Ken Kosik at UVU Arts in Education Conference

The arts ask the really big questions. Cognitive neuroscience asks big questions. Molecular neuroscience asks small questions.

Somewhere in our evolutionary history, the human need to make art has emerged. Around 50,000 years ago, our ancestors started to paint on the walls of caves. No other species had ever done this. And the paintings would not have been seen by very many people. So there is an urge to create this art that extends beyond the desire for others to see it. Musical instruments begin to emerge at about the same time, as did burying the dead with things - the emergence of abstraction.

Human genomes are almost identical to each other (only 1% different from one person to another). Neanderthals are also remarkably similar to us. But there are small differences, which may contribute to the human drive to create art. All of our closest relatives have gone extinct. Even the closest living ones (i.e. chimps, etc.) are threatened. Chimp genes are 97% like ours. But they wouldn't spontaneously help each other like we do. This is called the "social brain."

Reading: Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Attributes of the Social Brain:
- Ability to recognize people's faces (there is a part of the brain devoted specifically to this function; test yourself at faceblind.org)
- Watching the eye movements of people you're talking to
- Language - (there is a musicality to the Italian language, and they use the "musical" parts of their brain to attempt to extract meaning from nonsense words)
- Memories - beyond declarative ("Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinion, their life a mimicry, their passion a quotation." Oscar Wilde; "Let us, then, say that this is the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them upon it, just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts..." Socrates) The Greeks linked memory (Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory) and the arts (the Muses are her daughters)

Memory is not about the past. It is about the future. Memory is mental time travel. (Yadin Dudai quote on the role of memory)

We do not recall things perfectly. Rather, our memories help to inform our thoughts. When memory goes away, we lose our future. When you ask an Alzheimer's patient what they would like to do this summer, they have a difficult time providing detail about their desires.

Daydreaming vs. Task-oriented Behavior

The brain shifts when you are not trying to achieve a goal. It continues to use a lot of energy, but it activates the parietal lobes - the "dark energy" of the brain, when you are at rest, but active.

What does the brain do?
It tells us our own story - creates autobiography
1. Places us in the lead role of own story (agency, maps our position in space)
2. Creates a continuity of consciousness upon a fragmented field of memories
3. Deludes us about our past by conflating memory with imagination
4. Puts emotional valence on our experience so we can learn to survive

The brain tells our story. We have to explain what we don't understand. Confabulation is when we form false memories of events by confusing imagination and memories. But we also engage in storytelling through the arts - stories, painting, music, etc. As we chip away at a scientific understanding of things, we often don't get to the really big questions that the arts address.

In our day-to-day life stories, our brains respond profoundly to visual stimuli. But the mind can put a different kind of look to the same scene. The actual visual input is far more important than all of the meaning that we put on that information. This is true of all stimuli - it is the meaning we make that is most important.

Raising Nerds

The article linked below is a great reminder that we need to be raising a nation of nerds. In other words, we need to value education as much as (if not more than) athletic prowess and make it a key focus of our government, culture, society, and families. I couldn't agree more.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/28/granderson.raising.nerd/index.html?iref=obinsite

Compulsive Liars

So compulsive liars aren't crazy, they're crazy smart! Fascinating findings:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87922568

Genetics and Autism

I had the outstanding opportunity to attend a presentation by Dr. Valerie Hu, a leading autism researcher. Dr. Hu is a biochemist, so she looks at autism from a biological stand point. She has made some amazing inroads into understanding the genetic correlations with autism and I wanted to share some notes here for my friends with autistic children and my former and current students who have or will have the opportunity to work with students with autism.

Intro to Dr. Hu's work: http://www.modelmekids.com/autism-research.html

First, Dr. Hu realized that the current method of trying to analyze the biology of autism was completely ineffectual. Researchers were throwing all types of autism into the same pot and then trying to determine what made those with autism different from those without. Of course, they couldn't figure it out. There was so much variance in the data that they couldn't draw any conclusions from it. So Dr. Hu and her grad students began to categorize people based on the behavioral inventories that are currently in use. They were able to tease out four distinct forms of autism based on those inventories - severe language-impaired, intermediate, mild (including Asperger's), and savant.

Once these distinctions were made, they were able to start comparing the genetic data to determine if these behavioral categories were also evident biologically. They are. Dr. Hu has been able to determine definite biological/genetic markers for each of the four types of autism. The markers are particularly significant for those with severe language-impaired autism.

Parents of children with autism will not be surprised to hear what some of those genetic markers are. Dr. Hu discovered differences in the genes linked with circadian rhythms (which regulate sleep-wake cycles, among other things), digestion, head size, sensitivity to stimuli, etc. She states that this new form of analysis is 98% accurate for each type of autism and 94% accurate overall, meaning that a blood test for autism is on the horizon.

Additionally, it appears that many of these genetic anomalies are not related to flawed or damaged genes, but rather are caused by markers on the genes that turn them up or down. For example, one of the genes that is related to circadian rhythms regulates the amount of melatonin in the body. It is turned down in kids with severe autism. So, we may be able to supplement kids' melatonin to give them some relief and help them to sleep better.

Another fascinating finding here is that one of the genes that seems to be most profoundly impacted in children with autism is closely linked with the amount of testosterone in the body. If this gene is turned off, the amount of testosterone goes up, which reduces an enzyme in the body that helps to regulate sleep-wake cycles, neural inflammation, etc. So, boys already have more testosterone than girls. Autistic boys produce more testosterone because this gene is turned off, which reduces the production of the enzyme, which results in more testosterone production, etc. It is a terribly vicious cycle that both explains why more boys than girls have autism and explores a possible cause of some of the symptoms of autism. This research tells us that hormone therapy (giving estrogen), may help to alleviate some of the symptoms of autism.

Link to more info: http://www.livescience.com/12920-autism-common-males-testosterone-affects-gene.html

Basically, the idea here is that we are near a blood test for autism AND, perhaps even more interestingly, the genetic testing is leading to customized treatments for each autistic child as we discover which genes are impacted and then target therapies (genetic, hormonal, etc.) to their specific genetic deficiencies.

Super-exciting stuff that I think gives everyone a lot of hope for the future of children with autism.

Engaging the Digital Mind

Here is the slideshow from my presentation at SoTE 2011:

John Ratey

Presentation on exercise and the brain.

Torkel Klingberg

Presentation on working memory.