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INCLUDING

Which
Personality
Types Share
Fake News?

How Brains
Switch between
Languages

Origins of
Intelligence

The
Science
of Self
Neuroscientists may have
discovered the brain regions
that give rise to our identity WITH COVERAGE FROM
FROM
THE
EDITOR

Your Opinion Matters!

Help shape the future
of this digital magazine.
Let us know what you
think of the stories within
these pages by e-mailing us:
Liz Tormes

editors@sciam.com.

Astonishing Conscious Mind

Human consciousness remains one of the biggest puzzles in science. Indeed, we have made moderate
progress on how to measure it but less on how it arises in the first place. And what gives rise to our sense
of self? In February we published a special collector’s edition exploring these mysteries and more. This
issue’s cover story, by researcher Robert Martone, is a fascinating look at new discoveries on a region of
the brain that helps us create a mental picture of our present and future identities (see “How Our Brain
Preserves Our Sense of Self”).
Elsewhere in this issue, contributing editor Daisy Yuhas talks with linguist Sarah Frances Phillips about
new research illuminating the neurological basis for multilingualism (see “How Brains Seamlessly Switch
between Languages”). How the brain both creates our individual reality and enables us to thrive in that
reality is nothing short of astonishing.
Andrea Gawrylewski

Paffy69/iStock/Getty Images
Senior Editor, Collections
editors@sciam.com
On the Cover
Neuroscientists may have
discovered the brain regions
that give rise to our identity
 WHAT’S March–April 2022
Volume 33 • Number 2

INSIDE
OPINION
21. How Our Brain
Preserves Our
Sense of Self
One brain region is
crucial for our ability
to form and maintain
a consistent identity
both now and when
thinking about the future

Hase-Hoch-2/iStock/Getty Images
24. New Clues
Maridav/Alamy Stock Photo

about the Origins of

Biological Intelligence
A common solution is
emerging in two different
fields: developmental
biology and neuroscience
27. People Love
NEWS 8. This Protein Could 12. COVID Is Driving FEATURES the Brain for the
4. Cannabis Use in Boost Brain Function a Children’s Mental 15. People Have Been Having Less Sex— Wrong Reasons
Pregnancy Is Linked without Exercise Health Emergency whether They’re Teenagers or 40-Somethings Our fascination with
to Child Anxiety, An exercise pill Deaths of parents Among the young, social media, gaming brain-based explanations
Hyperactivity might one day and other terrible and “rough sex” may contribute to this trend of psychology arises
Changes in the activity produce health experiences have hurt 18. How Brains Seamlessly Switch from intuitive ideas
of immune system gains without the hundreds of thousands, between Languages about the separation
genes in the placenta exertional pain so new initiatives Bilingual people engage the same brain region of mind and body — ideas
could explain 10. A Portable MRI are trying to help that monolingual individuals use to put together unsupported by science
the association, Makes Imaging families in pain words — even when combining different languages
researchers speculate More Democratic ILLUSIONS
5. Cells Deep in Your An open-source 30. Here Be Dragons
Brain Place Time approach downsizes A gaming cartographer
Stamps on Memories today’s clunking discovers an uncharted
Researchers are behemoths with perceptual realm
unlocking not just the permanent magnets
“what” and “where” and deep-learning
of a recollection algorithms
but also the “when”

3
NEWS
Cannabis Use in
Pregnancy Is Linked
to Child Anxiety,
Hyperactivity
Changes in the activity
of immune system genes
in the placenta could explain the
association, researchers speculate

As with most decision points around

pregnancy, cannabis use is a fraught
subject. Researchers can’t assess it
in randomized trials because dosing
pregnant people with the psycho­
active substance is unethical. The
next best thing is studies with
enough participants who use canna­
bis on their own, allowing for com­
parisons with those who do not.
The findings of one such study,

Aiman Dairabaeva/iStock/Getty Images

published on November 15, 2021,
in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences USA, highlight
symptoms of increased anxiety,
hyperactivity and aggression in
children whose parents used
cannabis during pregnancy. And
its analysis of placental tissue
points to changes in the activity
of immunity-related genes.
Today pregnant people “are being
bombarded with a lot of ads to treat
nausea and anxiety during pregnancy”
with cannabis, says the paper’s senior
author Yasmin Hurd, director of the
Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai.
“Our studies are about empowering
them with knowledge and education
so that they can make decisions.”
The results are “very striking, very
much a first,” says Daniele Piomelli,
a professor and director of the

4
 NEWS
Center for the Study of Cannabis at
the University of California, Irvine,
who was not involved in the work.
Pregnancy studies in rodents and
even in sheep, which have a placenta
more like ours, have required cau­
tious interpretations of findings that
show effects on offspring behavior
and function, he says. The new study
is one of the first to tackle the
question in people “in a systematic
way,” Piomelli adds.
Hurd and her colleagues worked
with 322 parent-child pairs, begin­
ning with profiles of genetic activity
in placental samples taken at birth.
When the children reached about
three years of age, samples of their
hair were tested for levels of stress
hormones. From ages three to six,
they also underwent recordings of
their heart-rate variability, another
indicator of stress response, and
evaluations for anxiety, aggression
and hyperactivity. The researchers
used statistical methods to exclude
effects from cigarette smoking,
parental anxiety and other factors
that could confuse associations with
cannabis use.
In the placental tissues, gene
activity was altered with cannabis
exposure during pregnancy: genes
“We always have University of New York, who was not
to interpret involved in the study. Anxiety has Cells Deep in Your
some genetic underpinning, which
human studies parents can pass to children. For Brain Place Time
with a grain of salt.” this reason, he says, “I’m not sure Stamps on Memories
that cannabis is really the issue” Researchers are unlocking not
—Daniele Piomelli
instead of genetics. Earleywine just the “what” and “where”
is also an advisory board member of a recollection but also the “when”
of the National Organization for the
related to the inflammatory response Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML),
showed decreased function. Anxiety which advocates for the legalization How does our brain know that “this”
and hyperactivity levels were higher of cannabis. follows “that”? Two people meet, fall
in children from cannabis-exposed Hurd agrees that human studies in love and live happily ever after—
pregnancies and were associated will always involve elements that can or sometimes not. The sequencing
with the placental gene patterns. muddy the findings. “Yes, genetics of events that takes place in our
The researchers speculate that a plays a role, maternal anxiety plays head—with one thing coming after
decline in the activity of immune-­ a role, their postnatal environment another—may have something to do
related genes in the placenta might plays a role,” she says. But even with with so-called time cells recently
explain the behavioral findings. all of that, the associations her group discovered in the human hippocam­
“We always have to interpret found with cannabis are results that pus. The research provides evidence
human studies with a grain of salt,” “I don’t think we can ignore.” for how our brain knows the start
Piomelli says, because factors other For parents who used cannabis and end of memories despite time
than cannabis could still be the true during pregnancy and find these gaps in the middle. As these studies
cause of the behavioral outcomes, results potentially unsettling, “the continue, the work could lead to
including experiences after birth. human organism is very resilient,” strategies for memory restoration
Although the researchers in this Piomelli says. “Appropriate care and or enhancement.
study “did a really good job” of love and attention to your kid can The research has focused on
controlling for these factors, he says, certainly reduce any potential harm.” episodic memory, the ability to
“there is only so much one can do.” Hurd says that one strategy to remember the “what, where and
Anxiety is an example of a poten­ reduce harm is to be alert to signs when” of a past experience, such as
tial confounding factor, says Mitch of anxiety or hyperactivity in children the recollection of what you did when
Earleywine, a professor of psychology and get them help right away. you woke up today. It is part of an
at the University at Albany, State —Emily Willingham ongoing effort to identify how the
5
 NEWS

organ creates such memories. are inserted through small holes of

A team led by Leila Reddy, a
neuroscience researcher at the
French National Center for Scientific
Research, sought to understand how
human neurons in the hippocampus
represent temporal information
during a sequence of learning steps
to demystify the functioning of time
cells in the brain. In a study published
last summer in the Journal of Neuro-
science, Reddy and her colleagues
found that to organize distinct
moments of experience, human time
cells fire at successive moments
during each task.
The study provided further confir­
mation that time cells reside in the
hippocampus, a key memory pro­
cessing center. They switch on as
events unfold, providing a record of
the flow of time in an experience.
“These neurons could play an
Hippocampi, one in each
brain hemisphere
of these hippocampal time cells’ role late last year by researchers at the
in encoding experiences into memo­ University of Texas Southwestern
ry. “When we recall a memory, we
around two millimeters in the skull.
These holes are sealed until the
patients recover from the surgery
and are monitored for up to two
weeks with the electrodes in place in
an epilepsy monitoring unit, or EMU,”
Self says. “We record the hippocam­
pal neuronal activity while the
patients are performing tasks in the
EMU for a period of about one week
after the surgery.”
In the first experiment, the study
participants were presented with a
sequence of five to seven pictures
of different people or scenes in
a predetermined order that was
repeated multiple times. A given
image, say, of a flower, was shown
for 1.5 seconds, followed by a half-
second pause and then another
image—a dog, for instance. In a
Medical Center and their colleagues. random 20 percent of the image

Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

important role in how memories are
represented in the brain,” Reddy says.
“Understanding the mechanisms for
encoding time and memory will be an
important area of research.”
Matthew Self, a co-author of the
study and a senior researcher in the
department of vision and cognition at
the Netherlands Institute for Neuro­
science, emphasizes the importance
are able to remember not only what To better understand these cells, intervals throughout the sessions,
happened to us but also where we Reddy and her team examined the the parade of pictures stopped, and
were and when it happened to us,” he hippocampal activity of patients with participants had to decide which of
says. “We think that time cells may be epilepsy who had electrodes im­ two images was the next correct one
the underlying basis for encoding planted in their brain to evaluate a in the sequence before continuing.
when something happened.” possible treatment for their condi­ The researchers discovered that over
While researchers have known tion. The subjects agreed to partici­ the course of 60 repetitions of the
about the existence of time cells in pate in two different experiments entire sequence, all of the time-
rodent brains for decades, they were after their surgery. sensitive neurons fired at specific
first identified in the human brain “During the surgery, the electrodes moments in intervals between quizzes,

6
 NEWS
no matter which image was shown.
A second experiment followed the
same design, except that after the
sequence was repeated for a fixed
number of times, a black screen
was shown for 10 seconds—a gap
interval that was intended to act as
a distraction. For half of the partici­
pants, these intervals occurred after
every five repeats of the sequence
(resulting in six gaps in the experi­
ment). For the remaining participants,
they occurred after every two repeats
of the sequence (resulting in 15
gaps). The sequence was repeated
only 30 times.
The participants in the second
experiment were quizzed about the
order of the images in the sequence
while the electrical activity from
individual cells in their brain was
recorded. Some neurons fired at one
moment, corresponding to a particular
image. Others did so at another mo­­-
ment for a different image. Time cells
corresponding to a specific image still
switched on during the 10-second
gaps in which no image was shown.
These gaps appeared to help subjects
remember more pictures and their
correct order. During the gap periods,
about 27 percent of the time cells
were activated.
“We hope a clear “We think that the population of time
understanding of the cells in the hippocampus is repre­
cellular contributions senting several different and overlap­
ping timescales,” Self says. “The
to memory functions activity of these cells is present
will bring us closer to throughout the trial, providing a time
understanding why stamp for an event.” Yet the fact
memory functions are that these cells also represent the
lost in some diseases content of our memory (the “what” as
and how these diseases well as the “when”) makes things
more complex, he explains. “We don’t
can be treated." fully understand how the memory is
—Jørgen Sugar encoded,” Self says, “but the activity
pattern across the hippocampus
appears to simultaneously provide us
To address the question of wheth­ with both the time stamp and the
er time information was present in contents of the experience.”
the activity of hippocampal neurons, Self adds that this information
the researchers stimulated a subset may be combined with signals that
of time cell neurons that were indicate the context of the experi­
activated in response to an image. ence, but further research is needed
The firing activity of each neuron to understand this mechanism. “It’s
was modeled as a function of time, no use encoding that you saw your
image identity, and whether the friend at the beginning of an event
temporal period corresponded to an without also encoding the context—
image or the interstimulus interval that the event entailed ‘walking
(ISI) periods—the 0.5-second gaps around the supermarket,’ ” he says.
between the pictures. “Our research aims to understand
The researchers could decode how time information is com­­bined
different moments in time based on with contextual information to provide
the activity of the entire group of temporal structure to our memories.”
neurons—evidence that the human The results seem to be similar to
brain contains time-tracking neurons. previous studies in rats demonstrat­
ing that time cells are the same as
“concept cells” that respond to
different representations of the same
stimulus—that these cells encode
both a concept and a time. “Time
cells in [the] rat hippocampus are
also place cells that respond when
the rat is in a particular location,” Self
says. “It appears that hippocampal
cells are multidimensional and can
encode different aspects of our
experiences in their firing patterns.”
The paper answers a key question
about human time cells, remarks
Stefan Leutgeb, chair of the neuro­
biology section at the University of
California, San Diego. “The current
study makes a couple of important
contributions. First, it provides further
confirmation that time cells not only
are common in the rodent hippocam­
pus but also can be observed in high
proportions in the human hippocam­
pus,” says Leutgeb, who was not
involved with the work. “In fact, the
proportion of time cells that were
detected in humans in the present
study is higher, compared with the
previous study.”
The findings might explain why
some people with damage to their
hippocampi—one of which resides in
each brain hemisphere—can remem­
7
 NEWS
ber events but have trouble placing
them in the right order—a problem for
patients with Alzheimer’s disease and
other neurodegenerative conditions.
“We hope a clear understanding of
the cellular contributions to memory
functions will bring us closer to under­
standing why memory functions are
lost in some diseases and how these
diseases can be treated,” says Jørgen
Sugar, an associate professor of
physiology at University of Oslo, who
was not involved in the new study.
Researchers in this field are
looking forward to taking the work
further. “The next step is to develop
noninvasive or invasive methods of
modulating the activity of time cells
and time cell circuits,” says Bradley
Lega, an associate professor of
neurological surgery at U.T. South­
western Medical Center, who was
senior author of the study that first
documented the presence of time
cells in the human brain last year.
“This may provide a neuromodulation
strategy for memory restoration or
enhancement. The activity of time
cells can also be monitored to
determine what is occurring as
electrical impulses are applied during
such a procedure.”
Some scientists think this work
could assist in one day developing
“memory prosthetics”—a technique
that would allow a computer to insert
or delete memories with electrodes
placed in the brain. Such a step
would raise ethical issues about the
manipulation of memories, but it is
probably not close to being realized.
That potential technology could
also be used for treating post-traumat­
ic stress disorder or Alzheimer’s. “It
could be tempting to develop such
devices so that memories can be
deleted or inserted, but I don’t see
how these devices could be regulat­
ed to prevent misuse [insertion of
false memories or deletion of import­
ant memories],” Sugar says. “I think
a more reasonable strategy is to
focus our efforts on preventive
treatments of memory disorders.”
“I hope work in humans can reveal
how time cells are actually contribut­
ing to encoding and recall of a
unique one-shot memory,” he adds.
“Then the human race would be
optimistic of the time when this
emerging research will be put into
use in helping us understand how
our brain knows the start and end
of memories despite time gaps
between events.”
—Abdulrahman Olagunju
This Protein Could
Boost Brain Function
without Exercise
An exercise pill might one day
produce health gains without
the exertional pain
The drumbeat of exercise’s brain
benefits may sound familiar. Most
of us know that getting our move
on can mean a boost to mental and
neurological health. But what if,
through understanding these bio­
chemical processes, we could get all
of that brain gain without going
through the exercise pain? Mouse
experiments have already demon­
strated the feasibility of such a
shortcut. And there is a hint that the
results in rodents could work in
humans as well.
When plasma from well-exercised
mice is injected into their idling
counterparts, the sedentary rodents
have improved memory and reduced
brain inflammation. The blood of
Olympic athletes is not about to be
transfused into the arms of sofa
spuds—at least not yet. But people
with mild cognitive impairment who
exercise for six months show
increases in a key protein identified
in the "runner-mouse plasma." The
same protein may be able to whisper
its chemical message across the
notoriously choosy blood-brain
barrier and trigger anti-inflammatory
processes in the brain.
These findings, published on
December 8, 2021 in Nature, offer
new details of how exercise benefits
the brain and how molecules boost­
ed by physical activity communicate
across the organ’s strict gatekeeper.
The results also hint at a surprising
role for the liver and anticlotting
systems in these effects and possibly
point the way to a futuristic scenario
of exercise in a pill—or perhaps
a plasma injection.
“Puzzle pieces are coming togeth­
er,” says Saul Villeda, an associate
professor in the department of
anatomy at the University of Califor­
nia, San Francisco, about these hints
of multisystem involvement in
exercise’s effects on the brain.
Villeda, who was not involved in
the new study, and his colleagues
previously identified a protein
in exercised-mouse plasma that
refreshed neurons in the aging
mouse brain. “We’re starting to
8
 NEWS

identify factors in the blood that can

target different facets of decline or
pathology, and this one really high­
lights blood factors affecting inflam­
mation in the brain,” he says. “The
word that keeps popping into my
head is ‘convergence.’ ”
On the path to convergence,
behavioral scientist Zurine de Miguel,
now an assistant professor at Califor­
nia State University, Monterey Bay,
and her colleagues at Stanford
University and the Veterans Affairs
Palo Alto Health Care System first
had to let mice exercise. The animals
ran their heart out for 28 days, and
then their plasma was transferred to
mice that had not touched a running
wheel during that time. The recipient
animals showed improvements in
learning and memory after they had
received the runner plasma. Their
brain, in turn, revved up genes that
produced proteins that facilitated proteins, including one called the blood-brain barrier. When they the protein in 20 veterans with mild
memory and learning and showed clusterin, which helps to clear cells mimicked the effects of physical cognitive impairment before and after
a dampened inflammatory response. of debris. Homing in on this protein, activity by injecting the protein into six months of structure physical activity
When the researchers deliberately the investigators tested the effects the circulation of mice genetically and found that the levels increased.
induced brain inflammation in the of stripping it from the runner plasma. modified to have neurodegenerative De Miguel notes that in her and

Maridav/Alamy Stock Photo

animals, the runner-mouse plasma
dialed back that response, too.
The team next looked at what the
runner plasma contained. They found
increased levels of anticlotting
Brains of sedentary mice receiving
clusterin-free plasma showed much
less anti-inflammatory activity.
The team also found that clusterin
readily attached to the cells that form
disease, the animals’ brain inflamma­
tion also declined.
Finally, the researchers wanted
to see if exercise causes clusterin
elevations in people. They measured
her colleagues’ study, results differed
somewhat between male and female
mice. Despite similar anticlotting
protein profiles between the sexes,
the females showed more variability.

9
 NEWS
The hormones they make can affect
anticlotting factors, de Miguel says,
and the possibility that some female
mice were in a sexually receptive
stage during the study might explain
this greater variation.
The experiment illustrates a
growing recognition of the brain’s
dependence on assistance from
outside the neural no-fly zone. The
liver and heart are the most likely
sources of clusterin, the authors say.
The results implicate both organs
as sources of beneficial molecules
resulting from physical exercise,
de Miguel says. “They all seem to be
cross talking to the brain,” she adds.
Villeda says that his group’s
work with runner plasma in aging
mice also implicates the liver. The
organ produces an enzyme linked
to cognitive improvements in the
animals, and the same enzyme
was also increased in the blood
of older active people. The liver
connection “was surprising to us
because it wasn’t usually what you
focus on when you think about
exercise,” he says. With the liver con­
nection, “these mechanisms are
starting to converge and come into
a similar space.”
Although physical activity is
closely linked to good health, it may
be pos­­-sible to overdo exercise.
There are hints that some people
who en­­gage often in highly strenu­
ous physical activity may have
increased risk for amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis. “There is some
information out there that says that
too much exercise can impair some
of your immune response and make
you susceptible to opportunistic
infections,” de Miguel says.
How will runner plasma be used
as a therapy if these effects in mice
bear out in people? “I have more
hope now than when I started my
lab because it was difficult to think
about identifying all of these factors,”
Villeda says. “But now we have
candidates, and when you have
those, you can start thinking about
small-molecule development.”
De Miguel says that a possible
first step might be testing which
exercise protocols trigger the
biggest increases in proteins that
carry a brain benefit. As with mice,
someone in need of the brain-boost­
ing power of physical exercise could
simply receive an injection of runner
plasma, getting a runner’s gain
without the ensuing pain.
 —Emily Willingham
A Portable MRI
Makes Imaging
More Democratic
An open-source approach downsizes
today’s clunking behemoths
with permanent magnets and
deep-learning algorithms
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
scanners are the most valuable
diagnostic tool we have for assessing
brain injuries and disorders. Yet
around two thirds of people world­
wide do not have access to MRI
technology, and more than 90 per­
cent of the devices are located in
high-income countries. Expense is
the big reason: a typical MRI machine
costs around $1 million to $3 million.
They need a purpose-built room to
shield the scanner from outside
signals and to contain the powerful
magnetic fields generated by their
superconducting magnets, which
require liquid-helium cooling systems
that are pricey to run.
Low-cost, portable alternatives
may soon start seeing widespread
use. In a December 14, 2021, study
in Nature Communications, research­
ers at the University of Hong Kong,
led by biomedical engineer Ed Wu,
describe an MRI scanner that needs
no shielding and draws power from
a standard wall socket. The ap­
proach, known as ultralow field
(ULF) MRI, lacks the clarity and
resolution required for precision
diagnostics, but it is much less
expensive, with material costs under
$20,000, the study authors estimate.
What’s more, the machine’s design
and algorithms are open source,
inviting researchers everywhere to
help develop the technology.
MRI exploits the fact that we are
mostly made of water. The protons
in hydrogen atoms have magnetical­
ly charged “spins,” which are aligned
by the magnetic field and probed by
radio-frequency pulses. Different
tissues have distinct water concen­
trations and magnetic environments,
and these differences appear as
light and dark contrasts in recon­
structed images.
Rather than using superconducting
electromagnets, the ULF design
employs permanent magnets, thereby
eliminating the need for cooling. The
permanent magnets generate only
0.055 tesla, so no magnetic shielding
is needed (standard MRI scanners
10
 NEWS
use 1.5- or 3-tesla fields). The main
trade-off is that the signals are
weaker, so signal-to-noise ratio is
worse, and as a consequence, image
resolution is lower.
To maintain portability, the ULF
design eschews physical RF shield­
ing. Instead the researchers used a
“deep learning” algorithm trained to
recognize and predict interference
signals, which are then subtracted
from the measured signals. “That’s
one very useful innovation here,”
says biomedical engineer Sairam
Geethanath of Columbia University,
Fine details in standard MRI images such as
these currently elude ultralow field scanners,
which instead may be useful in urgent cases
where patients cannot be moved.
who was not involved in the study.
“It’s similar to noise-cancellation
headphones, where you’re trying to
learn the noise pattern in real-time
and suppress it.”
The team demonstrated the
device by scanning 25 patients and
comparing the images with those
from a standard MRI machine. The
researchers could identify most
of the same pathologies, including
stroke and tumors. “The images
appear of sufficient quality to be
clinically useful in a number of
scenarios,” says neuroscientist Tom
Johnstone of Swinburne University
of Technology in Melbourne, Austra­
lia, who was not involved in the
study. “Rapid assessment of stroke,
which has a large impact on success
of interventions, could be facilitated
by ULF MRI being located in more
towns or even mobile units.”
The new design joins a growing
yumiyum/Getty Images
list of other ULF MRI scanners being
developed. A company called
Hyperfine, based in Guilford, Conn.,
received fda approval last year for
11
 NEWS
its portable scanner, but details of
the design are proprietary. Wu and
his colleagues have made their data,
designs and code available online,
which could speed ULF improve­
ments and control costs. (Hyper­
fine’s machine is more than twice
the estimated price of the Hong
Kong team’s.)
Despite their promise, ULF devices
are not intended to replace high-field
scanners. They hold promise in
“triage” settings, where patients
cannot be moved or time is critical.
“It has a role to play as an escalating
device,” Geethanath says. The range
of applications will likely grow as
performance improves, and Wu has
some ideas about this. “Right now
MRI systems are built as if we don’t
know anything about what we’re
scanning, but often the information
we need is very subtle,” Wu says—
namely, to identify what’s different.
“That’s going to be a huge revolution,
driven by cheap computing.”
He envisions broader use of MRI
technology, more closely matched to
clinical needs at point of care. “The
nuclear magnetic resonance phe­
nomenon is a gift from nature,” he
says. “We must use it more.”
—Simon Makin
COVID Is Driving
a Children’s Mental
Health Emergency
Deaths of parents and other terrible
experiences have hurt hundreds
of thousands, so new initiatives are
trying to help families in pain
When COVID shut down life as usual
in the spring of 2020, most physi­
cians in the U.S. focused on the
immediate physical dangers from the
novel coronavirus. But soon pediatri­
cian Nadine Burke Harris began
thinking of COVID’s longer-term
emotional damage and those who
would be especially vulnerable:
children. “The pandemic is a massive
stressor,” explains Burke Harris, who
is California’s surgeon general. “Then
you have kids at home from school,
economic hardship, and folks not
being able to socialize.” These
stresses could be particularly toxic
for children, she and another state
health official wrote to health provid­
ers in April 2020. In December 2021
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
issued a similar warning about
children for the entire country.
The toxicity has become all too
real after almost two years, driven by
not just disarray but death as well. As
of last June, more than 140,000
children lost a close caregiver—such
as a parent—to COVID, according
to research published in the journal
Pediatrics. Since 2019 there has
been a rise in suicide attempts
among people younger than age 18,
researchers at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
found when they examined mental
health–related emergency room
visits during the past three years.
And a study of pediatric insurance
claims filed between January and
November 2020, conducted by the
nonprofit FAIR Health, found a sharp
increase in mental health–related
problems, especially generalized
anxiety disorder, major depressive
disorder and intentional self-harm.
These and other distressing trends
recently led the American Academy
of Pediatrics and two other health
organizations to declare that chil­
dren’s mental health is currently
a national emergency.
Burke Harris says those patterns
arise from what pediatric health
specialists term adverse childhood
experiences (ACEs). These events
include 10 types of specific traumas
that range from direct abuse and
neglect to overall household dysfunc­
tion. The adverse experiences
activate the brain’s fight-or-flight
system—a normal response to an
immediate physical danger such as
a bear rushing at you. But “what
happens when the bear comes every
night?” Burke Harris asks. Because
adverse events put children in
prolonged and repeated danger, it
extends their stress response and
creates damage.
When COVID disrupted the routine
and resources that school and
after-school care ordinarily provide,
many children were left to face
ongoing hazards at home, including
parental issues such as intimate
partner violence and substance
misuse. Both of these problems
significantly rose during the pandem­
ic, according to researchers.
As the pandemic wore on, Califor­
nia, guided by Burke Harris’s warn­
ings, took some action to protect its
children. Last October the state
legislature passed the ACEs Equity
Act, a first-in-the-nation law requiring
insurance that covers preventive care
and pediatric services to also cover
in-depth screenings for adverse
12
 NEWS

events. And, since January 2020,

California’s ACES Aware initiative
has been educating clinicians about
nonmedical interventions available to
patients facing adverse events, and
the state’s Medicaid program has
paid eligible providers $29 per
screening. Such regular screenings—
which involve asking intimate ques­
tions in a nonthreatening and
supportive manner—are linked to
a variety of positive health outcomes.
A recent literature review found
patients associate these screenings
with greater trust in their doctors.
And clinicians say the screenings
help them identify social factors that
influence health, which allows them
to offer more effective care.
Lisa Gantz, a pediatrician at the
Los Angeles County Department of
Health Services, is one of more than
20,000 health providers in California
who have received free two-hour come up with a reason why this child learned that the husband was what’s going on at home.” With that
online training offered in the state. wasn’t growing,” Gantz says. But deported, finances were tighter, and information, Gantz was able to
By teaching her how to screen for when she talked to the mother gently the mom needed to water down her connect the mother and her baby
and respond to adverse events, about possible changes at home, son’s formula to make ends meet,” with a social worker and to public
Gantz says the training has changed Gantz learned the child’s parents had Gantz says. “She was too embar­ services that could help them pay for

MoMo Productions/Getty Images

the way she approaches clinical care.
She remembers one recent appoint­
ment with an underweight four-
month-old and his mother. “We had
gone through all of the feeding
[methods], and I really wasn’t able to
recently separated. And the family
faced newfound financial hard­
ship—a circumstance true of nearly
half of U.S. households by August
2020, according to a national survey.
“As soon as the mom felt safe, we
rassed to tell me that before, plus
a mom’s not going to walk in for
a checkup and say, ‘By the way,
dad’s not here anymore.’ But the
screenings create a space to have
these larger conversations about
more formula.
Gantz describes the work of
treating adverse experiences as
creating a “medical neighborhood”—
a cohesive unit that responds to the
multifaceted nature of children’s

13
 NEWS
mental health with equally
multifaceted resources.
Efforts in other states are
trying to reduce children’s
adversity by helping parents
tackle their pandemic-related
problems. In North Carolina, for
example, the Raleigh-based
nonprofit SAFEchild offers a
Circle of Security Parenting
(COSP) program. Small groups
of parents in the program meet
weekly to reflect on their
behavior and improve their
relationships with their children.
Before teaching parents how to
listen, the program first helps
them feel heard.
That step is crucial if interven­
tions are going to go beyond
“telling people what to do” and
actually create lasting change,
says Ginger Espino, a COSP
facilitator at SAFEchild. She
notes that many parents in the
groups are victims of adverse
events in their own childhood.
“It’s about breaking that cycle of
abuse and empowering parents
to have confidence that they can
meet any of their child’s needs,
even if those needs were not
met during their own child­
hoods,” Espino explains. By
inviting participants to affirm
their own strengths, talk about
concerns, and construct what
security looks and feels like
within the safe support group,
the program aims to help
parents create that same loving,
nurturing environment for
children at home. “They realize,
‘Oh, my child’s not trying to drive
me crazy. My child has a need,
and I need to figure out how to
meet that need,” she says.
A few other states have
recently introduced efforts to
address the surge of pandem­
ic-provoked adverse events. In
May 2021 Maryland issued an
executive order to create an ACE
awareness day and announced a
$25-million fund to expand the
state’s youth development
programs to every county. And
Wyoming is using California’s
approach to reimburse health
providers for their ACE screen­
ings of eligible Medicaid patients,
says Elaine Chhean, who assists
the executive director of the
National Academy for State
Health Policy, which co-published
a paper on various ways that
states try to prevent or mitigate
adverse experiences.
Nationally, there have been
a few moves to help deal with
adverse events. Last May bipar­­-
tisan congressional representa­
tives from Georgia and Utah
introduced a bill to expand ACE
research and data collection. And
that month the nonprofit ACE
Resource Network launched an
awareness campaign called
Number Story. The program, so
named because a clinical ques­
tionnaire about adverse events
gives a person a score based on
the number of such experiences,
uses conversations with celebri­
ties such as John Legend and
Camila Cabello to educate the
public about adverse events and
how to recognize when they are
going through one or more.
Sarah Marikos, executive
director of the ACE Resource
Network, says such recognition
can help change behavior and
motivate people to seek help.
“In my grandparents’ day, it was
the norm to smoke, but now it’s
not. And that’s the same thing
we want to do around ACEs,”
she says.  —Julia Hotz
➦ 14
 People Have Been Having Less Sex —

Hase-Hoch-2/iStock/Getty Images
whether They’re Teenagers or 40-Somethings
Among the young, social media, gaming and “rough sex” may contribute to this trend
By Emily Willingham

15
 Emily Willingham is a science writer and author of Phallacy:
Life Lessons from the Animal Penis (Avery, Penguin Publishing
Group, 2020) and The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto,
to Companionship: A User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking
Smarter (Basic Books, 2021).

H
uman sexual activity affects cognitive func-
tion, health, happiness and overall quality
of life—and, yes, there is also the matter of
reproduction. The huge range of benefits
is one reason researchers have become
alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from
Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what
is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence,
showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered
sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex
and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adoles-
cents report less solo masturbation as well.
The decreases “aren’t trivial,” as the authors wrote in the
study, published on November 19, 2021, in Archives of Sexual
Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018 the proportion of adoles-
cents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with part-
ners, rose from 28.8 to 44.2 percent among young men and
in 2009 from 49.5 to 74 percent among young women. The
researchers obtained the self-reported information from the
National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and used
responses from 4,155 people in 2009 and 4,547 people in 2018.
These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age
from 14 to 49 years.
The study itself did not probe the reasons for this trend.
But Scientific American spoke with its first author Debby
Herbenick, a professor at the Indiana University School of
Public Health–Bloomington, and Tsung-chieh (Jane) Fu, a
co-author of the paper and a research associate at the school,
about underlying factors that might explain these changes.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
Given that research in other parts of the
world has already indicated decreases in
partnered sex, what do your recent findings
add to the picture?
HERBENICK: Our study tracks the declines, too,
and extends the research because Jane [Fu] and our
larger team tracked sex behaviors in really detailed
ways. We looked at penile-vaginal sex, partnered
masturbation, and giving and receiving oral sex. We
saw declines across all categories. And we included
adolescents, too. The decline in adolescent mastur-
bation is interesting, and we were the first to include
it. That one deserves a lot more attention.
What might explain declines among
young people?
FU: We need more studies to tell us why. But for
young people, computer games, increasing social
media use, video games—something is replacing
that time. During that period from 2009 to 2018,
different types of social media emerged. This is
always evolving, especially for younger people.
HERBENICK: We don’t expect there to be one
explanation or one driver in these decreases. We
fully expect that there are multiple things going on
for different age groups, different partnership sta-
tus, different genders. You don’t need those indi-
vidual pieces to explain a big part of a notable
decrease, but . . . each one [might] explain a per-
centage point or two.
Is there any contribution from increases
in people expressing an asexual identity?
HERBENICK: We don’t know why more people are
identifying as asexual, but I do think more people
are aware of it as a valid identity. Even compared
with when I started teaching human sexuality in
2003, I routinely had one student in my class who
might identify as asexual. Now I have three or four.
That’s striking to me. I love that young people are
aware of so many different ways to put into words
how they feel about themselves. For many of them,
they feel that it’s okay to opt out of sex.
In your paper, you bring up increases in
“rough sex” as potentially contributing to
declines. Can you explain what you mean
by rough sex, and how it could be playing
a role in these changes?
HERBENICK: Especially for those 18 to 29 years
old, there have been increases in what many peo-
ple call rough sex behaviors. Limited research sug-
gests that an earlier idea of this was what I would
consider fairly vanilla rough sex: pulling hair, a lit-
tle light spanking. What we see now in studies of
thousands of randomly sampled college students is
choking or strangling during sex. The behavior
seems to be a majority behavior for college-age stu-
dents. For many people, it’s consensual and want-
ed and asked for, but it’s also scary to many people,
even if they learn to enjoy it or want it. It’s a major

16
line of research for our team: to understand how they
feel, what the health risks are and how that fits into the
larger sexual landscapes.
FU: We have seen what seem to be real shifts in those
behaviors. We don’t know to what extent that may be
driving some people to opt out, but we do know that
some people are feeling frightened and don’t know what
to make of what’s being presented to them, especially
young adults. They could consent to sex, but something
like choking might happen without them being asked
before. We see a lot of gender effects in a lot of behaviors
for different nonheterosexual identities. For example,
bisexual women experience a lot more of these aggres-
sive behaviors.
HERBENICK: We have really been trying to untangle
that, too, because it’s not clear from our research how
much of those elevated rates are wanted and pleasurable
or unwanted, because bisexual women also report high-
er rates of sexual victimization.
In the report, you note that there are probably
multiple reasons that people’s sexual expression
has changed.
HERBENICK: Various studies around the world have
proposed different explanations, such as economic sta-
tus. Lower income is associated with greater declines.
One study looked at use of computer games among young
people [as a possible explanation]. Some folks have
tracked declines in alcohol use, and we know that [alco-
hol use] can be associated with disinhibition. We have
seen, somewhat, [an] increase in sex toy use—from what
we looked at, not a massive increase. If there is a change,
it’s probably just going to contribute to one of the blips.
I don’t expect it to be the explanation.
Do you have suggestions for people who might be
reading this interview and wondering, “Should I
do something with this information right now?”—
maybe from the perspective of themselves,
their partner or partners, or discussions with
their children?
FU: For parents, it would be great to have open conversa-
tions with their children, especially teens, about sex. Sex
in recent years looks very different, whether it’s the emer-
gence of technologies or of new sexual behaviors. We
hope that parents can play an active role in guiding their
children, not just to warn them of the risk of various sex-
ual behaviors but also to educate them on how to have
meaningful relationships and eventually satisfying and
pleasurable sex.
HERBENICK: For many of us, I think it is worth asking a
few things: How do I feel about my sexual life? How does
my partner feel? Ask them! Some people may look around
and feel like the sexual interactions they do have are plea-
surable, connecting, joyful and make up a satisfying sex
life for them. Others might look around and say, “You
know, 10 to 15 years ago, when we couldn’t stream as
many fun shows on TV, we watched a lot less television,
and we had sex more often. I wonder how we might have
sex more often?”
More generally, could you elaborate a bit about
how sexual activity with or without partners
intersects with other aspects of health and what
“sexual health” looks like?
HERBENICK: Sexuality is such an important part of life,
and understanding changes that occur matters to how we
understand what is shifting about the human experience.
We know that sexual activity can help people to relax, fall
asleep, reduce stress, feel intimate and connected, and
thereby improve their relationships—and may even help
to boost their immune system. And sex can also just be
fun, pleasurable and joyful—a way to express oneself in
vulnerable ways. Sexual health is multidimensional and
not just about the presence or absence of infections or
disease but about the potential for pleasure, access to
accurate information about sexuality, bodily autonomy,
and ability to have sexual experiences that are free from
violence or coercion.
What sorts of effects on these behaviors
do you already see or anticipate from
the pandemic, which of course was not tracked
in your study?
FU: We know that things are changing a lot when people
are at home. Being able to work from home has allowed
some long-distance partners to spend more time togeth-
er or even live together. But for partners who do not live
together and do not have that option of working remote-
ly, difficulties in travel may lead to even less time togeth-
er. For those living with their partner, more time spent
together at home may not necessarily lead to more and
more satisfying or pleasurable sex. Being quarantined,
practicing social distancing, having financial difficulties,
or working from home could all lead to strains in the
relationship. Loss of or the instability of child care
because of the pandemic can restrict the sex lives of
those who are parents.
HERBENICK: Certainly people who do not live with
partners have, by and large, been more constrained in
partnered sex over the past two years, with some relax-
ation of that since the widespread availability of vaccines
and vaccine boosters. But ultimately we don’t live in a
vacuum, and our sex lives don’t occur in a vacuum, so
there are myriad factors. The past two years have also
brought lots of grief for people who have lost family
members to COVID. Many people are dealing with long
COVID and related health challenges, job loss and finan-
cial strain. And more people of all ages are dealing with
anxiety and depression since the pandemic. So these all
have influences on sexual interest and sex drive, too. M
➦ 17
How Brains Seamlessly Bilingual people engage the same
brain region that monolingual individuals
Switch between use to put together words —even when

Languages
combining different languages
By Daisy Yuhas

KTSDesign/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

18
 Daisy Yuhas edits the Scientific American column "Mind Matters."
She is a freelance science journalist and editor based in Austin,
Tex. Follow her on Twitter @DaisyYuhas

B
illions of people worldwide speak two or more languages. (Although the Rather than calling them deficits, some
estimates vary, many sources assert that more than half of the planet researchers have argued that there is a “bilingual
advantage.” Can you explain that idea?
is bilingual or multilingual.) One of the most common experiences for
The claim—and there’s debate around it that makes it
these individuals is a phenomenon that experts call “code switching,” kind of a hot topic—is that bilingual people exhibit some
or shifting from one language to another within a single conversation kind of cognitive advantage, compared with their mono-
or even a sentence. lingual peers. This comes out of work done by Ellen Bial-
Last November, Sarah Frances Phillips, a linguist and graduate student at New York ystok of York University [in Toronto], who saw that bilin-
University, and her adviser Liina Pylkkänen published findings from brain imaging that gual speakers were faster at doing cognitively demanding
tasks, such as a psychological test where you have to
underscore the ease with which these switches happen and reveal how the neurological
inhibit some information to be able to successfully com-
patterns that support this behavior are very similar in monolingual people. The new study plete an assignment. These kinds of tasks are not neces-
reveals how code switching—which some multilingual speakers worry is “cheating,” in sarily linguistic in function; they tap into other things
contrast to sticking to just one language—is normal and natural. Phillips spoke with Mind that we typically use on a day-to-day basis, such as atten-
Matters editor Daisy Yuhas about these findings and why some scientists believe bilingual tion and working memory.
speakers may have certain cognitive advantages.
Could code switching relate to possible memory
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.] neurobiological perspective, you realize, “Oh, this is and attention benefits?
open territory.” One recent idea about improved cognitive functioning,
Can you tell me a little bit about what drew Most of the world operates with two or more languag- which comes from work by researchers such as Judith
you to this topic? es. We should have models that tell us how brains oper- Kroll of the University of California, Irvine, is that social
I grew up in a bilingual household. My mother is from ate not only within a single language but also across lan- aspects of language switching—such as deciding when
South Korea; my dad is African-American. So I grew up guages. We need to have a better understanding of what and how you switch—could help explain potential bene-
code switching a lot between Korean and English, as typical bilingual behavior and brain processes look like fits. Let’s say you have a Spanish-English bilingual person
well as different varieties of English, such as Afri- rather than relying on monolingual models of how lan- talking to another Spanish-English bilingual person.
can-American English and the more mainstream, stan- guages are processed in the brain. Those single-language Well, that is actually the easiest mode of conversation for
dardized version. models, potentially, could cause people who are bilingual them both because they can use whatever words work in
When you spend a lot of time code switching, and to be misdiagnosed with processing deficits just because whatever ways they want to put those words together to
then you realize that this is something that is not well they’re doing something that doesn’t fit what monolin- convey thoughts and ideas that they have, right?
understood from a linguistic perspective, nor from a gual people typically do. What’s actually hard is when you’re in a situation

19
where you have to stick with just “One of the things use “melt” and “jump” or other
one language. Let’s say, as a Span- verbs, we don’t see this effect,
ish-English bilingual person,
that I want people because those words don’t com-
you’re in conversation with some- to know and bine into something meaningful.
one who speaks only English or understand is that
only Spanish. In one hypothesis, What did you find
the adaptive control hypothesis, code switching when you did this test
the bilingual individual has to is very natural for on bilingual people?
work really, really hard to make We replicated what’s found in
this conscious effort to suppress
bilingual people.” monolingual people: So when
a language to communicate effec- — Sarah Frances Phillips “melt” is in the context of “icicles,”
tively with one monolingual per- we see increased activity when
son versus another fellow bilingual person. compared with “jump”—and we see recruitment of the left
Current ideas about the bilingual brain suggest that anterior temporal lobe. We found this both in language
both languages are always accessible, even when the switching [between English and Korean] and orthography
bilingual person is speaking with a monolingual person. [with Roman and Korean characters]. We’re manipulating
So in specific social contexts, bilingual people have to the language, as well as the representation of these words.
further develop their working memory and attention
skills to prevent switching to the language that the In other words, the brain activity looks
monolingual speaker would not understand. a lot like what occurs in people who speak just
one language. What does that tell us about
What did you do in your new study? code switching?
I was really interested in looking at what happens in the The fact that the left anterior temporal lobe is able to
brain when bilingual people switch languages as they combine these concepts in meaningful ways without
compose words together. We gathered data from 20 slowing down, without being affected by where these
English-Korean bilingual and biliterate participants, concepts are coming from or how they’re being present-
meaning they’re able to read, write, speak and listen in ed to us, tells us that our brains are able to do this kind of
both Korean and English. They each did more than 700 process naturally, and so we shouldn’t shy away from it.
trials. And we used a technique called magnetoenceph- One of the things I want people to know and under-
alography, or MEG, to track brain activity. stand is that code switching is very natural for bi­­lingual
We presented participants a subject and intransitive people. Asking us to maintain a single language is hard-
verb [forms of speech that combine in the same way in er. I think that while most bilingual individuals have a
both languages] to observe brain activity when these negative attitude toward code switching—they think that
words combine. So in monolingual speakers, when we get it’s bad or that we should stick to one language—it’s not
something like “icicles” and “melt,” it creates a greater actually bad for our brain. I think that it’s important to
peak of activity in a part of the brain called the left anteri- recognize that just because something doesn’t look like
or temporal lobe because these words combine. But if we monolingual behavior doesn’t mean it’s deviant. M

➦ 20
 OPINION Robert Martone is a research scientist with expertise
in neurodegeneration. He spends his free time kayaking
and translating Renaissance Italian literature.

NEUROSCIENCE

How Our Brain

Preserves Our
Sense of Self
One brain region is crucial for our ability to form
and maintain a consistent identity both now and
when thinking about the future

We are all time travelers. Every day we experience

new things as we travel forward through time. In
the process, the countless connections among the
nerve cells in our brain recalibrate to accommodate
these experiences. It’s as if we reassemble our­
selves daily, maintaining a mental construct of our­
selves in physical time, and the glue that holds to­
gether our core identity is memory.

KTSDesign/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

Not only do we travel in physical time; we also
experience mental time travel. We visit the past
through our memories and then journey into the
future by imagining what tomorrow or next year
might bring. When we do so, we think of ourselves
as we are now, remember who we once were and
imagine how we will be.
A new study, published in the journal Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN),
explores how a specific brain region helps to
knit together memories of the present and future
self. Injury to that area leads to an impaired
sense of identity. The region—called the ventral
medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—may produce
a fundamental model of our self and place it in
mental time. In doing so, this study suggests,
it may be the source of our sense of self.
Psychologists have long noticed that our mind
handles information about one’s self differently
from other details. Memories that reference the self
are easier to recall than other forms of memory.
They benefit from what researchers have called
a self-reference effect (SRE), in which information

21
 OPINION
related to one’s self is privileged and more salient
in our thoughts. Self-related memories are distinct
from both episodic memory, the category of recol­
lections that pertains to specific events and experi­
ences, and semantic memory, which connects to
more general knowledge, such as the color of
grass and the characteristics of the seasons.
SREs, then, are a way to investigate how our
sense of self emerges from the workings of the
brain—something multiple research groups have
studied intensely. For example, previous research
employed functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), a method that measures blood flow as a
measure of brain activity, to identify regions that
were activated by self-reference. These studies
identified the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) as
a brain region related to self-thought. The mPFC
can be further divided into upper and lower regions
(called dorsal and ventral, respectively), which
make different contributions to self-related
thought. The dorsal section plays a role in distin­
guishing self from other and appears to be task-
related, whereas the ventral section, the vmPFC,
contributes more to emotional processing.
In the new SCAN study, the researchers used
the self-reference effect to assess memories of
present and future selves among people with brain
lesions to the vmPFC. The scientists worked with
seven people who had lesions to this area and
compared them with a control group made up of
eight people with injuries to other parts of the brain,
as well as 23 healthy individuals without brain inju­
ry. By comparing these groups, the scientists could
investigate whether brain lesions in general or
those to the vmPFC specifically might affect SREs.
All people in the study underwent a thorough neu­
ropsychological evaluation, which confirmed that
they were within normal ranges for a variety of cog­
nitive assessments, including measures of verbal
fluency and spatial short-term memory. The re­
searchers then asked the participants to list adjec­
tives to describe themselves as well as a well-
known celebrity, both in the present and 10 years
in the future. Later, the participants had to recall
these same traits.
The researchers discovered that people in their
control group could recall more adjectives linked to
themselves in the present and future than adjec­
tives linked to the celebrity. In other words, they
found that the self-reference effect extends to both
the future as well as the present self. Although
there was some variation in this group—people
with brain injuries were somewhat less able to re­
call details about their future self when compared
with nonbrain-injured participants—the self-refer­
ence effect still applied.
Results were distinctly different, however, for
the participants with injury to the vmPFC. People
with lesions in this area had little or no ability to
recall references to the self, regardless of the con­
text of time. Their identification of adjectives for
celebrities in the present or future was also signifi­
cantly impaired when compared with the rest of the
participants. In addition, people with vmPFC lesions
had less confidence about an individual’s ability to
possess traits than other people in the study. All of
this evidence points to a central role for the vmPFC
in the formation and maintenance of identity.
The new findings are intriguing for several rea­
sons. Brain lesions can help us understand the nor­
mal function of the brain region involved. Lesions of
the vmPFC are associated with altered personality,
blunted emotions, and a number of changes in
emotional and executive function. Injury to this area
is most often associated with confabulations, that
is, false memories that are told with great confi­
dence. While it may be tempting for someone to
perceive confabulation as deliberate or creative
falsehood, people who confabulate are unaware
their stories are false. Instead it is possible their
confusion could stem from misfunctioning memory
retrieval and monitoring mechanisms.
More broadly, the study helps to elucidate how
self-related memories necessary to maintain our
core sense of identity depend on the function of
the vmPFC. But what about our past selves? Curi­
ously, in previous studies that asked people to con­
sider their past selves, there was no more activa­
tion of the mPFC than when considering someone
else. Our past selves seem foreign to ourselves, as
if they were another individual. One idea that scien­
tists have put forward to understand this distinction
is that perhaps we are not very kind in our judg­
ments of our past selves, and we may use our past
primarily to construct a positive self-image in the
present. Put another way, because we may recog­
nize flaws in our past self’s behavior, we tend to
distance ourselves from the person we once were.
Putting the present and future into the spotlight,
then, is central to understanding the way our brain
and thoughts build our current identities. In many
ways, it makes sense that the mPFC is important in
22
 OPINION

this process of recalling present details and imag­

ining future ones that build on our recollections.
The prefrontal cortex, including the mPFC, forms a
network that is involved in future planning. That
network includes the hippocampus, a brain struc­
ture that is central to episodic memory formation
and that can track moments as sequential events
in time. In past work, researchers have found that
manipulating the activity of the hippocampus alters
creative and future imaginings, which suggests an
important role for brain structures supporting mem­
ory in imagining the future. In fact, while we often
think of memory as the brain’s accurate and dis­
passionate recording device, some scholars have
characterized it as a form of imagination.
The importance of future thought to the human
condition is embodied in the mythological figure
Prometheus (whose name means “Forethinker”),
patron of the arts and sciences. According to Greek
legend, he shaped humans out of clay and be­
stowed them with fire and the skills of craftsman­
ship—acts that illustrate the power of imagining a
novel future. Although there is debate as to wheth­
er thinking about the future is an exclusively human
feature—birds such as Western scrub jays, for ex­
ample, appear to anticipate and plan for future food
needs—it is clear that future thought has played a
significant role in human evolution. This ability may
have contributed to the development of language,
and it has a key role in human interactions, where
the vmPFC is central to evaluating and taking ad­
vantage of social context. Thanks to this new re­
search, we have a better idea than ever before
of where this core ability is constructed in the brain.

➦ 23
 OPINION Rafael Yuste is a professor of biological sciences at Columbia
University and director of its Neurotechnology Center.
Michael Levin is a biology professor and director of the Allen
Discovery Center at Tufts University.

EVOLUTION

New Clues
about the Origins
of Biological
Intelligence
A common solution is emerging in two different
fields: developmental biology and neuroscience

In the middle of his landmark book On the Origin

of Species, Charles Darwin had a crisis of faith. In
a bout of honesty, he wrote, “To suppose that the
eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjust­
ing the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction
of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have
been formed by natural selection, seems, I con­
fess, absurd in the highest degree.” While scien­
tists are still working out the details of how the
eye evolved, we are also still stuck on the ques­

tion of how intelligence emerges in biology. How
can a biological system ever generate coherent
and goal-oriented behavior from the bottom up
when there is no external designer?
In fact, intelligence—a purposeful response to
available information, often anticipating the future—
is not restricted to the minds of some privileged
species. It is distributed throughout biology, at many
different spatial and temporal scales. There are not
just intelligent people, mammals, birds and cepha­
Naeblys/iStock/Getty Images
lopods. Intelligent, purposeful problem-solving be­
havior can be found in parts of all living things: sin­
gle cells and tissues, individual neurons and net­
works of neurons, viruses, ribosomes and RNA
fragments, down to motor proteins and molecular

24
 OPINION
networks. Arguably, understanding the origin of
intelligence is the central problem in biology—one
that is still wide open. In this piece, we argue that
progress in developmental biology and neurosci­
ence is now providing a promising path to show
how the architecture of modular systems underlies
evolutionary and organismal intelligence.
Biologists are trained to focus on the mecha­
nisms of living systems and not on their purpose.
As biologists, we are supposed to work out the
“how” rather than the “why,” pursuing causality rath­
er than goals. The “why” is not only always present
but is precisely what drives specific “how”s to be
chosen, enabling organisms to survive by selecting
and exploiting specific mechanisms out of an
astro­nomically large space of possibilities. In the
case of the human eye, for example, the optical
properties of the lens only make sense if they help
focus the light on the retina. If you don’t ask why
the lens is transparent, you will never understand
its function, no matter how long you study how it
becomes transparent.
In fact, the problem of understanding how intel­
ligence emerges is becoming more acute with the
“omics” revolution, which is generating systematic,
quantitative data on genomes, transcriptomes, pro­
teomes and connectomes. Biological systems are
being dissected into their ultimate complexity, but
no magic answer is appearing at the end of the
tunnel. The race to big data is not providing a better
explanation of living systems. If anything, it’s mak­
ing it harder.
Modern biology faces a fundamental knowl­
edge gap when trying to explain meaningful, intelli­
gent behavior. How can a system composed of
cells and electrical signals generate a well-adapted
body with behavior and mental states? If cells are
not intelligent, how can intelligent behavior emerge
from a distributed system composed of them? This
fundamental mystery permeates biology. All biolog­
ical phenomena are, in a sense, “group decisions”
because organisms are made of individual parts—
organs, tissues, cells, organelles, molecules. What
properties of living systems enable components to
work together toward higher-level goals?
A common solution is emerging in two different
fields: developmental biology and neuroscience.
The argument proceeds in three steps. The first
rests on one of natural selection’s first and best
design ideas: modularity. Modules are self-con­
tained functional units like apartments in a building.
Modules implement local goals that are, to some
degree, self-maintaining and self-controlled. Mod­
ules have a basal problem-solving intelligence, and
their relative independence from the rest of the
system enables them to achieve their goals despite
changing conditions. In our building example, a
family living in an apartment could carry on their
normal life and pursue their goals, sending the chil­
dren to school, for example, regardless of what is
happening in the other apartments. And in the case
of the body, organs such as the liver operate with a
specific low-level function, such as controlling nutri­
ents in the blood, in relative independence with
respect to what is happening, say, in the brain.
The second step in the argument is that mod­
ules can be assembled in a hierarchy: lower-level
modules combine to form increasingly sophisticat­
ed higher-levels modules, which then become new
building blocks for even higher-level modules, and
so on. In our apartment building, families could be­
long to a local association, like a chapter of a polit­
ical party, whose goals could be to ensure the fu­
ture welfare of all the families in the area. And this
party could belong to a parliament, whose goal
could be to shape the policy of the entire country,
and so on. In biology, different organs could be­
long to the same body of an organism, whose goal
would be to preserve itself and reproduce, and
different organisms could belong to a community,
like a beehive, whose goal would be to maintain a
stable environment for its members. Similarly, the
local metabolic and signaling goals of the cells
integrate toward a morphogenetic outcome of
building and repairing complex organs. Thus, in­
creasingly sophisticated intelligence emerges from
hierarchies of modules.
This may seem to solve the problem, except
that hierarchical modularity still does not explain
how evolution, changing solely one element at a
time at a lower level, can ever manipulate the up­
per levels. Given that the upper levels are built with
lower levels, wouldn’t you still need to modify a
slew of things at the same time to change an up­
per-level module? A third step in our argument
addresses this problem: each module has a few
key elements that serve as control knobs or trigger
points that activate the module. This is known as
pattern completion, where the activation of a part
of the system turns on the entire system. In our
apartment building, the family would have one cen­
tral figure, let’s say, one of the parents, who would
25
 OPINION
represent the family in meetings and engage it
when needed. These trigger points serve to repre­
sent the entire module and thus enable these
modules to be activated, altered, inactivated or de­
ployed in novel circumstances without having to
manipulate or re-create all their parts. Moreover,
pattern completion naturally emerges from sys­
tems of interconnected elements with interactions
among the elements.
In recent years researchers have found evi­
dence for pattern completion in both neural circuits
and developmental biology. For example, when Luis
Carrillo-Reid and his colleagues at Columbia Uni­
versity studied how mice respond to visual stimuli,
they found that activating as few as two neurons in
the middle of a mouse brain—which contains more
than 100 million neurons—could artificially trigger
visual perceptions that led to particular behaviors.
These fascinating pattern-completion neurons acti­
vated small modules of cells that encoded visual
perceptions, which were interpreted by a mouse as
real objects. Similarly, in work published in 2018,
Michael Levin of Tufts University and Christopher
Martyniuk of the University of Florida reviewed data
showing how triggering a simple bioelectric pattern
in nonneural tissues induced cells to build an eye
or other complex organs in novel locations, such as
on the gut of a tadpole.
The idea of hierarchical modularity to explain
biological intelligence has been explored before by
economist Herbert Simon, neuroscientist Valentino
Braitenberg, computer scientist Marvin Minsky,
evolutionary biologists Leo Buss, Richard Dawkins
and David Haig, and philosopher Daniel C. Dennett,
among many others. These recent experiments
from developmental biology and neuroscience can
now provide a common mechanism of how this
could work via key nodes that generate pattern
completion. While there is still much to learn about
how pattern-completion units work, they could pro­
vide a solution to the problem of how to repurpose
a system of modules without having to change it all.
The manipulation of local goal-pursuing modules,
to make them cooperate at multiple scales of orga­
nization in the body, is a powerful engine. It enables
evolution to exploit the collective intelligence of cell
networks, using and recombining tricks discovered
at the lower level while operating with robustness
despite noise and uncertainty.
Like a ratchet, evolution can thus effectively
climb the intelligence ladder, stretching all the way
from simple molecules to cognition. Hierarchical
modularity and pattern completion can help under­
stand the decision-making of cells and neurons
during morphogenesis and brain processes, gen­
erating well-adaptive animals and behavior. Study­
ing how collective intelligence emerges in biology
not only can help us better understand the pro­
cess and products of evolution and design but
could also be pertinent for the design of artifi­
cial-intelligence systems and, more generally for
engineering and even the social sciences.
➦ 26
 OPINION Iris Berent is author of The Blind Storyteller:
How We Reason about Human Nature (Oxford
University Press, 2020). She is a professor of
psychology at Northeastern University.

NEUROSCIENCE

People Love
the Brain for the
Wrong Reasons
Our fascination with brain-based explanations
of psychology arises from intuitive ideas
about the separation of mind and body—
ideas unsupported by science

How can a cellist play like an angel? Why am I en­

grossed in my book when others struggle with
reading? And while we’re at it, can you tell me why
my child won’t stop screaming?
Now neuroscience offers the answers—or so
say the news headlines. The brains of musicians
“really do” differ from those of the rest of us. Peo­
ple with dyslexia have different neural connec­ the brain give rise to our mental life. Furthermore, bias: As numerous experiments have demonstrat­
tions from people without the condition. And your invoking the brain does not always improve our ed, we have a blind spot for the brain. In classic
screaming toddler’s tantrums originate from her understanding. You hardly need a brain scan to tell work on the “seductive allure of neuroscience,” a

Ivan Bajic/iStock/Getty Images

amygdala, a brain region linked to emotions. It’s all
in the brain!
Neuroscience is fascinating. But it is not just
the love of science that kindles our interest in
these stories. Few of us care for the technical de­
tails of how molecules and electrical charges in
that your toddler is enraged. Nor is it surprising
that an amateur cellist’s brain works differently
than Yo-Yo Ma’s does—or that the brains of typical
and dyslexic readers differ in some way. Where
else would those differences reside?
These sorts of science news stories speak to a
team of researchers at Yale University presented
participants with a psychological phenomenon
(for instance, children learning new words), along
with two explanations. One invoked a psychologi­
cal mechanism, and the other was identical ex­
cept it also dropped in a mention of a brain re­

27
 OPINION
gion. The brain details were entirely superflu­
ous—they did nothing to improve the explanation,
as judged by neuroscientists. Yet laypeople
thought they did, so much so that once the brain
was invoked, participants overlooked gross logi­
cal flaws in the accounts.
Why people fall in love with brain-based expla­
nations, however, has remained a scientific mystery.
Past studies make it clear that neither the use of
vivid brain images, nor the complexity, nor the sci­
ence jargon alone drives people’s preference for
brain explanations of psychological phenomena.
Although they play a role, the fascination with the
brain remains even when scientists remove these
factors. Reductionism, the tendency to explain sci­
entific phenomena at one level by appealing to
a more basic level (such as reducing biology to
chemistry), presents another explanation. Re­
searchers have found that people do, indeed, prefer
reductive explanations. But the preference to re­
duce psychology to neuroscience is particularly
strong—more so than in other scientific domains.
Several recent investigations by my lab shed
new light on the mystery. In a series of studies,
my colleagues and I invited hundreds of partici­
pants—all nonscientists—to “play clinician.” They
had to diagnose a clinical condition using either
a brain or behavioral test. The two tests were
equally likely to provide a diagnosis. In every case,
however, people thought that the brain test was
more informative, and they drew inferences that
went far beyond what the test actually suggested.
These assumptions, in turn, revealed that people
hold beliefs about the brain that may help to ex­
When people think a At this point, you have a choice: You can ob­
depression diagnosis involved serve the patient’s reaction using a behavioral
method, such as eye-tracking technology. With this
a brain scan, their approach, you can detect surprise if the patient
essentialist intuition that stares at Jane for a long time. Or you can use a
“what’s in the body is innate” brain-monitoring technique where a “spike” in activ­
ity indicates surprise. Which test is better?
makes them perceive the In truth, the two tests are equivalent. But, as you
patient’s depression as might expect, most people favor the brain test. To
inborn and unchangeable. find out why, my colleagues next asked participants
to consider a different scenario. Once again, the
patient was suspected of having autism, but this
plain why they fall for neuroscientific explanations time, the symptom participants were looking for
in the first place. was a sensation: a hypersensitivity to sound, which
To imagine these experiments, suppose that causes people with autism to get distracted by
you, as a clinician, had to diagnose a patient who noises. As before, this condition was diagnosed
might have autism. The diagnostic test focuses on using either behavior (where eye movement re­
a well-studied characteristic of the condition: that veals the patient’s distraction) or brain monitoring
people with autism struggle to infer what other (where distracting noises would increase brain ac­
people might know and think in a given situation as tivity). But this time, the preference for brain tests
separate from their own knowledge and thoughts. was far weaker.
You present your patient with a video featuring one Why do people prefer the brain-based evidence
character, Bob, moving the car keys of another when they consider someone’s thoughts more
character, Jane, when she isn’t looking. The patient than when they focus on sensations? My col­
must predict whether Jane will search for her keys leagues and I suggest the difference reflects how
where she previously left them or where Bob put people perceive thoughts on the one hand and
them (a fact known only to the patient). Because sensations on the other. People tend to interpret
many people with autism assume others have the sensations as “embodied”—that is, we link them to
same knowledge they themselves have, when a specific body parts. We hear with our ears and see
patient with autism is shown this video, the patient with our eyes. But thoughts, in contrast, seem
will expect Jane to search for her keys where Bob strangely ethereal, even though we rationally know
left them. Your goal is to detect whether your pa­ they “live” in the brain. This tendency to view the
tient is surprised when Jane instead searches the mind as distinct from the body is called dualism.
area where she put her keys. My group has investigated this intuition extensively
28
 OPINION
in past work and found it slips into many of our
tacit assumptions about cognition. For example,
people suspect that thoughts are more likely than
sensations to remain in the afterlife but less likely
to show up in a brain scan. So science notwith­
standing, at heart we are closet dualists—we con­
ceive of the mind as distinct from the body.
Dualism could help to explain the seductive
allure of neuroscience. That’s because our dualist
intuitions put us in an uncomfortable position
whenever we encounter evidence that our ethere­
al thoughts interact with the body. In a recent ex­
periment, when I asked people to reason about the
causes of everyday actions, such as reaching
one’s arm toward a coffee mug, people rated
thoughts (thinking about coffee) as more surpris­
ing causes of their arm’s action than perceptions
(seeing the coffee). So although we readily attri­
bute people’s actions to their thoughts, deep down,
this effect of mind on matter is unsettling. But
brain-based explanations alleviate this tension. If it
is the brain—part of one’s body—that made one’s
hand (body) move, then there are no more ghostly
interactions between mind and matter—mystery
solved! Brain explanations are seductive, I argue,
because they alleviate a mind-body tension creat­
ed by our dualist intuition. And because this dualist
tension is particularly acute for thoughts, the allure
of the brain explanation is stronger for thinking
than sensing, which we align with the body.
There is more to our infatuation with the brain
than just dualism, however. Not only do many indi­
viduals consider brain-based explanations more
attractive, but my lab has also found evidence that
people tend to believe information linked to the
brain can reveal a person’s inborn “essence.” So
when participants learn that a woman’s depres­
sion was diagnosed with a brain test, they incor­
rectly conclude that depression runs in her family
and that the symptoms will last a long time. If her
condition was diagnosed with a behavioral as­
sessment, participants are less convinced of a
family connection or that symptoms will persist for
a lengthy period. (In reality, the test type has no
bearing on these matters.)
We believe these findings reflect a second prin­
ciple of intuitive psychology: Essentialism is the
belief that living things are what they are because
of an immutable essence that resides in each per­
son’s body. When people think a depression diag­
nosis involved a brain scan, their essentialist intu­
ition that “what’s in the body is innate” makes them
perceive the patient’s depression as inborn and
unchangeable. Essentialism, then, offers another
explanation for the brain’s seductive allure.
On a rational level, we all know that thinking
happens in the brain and that our brain isn’t our
immutable essence or destiny. But as the studies in
my lab make clear, our intuitive psychology sug­
gests otherwise. The consequences are far-reach­
ing. Not only do these beliefs kindle our irrational
love affair with the brain, but they can also seriously
sway our thinking about psychological disorders
and promote stigma toward patients.
Thankfully, our rationality can keep these biases
at bay, promoting better science literacy and a
kinder society. To do so, we must face our biases
by taking a hard look within.
➦ 29
 ILLUSIONS
Here Be Dragons
A gaming cartographer discovers
an uncharted perceptual realm
On December 2021, Lesha Porche, an illustrator
and graphic artist based in Florida, stumbled on an
illusion that would become an online viral phenom­
enon and leave many perceptual experts scratch­
ing their heads. Porche’s illustration work often en­
tails drawing maps for tabletop roleplaying games,
such as Dungeons & Dragons. This time, she set
out to produce a courtyard for the players, and ini­
tially noticed nothing amiss. Porche decided on a
repeating pattern of tiles edged in grass. She cop­
ied, rotated, flipped and randomly pasted tiles out
to an 8 x 8 grid. Just as she was ready to use the
image she created, she zoomed out to observe the
full effect. “I pretty much broke my brain trying to
figure out what I'd just made,” she recalls.
In the Warped Grid Illusion unveiled by Porche’s
work, a crisscrossing grid over a tile pattern seems
to bend and deform in front of the observer’s eyes.
In reality, all grid lines are perfectly straight. More­
over, the distortion effect is ever elusive to the
onlooker: each and every line that looks warped
in one’s visual periphery becomes rectilinear when
viewed directly.
Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik 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.
Left: Warped Grid Illusion.
“I get headaches from illusions, so Right: Grid pattern without at close range, and the latter from afar
I was surprised I had made one so dy­ the “cobblestone tiles.” (or out of the corner of one’s eye).
namic completely by accident,” says In the Warped Grid Illusion, the
Porche. “My friend Mike Johnson pointed out [that high spatial frequencies arise from the rectilinear
there is] a sort of secret path in the cobble pattern, grid, and the low spatial frequencies from the de­
and this is where the eye keeps ‘jumping,’” she ex­ signs formed by cobblestones of like colors. Ob­
plains. Indeed, the grass-etched grid pattern does served directly, the high spatial frequencies from
not appear to warp randomly, but instead seems to the grid itself dominate, making its lines look
follow the “chains” of pale cobblestones depicted in straight. In the visual periphery, the low spatial fre­
the tiles. If that is the case, Porche’s creation could quencies from the cobblestone sets take over,
be related to Hybrid Image illusions, in which two warping the grid design with distortions worthy of
superimposed images—one containing fine and the a Mage’s 7th level illusion spell. A similar phenome­
other containing coarse visual details, also known non is thought to explain why Mona Lisa’s smile
Lesha Porche
as high and low spatial frequencies—result in com­ seems subdued when observed directly, but wider
peting perceptions. The former is best experienced and more obvious when viewed peripherally.
30
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➦ 31
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
declamation, and repeated the performance to the other members of
the party. Next he offered drink to and apostrophised Douglas, and
finally Hose. The two officials received tremendous applause from
the crowded throng. I then gave a drink to Tama Bulan, and
delivered a little recitative in the English tongue but in the Kenyah
manner, and we cheered him again and again, and sang—

“For he’s a jolly good fellow.”

Tama Bulan gave drinks to most of the chiefs present,

emphasising with appropriate speeches the more important of them.
With some he was evidently on very friendly terms, sitting down and
caressing them while speaking; he also made a point of being
markedly friendly with the Madang chief whom he had recently
visited with Hose.
Aban Tingan, the warrior brother of Tama Bulan, gave a drink to
Taman Jaat Kirieng, a chief of the Lepu Agas who recently came to
reside in the Silat. The latter chief formerly lived in the Batang
Kayan, in Dutch territory, where a number of his people still remain.
It was interesting to see these two men sit and cuddle one another
and drink together, when one remembered that until very recently
they were at enmity, and a few years ago Aban Tingan, when on the
war-path, had thrust a spear through the thigh of Taman Jaat Kirieng,
a wound which nearly proved fatal.
There was also a Kenyah-Kayan-Madang group of chiefs, who sat
with their arms round one another and sipped from the same glass of
borak.
That evening I was in a war-canoe that was engaged with two or
three others in an exciting practice race. The vociferous
effervescence of the rival crews, the exhilaration of rapid movement,
and the stimulation of half-stifling showers of spurting spray, formed
a striking contrast to the sweet tranquillity of a waning tropical day,
as it folded itself to rest in the gorgeous robes of sunset.
But a new element of turmoil arose as the Lirongs dashed down
the river in three canoes, chanting their war-song, and dressed in
feathered war coats and caps. They were received with re-echoed
shouts, which were merged into a continuous roar of sound. No
sooner had they landed than they rushed up the hill, and before one
could realise what was happening there was a rough-and-tumble, in
which the Resident and Tama Bulan were mixed up, and everyone
had his share of blows. Hose, as a matter of fact, had fully expected
this encounter, as it is according to custom that people who feel
aggrieved should make some display when first meeting those
against whom they have a grudge. In this instance the Lirongs had a
score to pay off on Tama Bulan, as two years previously he had led a
Government punitive expedition against them, in which two
murderers were attacked and killed. Tama Bulan did not know that
the Lirongs had arrived, and was quite unprepared, although a
number of his followers, seeing the Lirongs’ canoes scudding down
the last reach, had rushed to their huts and donned the panoply of
war. No serious damage was done, and all friction ought then to
have been over.
The next morning a public meeting was announced in the
temporary hall, but whilst the people were assembling, the Lirongs,
assisted by the Sĕbops, started another jawa, and there was a great
hubbub and some scuffling as they attempted to drag the Kenyah
chiefs from the platform on which they were seated. This was not
according to lawful custom, and indicated spite, as the scrimmage of
the previous evening should have settled the affair.
The people became mad with excitement when blood was seen
flowing down Tama Bulan’s face, owing to a blow over the left eye.
This was the signal for less covert hostilities, and the Kenyahs and
Kayans rushed to their several huts for weapons, and the Lirongs
made for their boats, but the Long Kiputs and Sĕbops were nearer
their huts, and soon armed themselves. Hose had wisely arranged
that the Kenyahs and Kayans were encamped on the lawn near the
Residency, while the Lirongs were located in the Bazaar, a good way
off down the hill and beyond the Long Kiput encampment; between
these and the camp of the Kenyahs and Kayans was a large
unoccupied tract, in which was the fort.
Hose immediately grasped the situation, ran to the fort, and in a
very short space of time had the two small cannon charged with
shot, the one trained towards the huts of the Long Kiputs, and the
other towards the main encampment. The fortmen and some of the
crew of the Lucille, and one or two other trusted men were armed by
Douglas with rifles.
No sooner had Hose given his orders than he rushed unarmed
down to the Lirong boats, and after a great deal of trouble
succeeded in quieting down the Lirongs and other natives, who had
by this time armed themselves with spears, parangs, and shields.
The din was awful, and the excitement intense; that Hose came out
of it unharmed was due to the fact that the trouble was purely local,
and had nothing to do with the Government, which, as represented
by the Resident, was loyally respected. The esteem, not unmixed
with fear, in which Hose is personally held by all the natives of his
immense district, stood him in good stead, and the rapid quieting
down of the overwrought, gesticulating crowd was a powerful
argument in favour of a “personal Government.”
Douglas had charge of the fort, and no one was allowed to pass
from one side of the open ground to the other. He also succeeded in
pacifying the Long Kiputs and Long Patas.
Beyond, there were angry and vociferating groups of Kenyahs and
Kayans, and one or two men danced and brandished imaginary
spears and shields as they harangued their several groups and
clamoured for vengeance. Thanks to the good sense of the chiefs,
assisted by the calming words of McDougall, they gradually
simmered down.
All danger was now over, and Hose went about interviewing
chiefs, and orders were issued that no one was to carry a spear,
parang, or other weapon, on pain of its being confiscated
temporarily.
In the afternoon, at Hose’s instigation, the Lirongs presented Tama
Bulan with two tawaks and three gongs. Tama Bulan wanted to make
peace without compensation being made to him, and the Kenyah
chiefs and Tama Bulan’s followers were also disinclined to allow any
sort of compensation to be made to Tama Bulan, but for a different
reason, and suggested they should in any case wait to see how the
wound progressed before anything was received. Fortunately for the
sake of peace, McDougall was on the spot, and bound up Tama
Bulan’s wound directly, and under his treatment it rapidly healed,
though the eye was black for some days. Tama Bulan was
thoroughly at one with Hose, and was equally anxious to bring
matters to a close, and said he was ready to accept apologies only.
Hose next went down to the Bazaar and suggested to Taman
Aping Bulieng, the headman of the Lirongs, that he should call on
Tama Bulan to inquire after him. He at once acquiesced, and
immediately went to call on Tama Bulan, with whom he stayed a
couple of hours. All through there was little friction between the
chiefs themselves, the misunderstanding was principally due to the
inferior men, who had nothing to lose by causing trouble.
This unfortunate occurrence put a stop to any further festivities for
that day. The social atmosphere was too electrical for friendly rivalry,
and there were great searchings of heart among the various
combinations of natives, and many arrangements had to be made by
Hose and Douglas to ease down the excitement.
The Lirongs admitted they were entirely in the wrong, as there was
no custom that allowed a jawa to be done a second time. In order to
quiet his followers, Tama Bulan immediately he was hurt gave out
that he was hit by a fallen roof-pole of the hall and not by a blow from
a Lirong. Later, when all was settled, the truth leaked out, and also
with his customary good sense he was content to accept the
apologies of the Lirongs, and to let bygones be bygones; but for
politic reasons he accepted their presents.
It is occasions of this sort that test the loyalty and capability of
men, and bravery and readiness in an emergency are bound to
make themselves felt. It will be remembered that a few years before
Orang Kaya Tumonggong Lawai was an ill-disposed warrior whom
the Government had some little difficulty in bringing to reason. This
former defier of the Government proved his loyalty by walking up and
down among the excited people, armed only with a walking-stick,
and he effectually exerted his influence to quiet them down.
 A little incident like this proves that the present form of government
is extremely suitable for the people. As in the case of Tama Bulan in
the early days when the Baram was taken over, and in other
instances, a little rough discipline served to develop what sterling
qualities were lying latent in them. Indeed, trouble is usually given at
first instance by those men of character who later on shape into loyal
and capable adherents of the Government.
One great feature of the peace-making was a tuba fishing on an
unprecedented scale, and a lake connected with Baram River was to
be the scene of the attempt.
We started in the steamer at 6 a.m. on the morning of the 11th,
and on our way down stream we passed numerous canoes that had
started still earlier. On arriving at the scene of action we transhipped
into a boat and entered Logan Ansok by a narrow waterway which
meandered through a tropical jungle composed of divers trees of
varied size, interspersed among which were screw pines, palms,
ratans, and ferns, epiphytes clinging on to trunk and bough added to
the complexity of the luxuriant foliage.
 Fig. 40. Figure-heads of Canoes, Baram District

We stayed a little time in this verdant water-lane and allowed

several canoes to pass us. First rounding the corner, and as it were
peering through the foliage, would appear a grotesque head of what
seemed to be a monstrous dragon with long, sharp tusks, goggle
eyes, and erratic horns, but the long, thin neck soon resolved itself
into the bow of a war-canoe, paddled by lithe-bodied, copper-
coloured natives, in some instances wearing a hairy war-coat
adorned with the black and white feathers of the hornbill, and on
their heads ratan war-caps ornamented with the long tail feathers of
another species of hornbill. Other men were clad solely in the usual
chawat, or loin cloth; some wore in addition a white cotton jacket.
The heads of nearly all were protected by large round hats.
At one spot the canoes had to be dragged in shallow water
through the jungle, owing to a huge hard-wood tree having fallen and
so blocked up the waterway, and the weirdness was enhanced by
the cadenced hauling-cries of the men as they laboriously tugged
their canoes. It is impossible to adequately describe the scene and
the noise. The vivid colouring of some of the costumes was jewelled
against the green background by the broken sunshine as it streamed
through the tropical foliage, and all was instinct with human life and
activity.
Eventually we found ourselves in a large lake entirely surrounded
by trees; unfortunately the river was high, and so the water had
overflowed its banks, and the lake had an apparent rather than a
definite margin, as the water was spread out among the surrounding
trees. The placid water shimmered in the sunshine, and the varied
foliage lit by the early morning sun looked very beautiful, but the
interest was greatly increased by the numerous canoes now
paddling about in full sunshine, the high lights, catching the large,
round palm-leaf hats or some unprotected portion of skin or clothing,
being emphasised by deep shadows. The rows of hats alone
constituted a striking decorative feature.
The boats were ultimately ranged round the lake, and were tied up
to trees and bushes as far as possible in the shade. The next
business was to cut logs and short billets from thick boughs to serve
as mallets. The small packets of tuba root were separated from the
large bundles with which every boat was well supplied, and these
were beaten with the mallets on the logs which were placed in the
canoes. Many men preferred to climb on to trees and beat the tuba
on fallen trunks, or, perched aloft, they employed the branches for
that purpose.
From all around the lake came the measured beating, varied by an
irregular access of loudness and rapidity, reminding one somewhat
of the company firing of a distant review or sham-fight.
 Later the boats came into the open; in most several men were
hammering away, while others baled water over the crushed roots.
Then the bilge of discoloured water was ladled into the lake, and the
clouds of the infusion gradually dispersed. The characteristic but
indescribable odour of crushed tuba was wafted over the surface of
the still waters.
 PLATE XXXI

BEATING TUBA AND BALING THE INFUSION OUT OF A CANOE

PENCHALLONG PREPARED FOR THE GREAT PEACE-MAKING

In about an hour a few tiny fish were observed wriggling in an

uneasy manner near the surface of the water; these were at once
netted. I was in a boat with the Resident, Tama Bulan, and Aban
Batu, a Umo Poh chief, when the first little fish we saw was captured.
This miserable firstfruit was offered to Balli Flaki by Tama Bulan, who
said to the omen bird that he gave it the largest share and that we
had kept the smallest for ourselves. This was strictly true, as hitherto
we had caught nothing, and therefore a diminutive fishlet was a
greater share than nothing at all. Aban Batu then lit a match and
asked Balli Flaki to make the tuba strong that we might catch plenty
of fish. It was rather a descent to the commonplace to burn a lucifer
match instead of the shredded sticks that are used customarily, but
doubtless the smoke was as effectual a medium for the conveyance
of the prayer as if it were produced in the orthodox manner.
At one spot just within the jungle ten sticks were stuck in the water,
the cleft upper end of each holding an egg. These were placed there
by the Kayans, probably as an offering to the birds to secure good
omens, and possibly, in addition, because some of their number had
never been in the Lower Baram before, and it is customary for two
eggs to be offered in this way on entering a river for the first time.
Unfortunately while the lake was being tuba’ed the river rose, and
so the increase of the water prevented the operation from being a
success, and only a few small fish were obtained. Some twenty-five
piculs (over three thousand pounds) of tuba had been provided by
natives from all over the district, and this would have proved
sufficient for the purpose had not the heavy rains caused floods.
A very large number of men and boats were engaged, and we all
spent an enjoyable day, for as a native chief remarked some time
previously, when the arrangements were being made, “The scale on
which the tubaing was done and the general excitement would
please the people even if no fish were caught.”
 The second boat race took place early on the morning of the 12th;
sixteen canoes started, seven of which belonged to the Kenyahs,
four to the Kayans, and four to other up-river tribes; the Naroms of
Baram had one canoe. The number of each crew was unlimited, and
some boats carried as many as sixty or seventy men, so that there
must have been about a thousand engaged in the race.
The first prize of fifty dollars was won by the Naroms by about two
lengths; the Long Kiputs gained the second place and a prize of ten
dollars. The course was about 3¼ miles and the time was 15
minutes 10 seconds. The Oxford and Cambridge course from Putney
to Mortlake is 4¼ miles, and the average time for the last ten years is
20 minutes 34½ seconds. Thus the speed of these untrained natives
is slightly faster than that of a trained University crew, but it is
doubtful whether this would be the case if the Baram course were as
long as that on the Thames; further, it must be remembered that in
Borneo they paddled down a fairly large swift river, whereas on the
Thames they row on a full tide.
Many of the Tinjar people were delayed by one or two deaths
occurring, so they arrived too late to participate in the great race of
war-canoes. But as they wanted to maintain the honour of their river,
Taman Liri of Long Tegin and the Lelaks of Long Tru challenged the
Naroms to a supplemental race. This was rowed on the evening of
the 13th, the course being about a mile. The result was a dead heat,
which was gratifying to the pride of the Tinjar folk.
The final public meeting took place on the morning of the 13th; by
this time nearly everyone had arrived who was expected; amongst
the late comers was Saba Irang, the head chief of the Madangs (Pl.
XXIX., C., p. 376). On a low staging in front of the platform reclined
three enormous pigs, with tied legs, which the Resident had provided
for the purpose of swearing peace and friendship; one was primarily
intended for the Baram tribes, one for the Lirongs of the Tinjar, and
the third for the Madangs. At the other end of the hall was a gigantic
gaily painted model of a hornbill, on which a very large number of
cigarettes were suspended. The body was a large barrel; each wing
consisted of two hairy Kenyah or Madang shields, and the head had
been skilfully hewn out of a great block of wood by Iban fortmen. A
model of a hornbill is the customary table-piece, so to speak, of an
Iban feast, but this “Penchallong” or “Tenyalang” surpassed the usual
effigy as much as this occasion transcended an ordinary feast (Pl.
XXXI., B). A great quantity of borak was provided, which was duly
despatched at the close of the meeting.
After a little preliminary talking the following representative chiefs
crouched by the pigs: Saba Irang, a Madang; Taman Oding Silong, a
Kenyah; Taman Balan Deng, an Upper Tinjar Long Pokun; Taman
Aping Bulieng, a Lirong; Jangan, an Upper Tinjar Sĕbop, and others.
Saba Irang, taking a glowing brand, singed a pig and spoke to it,
telling it to act as a witness in the ceremony of peace-making. He
solemnly swore that he and his people would be friends with those
now assembled, and would not combine with outside enemies
against them, and he himself, so far as he had the power, would
endeavour to prevent others from breaking the peace. Should they
break this solemn oath, they hoped that the gods would call down
upon them all sorts of illness, and that they might be destroyed by
crocodiles or other harmful beasts.
Tama Bulan then pointed out that the Baram people had formerly
taken a similar oath, which they had kept. Now they were making
friends with the Madangs, and were in future to be one people. Old
scores had been wiped out, and there was nothing now to complain
of. The Government had brought them together, and they had mixed
with one another and had discussed old troubles; now was the time
to speak if they had anything to say.
Dr. Hose stood up and said, “Now you have sworn the inviolable
oath. This meeting was assembled that there should be a lasting
peace in the district. There is nothing to gain by war, but everything
to gain by peace. The difficulty in the past has been to make
enemies meet one another with a view to settling their differences
amicably; now this difficulty has been overcome, thanks mainly to
the assistance of those chiefs who have supported me. Now all of
you present! see this multitude, and bear in mind that whoever
breaks this oath, which has been taken to-day in the presence of
everybody, does so at his own peril. Who of you would dare after this
to kill anyone if he thought what the consequences would be? It
would be a matter of only a few minutes to wipe him and his people
off the face of the earth. The Rajah’s dogs will hunt, if it prove
necessary to call them out; as is known to everybody, they require
no hounding on. So remember the oath, and peace, I hope, is
assured.”
Several of the chiefs stated that they were very pleased the
Resident had spoken so plainly, as they did not like to do so
themselves. After this the pig was killed in the usual manner by
sticking it in the neck with a spear, and the liver was duly examined
amid great excitement.
The Madangs admitted the liver was everything that could be
desired; they stated they had already felt that the Baram people had
kept their promises to them, and now they had every confidence in
them. Saba Irang, in a great speech, said he was pleased to see
such unity among everybody in the district, and the Madangs all felt
that this was everything to them. Not only were his people glad to
join Baram, but he knew that many of the people of the Batang
Kayan had already begun to appreciate this general good fellowship,
and he had every reason to believe those chiefs were anxious to be
on friendly terms with the Baram folk.
Another highly excited Madang chief made a vociferous speech,
emphasising his points by violent jumping. “The Madangs,” he said,
“were anxious to have the same advantages as the others, and the
Baram people would see that, after all, they were no worse than
anyone else (jump). For years we had to hold our own on all sides;
we now feel assured that our people will meet with no opposition
when endeavouring to trade in the Baram district, and I will be
responsible for any fault committed by my people, but I feel they will
not be the first to break the peace (great jumping). I have finished”
(jump).
Speeches in a similar strain were made by Tama Bulan and
others. All said they were loyal to the Government; they would do
what they were told to do even unto death. So the great palaver
came to an end.
 The meeting of the chiefs and principal natives of the Baram
district was organised primarily for the sake of the Madangs. Last
November, when Hose went into the Madang country, it was the first
time a white man had visited them, and he received the adherence
of a number of chiefs, some of whom promised to come shortly into
the Baram district, a few having previously done so. Hose therefore
deemed it politic to have a mass meeting at which the Madangs
would be publicly acknowledged as Baram subjects, both by the
Government and by the other natives.
The Madangs, who live in the healthy uplands of Central Borneo,
have at divers times raided the inhabitants of the affluents of the
Rejang and Baram in Sarawak, on the one hand, and those of the
streams of the Batang Kayan in Dutch Borneo on the other. As they
live in a country that is very difficult of access, they have hitherto
practically been beyond the pale of the Government, and have had a
disquieting effect upon the natives who have given their adherence
to the Rajah. Certain of the Madang villages had already received
some punishment in the Rejang district, but it was necessary that
this unsettled state of affairs should cease, and these energetic
agriculturists be brought in under the Sarawak Government. The up-
river Baram people were pleased to make peace, as tranquillity is
always more remunerative than hostility, and the men felt it to be
irksome to be always in suspense when working in their gardens, or
to be anxious about the folk at home when they are out gutta
hunting.
The fact that Hose could collect all the important people from Miri
on the sea coast on the one hand, to Silat, one of the head streams
of the Baram, on the other, and from the as yet unvisited Kalabit
country to the east to their own country in the interior, would naturally
impress the Madangs with the far-reaching influence of the
Government, and would give them confidence in the power of the
Government to preserve peace and protect property.
The same argument would appeal to those chiefs who came from
the Batang Kayan River across the border. Several houses have
already come into the Silat and Lata Rivers, tributaries of the Baram,
and more are prepared to come. Hose had hoped that a large
contingent would arrive from the Batang Kayan, and he knew that
the head chief Tama Kuling and several minor chiefs with a
considerable following had actually made a start. It is probable,
however, that at the last they were somewhat fearful of meeting such
a large gathering of foreigners, many of whom were hereditary foes;
and it was through the territories of the latter that they would have to
pass to reach Claudetown. Small wonder, then, that they held back,
though they promised to come down shortly afterwards when there
were fewer people about. The few Batang Kayans who did come
would tell their friends about the meeting, and there is no doubt it will
have a tangible effect on those who feared to put in an appearance.
There are always local jealousies and feuds in every district, and
the river-basin of the Baram is not exempt therefrom, as we have
already seen in the fracas of the Lirongs with the Kenyahs. It is
therefore of importance that representatives of all the larger villages
from the various rivers should meet occasionally to discuss and
arrange matters, and there is little doubt that the presence of such a
large number of persons would tend to smooth over local difficulties,
as those not immediately interested could give counsel.
There are certain petty chiefs, remnants of good stock, who keep
up as long as they can the old exclusive traditions, and who are
usually situated in out-of-the-way places.
Owing to the number of difficulties of access and to the raids that
have taken place among the intermediate peoples, and also owing to
the fact that every Kayan and Kenyah chief is chary of giving in or of
admitting that he is in any way inferior to any other chief, it is easy to
understand that until brought together by an external power these
people rarely meet one another even though they may be friends.
It is not difficult to imagine that in course of time the less important
chiefs should acquire an exaggerated opinion of their power and
authority generally. They see nobody but people who listen to them,
and having no opposition, they regard themselves as small lords of
creation. Some in their excited moments of drunkenness tell their
followers that the sky and earth belong to them; and in the case of
people like the Kalabits it is not uncommon to find a chief who adds
the name Langit (“the sky”) to his proper name.
The really important Kenyah and Kayan chiefs laugh at this sort of
thing, and men like Tama Bulan and others strongly object to have
any title given them. Taman Aping Kuleh, a Long Sibatu Lepupun,
when told by Hose that Borneo was an island, remarked that it might
be so, but that he knew nothing about it; it was of no consequence to
him where the river ran out, and that he and his people knew only of
the country and people immediately round about, and they regarded
themselves as the most important people.
Nor must the purely social element be left out of account.
Gatherings such as these tend largely towards creating a solidarity
between more or less isolated peoples. As it is, the different tribes or
villages which live on a small river, or on a long stretch of a large
river, tend to constitute a social group, so that one can speak of the
Silat people or of the Upper or Lower Tinjar people as recognised
groups. In the case of the two latter, although there is friction
between them, yet they combine in the case of a common trouble,
and so, for example, we have a temporary Tinjar combination of
sentiment against the Baram.
This is the initiatory step towards the development of a feeling of
nationality, and there is no doubt that in time a wider sentiment of a
similar character may be induced by meetings such as this. It
appears to me that one probable result of Hose’s system of
government may be the development of a patriotic feeling for the
Baram district as a whole. Should this occur in this and other rivers
or divisions, a Sarawak nation may in time arise, composed, as
practically every European nation is, of several races and
innumerable tribes.
A nation is an organism of slow growth, and requires careful
tending, especially in its early stages. As in some other instances in
the past elsewhere, the cementing bonds in the present instance
probably will be the relief from anxiety in the daily agricultural
pursuits and the mutual interests of commerce. But no nation is
worthy of the name that has not a patriotic feeling consisting of love
for the country, regard for fellow-countrymen, and loyalty to the
Government.
 FOOTNOTES
[1] Ray informs me that Kake! is a word of address to a woman;
the corresponding term to a man is Kame! I suppose my
informant, who was a Mabuiag man, made a slip, as he would
himself naturally begin a love-letter with “Kake!”
[2] Nakö is an interrogative.
[3] Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, etc, 1892, i. p. 65.
[4] Evans, E. P., “Superstition and Crime,” Appleton’s Pop. Sci.
Monthly (New York), vol. liv., December, 1898.
[5] Haddon, A. C., The Study of Man, 1898.
[6] Island Life, second edition, p. 375.
[7] When travelling about I let my beard grow.
 INDEX

Aban Abit, 335, 337, 369

Acolytes, Papuan, 256
Adzes, stone, still used in canoe making, 220;
in Mekeo, 272;
Borneo, 368-70
Afu (taboo in Mekeo), 270, 271
Afu symbol at Inawi, 271
Agi, 244, 245
Agricultural ceremonies, 106
charms, Torres Straits, 67, 86, 87, 107, 140;
New Guinea, 104-7, 202, 205
Agriculturists, 212, 262, 323
Agu, turtle trophy, 154-6
Alexis, Brother, 252, 266, 270, 271, 276
Alluvium, 212, 319
Alukune, 221
Aman (omen animals), 384
Amentum, 201
Andersen, Neil, 4-8
Angabunga River, 261
Anglo-Saxon overlord, 328, 329
Anthreptes, 384, 385, 391
Arachnothera, 384, 385, 390
Archbishop Navarre, 185, 203, 252, 266
Arctogale, 384-6
Areca nut (betel), 217
Ari, chief of Murray Island, 8, 9, 20, 28, 29, 57, 72, 74
Ari (personal totem) at Cape York, 193, 194
Arrow-points, making with a boar’s tusk, 269
Astrolabe Range, 239
Atsiamakara village, 242
Augŭd (totem), 132
Au kosker (big women shrine), 69
Australian aspect of vegetation, 239
colour names, 24
dance, 193
languages, 30
medicine-man, 90
Australians, Cape York, 190-4

Baby, paying for, 175

Balfour, Henry, 225
Baling Go (the thunder god), 369
Baling Go’s eyeball, 371
front tooth, 370
toe-nails, 369
Ballantine, Hon. D., 205, 206, 236, 241, 244-6, 248, 251
Balli Atap, 360
Balli Flaki, offering to, 384, 409
Balli Penyalong (god of child-naming), 354
Balli Taun (god of harvest), 373
Balungan (river dragon), 373
Bamboo knife, 115
Bampfylde, Hon. C. A., 279, 280
Barawan, 321, 343
house, 334, 336
Bark belts, 266
Bark-cloth shawl, 259
Barker, Dr. A. J. C., 279
Barking deer, 385
Bartlett, E., 283
Batang Kayans, 364, 365, 401, 403, 412, 413
Batu Blah, 306, 321
Beardmore, E., 111, 114
Bêche-de-mer, 2, 3
Beehive house in Murray Island, 58
Bees, 383, 391
Beheading knife, 115
Berantu ceremony, 306-11
Berenicornis, 384, 385, 388
Betel, 217
Biofa, 261
Bird dances, Sĕbop, 358;
Torres Straits, 49, 114, 189