
ideas about who we are, can be and should be. If less; still, the brain desperately tries to assemble ourselves, as Camus put it, “divested of illusions.”
we settle on a single self-conception, we risk limit- them into “coherent narratives,” which we experi- Wilson needn’t have worried. Scientific omni-
ing our freedom to reinvent ourselves, to discover ence as dreams. science looks less likely than ever, and humans are
new ways to flourish. In this way, Wilson “explains” Amaringo’s visions far too diverse, creative and contrary to settle for a
Wilson acknowledges that consilience is a re- in terms of evolutionary biology, psychology and single worldview of any kind. Inspired by mysticism
ductionistic enterprise, which will eliminate many neurochemistry. This is a spectacular example of and the arts, as well as by science, we will keep
ways of seeing the world. Consider how he treats what Paul Feyerabend, my favorite philosopher and arguing about who we are and reinventing our-
mystical visions, in which we seem to glimpse a fierce advocate for pluralism, calls “the tyranny selves forever. Is consilience a bad idea, which we’d
truths normally hidden behind the surface of things. of truth.” Wilson imposes his materialistic, secular be better off without? I wouldn’t go that far. Like
To my mind, these experiences rub our faces in the worldview on the shaman, and he strips ayahuasca utopia, another by-product of our yearning for per-
unutterable weirdness of existence, which tran- visions of any genuine spiritual significance. While fection, consilience, the dream of total knowledge,
scends all our knowledge and forms of expression. he exalts biological diversity, Wilson shows little can serve as a useful goad to the imagination, as
As William James says in The Varieties of Religious respect for the diversity of human beliefs. long as we see it as an unreachable ideal. Let’s just
Experience, mystical experiences should “forbid a Wilson is a gracious, courtly man in person as hope we never think we’ve reached it.
➦ 43
ILLUSIONS Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde are professors
of ophthalmology at the State University of New York and the organizers
of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest. They have co-authored Sleights
of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday
Deceptions and Champions of Illusion: The Science behind Mind-Boggling
Images and Mystifying Brain Puzzles.
No Shrinking Violet
How Impressionist painters made an unusual
color all the rage
W
hen Russian-American artist and cogni-
tive scientist Allen Tager thinks about his
childhood in the Soviet Union in the
1960s, his memories are violet-tinged. “We had
one ink color, violet,” he reminisces, “and it was
kept in glass jars that tipped over constantly. My
hands, school uniform and textbooks were perpet-
ually covered in violet stains.” Outside of the class-
room, in contrast, violet was inexplicably absent
from household objects and other everyday items.
Years later, when Tager fell in love with the paint-
ings of Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910),
his fellow art students dissuaded him from creat-
ing “a similar violet harmony” and asked him to
repaint the violet shades in trendier purple tones.
The ostensive unpopularity of violet versus
purple nagged at the back of Tager’s mind for
much of his life, eventually setting him on a
20-year journey across 193 museums in 42
countries. Tager’s search traversed time as well as
space, compelling color examinations of paintings
Allen Tager
from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to their
contemporary counterparts—and every era in Violet wisteria flowers resting on a purple towel
44
ILLUSIONS
Allen Tager
much like the color violet in old masters’
paintings, remains elusive.
➦ 45
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