Tag Archives: psychology

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Investigating the science of fiction

brain scans A new brain-imaging study shows what parts of the brain are active as we read a narrative, suggesting that as readers we create vivid mental situations of what is described and activate the part of the brain we would use to process similar experiences in real life. (Via PhysOrg.)

The research was conducted at the Dynamic Cognition Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (and the paper, published in Psychological Science, is online here). (CORRECTION: That link leads to an older study published in the same journal by the same authors a couple of years ago. It’s related research, but not the newest study, which won’t be posted in public for another month or so. – EW.)

(UPDATE: Well, that was quick. A pre-print version of the current study is now online here. – EW) 

Participants each read four stories, each less than 1,500 words, taken from a simple book from the 1940s about the daily activities of a young boy. They found:

…changes in the objects a character interacted with (e.g., “pulled a light cord”) were associated with increases in a region in the frontal lobes known to be important for controlling grasping motions. Changes in characters’ locations (e.g., “went through the front door into the kitchen”) were associated with increases in regions in the temporal lobes that are selectively activate when people view pictures of spatial scenes.

Overall, the data supported the view that readers construct mental simulations of events when reading stories.

Obviously, they need to repeat this story with people reading science fiction. What parts of the brain do we activate when we read descriptions of far-off planets, aliens, far-future technology and other confabulations for which we have no day to day experience to draw on?

(Image: Washington University via PhysOrg.)

[tags]psychology,brain,reading,fiction[/tags]

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Neurocosmetics: wireheads for congress

neurospasmNeurocosmetics has yet to take off in the backstreets of Birmingham, but is likely to change everything, at least according to Marcel Kinsbourne in his Edge question answer:

…the novel method of deep brain stimulation (DBS), by which electrodes are inserted into the brain to stimulate precisely specified locations electrically, is already used to correct certain brain disorders (Parkinsonism, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).

Not only are the targeted symptoms often relieved; there have been profound changes in personality, although the prior personality was not abnormal.

A patient of lifelong somber disposition may not only be relieved of obsessions, but also shift to a cheerful mood, the instant the current is switched on (and revert to his prior subdued self, the instant it is switched off). The half empty glass temporarily becomes the glass that is half full. The brain seems not entirely to respect our conventional sharp distinction between what is normal and what is not.

Paging Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Iain Banks, Greg Egan et al – but how will society change when people are free to choose their personalities at a whim?

In fact, could that be the solution to the Fermi Paradox? Could it be that all technological civilizations advance to the point where they develop a technique for inducing whatever their alien equivalent of permanent happiness is and then stop developing?

If you can track down a copy Arthur C. Clarke’s The Lion of Comarre deals with a similarly themed subject rather well.

[from the Edge question][image from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³]

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Milgram obedience experiment replicated

About 50 years ago Stanley Milgram conducted controversial experiments showing that seemingly normal people, when ordered by an authority figure, were willing to administer what they thought were painful electric shocks. Now the flagship journal of the American Psychology Association carries a paper claiming that Milgram’s results have been replicated.

Jerry M. Burger, PhD [at Santa Clara U.] … found that compliance rates in the replication were only slightly lower than those found by Milgram. And, like Milgram, he found no difference in the rates of obedience between men and women.

…”People learning about Milgram’s work often wonder whether results would be any different today,” said Burger, a professor at Santa Clara University. “Many point to the lessons of the Holocaust and argue that there is greater societal awareness of the dangers of blind obedience. But what I found is the same situational factors that affected obedience in Milgram’s experiments still operate today.”

Burger’s participants were 29 men and 41 women. His experiment was done in 2007 but the results have just been officially published. Milgram’s experiments showed that 79% of participants would administer “shocks” even after their “victims” protested; Burger found an obedience rate of 70%.

[Image from Abu Ghraib: Wikimedia Commons]