Mind At Large

Your Brain on Mushrooms

2012-02-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

In the next few months, you're going to hear a lot about a couple of very recent studies exploring how psilocybin mushrooms affect your brain after you've eaten them. It'll appear in all the same old places: NY Times, Scientific American, CNN.com. So I figured I'd beat them to the punch and explain what researchers have learned, and what it might mean.

Humankind's relationship with the psilocybin mushroom has been hypothesized to date back to the dawn of its transition into what we now understand as consciousness. It is speculated that the cubensis mushroom left its spore-prints on religion, modern technologies, philosophy, art culture, medicine, music, and even on science. It has been a sorted relationship, one in which human interest has reached peaks and valleys, yet the bond remains even after tens of thousands of years. The broaching of the 21st century has given way to a reinvigoration of that relationship. The thrill is not gone, and today's reincarnation of that bond has emerged most pronouncedly in medicine, and now science. A labyrinth of scientific questions lay before mankind now, as he attempts to understand the mushroom in a physical sense, and we can expect these first few reports to soon multiply rapidly. Many of us will digest these reports with tempered scrutiny of the reduction of so profound an experience to a physical level, but it is important to remember that all things exist in many forms, across many planes of reality. So as we encounter these reports, let us keep an open mind and an open heart.

In the first report, researchers wanted to know what regions of the brain undergo a change in activity when a person has eaten mushrooms -- or, in the case of this experiment, when a person has had psilocybin injected into their bloodstream. To observe changes in brain activity, they used a number of brain imaging techniques, including a technique called BOLD imaging, in which a functional MRI is used to visualize where oxygen is being consumed in the brain. Increases in oxygen metabolism indicate increased activity, while decreases in oxygen metabolism indicates decreased activity. What the researchers was found was somewhat surprising.

Soon after injecting the subjects with psilocybin, the researchers observed DECREASES in brain activity in brain areas that mediate some of the most basic and most complex human behaviors. Among basic brain regions where either technique observed decreased activity include the subthalamic nuclei (for the movement and coordination of both physical and mental activity), the putamen (learning about categories/rules, regulating dopamine, and coordinating motor activity) and the hypothalamus (coordination of basic survival functions, like breathing). Among higher brain regions whose activity was decreased by psilocybin were areas in the prefrontal cortex, which are evolutionarily newer brain regions responsible for higher cognition and emotional regulation. In sum, it appears that psilocybin decreases activity in parts of the brain responsible rules, inhibition, and movement.

Let's look into these structures a little more. Together, the subthalamic nuceli and the putamen work together with other brain structures to coordinate movement -- both in the body and the mind. More specifically, they contribute to a circuit that serves as something of a gain control for those movements -- information about moving comes in, and these structures help make sure that that motion is smooth and controlled, those thoughts organized and easily processed. These are the structures affected in Parkinson's disease, in which the loss of gain control causes uncoordinated movement (or trembling) and, eventually, uncoordinated thoughts (dementia). By decreasing the activity of these brain structures, one's thoughts become less pared down. That is to say, they are not made to be shrunken, simplified, and coordinated for easy use. That is to say, they are the raw, uncut version of thought patterns.

By allowing thoughts to be perceived in their unprocessed and complete form, the individual gets information that is typically streamlined for the sake of accessibility. In day-to-day life, simplifying information is incredibly useful. It allows us to use our thoughts with great efficiency. However, what it offers in ease of use, that process subtracts a lot of potentially important and life-changing information. And as we get older, and the process of reducing ideas gets more and more refined, we lose access to more and more information. Based on the findings in this study that relate to the subthalamic nuclei and putamen, it could be hypothesized that psilocybin gives us access to thought information that repetition masks from us.

The putamen also plays a part in how we learn. In particular, it contributes to the process of learning rules and categories. By regulating dopamine, the putamen helps to send reinforcement signals that indicate when something is governed by a rule or falls under a category. In the case of a stop sign, the putamen would send a reinforcing dopamine signal that stopping a red octagon is a good thing. Or, for example, the first time you went to a BestBuy, the putamen would help you learn that people in blue polo shirts can help you find what you need. On a higher cognitive scale, the putamen would help you learn more abstract rules, like people can be categorized by the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. By decreasing the activity of the putamen, incoming information is less subject to rules. People are no longer placed into categories, and therefore, one is free to experience the humanity of others without learned rules that separate them, and this might explain the sense of unity often felt during mushroom experiences. Moreover, the general decrease in rule learning allows information to be experienced in their full and boundless form. Hence, the idea that mushrooms dissolve boundaries.

The evolutionarily newest part of the brain is considered to be the prefrontal cortex, and it too showed a decrease in activity after psilocybin was administered. The prefrontal cortex literally sits on top of all of the other older brain regions, and from there it controls the output of many of them. For example, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for regulating emotional output. Emotion signals originate from older brain regions, and, by using experiential information, the prefrontal cortex can control how much of that actually gets turned into behavior. People with a damaged prefrontal cortex have issues with impulse control. The prefronal cortex also helps control memory by filtering out "unimportant" memories until they are absolutely necessary. By decreasing the activity of the prefrontal cortex, emotions and memories are free to arise without inhibition. That is to say that, feelings and memories can be felt in their fullest and most organic, albeit somewhat illogical, form.

Together, we see a profile wherein psilocybin decreases the activity of filtering mechanisms in our brain. These filtering mechanisms are crucial for maximizing our ability to survive and interact with an ever-changing and dynamic environment. However, a filter still reduces the information coming in, and oftentimes filters out information that could be important to things NOT related to survival -- things like spiritual fulfillment and perspective and compassion and understanding and self-awareness. And as we get older, these filtering mechanisms become more and more refined, filtering out more and more information unrelated to survival. Psilocybin appears to temporarily deactivate those filtering mechanisms to allow us to experience the world and ourselves in their uncensored form, and apply previously inaccessible information to ourselves. Also, by decreasing the coordination of physical movement, one is forced to sit and experience these changes -- as Terence McKenna would say, be "nailed to the ground".

It is particularly interesting that these researchers observed no INCREASES in brain activity. One would assume that diminishing the activity of regulatory brain regions would result in an increase in the regions that they regulate. However, the lack of increased activity suggests rather that psilocybin allows an individual to experience the content of energy-producing regions of the brain (those that generate memories and emotions and process incoming information energy) without limiting and simplifying that energy. In short, it widens the reducing valve (hey that's the name of my blog!).

While the neuroanatomical and neural systems perspective on these findings is very interesting and hints at a biological understanding of what psilocybin does, let us take a wider look at the implications of those conclusions. If indeed psychedelic mushrooms remove filtering and reducing mechanisms from the brain, to allow the ingester to experience their external and internal reality in their raw and unprocessed form, if they allow emotions and memories to be experienced in an organic and uninhibited manner, if they dissolve the boundaries placed on our thought patterns by years of learning and experience, then who is it that is experiencing that raw unfiltered information? And who was it that was experiencing the filtered form of that information before the mushrooms? And who is that person who experiences a new filter after the mushroom experience? Is they all the same observer?

The mushroom experience changes a person, even after the mushroom has left a person's body. After the mushroom leaves your body, your brain presumably regains its normal function of filtering out information, repressing emotion and memories, and coordinating thoughts into nice and easy portions. But something is different. Perhaps some of the old rules that separate people and behaviors into categories, enforced by the putamen, don't seem to apply anymore. Perhaps some of the thoughts and thought patterns that the subthalamic nuclei and putamen made so manageable and simple no longer seem so simple, but are wildly complex and beautiful. Perhaps emotions and memories that had been repressed or diminished by the prefrontal cortex flow more easily into consciousness. But who is that observer who changes?

I'm not sure that science will ever get to the point of explaining WHO is observing all of this reality and all of the self. That's pretty friggen awesome to me. Is that the soul? Is that god? Who knows? But it certainly seems pretty special.

Political translator

2012-01-20T10:34:00.001-08:00

Any time you hear a politician say the word "jobs", there is a very good chance that you are being manipulated.

For example, “Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly. Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I’m optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming week.”

But beware, even when you don't hear the word "jobs", you may still be inundated with half-baked monkey shit:

“Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”

And somewhere in the United States, where people do not respect American citizens, criminals who do nothing but peddle fetishized objects and services are smugly watching how the United States decided that it was not even worth debating how to stop criminals on their own turf from draining our economy by outsourcing American JOBS (am I manipulating you?) overseas.

Basically, what these a-holes are telling us isn't fair to the companies that laid off American citizens, and sent their jobs to India or China or wherever else, that those same citizens don't want to pay for those products, and that by not paying they are costing jobs.

What the fuck is going on?

Bad Science and Cigarettes

2012-01-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

I've been volunteering at this school in Philadelphia, helping middle school kids with these projects that they are preparing for a science fair. It's been a really interesting experience working with two students who I've been helping. As I was trying to motivate them to keep working and trying to teach them a couple things, one of the boys said that he didn't want to learn because "it would ruin his reputation." I've given a lot of thought to that over the last couple of weeks, wondering to myself why a young person should have an interest in their own education. Oftentimes the material is uninteresting, the teachers uninspiring, and for students in low-income areas there is little emphasis on the kind of learning that is done in a classroom. I myself have had my reservations about "learning" throughout my schooling, and wrestled with what to say to a kid who lives in an environment where book smarts are considered a demerit to one's peers.

What I've come to realize in these last couple of weeks of thinking about this, students such as the one I'm writing about should be encouraged to place a priority on learning how to THINK, rather than always emphasizing the importance of knowledge and repetition. While specific information must be learned and practiced, an emphasis on thinking and asking questions and analyzing information should always remain the top priority. Those latter skills apply in all situations, and I am reminded of this by a little article that was published last week in which researchers discovered that the tobacco company Philip Morris had tweaked data on the harmfulness of cigarette additives to make it seem as though they were not harmful.

The purpose of the study was to determine whether flavor additives -- a whole gamut that included, among others, menthol, vanilla, and molasses -- made a cigarette more harmful to one's health. To determine this, they used three different cigarettes: one that was entirely tobacco, one that was partially tobacco and partially additive, and one that was almost entirely additives. Then they measured a number of metrics of toxicity, including bacterial mutagenicity screen (Ames assay), a mammalian cell cytotoxicity assay (neutral red uptake), determination of smoke chemical constituents, and a 90-day nose-only smoke inhalation study in rats.

They report their findings as follows:

"The results of the smoke chemistry studies indicated a reduction in the majority of the smoke constituents and a few isolated instances of increases when compared to the control cigarettes. These smoke chemistry changes, while statistically significant, were not supported by any significant alteration in the biological effects of cigarette smoke normally seen with the bacterial mutagenicity assay, cytotoxicity assay or subchronic inhalation study."

Basically, they report no differences in the harmful effects of adding flavor enhancers to the cigarettes. That's at least what the information says.

If you look closer at the study, you may ask some questions. One of these questions might be: how does having less tobacco in the experimental cigarettes (which are partially or almost entirely made of additive), compared to the control cigarette (which is 100% tobacco), effect the experiment?

If you asked that question, you would find that it did have an effect, and it skewed their data. All of the cigarettes produced the same amount of smoke, but, because there was less tobacco in the additive cigarettes, they gave off less nicotine, and they also created MORE particulate matter in the smoke.

So let's say you're testing some new genetically-engineered extra pulpy oranges for toxicity, and you have three oranges: one that's a real orange (it has 10 units pulp), one that is half-and-half (it has 25 units of pulp), and one that is the pulpy mutant (it has 40 units of pulp). The oranges are all the same size, and you find that the more pulp the orange has, the more flavor it has.

In your toxicity study, you find that 40% of the animals that eat the full mutant get cancer, 20% that eat the half-and-half get cancer, and 10% of the one's that eat the wild-type orange get cancer, but rather than report that 80% of the animals get cancer, you decide to "normalize" the data to the amount of pulp, stating that, since we're trying to make ultra-pulpy oranges, its the pulp -- not the size or flavor -- of the orange that matters. And when you normalize the data by dividing the amount of pulp by the amount of cancer (10/0.1 = 100 , 20/0.2 = 100 , 20/0.4 = 100) you find that there's no difference between the oranges, and therefore the genetically modified orange is no more harmful than a wild-type one. Had you "normalized" the data to size or the amount of flavor -- arguably factors that matter MORE to orange-eaters -- you would have found large increases in the amount of harm caused by the genetically modified orange.

That's basically what Philip Morris did. Instead of normalizing their toxicity data to factors that matter to smokers -- nicotine content and smoke delivery -- they normalized their data to the Total Particulate Matter in the smoke, stating that what smokers really love is the tar. And since the additive cigarettes had more Total Particulate Matter, their data showed no differences in the toxicity caused by the additive.

So the ability to ask questions is as important as the ability to understand the answer, because there are people everywhere trying to deceive you with information. Especially people who have no concern for your well-being. You would think that science would be a safe place, but it's not. Take a look at this email record that they found from one of the principal investigators on the study.

The name of the journal, by the way, was "Food and Chemical Toxicology", a peer-reviewed journal. It turns out that one of the editors was being paid by Philip Morris.

Kids need education for their own safety in this world where information is used on a regular basis to deceive us.

On SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

Dear government officials,

I completely support measures to stop artists -- a loose term, considering how much crap is put out by "artists" (see: Nikki Minaj or Hangover 2) -- from having their intellectual and creative property stolen. However, with all the brainpower in congress, it shouldn't be hard to develop a better solution than this one proposed by the very corporations that wish to maintain control over a consumer population. I do not support giving corporate entities or governing bodies any more control than they have. The AFI Top 100 film "Network" (a real piece of art) describes how television, once co-opted, became an information transmission device owned by and used for corporate entities -- he who controls the device that transmits information, gets to decide what information is transmitted and how. Now it seems the same thing is happening to the internet. For the sake of children growing up in this internet world, let's let them develop in whatever semblance of freedom of information remains, and not have their minds taken over by whatever corporate body that wishes to hook them on products and ideas. For once, do something in the best interest of the real PEOPLE, and not the corporate individual.

Thank you,
MattYoung

P.S. Let's seriously find a better way to stop online piracy, though. The way I see it, Napster and torrents have basically given way to the popularization of crap. Basically, if people actually had to pay for that Rebecca Black song, or for whatever refried crap Jennifer Lopez was putting out, THEY WOULDN'T BUY IT, and we wouldn't be celebrating that garbage in any way. You know what the top two downloaded movies on PirateBay are? Real Steel and Johnny English Reborn. This whole piracy movement has retarded us, because we no longer have to choose where we put our money, and so we just fill our heads with whatever crap is loudest, shiniest, most colorful, and most talked about. It used to be that crappy product came out, died, and disintegrated back into the Earth (or into $1 bins or garage sales). Now, crappy product lives on into eternity and sometimes actually becomes HUGE or a meme (see: Rebecca Black). Let's stop the online pirates from giving life to crap.

P.S.S. In honor of today's protest against SOPA/PIPA, here's a clip from Network where Ned Beatty describes how information transmission, democracy, foreign relations, and domestic policy work. Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Wouldn't surprise me if corporate heads weren't blowing up like this today. Go ahead and click forward to 1:00 to get it rolling.

Network Speech from Thomas Beatty on Vimeo.

What Do You Believe?

2011-11-21T21:20:00.001-08:00

Early humans found truth in the idea of spirits. Individual conscious spirits, if only invisible to the eye, in some way determined the outcome of natural interactions, or were responsible for their existence altogether. The sky and water and food and grass and animals and people -- they all were controlled or created to some extent by invisible spirits. When people behaved in a certain way, or experienced a string of good or bad luck, it was believed to be due to the intervention of spirits. The universe in its known entirety was believed to be created by spirits.

Later, as these spirit cultures waned and monotheistic cultures arose, the idea of spirits persisted -- only now, all things could be explained by a single spirit, rather than many different ones. The universe was believed to be created by one god. People were believed to be controlled by that god, and the outcomes in their lives to be controlled only through prayer to that god.

The Enlightenment in the middle ages weakened the popularity of spiritual cults, and rational minds whose understanding of truth came from what they could observe rather than a belief in an omnipotent and omnipresent deity, paved the way for new cult of Truth: empiricism. Under this new philosophy of empiricism, technology began to grow rapidly as people tried to discover ways to increase the scope of their ability to observe, and to test the merit of their conclusions about those observations. Empiricism changed everything, including religion, and the cult of empiricism only grew as its technologies and observations gave way to an improved quality of life. The merits of empiricism should be no surprise, as it is a system honed to operate in the physical world in which we expend the majority of our conscious energy.

Now, while it is easy to point out the great benefits that the cult of empiricism has brought about, looking deeper reveals two problems. The first, is that it has driven us more and more exclusively into the empirical world. In today's empirical culture, the overwhelming majority of things that are worth conscious energy are those things that can be observed or measured. This empirical bias has led to the rise in voyeurism, saturation of "news" coverage, obsession with celebrity and fame, and a fundamental belief in statistical analysis that undermines its own purposes by passing off collections of approximates as accurate depictions of reality. "Information" has become one of the most valuable currencies in our society. How fast can you get info? What's the video resolution? How many bytes can you store? How in-depth is your coverage of a story? And much of this has served to de-humanize ourselves and one-another. People are seen more as vehicles for information and data, and less as human beings with feelings. It's hard to measure feelings, isn't it. And in a culture of empiricism, even if you could measure feelings, you could make them disappear by ignoring them.

The second problem that the cult of empiricism has caused is the loss of the spirit and, to some extent, creativity. Just the idea of me saying 'there is more to each of us than the physical and psychological characeristics that we can measure and observe empirically' makes me sound like a crackpot. But I maintain that there is so much more to us. Look no further than POTENTIAL. We each have the potential to be something that we currently are not, or to create something that does not exist. How do you measure that? Yet we all have potential -- an abstract, immeasurable aspect of ourselves that may have once been called "spirit". Yet we've distanced oureselves from our spirits. We've distanced ourselves from a fundamental aspect of ourselves, and it is leading us down a dangerous path.

The most peculiuar thing about this cult of empiricism is that it is leaving us without truth. As technology advances to create finer and finer resolutions of observation, it has also given way to means of faking truth. Video and photograph are no longer indisputable proof of truth. Official documents can be easily faked. Identities can be stolen. Works of art can be made fraud. And we all know these things, and they all cause us to doubt the things that we observe -- the very empirical things that we rely on to understand truth. And even in the world of science, where peer review protects us from fraud, people are discovering that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. Empiricism is bringing about its own demise.

I think that the weakening of empiricism is as necessary as the weakening of spiritualism once was. Any devotion to a system is dangerous and unhealthy. In order to better ourselves and our culture, we need to start giving some credence to the things that empiricism tells us not to believe.

Growing Up

2011-11-21T20:26:00.001-08:00

A fundamental problem in our civilization is that it is largely immature. Watch how the potential leaders of this country behave as they jockey for position. Watch how we each revel in their missteps, and how the media bullies people who say silly things. Corporations and Wall Street are built for now, not for the future. Leaders have immature notions of invincibility, like that banks are too big to fail or that progress and growth can go on interminably. We use resources for what they can give us now, rather than considering what lies ahead in the future. Those behaviors are driven by the demand for immediate gratification -- to have things now, at all costs. We are self-centered, making decisions based on what serves us best, without thinking about how it affects others. We demand attention and recognition on YouTube and everyone has a headshot and a demo tape. We are stubborn, sticking to imaginary political teams, often blowing off reason just to win. We are immature -- our government, our corporations, our banks, our education system, our law enforcement, and each of us individually behaves immaturely to some extent. And what it seems the Occupy movement is demanding -- if only subconsciously -- is a maturation of the powers that be.

Throughout the course of each of our lives, we will mature to some extent. Let's start with myself. I am a 25-year-old male, and I really have very little to think about other than myself. I have my cats. I have my girlfriend. I have my family back home. I have my friends. But for the most part, admittedly, I am a self-centered person. I spend my money on me. I do what I want. I do dangerous things. I swear a lot. I stay out late and put substances in my body that are bad for me. I don't always recycle, and I definitely don't compost. It's all about me.

Someday, I may have a family -- a wife, and, more importantly, a child. And with the birth of that child, things will certainly change. I'll have a family to think about. I won't spend all money on me. I'll sacrifice what I want for what's best for the family. I won't swear around the kid. I won't stay out late anymore, and I'll take care of my body so that I can be there to watch him/her have his/her own kid. I'll want to compost because I'll want my child to live in a nice world. The big question at hand is whether our civilization will mature in the same way. Will the powers that control this civilization -- both the large bodies and the individual citizens who make up the populous -- begin to make decisions with the understanding that we are all a family on this planet, or will it drink, smoke, party, and consume itself into the grave? We will begin to behave like the father/mother, or will we careen over the edge of the cliff drunkenly on our motorcycle?

It's a big question indeed, and a question that has been asked time and again in the course of human history. Will we mature? Many a civilization has failed to pass the test, and in many ways we've learned from them. Yet, have we learned enough, or will we be just another failed cycle, paving the way for the next cycle of civilization to give it a whack?

In a couple of weeks, people are going to descend on the Capitol in Washington, DC to "Occupy Congress" -- to ask Congress if they'll start the process of making this civilization mature. But are we asking the right people? In the current paradigm that we understand, it makes sense to go to the government to change things. Yet, things have become far more complicated. There are lobbyists and corporate entities that have power in the government. They must asked to mature. There is the Federal Reserve who basks in the control over the conception of "money". They must be asked to mature. There's each of us, who continue to pass the buck, asking others to mature, when we too must mature. The fact is, we don't need more government. Last week I watched the same Congress that will be Occupied spend 30 minutes voting on what to name a post office in Massachusetts. But who else do we ask for help?

Much of the responsibility is on us. We bemoan the economic system, demonizing the Fed and corporations and the wealthy -- and certainly they are as much at fault as anyone -- but any Economics 100 class will tell you that economics is fundamentally based on how the humans in a civilization behave. The very concept of supply and demand is based on psychology. The things that we value, the things we "demand", create the system. Taking down the Fed, putting restrictions on corporations, and taxing the wealthy are all well and good, but the real problem is that our psychology is an immature one. And until we grow up, until we learn to treat the planet and one another as family, as each person as our own child, we're fucked.

Night Out at SfN

2011-11-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

Students from UPenn are have hooked up a space at the Bier Baron in Dupont Circle on Sunday the 13th. Come by and check out the spacious upstairs room, which will be opened for conference-goers and guests. Bring along your conference badge for an SfN drink special going on until 1pm. Come by at 10pm to finish off your first day at SfN the right way.

I Saw a UFO

2011-10-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is coincidence, the law of attraction, or a very realistic hallucination, but I'm about 95% sure that mere hours after posting a blog about wanting to see a UFO that I actually saw a UFO.

I was out on my back porch with my friend Kyle, talking about UFOs and aliens and such -- like we do -- when I jokingly pointed to a bright orange light moving slowly across the sky. It was a bit brighter, but about the same size, as an airplane, and I fully expected to see some blue/red lights upon further inspection. Kyle looked up and saw it too.

And then, in an instant, the light dimmed and shrunk by about half. And before I could even conjecture at the strangeness of that, the light dimmed and shrunk even more -- as if moving away from us -- before it became so dim and small that it was invisible.

We both saw the whole thing, from bright orange light moving leftward across the sky, to it stopping, dimming, and then disappearing. And the light never reappeared.

We were both pretty freaked out, and I was on the verge of tears. I'm pretty sure I saw a UFO last night, and today I feel pretty weird.

A UFO in Times Square

2011-10-23T17:30:00.001-07:00

So here we are: it’s October of the year 2011. The people have descended upon Times Square en masse, but not to buy souvenir t-shirts to praise the city whose streets they’re trying to overrun. This horde raises signs and chants in unison against the fiendishness of the very corporate entities that sold them their idea of America. The sales pitches, premeditated images of glorious ownership and luxury, flash in ecstasy above the mob – moving colors and pictures against the backdrop of a concrete dusk, a monumental rave of living advertisement on asphalt. The people push forward against the barricades like shoppers on the Friday morning Thanksgiving. There’s hardly room to stand anywhere in the mob, and people bump into one another as hefty swaths of Novocain-faced police officers in their shiny blue helmets and shinier black boots hold them back. Then, amid the modernity of apoplectic flashes of advertisements and the heaving masses of disenchanted drones, come the horses hoisting police officers, so that they tower twelve feet above the crowd that they push back from the square. It’s October 2011, and the old forces back the new.

And all the while – even as I am embedded in the chaos, and a man in a purple fur coat sits up on a scaffold and shouts out that a cop just fell off the horse he was charging at the masses, and other police shout through bullhorns, and signs and shouts go up in protest, and the advertisements for Kodak and Bank of America and American Eagle flash by on the horizon, and a helicopter hovers above the crowd in the space between the buildings, and the tension grows and grows and grows, and the cops in riot gear feel it, and the beat of sticks on paint buckets speeds and speeds, and sense that something is happening rises and builds and heats as if on the verge of glorious orgasm or excruciating birth – even through all that, I can’t help but wish a UFO would appear in the evening sky above it all.

I routinely sneak glances upward, hoping to see an unfamiliar and inexplicable light moving across the backdrop of infinite black and incomprehensibly distant stars. The glances are clandestine in a way, as though if they knew I was looking they’d sip behind an invisibility cloak or something. Sometimes, I actually think that see one – a peculiar light, or a particularly nimble motion, or a brightness that could be nothing else but a spaceship. My heart quickens, I hold my breath, waiting for some confirmation that this is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment where something unspeakable is revealed and satisfaction is be delivered. The mysterious object always turns out to be identifiable – an airplane, a helicopter, an earth-borne satellite, the moon – and has left me to wonder, not if such things as spaceships actually exist, but why I am so interested in seeing one. What is it that had me daydreaming about UFOs even amid one of the most profound political demonstrations since the civil rights movement?

Today’s interest in flying saucers is a pretty recent phenomenon, entering the collective consciousness around the 1940s. As a psychologist, Carl Jung took an interest himself in what these things people were claiming to see really were. More than the physical reality of the things, Jung was curious about what the idea of vessels from another planet meant to people. In the end, he decided that the idea of UFOs in the collective conscious of Western society was the result of, or perhaps a prelude to, a massive shift in consciousness. “Apparently,” he wrote, “they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, or ‘gods’ as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations in the collective psyche.” To Jung, the very idea of UFOs opened up the collective unconscious, the cultural mind, the status quo to transformation. So it’s no wonder that I wanted to see a spaceship amid the tides of change slamming up against the cliffs of status quo.

Any status quo or cultural mind is a closed-circuit, self-sustaining system, which makes it very difficult to interject any sort of change into it. Taboos and laws and regulations and ethics guard against most potential agents of change to the presiding system. There may be no better image of the old status quo defending itself against change than the police on horseback trying to fend off the people demanding large-scale changes to American society. Like a cultural immune system, the police quarantined off the masses of protestors threatening the health of the current status quo, and even did it with the barbarism of yesterday’s equine artillery. In the same way did the cultural immune system fight back against those demanding change in American history – those calling for racial equality or fair wages or an end to the Vietnam war or sexual freedom or the right to be homosexual. The closed systems of cultures and status quota do not take kindly to ideas that threaten to change them.

It requires a great shock to the system to really force change. Something so outside of the norm, so unexpected, so unimagined that the system has no choice but to change. And so, amid the turmoil brewing between the transformative masses and the plastic-faced police who refused to look any of them in the eye, did I hope that UFO would appear there, right above Times Square in plain view of those who wanted change and those whose job it was to prevent it, in front of those trying to make it to the show and those trying to pick up a souvenir for someone back home, in front of all the flashbulbs and video-cameras, to bring about long-lasting transformation in the collective psyche. Perhaps in one fell swoop a rotating disc of light hovering above Coca-Cola Classic would have opened up people’s mind to the fact that things can change, and that the status quos that we protect so faithfully, so fearfully, are just today’s fashion and tomorrow’s dollar-bin fodder.

So rather than say that these protests won't do anything, rather than poke holes in what the movement stands for, think about what you think needs to change. Regardless of your political or economic philosophy, it is hard to argue that things are just dandy the way they are in this country. Go head on over to CNN or NyTimes or FoxNews, and tell me that our values don't need a bit of readjusting. And ask yourself if a defeatist attitude isn't the status quo creeping up on you with ghost stories about the terror of change. Those are the same ghost stories that old status quos told to people before we had racial equality. Keep your eyes to the skies.

The Occupation

2011-10-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have made it down to the Occupy Philly scene a couple of times. It is inspiring. There are actually some really smart people down there. On the other hand it's difficult to see where this will go, even when trying to keep the whole movement in perspective, and recognize that this is just the beginning. The way I see it, there are only a few real avenues for the type of change that has to occur in our country.

The first is plain old "revolution". A guy down at Occupy Philly asked, "What are we doing here? Is this a protest? A demonstration?" And someone chimed in, "It's a revolution," to which many people cheered. Well, revolutions by nature are violent -- at least that's what Malcom X said. A revolution doesn't just happen on it's own. It requires that those enforcing the status quo become fearful for their safety, unless they change. A revolution requires an attack on old ideas and behaviors, violent protests, attacks against the "enemies", hunger-strikes, setting oneself on fire in a public space, shootings at Kent State, and martyrdom of the like. The problem with this is that over the last 50 or so years (basically since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements), people have forgotten what a revolution is, and how to revolt. The majority of people at Occupy Philly (and other Occupations I presume) want to protest peacefully, with the idea that simply voicing their opposition loudly enough will cause the government to punish the bad people. But I don't see it happening that way. You have to make the bad people, and the government for that matter, afraid of you, and you do that by accumulating numbers and becoming potentially violent.

The second way that things could change is through separation. That is, that the angry people remove themselves from the system that is oppressing them, and make their own system, like the original pilgrims did four hundred years ago. If they are successful, the old guard withers and the new community flourishes. The old powers decide to give up their old ways to become part of the new world where their old measure of worth is actually a faux pas. The problem with this is that very few people are willing to give up the lifestyle that they are accustomed to. Basically, they need the system in place.

The third way things could change is through litigation. Most of the major change in this country occurred this way, whether it is Roe v Wade (abortion rights), or Brown v Board or Education (desegregation of schools), or Loving v Virginia (interracial marriage). These decisions paved the way for larger changes in unspoken cultural values and understandings. In our case, the Supreme Court would have to step in and decide, for example, that it's unconstitutional for corporations to be recognized as individuals, and therefore should not have its individual rights protected. But someone has to step in and begin the process of taking these issues, these travesties that are crushing our nation, through the whole process to get to the Supreme Court. That's just not something these demonstrators can do.

Frankly, I'm not sure I'm capable of any of these things right now. I'm not quite ready to go jail for this movement. I'm probably closer to separating myself from the current civilization, but not at this moment, when I'm trying to get this doctorate. And I'm no lawyer. I think that a lot of people are in the same boat as I am, and demonstrating or protesting is a form of catharsis and expression. I'm totally for that. I've been down to City Hall out here. There lots of angry people -- mostly young people -- shouting and holding signs, banging on drums and camping out, having group discussions and trying educate one another about the problems in this country and how to be more self-reliant. It's awesome. But at the same time, they're doing a lot of this with Apple laptops, and tweeting on their iPhones and Google phones, they're having to shit in the nearby Wendy's. And one has to ask themselves exhaustedly, "What the fuck?" Here is this protest against corporate America that is being run on the products made by corporate America.

What does this movement's perfect world look like? Basically, everybody wants to have their cake and eat it too. Everyone praises Steve Jobs as a revolutionary, a genius of our age, while knowing full-well that their iPhone was constructed at a FoxConn complex in Taiwan where the working conditions are so inhumane that they had to put nets up around the dormitories they live in to keep people from hurling themselves to their early death. In the world that most people foresee, they don't have to think about those people. In their future, they have no debt, everyone gets to drive a nice car, have a nice home, and have a decent job and get paid well, and have the spare cash to buy a flat screen and have as many kids as they can pop out. That is just unrealistic. The change that people want to see will require big, big, big things to change, and it will require us to change.

Suggesting, however loudly, that the solution to this country's problems is to tax the rich, or end the Fed, or bail out working class America is ridiculous. They are solutions based on the very system that has become infected. The vermin who are infecting this country and sucking up all if its resources are not just going to realize their faults and do the right thing. Heck, they're selling you the gadgets driving your "revolution". The politicians aren't going to do anything to stop them just because a bunch of in-debt, poor, perhaps unemployed, people with signs and a microphone parade around night and day at City Hall. They either have to be violently forced into change, or be shown a world that is so much more beautiful than theirs, where they aren't allowed to enter unless they've cleaned up their act.

It doesn't seem like either of those things will happen. Not as long as we all aspire to be part the 1%. Shit, if someone offered to give me $1 million, I wouldn't turn it down, and the first thing I'd do is buy myself a house. See it's not just the 1% that needs to change. Why should they? They're in control, at the top of the heap, the Michael Jordan's of this game. The 99% needs to change, and they need to change the whole game. Look what happened to Michael Jordan when the game got changed to baseball. It's less about the 1%'s money than the 99%'s behavior. Once the 99% stops aspiring to be 1%, and starts aspiring toward a measure of wealth not based solely on money, the 1%'s game will begin to crumble around them, and they'll be forced to start playing by the new rules, or get left out...

The powers that be recognize that changing things will be a lot harder than demonstrating. That's why they're letting people "Occupy". "What difference will it make?" they ask. And they cooperate, and give the angry people the sense that the local government is on their side, and recognizes that they're angry. They're just trying to prevent the violence that will really change things. That's why there's very few cops at Occupy Philly. But see what happens if they try to go protest at the Comcast Building, or the PNC building, or go over to the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia. Then the violence will come. but as long as people are at City Hall, in a public space, protesting peacefully, the powers that be are comfortable to just sit back and let this burn itself out.

So I'm conflicted about this whole thing. That doesn't mean that I won't go down and do my own Apple-sponsored politically-correct protesting just to blow off some steam (read: "I am sick of this shit"), but part of me recognizes that it's more than taxes, more than the economy, more than government, more than education -- it's a fundamental understanding of community. And until I'm willing to lose everything to for the sake of the tribe, I'm probably not going to make much of a difference.

Civilization and It's Discontents

2011-10-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

How do you condense a potential cultural revolution into a sentence? The media and much of an unimpressed population claim to not understand what has frustrated people into taking to the streets as part of the "Occupy [fill in the blank]" protests. But I believe that in a country where it seems impossible to go one day without a dejected "what the fuck?" moment, we all have an unspoken understanding that something is wrong in this society. It is a primordial feeling; an ancient feeling that dates back to the first conscious apes; a feeling buried deep in our psyche.

In his Civilization and It's Discontents, the psychologist Sigmund Freud dissects the fundamental paradox between the individual and the society in which he must live -- the innate animal hunger for sexual satisfaction, dominance, reverence, and pleasure versus the social contract that preserves one's comfort and safety. Society, claims Freud, developed out of fundamental, and also random, differences in the ability to satisfy the individual desires. Namely, the biggest and strongest proto-human was able to dominate all of the smaller proto-humans. This, Freud would say, made for a large number of "neurotic" people -- people who constantly lived in fear of being attacked or having their mate stolen or simply not having the basic things to satisfy their own innate psychological needs. The solution, as suggested by Thomas Hobbes three-hundred years earlier in his book The Leviathan, was that all of the little people gained strength in numbers, and agreed that they would give up their freedom to take whatever gave them most individual pleasure in exchange for the safety of living in the new community, safe from the bigger humans, and safer from one another. And so society and civilization began, and have persisted in some form or another throughout the bloodied pages of history up to this very moment.

The civilization movement has been largely successful. Freud would argue that civilization, by nature standing in the way of one's most basic means of achieving pleasure, is a huge obstacle to one's happiness, but a necessary evil. Freud is correct in pointing out that civilization creates discontents. The denouncement of the immediate "pleasure principle" in the name of community and personal safety, Freud claims, creates neuroses in people -- a instinctual malnutrition resulting from the renouncement of base animal desires. Yet, such is the price that is paid for the somewhat safer environment of civilization where the largest human -- born that way by no effort of his own -- is not necessarily the most successful human. This playing field has empowered physically feeble people like Freud himself, and Einstein, and Steve Jobs, and escalated women beyond the role of subservient mating objects. Civilization has yielded great pleasures and innovations and creativity that we, particularly in a country like the United States, have benefited tremendously from.

Yet the nagging pangs of our animal pleasure principle has driven us to find new, socially acceptable, ways to dominate our peers and our environment. It has instilled in people this wretched neurosis that drives them to horde money and objects, and climb to the top of the corporate ladder, to trade their dignity for a moment of celebrity, to sell their morals for re-election, to move forward-forward-forward to greater and greater profit margins at all costs, and to cut anyone and everyone down who stands in the way of us satisfying our need for pleasure. And in the ages since that first social contract, that Leviathan, in the wilderness that saved the great many little people from the few unruly big people, we have come full circle to find ourselves in a wilderness where everyone is seeking out immediate gratification of their basest pleasures at all costs. And there are those of us who are bigger and stronger, who will take away the jobs of of a thousand people so that they can satisfy their need for more and more power. Those people have infiltrated and hacked the mechanisms of the society that was crafted to create a safe place for the many, and they have taken control of it for their individual good. We are back in the wilderness.

In darker parts of the modern-day wilderness, groups of smaller people are banding together, protesting these giants, these insatiable pleasure-monsters. And, as of yet, they don't quite know how to reinstate the kind of civilization that their ancestors began to forge thousands and thousands of years earlier in the jungle and savanna. Most of them can't even yet put into words what it is that they want to change, but they feel it in their most basic humanity. They might not ever be able to put it into words. How do you describe in one sentence what a revolution in human civilization is, or how it happens? What is this "shit" that we're all sick of?

What people haven't yet realized -- and they may not ever realize it -- is that we need a fundamental change in our culture. The very understanding of the word "profit" and "success" and "pleasure" must be altered from individual ownership and monetary worth to incorporate the well-being of others. We must come to understand that there is nothing wrong with people having more than others, but that the cost of gaining those things is not read only in the red numbers, but in the red-blooded people and the shared planet that one must compromise for their gains. Until the "ninety-nine percent" begin to understand and articulate this to the "one-percent", they will never change anything. But who knows how to tell them this?

Once in the old wilderness we did it. We had to band together, and push the big powerful people out. It wasn't easy. We are being called once again to infuse some humanity into this wild civilization. Discontent no longer comes only from the cultural taboos that squash one's freedom of expression, but also from the powerful who force their dominance upon us smaller people. How will we take the power back? By force? Or by creating a new culture? Our culture. A self-sustaining culture where the money in your pocket is worth far less than the goodness in your heart.

Thoughts From Last Night

2011-09-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, you have one of those nights where you and someone else are just rapping off of each other, coming up with ideas at a dizzying pace. Last night was one of those nights. Here's what I came out of my dizziness with:

1. Most of us are squares -- literally. More correctly, living in three-dimensional space, most of us are cubes. A cube is riddled with corners, which prevent them from moving very much. They generally have to stay in one place until something picks them up and puts them somewhere else. In the figurative form of the word, "square" means to be unhip, unaware, uninitiated. A square "doesn't get it", doesn't flow.

I think that a primary motivation in life should be to lose your corners; stop being a square, and become a circle. A circle moves -- like a wheel. A ball moves in even more directions. It has no edges, no resistance. It lends itself to sport, to fun, to capriciousness.

In short, no one plays ball with squares.

It's not easy to lose your corners -- the fears, the psychological limits, physical limits, spiritual limits, financial limits that are placed on you by your upbringing, your culture, and yourself. It takes a lifetime of grinding those corners away. All the time, working, working, working, grinding, grinding, grinding.

But if you make it, if you grind down your corners, you will move through life with ease and joy. You will move through life and the universe instead of watching it move around you.

2. We are beings of light living in darkness. This was actually something said to me a couple of days ago by my friend Daniel, and it really only began to ring true last night. I want to first clarify that, for me, the words "light" and "dark" do not equate to "good" and "evil". I think that they more refer to potential: light being the potential for awareness and understanding and action, dark being resistance to those things. The world is shrouded in darkness until light is cast upon it. The world was once believed to be flat before someone set off to discover that it was round. We allow our fears to control our lives until we cast light on those fears and realize that we may overcome them. We may walk around the world alone until one's true love comes along and illuminates the world for us.

We all beings of light in this world of darkness (remember, darkness isn't bad), which is to say that we all have the capacity to become aware and active in the world around us, and also to bring that awareness to others. Most of us carry a dim lamp, allowing us only to see what is right in front of us -- not the big picture of the whole world, which can only be seen in tiny bits with a dim lamp. So the scope of that dim lamp -- the little bit that can be illuminated at a time -- constitutes the whole world for people. That's why people can get so hung up on "the little things" and think that, say, waiting in line, or buying the new iPhone is actually a huge deal when, if they could see a bigger picture, it doesn't.

Others carry a brighter lamp, and it allows them to see more of the darkened world at a time. These people have better "perspective" on life and the universe. How these lamps get brighter is not clear, but they are. Take an Einstein or a Gandhi or a Dalai Lama or a Bill Watterson (calvin and hobbes) or a Richard Branson for example. These people not only see more of the world at a time, but their brighter light also allows those with dimmer lamps to see a little bit more too. That doesn't mean that it makes their lamps any brighter, it just helps them see a little bit more.

Lamps can get brighter though. It takes work. It takes hanging around with other people, putting your lights together to see more -- to get more "perspective". And as your light gets brighter, you begin to bring light to other people. To show them more of the world at a time, to help them see that the tiny bit that they usually see isn't the whole story. And it should be our goal to try to make our lamps brighter. To work together to see better. To ultimately illuminate the whole world.

However, I also believe that there are those of us who abandon the lamp altogether. They mutate into beings that don't need the light -- winged beings that can see in the dark. They fly around and feed on the people with the dimmest lamps -- those who can't see them coming. They are the evil people in the world, who stand to gain something from people not being able to see. They are the owners, the oppressors, the dominators, the corporate entities that try to control our minds and our government and our economy, the politicians who suck off the political system with more interest in power and adoration than the well-being of society.

We must all become brighter if we are to make this world a better place -- to make it a place where the monsters in this world can be seen in plain sight, and squashed. We should make this a world where children born into it can see right away, and don't have to be afraid of demons.

3. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is the Michael Jordan of Politics. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever, but no matter how much he "changed the game", no matter how many shoes and jerseys he sold, no matter how many championships he won, the game is still called "basketball", not "MichaelJordan-ball."

Barack Obama is the perfect politician, but politics is still the name of the game. No matter how charismatic he is, there system is set up in a way that a man with a genuine desire to make the world a better place cannot succeed without cutting some throats. People say Obama is weak. I think that Obama is a good man trying to work in a system of savant psychopaths -- people who are Michael Jordan's in their own right in the game of manipulation, power-playing, and oppression. And Obama is a good man. He wants to try to work with these people, to compromise with them. And they snicker. They say, "okay, we'll let you do such and such, just do this one thing for us, don't do this one thing for us, just do us one favor." And they don't reciprocate.

And that's why the array of Republican presidential candidates is so outrageously laughable. The powers that be don't need a yes-man (or woman) to be president. They have the political Michael Jordan. A black president who can ingratiate himself to a nation and the world abroad, but who doesn't have the mean-streak to say "no". He does whatever they manipulate him into doing. If he were a worse politician, he would not be re-elected -- he wouldn't win another ring. But he is MJ, an MJ who puts butts in the seats, sells merchandise, sells the game, sells the league, and has droves of fans who support him, and thereby support the game. But the game is still politics, and the game is corrupt. It has no interest in you or I. It only has interest in more control, more power, more money.

Obama isn't Jordan in one way though. In 1985, the NBA banned the Nike Air Jordan I from being worn in a game. They said that the colors were to vibrant to be worn on the court. Jordan said "fuck it", and wore them anyway. The league fined him $5,000 for every game he wore them. And he kept on wearing them. When are we going to see Obama's Air Jordan moment. When is he going to say "fuck it" and be the man we know that he is?

4. Be a ball of light. Lose your corners, light up your lamp, and move through the world with ease and awareness so that you may bring it to others and make the world more illuminated.

Hope and fear

2011-08-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

As a neuroscience graduate student studying the effects of fear on memory storage, I spend a lot of time thinking about emotions. Emotions are both splendid and devious. At the same time that joy and sadness and anger remind us of our humanity, emotions secretly control so much of our behavior. Take for example the classic example of spotting an oncoming car out of the corner of your eye: before you even think about moving out of the way you already have. This is because of a great little trick in the wiring of the human brain that sends important sensory information first to a part of the brain called the amygdala before it goes to the language and reasoning centers that allow us to make sense of things. When experiencing either positive and negative emotions, the amygdala catches fire, letting us know that something important is happening.

The fundamental function of emotions, developed long ago in early nervous systems, is to signal the significance of something in the environment. Today, that could be a stimulus, or a place, or a memory, or a person, or even an idea. In an environment filled with sensory information, it's important to be able to pick out the stuff that actually matters, like the lion hiding in the tall grass, or the big juicy mango hidden in the canopy. The word emotion literally means "to move out" (e- out, motion- move). The secondary function of emotion, after recognizing the significance of something, is to move toward or away from it. The emotion of fear causes us to move away from the tall grass, and the emotion of happiness moves us toward the canopy.

All of this significance signaling and movement driving occurs unconsciously in the amygdala and other associated structures, and, if we fail to involve the reasoning centers of our brains, we generally move around at the whims of our emotions -- much like our animal cousins. In humans, this type of behavior is observed most apparently in young people, who, lacking the reasoning skills to process emotions in a rational manner, often behave compulsively. But it can be seen in adults as well -- in people who have addictions, or co-dependence, or anger management problems. And we all individually are to some extent driven subconsciously by our emotions. While this unknowing capriciousness adds spice and excitement to life, it is often used to control populations.

I was reminded of this by a lyric in a song that went: "there are two ways to control a population: hope and fear." And as we look at the landscape of our society, it is hard not to see how we are controlled in this way. The easiest and most current example would be the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, which came up largely successful by preaching hope for a change from the "bad". Indeed, we observed how emotions were stirred up by this idea of hope, and how people moved to the polls in order to make something of it. But there are far more dvious ways of controlling a population through hope and fear. For example, the whole idea of credit is a means of control by hope -- hope that someday you will actually own that plasma TV or that BMW or that house. But what really happens is that you are owned by Visa or Mastercard or CitiBank, and you spend more time slaving away to pay for those things than using them. Shit, the whole "American dream" has turned into a hope ploy to control people. Work, work, work, and someday you'll have everything you ever dreamed of. And of course there are the fear ploys that support the hope ploy: have fear of the Chinese, have fear of the Arab world, have fear of people who speak out against the American dream. The news media is almost entirely a fear machine bent on keeping you in control.

The point of this post is not to point out all of the dastardly ways that government and culture use hope and fear to control you, me, and everyone else. The point is to describe just what's going on. Remember, the circuitry of our brains have evolved to send messages first to the amygdala, an emotion center of our brain. The amygdala gets to decide whether you should be immediately afraid or hopeful before the rational parts of your brain get to look over the sensory material. This adaptation had protected us through the millenia from impending doom or the scarcity of resources. But that system can be hacked. If people can make you hopeful or fearful quickly enough, pound you with information so that your reason centers cannot process it, they can control how you behave -- how you raise your children, how you spend your money, how you spend your time, how you treat others.

So I implore you to take a closer look. Let your whole brain process the information that the government, culture, media, corporations, etc, feed you. And before you rush to judgment, before you rush to action, consider what someone has to gain from hacking your amygdala, consider who really benefits from your hope or your fear: you or someone else?

Humanity: a monkey's journey to space

2011-06-17T12:51:00.001-07:00

Mice, while lacking the psychological and cognitive complexity of the average human, share with humans a striking proportion of basic behavioral and biological patterns. For example, we both learn. Among other things, we both learn and remember spatial characteristics of our environment, cues associated with positive and negative emotions, patterns of behavior that increase the likelihood of obtaining positive cues and avoiding negative ones. Mice react to their environment in ways that resemble our own behavior. Like us, they approach with hesitance environments, conspecifics, and foods that are unfamiliar. Like us, mice prefer foods high in fat and sugar. Like us, they can develop addictions to cocaine, heroin, and nicotine. While the complexity of mouse behaviors pale in comparison to our own, the similarities between mice and ourselves make mice useful subjects for understanding why we behave the way we do. We can even understand why we wage war.

(Note: The heretoforth use of the words “masculine” and “feminine” is certainly loaded and contentious. When I say “masculine” or “feminine”, I’m referring more to them as an aspects of humanity. Every person possesses a “masculine” and “feminine” aspect, and the words are not meant to connote biological maleness or femaleness. Instead, they are meant to distinguish a differene in characteristic. For example, in my mind, the moon has a strong feminine feel, the sun has a strong masculine feel; nature has a distinct feminine feel, civilization has a more masculine feel. These “feelings” are indeed subjective, but I think that we can agree that different things have different “feels” to them, irrespective of ones personal feelings about those things.)

When we extrapolate the motivations of our interpersonal conflicts from mice, it is difficult not to see that the widest swaths of bloodshed are violently unfurled by the masculine aspects of our culture. To put it simply: in mice, males fight over territory, and females don’t. If you put a male mouse in a cage for just one day, he will attack any other male mouse that is put into that cage afterward. It doesn’t matter that there’s more food, water, and females available for any one mouse. Fighting harmless intruders is in his programming. Female mice, on the other hand, don’t have this problem. A female mouse could live in a cage for her entire life, and exude no ill will whatsoever to any other female or male mouse introduced into her home cage. As a matter of fact, if two females give birth to litters in the same cage, they most often choose to nest the two litters together, rather than separately. In these nests, mothers don’t selectively nurse their own pups, but offer mothering to all pups indiscriminately of their biological relationship to them. Male mice seek territory, dominance, and separation. Female mice have little preference.

The masculine inclinations of our cultures lend us more to fighting, warring, arguing, and separating than sharing, understanding, and integrating. We form not only physical territories, but ideological territories that demand the dominance of one way of thinking over another. Dissonance between, or encroachment upon, territories by “others” lead to fighting, which resemble a mouse in his home cage. The inhabitants of a world dominated by a masculine state of mind actively seek and compete for territory – ownership of people, things, and ideas – which ultimately leads to conflict when more than one party wants to own something or possess the prevailing idea. Nations will war over ideology. Leaders of nations, drunk on power, will mistreat and dominate their citizens. Wealth and power take on the greatest importance above all other values in a society. Those with the wealth and power inflict it upon others. Races segregate and discriminate. Such is life in the male mouse cage that is our planet.

Imagine a world more like the female mouse cage. Imagine the outcome when femininity is empowered and given influence in culture – a world where wealth and power are shared, where all of the children are fed regardless of from whom they came, where people do not allow their differences to tear them apart. I don’t mean to say that were women in control of the world that it would be a better place. Women are in positions of power all around the world at this very moment. Yet, those women in power more often than not seem to put aside the feminine aspect of their biology, and augment their masculinity in order to obtain and maintain power within that masculine system. I don’t believe that change will come to this world by changing the people in positions of power, but to alter how we understand power and wealth altogether. Positive change for mankind will require recognizing that the masculine understanding of power, while not without worth, fails to capture the full power and wealth endowed upon us by virtue of our humanity. We are not mice, and we are not beholden to our biology.

The task of challenging the momentum of our biological and social evolution is a daunting one. In doing so, one hurls himself or herself from the safety of mankind’s hundred-thousand year march forward, leaving oneself vulnerable to cries of un-Americanism, dissidence, and crackpotism. It can be discouraging to see how slowly things change; to see how long antiquated ideas and behaviors continue to persist despite the progress about which we boast. While slow and stubborn, the movement of our biology and society is not without strength. The force of a body in motion is its velocity multiplied by its mass. Where biological and social evolution lack velocity, they carry the mass of an incalculable number of bodies, and interactions between those bodies, that give our evolution a tremendous force with incredible momentum. The force and momentum of Earthly and cultural evolution often seem prohibitive to the individual’s attempts to change the direction of that evolution. Yet, human and biological history reveal instances in which cracks in the system allow for uncharacteristically rapid evolutions to be perpetrated by opportunistic individuals.

We may find hope of guiding humanity in a positive direction in our own lifetimes when we look at instances in which cracks in the slow process of evolution have allowed for most drastic advances in Earth as an organism and in human society. We can look to changes in the atmosphere that turned a million years of anaerobic progression on its head, giving way to an explosion of aerobic organisms that brought about plant life on this planet. We can look to the mutiny waged upon the thunder lizards – who dominated the globe as little more than giant, inconsiderate, eating machines – that gave rise to the mammalian revolution. We can look to the explosion of the human brain that occurred in seconds relative to preceding evolutionary advances in the nervous system. We can look to individuals like Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King Jr., who, in times of cultural upheaval, vaulted human society relative centuries in only a few years. Cracks in the seemingly predestined momentum of evolution allow for massive changes if the individual can enter through that crack and perpetrate that change. Such is the power of humankind.

Humankind possesses, perhaps through biology or metaphysics, the unique capacity to function as a conscious agent of his own evolution. He merely needs the opportunity. It is easy to look at the mouse, and other mammals too, and conclude that warring is destined by biology. But such a claim defeats one’s own humanity. Admittedly, as I described in the opening of this essay, evolutionary processes imply a great deal of similarity with our predecessors and co-habitants on this planet. Yet, while some among those predecessors and co-habitants – even those most closely related to humans – eat their offspring and rape their conspecifics, we have agreed to transcend that biology. The question I ask is: where do we draw the line between our humanity and our animalism? Where do we demand transcendence from ourselves, and where are we satisfied to maintain antiquated behaviors and ideas?

I believe that humankind’s purpose on this planet is to overcome its own biology, and the next step toward our transcendence is to better balance the masculine and feminine aspects of our souls. We must now begin to choose love and compassion first, over ideas of ownership and division and fear and aggression and hate, and all of those other male mouse behaviors. In a universe where entire solar systems, planets, species, mothers, and children are swept under the rug with cold impunity, humankind, as it exists in this moment, stands as the sole beacon of love and compassion and art in our known universe. Making good on the task that has been put before us begins with each of us right now. We are fundamental parts of each other’s realities – and if we are to change the reality we’ve accepted, we can only start with ourselves. For only when social and natural environments are purged of fear can the human being – born into this world with the machinery to most efficiently adapt the environment – achieve his potential.

The newborn child comes into this world as a fragile heap of potential, equipped with little more than the senses to gather data from the world, and programming to register that data as good/safe or dangerous/painful. The human experience then whittles down the wild potential of the newborn child into a personality – the catalog of programmed and predictable responses to the environment that make each of us who we, and the world, think we are. In the beginning, the newborn child knows nothing of the world, but, as a sole function of its programming, will adapt to its environment so as to maximize the potential for survival and fitness. At its most basic level, the personality develops in response to positive and negative information. As a result, the child may develop one way or another based on what a society seems to reward and fear. If a child experiences rejection early on, he or she may develop an anxious or depressed personality. As such, a society self-perpetuates its own culture – the environment as a society, formed by the people within it, drives the development of future adults that will enter that society and influence the development of future generations. If we are to achieve our potential of transcending the imperfections of our biology, we must first create an environment that fosters the development of children inclined toward transcendence – a culture in which we teach children that wealth does not depend on how we indulge the body, but on how well we indulge the soul. If we each begin to actively promote such an environment – to our best ability, as beings that have been fed on material fetishism – then future generations will continue that on unconsciously more and more as each generation passes.

Such an idea has somewhat disappointing implications. Namely, that it is likely that you who are reading this, and myself, will not have the fortune of living in a human society that has transcended its current imperfections. We, as we exist at this moment, are not the chosen ones. It is entirely possible, even, that human beings are not the chosen lifeform. We may fail to transcend altogether, forcing life take on a new form in which to attempt to achieve transcendence. We often assume that we are the pinnacles of biological and social evolution: that our bodies, minds, and societies will never – can never – be any better than they are at this very moment. Such a belief is almost certainly incorrect. The history of life on Earth is an eons-long flux through countless forms and interactions, none of which has remained the same for long. I hope that life – DNA – can transcend the limits of biology in our human bodies. In some very few individuals, I believe it has. However, if we continue our refusal to cast off these bodies, choose not to reach for the heavens in an attempt to transcend the drives of our evolutionary ancestors, life will find a new, as yet unimagined body, in which to achieve transcendence. If we are indeed to be the chosen ones, to transcend the demands of our bodies and interact with other lifeforms through love instead of reflex – or rather when love becomes the reflex – we must imagine ourselves as being better than we are now. We must allow ourselves to be better than we are. We must demand that we are better. Such a demand does not require turning our back on the physical world or our bodies, but abandoning as much as we can of our instinctual drives so that we may interact with the physical world in a new and better way. Once evolution lifted life from crawling around on its belly, to walking upright. We must lift ourselves off of our spiritual belly and walk upright.

Dr. Kevorkian Died Today

2011-06-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kevorkian died of natural causes today. Why he denied the world the poetry of using his suicide machine on himself, I'll never understand. Either way, as his body is committed to the Earth, as his soul has been to the great beyond, I hope that his legacy will be appreciated.

The famed Dr. Kevorkian had a wild influence on me. When he went to prison in 1997, I was only eleven years old. In the media, he was vilified, lampooned, and written off. But I remember wondering to myself what was so bad about this guy who helped people shuffle off their mortal coils with their dignity in tow. And it was the provocation of thought that I think we should remember Dr. Kevorkian by, because I don't think that you can really understand your life without reconciling with your inevitable death.

We are hesitant to even acknowledge that cliff hanging over the abyss that seems to lie at the end of all thought experiments and all life. For certain, we are programmed to avoid death. Evolution of life on Earth is predicated upon avoiding termination. Yet, that evolution that has manifested humanity on Earth, that has bestowed upon us such great power and great beauty, seems to have cursed us with minds too big for our bodies. These immeasurably beautiful and complex and creative minds, with the capacity to imagine worlds and ideas in ways that seem to transcend space and time, are trapped in clumsy, ephemeral, weak bodies that seem to only want to fuck, fight, and feed. The rest of life on earth is perfectly satisfied with that imperative, and understands death as little more than the end of all of that glorious debauchery. But when we look over that cliff into the abyss, we are compelled to wonder to ourselves why we should even bother with life. And isn't that the most important question of all? For if we go on living without addressing that question, our hearts aren't really in the game. We're just going through the motions, and life becomes merely the business of keeping yourself busy; the occupation of keeping yourself occupied.

Having stared long and hard into that abyss, I have my own understandings about what the point is of turning around from the cliff knowing full well that the conveyor belt will someday hurl helplessly me over it. But those are my ideas, my fairy tales, and they aren't for you. There is no substitute for standing over that cliff yourself. People will try to tell you what the point of living is. And somebody probably told them. They'll say it in short aphorisms or slogans. They'll tell you what it all boils down to, or what it's all about. But you have to walk into that haunted house yourself if you're going form any opinion on it.

So today, with Dr. Kevorkian dead, I implore you to find the time to walk out to that cliff. Take a seat. Stay there for a day, a week, a year -- stay there until you find your reason for walking back to the hum of life.

Matt Young: doctoral candidate

2011-03-24T09:41:00.001-07:00

Here's what the National Institue for Mental Health wants to know about me to keep funding my graduate work.

The past year of Matt Young’s graduate work has largely focused on research. In May of 2010, he completed the last of his required coursework, and successfully passed his candidacy exam. Since defending his research plan, Matt has made significant progress on his first of three specific aims. The research he has completed over the past year will culminate in a figure in a manuscript on which he will be the second author. With his first specific aim coming to a conclusion, Matt has begun progressing on his second and third specific aims this Spring. His progress thus far, and his research plans moving forward, will be presented to his thesis committee in the first week of April.

While completing coursework freed up a significant amount of time to focus on research, several other commitments quickly took its place. In the Fall of 2010, he served as a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Neuroscience course, where his responsibilities included attending three lectures a week, leading a recitation once a week, writing exam questions, and grading exams/quizzes/homework. Additionally, he took it upon himself to make extra efforts to work with students on an individual basis to maximize their success in making use of the course information and applying that to graded evaluations. He found working as a teaching assistant “tremendously valuable, albeit exhausting.”

In addition to research in the lab and working as a teaching assistant, he has made an effort to forward his knowledge of current research in neuroscience by attending a number of seminars each week. In addition to a variety of seminars around campus, he routinely attends the weekly Mahoney Institute for Neurological Sciences seminar series, and monthly meetings of the “Mouse Behavioral Genetics Club” and the Student Neuroethics Discussion Group and Seminar Series.

In addition to listening to other people talk about their research, he made a commitment to seizing opportunities to present his research in the past year. These presentations included a fifteen-minute presentation to students and faculty at the Neuroscience Graduate Group Student Retreat, a twenty-minute presentation at Philadelphia’s inaugural gathering of the international event “Nerd Nite”, and a thirty-minute chalk talk for the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Matt will also present a poster at the coming 2011 Mahoney Institute for Neurological Sciences retreat in April.

Finally, Matt has maintained a commitment to community service by volunteering for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Musician’s on Call program, and by serving on a student panel for Upward Bound high school students. In addition to serving the greater Philadelphia community, he also works with the Mindfulness at Penn group, EE Just Biomedical Society, and the Fontaine Society on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

As a side note, Matt enjoys watching documentaries with a cat resting on his stomach. When not watching documentaries, he spends his evenings playing music, painting, laughing with friends, and getting the shit kicked out of him in jiu jitsu. Ultimately, Matt realizes that he is not just the sum of his activities or memories, likes and dislikes, achievements and failures, but also a much broader consciousness that exists beyond the plane of this percievable reality. In truth, Matt is not all that attached to all of the motions of the biological heap he lives in at this moment, which he and others have agreed to call Matt Young. Matt will find progress and achievement only in the obtainment of perfect equanimity through the understading that peace, love, and beauty reside in all things and all people.

My PI thought it would be wise to leave out that last bit. Hey, everyone has an agenda, and I guess the National Institute for Mental Health, of all organiztions, would be a little turned off by someone who's a bit out of the box.

Emotional Memory

2011-03-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've noticed that certain memories of your's seem to have privilege over others, that, without having made any conscious attempt to stow those memories away, they seem more vivid, more persistant, more readily accessible. In short, they seem more real -- more you. Chances are that these privileged memories are threaded with a ghostly sense of joy, sadness, anger, or fear. It isn't uncommon for us to have a superior memory of emotionally-charged events. In the lab, I study the well-characterized phenomenon in which emotional arousal allows us to remember people, places, and things more keenly. With the recent string of emotionally-charged events going on around the world, I thought it pertinent to address what we understand about how emotion improves memory.

>>>What and Where Is Memory?

In one of his less poetic notions, Oscar Wilde espoused the idea that memory is a diary that we all carry about with us. Yet, memory is far more than just a diary -- it is the moving construct of who we presume to be. Our memories are not merely the stories we've collected in a lifetime, but the patterns of movement that allow us to walk or turn a doorknob, the patterns of a face that allow us to recognize a loved one, the pattern of trial and error that tells us that we like one food but not another, the pattern of timing that tells us that showing up late for work will get us fired. Memory imbues us with an inexorable passion for collecting patterns, and our personal collections -- buried somewhere in the hard folds of our brains -- contribute hugely to our individual behaviors.

As neuroscientists and psychologists, we firmly believe that memories, or at least parts of memories, reside in the brain. We believe this because damaging certain parts of the brain impairs the ability to form new memories and to recall old ones. While this observation suggests that there are portions of the brain required for memory function, it does not mean that those areas are the "memory centers". Instead, it means that they are a key station in the memory pathway through the brain. The truth is that the brain and all of its nerves that extend throughout the body work as a whole organism to create the memory phenomenon.

All phenomena that occur in the brain are merely probabilities. In order for any action or thought to occur, the neurons in the pathway to carry them out must successfully communicate with one another. Some pathways have an incredibly high probability of successfully communicating. For example, the pathways that travel from your motor cortex, through your spinal cord, and into you arm and fingers that allow you to bring food to your mouth are very reliable. Even more reliable are the pathways from your brain that control your digestive system. These reliable pathways have had thousands of generations to become refined, or they are developed and refined in the early years of life.

Memory works on the same the same principle of probability. Instead of asking what the probability of being able to move food to your mouth will be, the question is: "What is the probability that a pathway representing a pattern will be activated?"

>>>Forming A Pattern In the Brain

Wiggle your fingers. If you can imagine a pathway that goes from your motor cortex to your hand to make your fingers wiggle, then consider a pathway for memory as one that goes from your brain to an idea or a pattern. The difference is that while you only have two hands and ten fingers, there is an infinite amount of information and patterns in the world to process. For every new idea/pattern, your brain has to form a new pathway of neurons to get there, and it does this on a microscopic physical basis.

To form a new pathway the brain has to do a few things. First, it has to have the neurons to get there. Of course it has this. You have neurons that take in information from the world outside and then turn it into a language that the brain understands. You have neurons that take that information and carry it to the station where the information can be turned into a memory. And you ahve neurons that take that information to other parts of the brain to elicit a thought or behavior.

Second, all of those neuron have to be connected to form a memory pathway. The neurons that take in the information already are connected. If they weren't you wouldn't be able to use that particular sense. And the pathways that take the information to the memory station are already there too. Otherwise, you would never be able to form a memory. And you have the pathways that go to brain regions that elicit a thought or behavior too. Those are all in place, thanks to evolution and normal human development. The place where new pathways are formed are in the memory stations, where the intake is matched up with the output so that it doesn't have to take the long way around. To form a pathway, two neurons have to be connected. This is done through a number of proteins that physically connect the neurons, and increase the probability that a signal from Neuron 1 will be captured and passed on by Neuron 2.

Allowing a signal to pass betwen the two neurons is the third and final step to creating a new pathway. Neuron 1 will release a certain amount of neurotransmitter that can be captured by Neuron 2 and cause it to pass on the signal. Increasing the probabilty of success is pretty simple: increase the amount of neurotransmitter released by Neuron 1 and increase the number of sites that can catch those neurotransmitters on Neuron 2. If this happens, and those changes persist, you have created a memory -- a pathway with a higher probability of firing and putting an idea/pattern into your mind.

>>>Why We Remember Emotional Memories So Well.

Like I mentioned before, there's a lot of information in the environment, and most of it isn't incredibly important to your survival. Heck, most of it isn't important to your happiness. Early in our evolution, the brain developed a trick to deal with all of this useless information: it developed emotion.

In its most basic function, emotion is a signal of significance. It primes us to pay attention to things that are important. Namely, appetitive and aversive cues. Take the classic hot stove example. When you first encounter a glowing hot stove, it means nothing to you -- just another piece of useless information. That is, until you touch it. Suddenly, you're whole body is wrought with distress and your hand is throbbing. This would be called an "aversive cue", and in that moment you've established a new pathway for a pattern: glowing stove = pain. Now, any time you see a glowing stove, the probabilty of successfully firing the pathway for that pattern is hugely increased. And that memory doesn't just last a few days. It lasts a lifetime.

In the early days of the animal kingdom, the stakes were much higher than a hot stove. Predators lurked all about in the tall grass and around the watering holes. If a body was to survive it had to be able to detect threats, and it would use keen senses and strong emotion to remember where the predators lay in hiding. The brain would use norepinephrine.

Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter that is released into the brain during emotional and physical arousal. It is a neurotransmitter that promotes attention and wakefulness, and it also improves the creation of memory pathways. It is believed that at that site of pathway construction in the memory station, norepinephrine does something (no one really knows what) to strengthen the connection between the neurons there -- to increase the probability of that pathway being activated.

Take, for example, the case of mouse. If we expose the mouse to a tone, and then turn the tone off just as we shock the animal, it will form a pathway for a pattern that says: "tone = pain". If give the mouse a very light shock, it remembers that association a little. If we give it a stronger shock, it remembers it better. It is believed that this difference in memory is caused by norepinephrine. There is less emotional arousal caused by the light shock than the strong shock, and therefore more norepinephrine released in response to the strong shock.

In fact, it's been found that giving a subject artificial norepinpehrine actually helps them form stronger memories. Moreover, if you give artificial norepinephrine when before you expose them to an emotional cue, they will remember that cue's association even better.

>>>Conclusion

Memory is a powerful tool for survival, but we should note that it is not the end-all-be-all. Plants lack a nervous system as we know it, yet have survived on this planet longer than any brained organism, and will likely outlast them as well. Plants long ago figured out how to harness the power of the universe (the sun) and the power of the earth (water) to survive and thrive all across the globe, from the mountains down into the ocean.

It should be noted that the whole of a memory rarely resides in the brain. Typically, a pathway must be lit by an external stimulus: a smell, a sound, or a taste that leads us down a path to an idea, pattern, person, or place. I have noticed this since I left Arizona, where I lived for 22 years. There are times that someone will try to reminisce with me about something that I cannot remember at all, or that I hadn't thought of in years. And, yet, when I was home just a few days ago, memories flooded back like crazy. Memory is an incomplete phenomenon that relies in large part on external stimuli.

But sometimes a memory can pop up in our minds seemeingly unprovoked. As I said before, memories are merely probabilities, and, like a twitch, there is always a chance that a pathway will be lit up by chance. Because emotional memories are so well stored with the help of norepinephrine, they are the ones that are most likely to spark by chance. Such is the case in post-traumatic stress disorder, where an emotionally charged memory is so well stored that it intrudes on an individual uncontrollably, bringing to mind a time that one so wishes to forget.

The peculiar phenomenon of memory has fascinated explorers of the human psyche -- from psychologists and neuroscientists to playwrights and philosophers -- for centuries. It is a powerful tool for survival. The power of emotion to strengthen memory can bestow upon us a lifetime of joyful reminiscence or haunting distress. A tricky devil indeed.

Two Epiphanies

2011-03-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Epiphany #1: The inevitability of our disintegration. I have always been a proponent of the idea that we can find harmony with each other and with the Earth, but this recent epiphany has had me down in the dumps for the last couple of weeks. I can't recall what brought this thought about, but it follows a pretty clear line of logic. Before the bang that subsequently engendered the whole of the known universe -- from the biggest stars to tiniest quarks, from the deepest black holes to the highest peaks, from the vapid rocks hurling through space to our very brains and hearts -- there was a tiny, super-dense "marble" within which everything that would come to be was smashed. Inside that tiny marble, with the whole of the universes atoms and waves packed so close together, the universe buzzed about at speeds and temperatures never achieved since. The entire infinite potential of the universe and all of its parts churned and burned with endless fervor. And then there was a bang. It was a bang that set in motion an expansion whose turbulence was only surpassed only by its magnitude, which has since made that expansion seem like a slow a process from our tiny perspective. Ever since that bang, all of the pieces of the universe have been moving apart from that central object of creation that predated it. We can see the separation no better than here on Earth, where one supercontinent ultimately erupted into seven separate continents. Those continents were then divided up further into countries, then states, then cities, and townships, and neighborhoods. Life began as a single strand of DNA, then a single cell, then multiple cells, then large organisms that split into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, genera, and species. And within a particular species, we developed into separate tribes and races and cultures and ideolgies. Today, media and politics and the economy divide us further and further apart from out communitesapart into tinier and tinier individuals. And even in these individual bodies do we spread out physically and psychologically: from a zygote actually living within another being, to an infant in the small world of a family, into an adolescent venturing into society, to a full grown adult in a culture, at which point we spread out and out and out until we become dust. We are separating. It has always been my hope that we could find harmony together, that we could some day find it in ourselves to recognize what makes us all the same: those old times when all of the stardust in the universe sweat it out in a tiny space before the big bang. Yet, it seems phsyically inevitable that we spread apart from on another until we disintegrate. Perhaps there hope is to be found in the infinite number of examples the universe has given us of things coming together. All "things" in the universe are a product of particles coalescing to give them form. However, the one thing that cannot be denied is that our physical bodies -- made up of the original atoms housed within the pre-bang shell -- are cooling. We are losing the heat that once burned within every atom of our being as we move further and further away from that original time. The hope is that as our bodies cool, our souls grow hotter. Epiphany #2: Charlie Sheen is the Manchurian Candidate. The Manchurian Candidate was a book/movie about a man who had been brainwashed to unknowingly become an assassin when given a trigger cue. I believe that Charlie Sheen, and other notable celebrities, have been unknowingly brainwashed by the government in a similar way. In the case of celebrities, however, the trigger does not set them off on an assassination mission, but on a manic distraction campaign. It cannot be a coincidence that when national/international conflict arises, a celebrity seems to come to put on a display so outrageous that it overshadows the conflicts at hand. In this case, I believe that in the midst of oppressive attempts to de-unionize public workers, and the simultaneous uproar overseas, Charlie Sheen picked up a call from an unknown number a couple of weeks ago, queried a cautious 'Hello?', and recieved in response a stern, 'Pineapple'. Upon the click of the phone hanging up on the other end of the line, Mr. Sheen proceeded to make a spectacle of himself all over the news, effectively distracting people from the real issues at hand. So I caution those new to fame out there. Don't walk down any dark alleys alone or get into any suspicious unmarked vans. I believe that someone is coming for you; to take you to a dark and musky subterranean lair where you'll be brainwashed "clockwork orange"-style into a unwitting clown. (note: most of this was a joke).

We're Number Two! ...two?

2011-03-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

In the early 1960s, the car rental business ran on one name: Hertz. Its closest competitor, Avis, could only muster 11% of the market share. In an effort to close the gap, Avis launched a marketing in 1963 saying essentially, "We're number two, so we have to try harder for you than the other guy." Within five years, Avis' market share had more than tripled.

America needs to be more like Avis.

I've been told all my life that America is number one, the greatest country in the world, god's favorite, the envy of all other countries, etc. The validity of such bombastic confidence can be debated on a point-by-point basis. For example, on the one hand, we have the world's mightiest military, but on the other hand, fall short when it comes to educating our children and providing our citizens with health care. I argue that our claims of earthly supremacy, regardless of their truth, have put this country on a path of self-destructive indulgence and complacency.

A smart man once noted that very beautiful women often come up lacking in other valuable human traits -- education, motivation, sense of humor, humility, self-reliance -- because no one has ever critiqued them or asked them to do anything for themselves. Such people avoid rejection and hardship because society has always given them a pass on their foibles or a hand in their efforts because of their looks. In the same way, our blind braggadocio -- based on past achievements in industry, law, and science -- has atrophied the very efforts that made our country such a great one. We are an aging beautiful woman, left with few laurels to lean on as our looks fade.

Having spent so many years in complacency with our own hubris, failing to develop as any organism should, this country become more and more of a husk, filled only with the delusions of a glamourous past. The fact is that we are in almost inexorable debt. The jobs that once made our economy a "land of opportunity" have been outsourced to other countries. Our progressive laws and government that gave equal rights and civil treatment to women and minorities while other countries continued, and some continue, to discriminate and subjugate, is becoming stagnant -- holding fast to silly notions that homosexuals are deviant and shouldn't be allowed to marry. Our education system continues to teach children like we're living in the 1800s, and fewer and fewer efforts are being made to actually educate children to be excellent human beings. NASA just launched its last shuttle. I could go on, but the point is that, though all of our former achievements are diluting, we continue to show up to the bar in our make-up and mini-skirt, rather than try to develop our personality -- our humanity.

Why should we try to progress as individuals and as a larger culture when we continue to be fed those lines about how great we all are, and how America is the best? Why should we try to better when we're already created in god's image? Why should we even assume that we can be anything better when we're already a finished product sitting on the top shelf?

While many empires fell simply because other nations grew to strong too quickly, many former empires self-destructed within from the aging beauty complex. Rome is perhaps the best example. Once an hub for the very greatest in art, culture, philosophy, and law, Rome got complacent, and fell into gluttony, laziness, and entitlement. So too appears our fate as Americans. We continue to get fatter, more consumerist, less self-reliant, less interested in educating our children. And all the while, we are prevented from doing anything about it because we still believe we're the best.

I argue that we agree to be more like Avis: a country that says, "We're not the best, but we're damn well going to try to be." There was a time not too long ago when this was case -- when the American people thought it was great to be American because we worked hard, loved our families, treated our neighbors with respect, and would do whatever it took to one day be the best. Case in point: the space race. The first man in space wasn't an American. He was a Russian: Yuri Gegarin. In fact, most of the early space achievements were captured by the Russians. We were the Avis of space exploration. In true number two fashion, we launched our first man into space one month after the Russians. Only eight years later, we had landed on the moon, and continued to do so for years after.

So encourage you, for the betterment of our country, to put to rest any chest-beating claims, from yourself or others, that we're the best. We have proven time and again that we have more than enough potential to be the best, we just need to be hungry. And to become hungry again, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror -- Cheetos-stained sweatpants and all -- and realize that we've really let ourselves go. We're number two. Now let's get cracking at being number one again.

Stand Up and Support the Teachers!

2011-02-21T10:40:00.000-08:00

An issue's appearance on the surface rarely suffices to capture its importance. Instead it merely provides points of reference -- the lede, the setting, the characters, the hook -- between which the critic must fill in the lines connecting them. By taking a news story for what is provided within its margins, one renders themself a rubber-necker passing by an accident, but not knowing the ramifications of that crash. In Wisconsin, there's a crash that threatens to pollute the balance of power in this country, and I don't think that the average rubber-necker realizes it.

On the surface, the State of Wisconsin trying to cut the pay of teachers and strip the rights of the teacher's union seems to be a budgetary issue. There's a lot of action, and intrigue to this story: democratic legislators fleeing the state to prevent the law's passage, a governor standing with his back to wall, warding off detractors with a knife and calling the legislators cowards, the teachers of Wisconsin staging protests, and supporters of the law being bussed in to counter them. But the issue here is far greater than all that.

Labor unions were desperately fought for during the 20th century, and the government fought violently against them. Now, why would a government fight against unionization of workers? Unions, in particular public unions, take power away from the government. They give the citizens a chance to represent themselves outside of the republic, as a specific entity with its own needs that may or may not be met by the far larger majority of people who are not public servants in this country. Essentially, legislators and voters could not be trusted to care for the best interests of the people devoting their lives to serving them: the fire-fighters, the police officers, the teachers, the construction workers, the public transportation workers. And so those public servants unionized, and, despite the governments best attempts to disband those unions, to strip away their power to defend themselves, they made concessions and agreed to come together to make decisions about how make both sides happy. This was much to the chagrin of many politicians in Washington. To them, this was like a holy war: the government being the all-mighty elected decision-maker, and the unions being sinners who stepped out of line to try to represent themselves.

Unions prevailed, however, and over the last 60 or so years have fought for the rights of public servants, and served as a check against anti-labor decisions made in Washington D.C. And to be certain, the public unions in the United States are far less demanding than those in other countries, where the 30 hour work-week, several more weeks of vacation time, and other benefits not recognized in the US are common. Now, with belts tightening in all 50 states, government has been given a new scheme to dissolve unions: claim that there's not enough money to continue supporting public employees as they have been before.

That's a totally fair argument. Everyone is having to make sacrifices these days. So too should public employees. The issue in Wisconsin, however, is not the wages and benefits given to teachers. It is a common practice under the collective bargaining agreement for public unions and the state government to meet and discuss potential changes in contractual specifics. The REAL issue in Wisconsin is the state legislature's desire to strip the teacher's union of their right to function as a union -- to make it illegal for teachers to unionize. The government is again trying to weaken public labor unions. This is not a stand-alone issue. What happens in Wisconsin will set a precedent for state legislatures around the country to act similarly -- to dissolve public labor unions around the country because "the other guy did it".

What I don't think people understand is how this affects THEM. This is issue applies to us all, whether we are public employees or not; whether we are part of a union or not. It applies to us all because we are a part of the balance of power between the citizens and government that presides over the society. A government requires that the individual give up certain freedoms for the sake of maintaining order and reaping the benefits of a government -- the benefits being the police force and fire department and hospitals that keeps you safe, the roads that let you get around, the teachers that help you educate your children, etc. But dissolving unions is big step toward asking you to give up more and more of your freedoms for the sake of the government. If we want to maintain a quasi-democracy, we have to have checks against the government that makes the laws and the decisions that determine how many freedoms we must give up, and how much we get in return for that.

The average teacher makes between $40,000 and 43,000 to educate our children, to invest their time and energy into building our future. And while Wisconsin is trying to cut the meager wages of those teachers (a cut that the teachers are WILLING to discuss) for the sake of helping the state budget, both the state and federal government have voted for corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Now while this seems like a silly hypocrisy, let's look at the deeper issue here: the widening of the gap between rich and poor, and the disenfranchisement of the middle class. You see, the middle class GREW out of unionization. The industrial revolution brought about the means to establish a middle class, but it was the unions that prevented corporations and the government from keeping those workers poor. The unions allowed the middle class to grow, and empowered mere laborers and public servants. So now they want to take away pay? Fine. They want to take away benefits? Fine. But the act of trying to dissolve union is an attack against the middle class. It is an attack against the common man/woman. It is an attack against the citizen. It is an attempt to widen the gap between those who have much (those getting the tax cuts) and those who have less or little (those having their unions outlawed and their rights taken). It is an attempt to grab more power over this society.

Anyone who supports this idea to disband the teachers union has not thought about the issue enough. And that is exactly what a power-hungry government wants: they don't want you to think. So it's not coincidence that the union that the state of Wisconsin has set its hungry sights on is the TEACHERS' union. The people who educate our children. Because a power-hungry government wants it's people to be stupid, to be easily manipulated, to be easily controlled, to be disempowered. We are being disempowered here, and it is imperative that we as a nation stand up and say, "No. We will not be cattle."

A Tired Exhalation

2011-02-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

As I listen to the words coming from the mouths of reporters and politicians on the news and read them in black and white from the newspaper, as I watch the ping pong match that is government rage on to perpetuity through these media, I get the feeling that something big awaits our unsuspecting country. I sigh a lot these days, a gesture marking the rapidity with which disbelief turns to acceptance. Here are some of the things that have been making me sigh lately.

The contradiction of American hyper-individualism. American culture perhaps cherishes individualism over all other institutions. "The pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is written into our declaration of independence -- a declaration of the independence of our country and ourselves. The Bill of Rights and the economic institution of capitalism later punctuated -- with and exclamation point(!) -- that formative declaration, which ultimately found itself summed up by the single phrase "Freedom." What is freedom in this country but the ability to sustain and exert ones own individuality: the right to own land, to have a job, to pursue our inalienable rights? In this country, anything that challenges someone's individuality -- taxes, restrictive laws, government regulation -- is an attack against one's freedom. For the sake of sustaining one's own freedom -- the institution most cherished by this nation since its very inception -- one often sacrifices the greater community (i.e. the nation itself). In short, our hyper-individualism encourages us to put ourselves before the tribe, to feign sacrifice for the betterment of the nation we so claim to love, and to enslave the whole of the complex system of American civilization with our own love of self.

And for all of our individualism, much of this country suffers from depleted self-reliance. Everything -- our food (prepared and unprepared), our entertainment, our faith, our energy, our homes, the maintenance of our homes, our cars and their maintenance, our transportation -- comes from the teat of modern civilization. Few among us could feed ourselves if there were no supermarket. Few among us can stand to be alone, without taking in information, entertainment, or interaction for any period of wakefulness. Few among us find our faith within ourselves and in each other. Few of us know how to repair our homes and cars. Some of us cannot even rely on themselves to care for their own children. The lack of self-reliance has come to be valued in this culture, considered a symbol of luxury. Those who can afford to slough self-reliance are envied, and those who maintain self-reliance are pitied. Who wants to be a plumber?

How can a culture survive when all the people in it care more about themselves than their community, yet rely heavily on that community for sustenance. One or the other must change. Either we become a frontier nation, where everyone truly is for themselves, or change our frame of mind, and become a nation where we "ask not what our country can do for [us], but what [we] can do for [our] country."

Alternative Energy: congress wants to cut government support of alternative energy ventures. (insert sigh). While alternative energy has become something of a political issue --conservatives (most) insisting on the futility of spending on alternative energy and liberals (most) promoting the idea of finding new ways to sustain ourselves -- I think that it is a national issue that is important to the integrity our country.

To wit, China has long been outpacing us in moving forward on a number of non-oil energy enterprises. It is the world's top producer of wind turbines, the largest manufacturer of solar panels, and is moving forward on cutting edge "clean" ways of using coal and nuclear power. This means a couple of things for China. First, they are investing in the maximization of energy independence, forging a path of self-reliance in a world where oil is becoming more and more expensive. Second, they banking on the idea that other countries will also value alternative energies, but, lacking the infrastructure to provide it to themselves, will opt to buy those technologies from China. China plans to sell us our future.

Yet here in America, where we consume unimaginable amounts of energy every second, our congress wants to cut funding for alternative energy. It's not enough that China owns our debt, but we could be making a decision to give buy back the key to providing households with energy. *sigh*

...I have to get to work now. But more sighs forthcoming....

Touch

2011-02-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

As a unabashed social introvert, physical contact with other humans is something that rarely comes to mind, unless it is accompanied by a pall of anxiety. I call this "the bubble complex", and I wrote about it in a previous blog post . We have an invisible barrier of personal space that grows and shrinks based on the situation, and we have a significant emotional reaction when that barrier is broken. I think that my emotional reaction is a bit on the higher end of the bell curve, and that might explain why I'm so anxious about having my personal space breached. In the past month however, I think I'm beginning to get over this -- at least theoretically.

My New Year's resolutions this time around were centered around the idea of growth. To achieve this end, I decided to commit myself to a few new hobbies, one of which is Jiu Jitsu. This was a really uncharacteristic decision for me, for, unlike the boxing training I did a few years back, Jiu Jitsu is more like wrestling -- an activity I feigned as a high school student because of my well-established issue with physical contact (in particular with sweaty, spandex-clad, boys). Yet, there I stood a month ago, realizing what I had gotten myself into: year-long commitment to entangling myself with sweaty strangers. To say I felt nervous does little justice to the cocktail of discomfort, anxiety, and terror that I felt. But, I breathed, recognized that my emotions were a bit irrational and set to learning the art of rolling around on the ground with someone so as to incapacitate them.

And when I jumped into it without judgement or over-thinking, I discovered a liberation beyond words. For the first time in my life I felt freedom from the anxiety of physically interacting with other human beings (one's with whom I do not share any sort of relationship). I felt happy, even for a couple of hours after I left the gym, and I realized the importance of touch -- even if the point of that touch is to defeat that person.

How often to we come in contact with other human beings each day? Maybe we hug/kiss our significant other, ruffle our kids' hair, shake hands with a new acquaintance. For those without kids or significant others, how often do you come in physical contact with other humans? How often in a non-sexual way?

For myself, the answer was NEVER. But these days, practicing jiu jitsu, teaching and being taught the martial art, I experience and give touch for a couple of hours every week. And I feel less stressed, less distressed, less anxious, and more comfortable with touch in day-to-day life. I think that I'm training my amygdala (the emotional part of the brain) to relax when it comes to personal space, to not fear physical contact for whatever reason I feared it. And I think that if we could all become more comfortable with the touch of other humans, we could remember that we are all human, we are all fragile, and that we need to care for our own physical bodies and so too those of others.

A New Post

2010-10-22T12:40:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone. That's how I've been starting a lot of my e-mail these days, and what busy days they have been. My life as a graduate student has been overcome by two huge time vacuums: learning a new molecular analysis procedure, and working as a teaching assistant. I feel like an undergraduate again -- having to go to a 140-person lecture, fumbling about the lab bench and begging for guidance, and generally feeling somewhat incompetent. It has, in short, been a hell of a couple of months.

The molecular procedure I'm trying to learn is called a "Western Blot", and if you don't know what that is, and want to feel like a scientist, roll your eyes. I've found that this relatively straightforward and ubiquitous procedure has been the bane of many a scientist's existence at least one point in their career. While I have found it to be an arduous and time-consuming procedure, it hasn't been too bad.

In short, a Western Blot is used to quantify how much of a particular protein is in a given amount of tissue. This can be important information if you think that a particular protein is important to some type of change in the function of that tissue. So, if your hypothesis is that a change in the amount of "Protein A" causes the change in the function of the tissue, you would take two groups -- one in which the tissue is unchanged, and another in which the tissue is changed -- and compare the amount of Protein A in each group. In my case, I'm using very small amounts of brain tissue, and investigating the changes that underlie the storage of memories in that tissue. The first course of business, however, is to learn how to do a Western Blot, and then to tailor that procedure to your particular tissue and your particular protein.

The whole process takes several days: you extract the brain, you dissect out the desired tissue, you grind up the tissue in a solution so that all the protein is separated out and free to float around, you measure how much TOTAL protein is floating in that solution (because it will differ from sample to sample because it's damn near impossible to take the exact same amount of tissue from each brain), then separate out all of the different proteins by size (Protein A, B, C, D, ad infinitum), then identify which protein is Protein A, then make Protein A visible, then take a picture, then quantify how much protein is in that picture. The whole process can take as many as six days, and involves a lot of mixing of solutions and other manual labor that can easily be messed up.

But what I have found to be most frustrating, is how difficult it is to get help from certain people in the lab who have done this before. While I have gotten a ton of help from one individual, others have not been so kind. The primary issue, I find, is that there is no discrete protocol in the lab for how to do the procedure. Everyone has their own notes, everyone has their own esoteric protocols, and those can be helpful...if you've ever done the procedure before. So I have taken meticulous steps to write out a "Western Blot for Dummies" protocol for future students in the lab, so that we don't have to keep reinventing the goddamn wheel every time. And, finally, after several weeks of toiling away, I got one to work. Victory.

The other thing I've been spending my time doing is being a teaching assistant. This has entailed going to the 50-minute class three times a week, running a 90-minute recitation/lab with 20 undergraduate students, and writing/grading exams, homeworks, and quizzes. I found this to be a rather exhilarating experience, and I have used my podium during recitation to plant little seed ideas in the young minds of my students in hopes that some day those seeds will pop up as tiny little sprouts.

Aside from starting every recitation with a 5-minute meditation, the seed ideas are all familiar ones from this blog. For example, in learning about the sensory systems, I've stressed that the brain processes environmental information into behaviors (i.e. smell a cookie, then smile), and as such our behaviors are processed by all of the brains that perceive them, which then turn that information into their own behavior. Therefore, we are all connected by the way that we process each other's behavior, and that our own behavior is affected by that. So be nice.

I think that I would like to teach as a career. I recall several professors from my days in college whose seed ideas have had a profound effect on me. The most important things that I learned from college were not lessons about cell biology, or abnormal psychology, or research methods, or alternative medicine. The most important things were the little sidebars that professors would go off on about science, spirituality, history, philosophy, etc. I'd like to influence young minds in the same way. Not to tell people that they should read this, or listen to that, or think this or that, but just to put ideas out there that might re-emerge in the course of a young person's development.

Which brings me to the final point of the post.

I have been reading in the news about the sheer stupefaction at some of the things one Christine O'Donnell has been saying. For example, asking where in the constitution a separation of church and state are mentioned. Ms. O'Donnell's behavior is very reminiscent of that of one Sarah Palin and other arising faces in the political sphere. It seems as though political hopefuls are just getting stupider. But argue that this stupidity is tactical.

Information and media are more accessible now than ever. More people today know the tiny details of national politics than ever before. It has become so accessible that it's damn near impossible NOT to know what is going on. I don't even follow politics, and I know who Christine O'Donnell is. And it is this pervasiveness of media and information on our lives that has made idiocy a weapon.

"Don't think of pink elephants." It's a classic example of the psychology of suggestion. All you have to do is throw it out there. And I think that certain powers have realized that the audience has become so big, and the bullhorn of media so loud, that when you say things, especially stupid things they get out there. And just like pink elephants, and just like seed ideas, if you say it enough times, people will actually start to believe it. With advent of social networking and the increasing speed and span of communication, people who start believing can start organizing, and ideas that were once outrageous develop into interest groups that influence political activity. Essentially, the pool has become so wide, that it has become dangerously shallow, such that even the ideas with the tiniest bit of credibility appear as giant islands sticking out of the water upon which to build ideologies.

Beware the power of suggestion being used through the pervasiveness of the media.

In the future

2010-10-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

Since the first pilgrim set his/her foot on American soil almost four-hundred years ago, with every step of the American pioneers took Westward across this great land, and buttressed by the subsequent immigration of millions of people through Ellis island, the goal of every American person has been that one's children will soar higher, go further, and do so with greater ease, so that their children will live better lives too. Throughout that American history, the measuring stick of success has been education and socioeconomic status. For all of those generations, passing on genes and ideals from parent to child, that measuring stick has been mostly effective. In my own family history, my great-great grandfather was a butcher in Russia, his son immigrated to America where he worked in a repair shop, his daughter went to a trade school and would ultimately own her own business, her children would own their own businesses and serve in congress, and my mother's son (me) will (presumably) obtain recognition as a Ph.D.

However, physical progress is not limitless. At some point, the linear relationship between number of generations and education/socioeconomic status has to reach a ceiling. Not everyone can be a doctor. Not everyone can be a congressperson. Not everyone can be rich or super-educated. Every gene line has a climax, at least for a period of time. As I look around, I see more and more families that have "peaked," in which the children will not go further than their parents, but they will do it with more ease. While increasing ease at reaching a social/educational niche is a tremendous achievement, there has to be something to show for it. To this point, those things have come in the form of college degrees, cars, and televisions, and houses -- possessions. But as more and more people climax, those things aren't going to hold much value. Already, with the advent of credit and leasing and Best Buy and community college and the fact that damn near everyone has a degree, low- and middle-class people can do a pretty good impression of upper class. Consider a middle class family thirty years ago owning a Mercedes. It would not, could not happen.

So what is going to be the new status symbol -- the new thing to achieve in successive generations? I posit that the goal for individuals in the coming generations will not be that their children have more education or a bigger house or a nicer car than they had, but that they became better people. That they made fewer enemies, had more intimate relationships, worked a job that they loved, didn't get divorced, found peace and love and harmony in their lives before they were too old to enjoy it fully.

And those other people, the ones who raised their children to own more and more and more, will be a thing of the past. No longer will the worth of a person be how many people work under them, or know who they are, or how big their house is, or what kind of car they drive. Because in the future, there will be no roads. In the future, we will have pity on people who have nice things, but aren't evolved human beings. In a future where material gain cannot progress from generation to generation, we're going to have to invest in spiritual gain.

Emerging Adults.

2010-08-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

What is "emerging adulthood"? A New York Times article profiles this theoretical stage of development as a period of time between adolescent and adulthood -- typically occurring between 20 and 28 -- which has arisen out of unspecified cultural changes in the past few decades. Essentially, theorize some developmental psychologists, the maturation process into adulthood has begun to lag behind intuited cultural expectations.

As a twenty-four year old, supposedly smack-dab in the middle of my emerging adulthood, I am intrigued by this idea. Moreover, as my mother reports to me about the development of my younger brother (20 years old) and sister (eighteen years old), I am curious what the future holds for coming generations of emerging adults.

At first glance, it's hard not to see the phase of emerging adulthood as an established, albeit somewhat recent phenomenon. In my own cohort, and those preceding and following it, many people either still live at home or are supported in large part, if not completely, by their parents. None of my friends from high school are married. No one I know between the age of 20 and 30 has a child. Yet, even my own parents were married at about this time, and children followed soon after.

Everyone has their own explanations for this seemingly delayed entrance into adulthood. Rather than go into them, here's a quick blurb from the article:

"He says what is happening now is analogous to what happened a century ago, when social and economic changes helped create adolescence — a stage we take for granted but one that had to be recognized by psychologists, accepted by society and accommodated by institutions that served the young. Similar changes at the turn of the 21st century have laid the groundwork for another new stage, Arnett says, between the age of 18 and the late 20s. Among the cultural changes he points to that have led to “emerging adulthood” are the need for more education to survive in an information-based economy; fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling; young people feeling less rush to marry because of the general acceptance of premarital sex, cohabitation and birth control; and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options and their access to assisted reproductive technology if they delay pregnancy beyond their most fertile years."

These are all great explanations for this phase of development, but let's look a little deeper than the fact that there are fewer jobs. What the hell is adulthood anyway? And, moreover, is the current connotation of adulthood really a good one?

From my perspective, the underlying essence of adulthood is independence -- the ability to provide for oneself independently. Only through such self reliance, can one be perceived as an adult. Adulthood requires individualism. Now, individualism is a relatively novel idea in human history. Only since the development of the modern human civilization (i.e. Rome, Greece, China) has adulthood meant moving out of the parents' house and becoming an independent individual. Indigenous peoples long before that had lived with a communal-, rather than ego-, driven consciousness. Adulthood during those early times was not defined by the ability to provide for oneself, but to provide for the family and for the tribe. Families lived in the same place for generations and generations. All actions were done for the greater glory of the tribe, rather than of the individual person. Parent cared for children, children returned the favor, and so on and so forth.

Only recently has this changed. Individualism became about leaving the home, starting one's own family, caring for oneself. And the idea of individualism inherently drives competition between individuals. So drastic did the trend of glorifying the individual get, that people like Charles Darwin left for college at 14 years old.

In our current culture of adolescence and emerging adults, such a departure is inconceivable. Just as human history reveals large-scale changes in consciousness (from tribal to individual), is our current culture suffering the birth pains of a return to those more archaic ways of life? Will our conception of more and more delayed emergence into adulthood ultimately lead to the adoption of a familial and tribal culture in which children never leave the home and raise their own children there as well? And would this be a bad thing?

Recent history has consisted of a conveyer-belt culture, in which young people enter a career and start families early in life. Young people are quickly and coldly pushed from pseudo-adulthood in college into the workforce without ever really developing an emotional body. Perhaps the unemotional conveyer belt culture that has presided over the past few centuries explains the unfeeling ease with which industry giants destroy rainforests and oceans and each other for the sake of power, money, and control. Those people certainly did not attain their status by loafing around in their 20s. And, certainly, were they of the archaic mentality that put the tribe and the planet ahead of individual gain, they could not commit such atrocities.

Perhaps we are observing the neonatal steps back into archaic culture, before sexual freedom was limited by the idea of marriage, before community-based consciousness was usurped by the individual, before the glory of god was condensed into a single human form. Perhaps this individualistic ego-driven culture was merely an artifact of particular environmental changes that required the emergence of the single human. And perhaps many failures of our individualized civilization to play nice with nature, have predicated a termination of that particular experiment. Nature is constantly throwing new things against the wall to see what sticks, and perhaps the individual human culture has not stuck.

Culture will try to prevent that change. It might try to develop social systems for "emerging adults," to coddle them, and aid them back onto the conveyer belt, because that conveyer belt is a part of the current culture. Like all cultural morays, it works to benefit itself. Culture tenaciously fights to maintain its status quo. "Emerging adults," like all paradigm shifts, threaten the status quo. Culture WANTS these kids to languish in community college, to sit on mom and dad's couch, to accumulate debt, to continue to feel alienated. A sense of alienation engenders an attraction for the status quo. Emerging adults need to not feel alienated, but "find the others" and begin to use this period of time to do everything that is counter-cultural: produce works of art, and writing, and philosophy; to plant gardens and utilize public space; to form communities and live outside the confines of culture.

Culture up to this time has said in large part that it is dangerous to leave the workforce and go live on a farm. It has told us that artists make no money, and, therefore, cannot be happy. It has told us that jobs are on the horizon. It has told us that we have a RIGHT to have children. It has told us that marriage is a SACRED institution. These are all cultural illusions for its own sake. These "emerging adults" are not emerging into adulthood. They are the emergence of a new adulthood -- one that returns to us the communal mind that lives in harmony with others and the planet. Those emerging adults (if they get off the damned couch, quit drinking, stop watching the Jersey Shore, quit buying into shitty music and shitty culture) can change things.

A Long Story

2010-08-05T17:21:00.001-07:00

I am a lazy person. Not so lazy that I won't write a novella about existentialism and finding a direction in life, but lazy enough to have had it completed for two years now and not published it. I would, however, like to share that story with the world. So, I'll be posting 7-10 pages of that story, titled "Forty-Thousand People Every Day", each day for you to read at your leisure. I know that reading on a computer screen in short segments isn't the best way to read, but this is what I've got at this time. If you enjoy what you're reading, it is available for the Kindle on Amazon. Let me know if you're interested and I can give you the details. Alternatively, (again, if you enjoy what you read,)I'd be more than willing to print off a copy of the book and send it. I'll start posting science-y stuff again too when interesting things pop up. Peace and more peace.

Forty Thousand People Every Day

This book is dedicated to my friend, Mike C., who went to great lengths to show me that there’s always way more love out there then you think there is.

I’d also like to dedicate this book to my friend Ryan: the Alpert to my (former) Leary. Maybe someday he’ll find the time to read what he inspired.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

I nearly shit a brick when I heard that my friend Sammy had killed himself. My mom nearly had a heart attack when she heard that I had killed my own self. I wonder if it would have been the same had the news been that either Sammy or I had been killed by someone other than ourselves. I think I would have been less astonished had Sammy’s mom told me that he had died in a terrible car accident, or that he was shot trying to be a hero during a bank robbery. Would my mother have been any stronger of heart had she heard that I died in my sleep, or was struck down by lightening? They say you shouldn’t blame the victim. I guess that’s what makes suicide such a hard pill to swallow. The victim and offender are one and the same.

Sammy and I had only ourselves to blame. We made the stupid pact. We were just kids, though. Jaded, frustrated, kids in the new millennium, who had an outlook on life that some people don’t reach even in their final moments. We were teenagers who didn’t care if we died.

I remember reading about this story at the library. Back in the Summer of 1974, Christine Chubbock, a news reporter for a local station in Sarasota, Florida aired her final segment of the Suncoast Digest. She hadn’t been fired, laid off, asked to leave. She just up and quit.

The tape of the footage they were running of the shooting at the “Beef and Bottle” restaurant had jammed, but Christine, a professional who had always dreamed of herself in front of teleprompters and television cameras didn’t miss a beat. She stared back into the camera calmly:

“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the best in blood and guts – and in living color – here’s another first: an attempted suicide.”

At which point, 29 year-old Christine Chubbuck pulled the .38 caliber out from under her desk, placed the barrel behind her right ear, and pulled the trigger. The television screens in a thousand Sarasota households went black.

A few weeks earlier, she had interviewed a police officer for what she had said was a segment about suicide. He’d told her that a bullet behind the ear was the most sure-fire way to do it. Putting the gun barrel in your mouth, he told her, was a mistake. You actually have a better chance of surviving if you do it that way. I wonder, now, whether he was surprised when he heard what had happened. I mean, he practically pulled the trigger.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

My seventh birthday party. That’s was the first time I met Sammy, and the same day we became best friends. It was one of those things that, even at seven years old, you just know. At that age, the few things that you know without your parents telling you are, and remain, perhaps the most meaningful revelations.

Sammy’s family had moved into the house down the street that summer just the week before, and my mother had invited him to my birthday party before they even had their kitchen table moved in. To her, it made sense. Sammy was my age and new to the neighborhood.

I didn’t even want to have that party at all. My old best friend, James, had moved out of the very house that Sammy’s family was moving into. Those fledgling middle-class families are all pretty much the same in suburbia – hermit crabs. One moves out when the family gets too big, and a smaller one, one that looks just like the old one, happily moves right on in. But back then, before the world became routine to me, I could tell the difference.

I hadn’t even met Sammy before he showed up to my party. I remember him standing in the doorway holding a wrapped package that was almost too big for him to wrap his arms around. He had looked frustrated. Peering out from behind my mother’s legs, I was intrigued by the kid standing in front of his mom in the doorway. My intrigue was mostly for the box, but looking back, Sammy was the real point of interest. He seemed too big for his own mother to wrap her arms around him. It wasn’t that Sammy was a big kid. As a matter of fact, he’d always been pretty small. But he was larger than life, you know?

His features were far too sharp for his age. His blonde hair that hung out beneath his backwards Milwaukee Brewers hat wasn’t the thin, practically white, type that kids usually grow out of. It was thick and stringy and dirty blonde. His completely proportional little figure made him seem more like a little man than a little kid.

My mom introduced Sammy. I leered at him, but he leered right back at me, and his dark brown eyes were intimidating. My mom insisted that I show Sammy where the presents were being kept, and I dragged my feet over to the kitchen. He heaved the box, tightly wrapped in blue paper onto the table, and then stood there just looking at me.

“What?” I asked in my seven-year old voice.

“You have to let me play with it,” he said, opening his eyes wide.

“Play with what?”

“What’s in the box.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you,” he whispered deviously.

“What?” I asked, trying to dodge his cockeye.

“But I’ll tell you – if you promise to let me play with it.”

“Okay, I’ll let you play with it. What is it?”

Looking back, I wonder if there’s another seven year old kid on this planet with the gall to stand in the kitchen of your parents’ house bargaining with you to get to play with whatever your present is in the box in exchange for breaking the golden rule of birthday presents.

“Now, you promise? You have to let me play with it if I tell you.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” I shouted, before realizing that I had to keep it down if we were to keep the deal clandestine, “What is it?” I whispered.

Sammy leaned over, got really close to my face, and opened his eyes wide, “It’s a remote control car. I already have one,” he explained, “but it’s old and kind of broken, and my mom won’t buy me new one because she said it would make me ‘a spoiled brat’. So you have to let me play with yours.”

“That’s so cool,” I marveled, eyeing the box.

“Don’t forget. You promised,” he warned.

We hung out together for the rest of my party. I didn’t even know any of those other kids. My mom had invited them, and they were mostly her friends’ kids anyway. Me and Sammy were too busy getting to know each other before we spent the rest of our lives playing with that remote control car.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

It was weird hearing Sammy’s mom’s voice on the other end of the phone line. I hadn’t heard her voice since the night that she caught me and Sammy snagging some Seagram’s from their liquor cabinet. Man, was she pissed. She’d always been really hard on Sammy, expected a lot from him. But Sammy never acted like he minded.

When she called, I had been taking a nap on one of the campus lawns in between classes. I doubt I was the first person that she had told about the tragedy. She never really liked me, even though I was Sammy’s best friend. She thought I was a bad influence, and, as much as it had broken Sammy’s heart, she was thrilled when I decided to go away for college.

She was right though. Me and Sammy encouraged each other, regardless of whether the decision was good, bad, or neutral. Shit, our parents didn’t give us that kind of support.

“Hello,” I croaked. It had already been a long day, and I had two more classes that I really didn’t want to go to, but I figured I’d give it a try. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

It was one of those days that you sort of sleepwalk through anyway. It had been so much like one of those days that I had actually fallen asleep. The sun had warmed the back side of my body, and there was dried grass stuck my front. The midday light stretched my corneas to the point that they felt like they were going to tear open, and my brown irises hurriedly tried to squish closed the portholes that let the light in.

“This is Kris Anderson. Sam’s mother,” I was too out of it to realize that she was sobbing hard. I was more confused as to why Sammy’s mom was calling me, “I got your phone number from your mother. I have some bad news.”

The creakiness in my body quit for a moment, and I got that chilly feeling in my spine that makes your whole torso quiver into a sinking feeling in the heart, “What’s the matter Mrs. Anderson? Why are you crying?”

“Ben,” she was choked up. Couldn’t talk.

“What is it Kris?” My chest was caving in now. “What’s the matter?”

“Ben, it’s Sammy. Sammy’s dead.”

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

I shouldn’t have been surprised. What else but bad news would possess her to look me up out of nowhere, two years removed from being caught red-handed pilfering her whiskey and corrupting her son? Maybe she wasn’t so right about me being a bad influence. Look what happened when I left.

At this point, the brick of shit teetered on the verge of smashing into the seat of my pants. I sat up in the grass and dug the nails on my free hand into the soil. The cold mash caked in underneath them.

“What?” I asked, feeling like I had been caught for something – maybe stealing whiskey – and I was acting like I didn’t know what was going on. “What happened? I mean, how did he do it?”

I already knew he’d killed himself. We’d talked about it a hundred times when we were younger, but I was still surprised, or at least frightened. I mean, I didn’t know he’d actually do it, and I sure as hell didn’t know when.

I could hear Kris Anderson sobbing on the other end of the line. Shit I thought, regretting having asked how he’d done it.

“Never mind. How’s the rest of the family?” Again, stupid question.

Really, what do you say to the grieving mother of your best bud, whose son you had made the agreement with that ended his life? I mean, I knew this was going to happen – unless I killed myself first of course – but I didn’t exactly have a plan set out for when it actually did. It had always been a probability that I never really thought about in my everyday meandering from school to work to home. Even if I did have a plan, I really don’t think it would have made me feel any less freaked out.

“Oh,” I could sense her wiping the tears from her eyes, “they’re doing fine – relatively.”

“Well that’s good. Is there anything I can do? I know I’m kind of far away.”

“No, no, I know that you’re busy. I just wanted to call to let you know about Sammy,” saying his name made the tears flood back to her eyes, and her vocal chords were going out of tune, “and tell you when the funeral is.” She was now in a full fit of weeping and was fighting to dam the salty flood with more words. “I know you’re in L.A. and you probably don’t have too much money, but I thought that you should know. In case you decided you wanted to come.”

I was hesitant now, my head stopped up with a flurry of uncertainty. Sammy and I never talked about having to go to the other’s funeral. That wasn’t part of the deal. We were supposed to do it together.

“Well, I have classes and work, and it is kind of a ways away—“

“That’s what I thought. I just wanted you to know about Sammy.” Still sobbing. Guilt set in quickly.

“No, no. When is it? I’m sure I can make it out for the day. It’s important”

“Okay,” she was drawing the last syllable of every sentence in a chorus, “it’s on Saturdaaaay. In the morniiiiiing.”

“Okay, yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Okaaaaaay.”

Silence. The conversation couldn’t have gotten more awkward, so in a strange way I welcomed the silence as an improvement, but I felt like I had to say something.

“I’m sorry, Kris. Sammy meant a lot to everyone who knew him. He’s my best friend, and I’ll definitely be there.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

“What time is the funeral?”

“Ten.”

“Alright, I’ll be at the house by nine.”

“Okay.”

“Bye Kris. I’ll see you on Saturday. It’ll be okay.” I knew I was lying.

“Okay, bye.”

I put my cell phone down on the grass and stared off into nothing. I don’t know how long I sat there with my mind blank, before I thought about the thing that seemed to have slipped my mind. The thing that got lost between the sobs of Sammy’s distraught mother.

Am I really going to kill myself too? I wondered.

thoughts

2010-07-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hopeful news: they've capped the oil leak, and the results are promising. Let's send some good vibes down there, in hopes that it stays strong. The oil leak has been on my mind a lot lately. It's hard to maintain optimism about humanity when we pile up the embarrassments. In thinking about all those "oopsies" I realized that we are at war. Not in Afghanistan or against drugs or poverty. We're at war with the Earth and nature, and they are trying to KILL us(!). In all seriousness, consider it. I've heard the cliche countless times from the downtrodden and hopeless: "We're a disease, and infection, a parasite on this planet." And while the parallels are clear -- we take, take, take from a living and breathing organism -- I had written of the statement as a dime-store expression of exasperation. However, the fact that this oil leak was so similar to how a leech or a mosquito acts as a parasite on us brought me back to this parasite/germ metaphor for humans. Namely, how a body reacts to such an intrusion or infection: an immune response.

I began to consider that if we really are an infection, the organism that is the Earth/Nature would have to mount an immune response. Take for example peanut allergies. I lived the first 22 years of my life having encountered a peanut allergy one time: in an episode of the beloved "Freaks and Geeks," in which Bill goes into a coma after mistakenly eating a peanut. And in the last couple years, peanuts and peanut butter have actually been banned from many schools. The domesticated/farmed peanut is believed to date back over 7,500 years, and to have begun making its way around the globe via trade hundreds of years ago. So what the hell has happened in the past few years that's making so many people allergic to peanuts? Could it be a counterattack on us in the decades following the industrial revolution? Or how about recent string massive earthquakes and typhoons and hurricanes that decimated highly populated areas around the world?

One might argue that we've brought these attacks on ourselves, that our own actions have propagated consequences in the form of global warming or antibiotic resistance. But, in the same way, a germ brings about our body's immune response. If the bacteria is harmful, the body will destroy it. But, if the bacteria lives inside of us an helps us -- lives with us not against us -- like the bacteria in our intestines that help us digest food, the body doesn't mount a response.

Which brings me to Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan. Why do we so relish in watching people crack? I have certainly gotten great pleasure out hearing Mel humiliate himself and act like a hateful buffoon. But why? I think that deep down we know that our egos and our culture are silly, but, so immersed in them, we are rarely able to step back from ourselves and see. Instead, we stand inside the phone booth, screaming into the telephone about sports, or politics, or being respected, or needing a particular car or watch or house or person. It's damn near impossible to leave our bodies, and watch how silly we look from outside of the glass phone booth. When we see someone crack -- in particular, the people in the most readily viewable and privileged phone booths -- we get a chance to rouse that little itch that quietly tells us, "this is all absurd." Our obsession with possession, with fame, with recognition, with success, with progress, on and on and on. We get to embellish that understanding for a moment.

And poor Lindsay Lohan. How we love to hate this girl. The fact is, she has a serious addiction to escapism, in the form of chemicals (personally, I think a person so in live with chemicals should put down the booze and pain pills, and pick up a handful of the real shit that'll set you free). And how much of that is her fault? When are we going to start holding parents -- all parents -- accountable for being terrible parents, for damaging their children? We should. Because it's those parents that are engendering the most anti-human behavior and rhetoric of all. They are creating more and more people who have not been taught to love themselves or others.

I know in every generation there are those of us who bemoan the state of the world, and think it cruel to bring a helpless life into it. But I believe that if that's how you think, then having children is the greatest thing you could possibly do. We need conscientious, loving people to make more loving children. The awful world that people often allude to needs you to fill it with good people.

The Metaphorical Oil Leak

2010-07-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

A smart man once said: “Intelligence is a grand experiment upon which a great deal has been risked. But if it proves inadequate, nature will cover it over with the same kind of cool impunity with which She covered over the dinosaurs and the trilobites and all those other folks who came before. So what we must do, I think, is see our future in the imagination. Catalyze the imagination. Form symbiotic relationship with the plants, affirm archaic values, and spread the good news that what is out of control, what is in fact dying, is a world that had become too top-heavy with its own hubris. Too bent by its own false value systems and too dehumanized to care about what happened to its own children. So I say good riddance to it. Bring on the archaic revival and let’s create a new world. And that’s it.”

The visceral sadness and insurmountable ache aroused in the hearts of anyone who considers the tragedy of millions of gallons of oil pouring with casual fury into the sea gives me hope for humanity: at least we can all agree about something. By no means am I trying to find a silver lining here. I am hopelessly disgusted and saddened by the reckless abandon with which we again and again attack this planet and the organisms with whom we share it. There is no silver lining here. There is nothing to gain from such a tragedy. And while the suffocating pressure of such a tragedy, and the helplessness in knowing its magnitude, make it painful, we must not allow ourselves to turn away from the feelings it evokes.

Last week, I met in the park with a circle of people to focus energy on healing our waters and each other. As we went around the circle, expressing how the oil leak made us feel, some were angry, vengeful, disgusted, and more than a few were brought to tears. As I watched hot tears well up and spill over the cheeks of those people, I couldn't help but feel like the whole of universe was weeping -- clean, salty water wrung from human eyes in effigy to the spreading sickness in the sea. Those people cried for us all: those of us too weak-hearted to really gaze upon the tragedy and feel the sadness it evokes, those of us looking for someone to blame and someone to punish, those of us, who like the ego, build up walls to protect ourselves from the things that frighten us. Those people channeled the universe. While such a large oil slick may be but an electron to the vast universe, a tiny cog of happenstance that had to occur and actually holds little bearing on the rest of existence, there is a feeling aspect to that cold universe. There is a thread that binds us all in feeling that somehow we have failed.

Our intelligence, our individual egos, and our culture have failed us. They have wrought irreparable havoc in the ocean. Yet I don't think that it is our science or technology that have failed us -- it is our hearts. This disaster is but a macrocosm of a million "oil leaks" that blacken and corrode the hearts of men. All around the globe there is civil war, ethnic cleansing, rape, murder, oppression, manipulation, fear-mongering, power-grabbing, enslavement, deprivation, stolen childhoods, disease propagation, hate, deforestation, air/water pollution, whale/dolphin hunting. These atrocities spill sick bile into the universe and into other people. And here too, our intelligence fails us. For if our intelligence operated even the slightest bit more out of that golden thread that binds us -- the one upon which the Deepwater Horizon leak tugs -- how would we be able to be so cruel to each other and to the planet? How would a business so brashly and irresponsibly construct an underwater oil well? Would we still let progress and profit and power overshadow our humanity?

Yet we turn away from all of those atrocities as well. They hurt too much. They make us sad. They make it hard to make it through the day. But we must allow ourselves to feel those feelings, because we all feel them. In letting that sadness course from the soles of our feet, through our hearts, and out the top of our heads, we feel each other. We join in the project of being.

It may feel like science has failed us. But the way I see it, and what neuroscience and psychology have taught us, brains permit the capacity to feel emotion, and our human brain allow us to communicate with each other in intricate and, with the advent of cellular phones and the internet, nearly telepathic ways. We have learned about the power of emotion: how it drives behavior and gives significance to experience. Emotions like love and sadness and fear can bring us together. And not just humans, but all creatures. Science has shown us through genetics that we are all connected. So the way to heal the world, and to heal each other, is not to build better oil wells, or better assembly lines, or robot housekeepers. The way to heal the world is to live through our shared emotions, love, and awareness; to allow ourselves to feel our feelings and not build walls around ourselves. Only when we are guided by love -- by that golden thread that runs through each of us and through the universe -- will the fruits of our intelligence be revealed to us. And as scientists, let us remember to perform our research with pure hearts and integrity.

Africa and the Love Connection

2010-06-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend has been writing home for the past couple weeks about her experiences working with a humanitarian organization in Kisimu, Kenya (here's a link for a video about what they've been up to). Her descriptions of the poverty and the unbelievable prevalence of HIV/AIDS in just that village were to be expected. One's heart reaches out to those people. And in feeling the tremendous sadness of knowing that so many people in the world live in such desperate circumstances, a number of other emotions and thoughts came to mind.

I wondered what it was that made me so sad? What about the disease and hunger evokes such a visceral feeling of angst and disappointment? Perhaps it is egotism -- the idea of how I would feel if I were hungry and disease-ridden. Or, perhaps more accurately, how I would feel if the lifestyle and the things that I am attached to at this moment were taken away from me. While egotism almost certainly has something to do with it, there is also something else. I think that the sadness and disappointment could not exist were it not for the understanding of the tremendous potential that every human being is born with -- the potential to feel and share happiness.

My girlfriend writes to me about the children who want to be held, to feel love, to feel positivity in their lives. Even with their disease and hunger, it's not the food that they need, it is love. She tells me that there isn't much of that there. Parents rarely hug their children. They don't comfort them when a friend or family member dies. They hold their hand over a fire for being bad. They cane them in school. As I watched the video of people building homes, or giving medicine, or teaching arithmetic, or teaching trades, I wondered to myself where the people were teaching love. I understand that it's hard to emphasize love in a culture where survival is a full time job. It's tough to shine positivity upon your children when the scene of your life is so negative. But it's also tough to build homes or get medicine when life is hard, and we emphasize those things in humanitarian work. Perhaps it's the poverty, or the disease, or the fear, or the uncertainty, that make people build up walls around themselves to avoid the painful emotions that will arise when a loved one is sick, hungry, or dying. The really sad part about that is that it doesn't sound like they are born that way, but instead have attachment disorders, fear, and depression trained into them by unfeeling and emotionally handicapped parents and elders. Perhaps more than homes, education, medication, and clothing people need to practice loving kindness, compassion, emotion, and communication. Humanitarians always have to keep in mind the effect of culture, to understand that people have different ways of doing the same thing. But I have to think that love is different. If a child in Africa craves positive touch or a smile or a hug in the same exact goddamned way as a child in the US or India or China or Ecuador, how can it be different? The only difference is in the way that the adults respond

For all of the sadness and disappointment, all of the things that make no sense where you are, all of the quick fixes and idealistic solutions to the myriad hardships suffered by our fellow humans, I think that it emphasizes what a privilege it is to be a human being. The disappointment develops only with the understanding that each of us has so much goddamned potential. And when I hear that these children in Kisimu crave love and positivity in what sounds like a downtrodden and loveless environment, it makes me think that that potential is not in building skyscrapers, or driving fast, or understanding what makes a rainbow. Our potential, our incredible human potential, is to give that love, is to look into each and every face -- whether it is young, old, white, black, brown, dirty, clean, disfigured, sad, angry, happy, whatever -- and see that we need look no further than each other to understand our "purpose" in this world. Because the world can squeeze your heart until you feel its walls pressing together and make you want to jump out of your skin and disappear. The only thing that keeps us here is each other.

Back to Blogging

2010-06-14T13:37:00.001-07:00

Greetings, world. It's June 14th. My extended absence from blogging has come at the hands of my candidacy exam. As of May 27th, I am now officially a doctoral student. This means that if I were to quit graduate school today, I'd leave with a M.S. in Neuroscience and an $8,000 loan to pay off. I think I'll stay.

But my commitment to completing my doctorate was made weeks before it was actually a reasonable idea. In a moment of reflection, looking through a glazed kaleidescope across one of the campus lawns, I tugged a bit at the skin of my situation to see if it was really real. And while my life as a graduate student indeed existed -- evidenced by my impending candidacy exam, and a slew of final exams from classes -- it seemed like something of a dream. It was the type of dream in which one plays along with even the most outrageous characteristics, despite the itchy notion that none of it is real. I realized that in playing those games, I had made myself uncomfortable, had forgotten myself, and forgotten to live my life as it is -- in this moment, in the place. Up until that point on the grass, sitting beneath a curmudgeonly old and twisted oak, I had lived with the primary directive of getting out of graduate school as quickly as possible, and by running toward a carrot I could only imagine, I had lost my grasp of each passing moment. I turned my gaze toward the present, and in it saw the freedom, the beauty, the wonder of a graduate student's life -- getting paid meager sums to think and dream, tinker and scheme. And while administrators and faculty and review boards wish us all to spend every waking moment in the laboratory, when I think of my ideal graduate student, he/she spends a couple hours a day reading a book, catching a nap, sitting under a tree and thinking about the mind and the brain, meditating, creating art, communicating with the world. These things are all feasible for a graduate student. So in that moment, I committed to graduate school. To become a doctor of the philosophy of neuroscience.

Science stories to come...

Also, you can follow me on twitter @ iammattyoung1

Front Page of the New York Times (4/12/10)

2010-04-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

During my tenure at Arizona State University, I wrote three different papers that I was really proud of. The first, during my sophomore year, was a personal narrative for a creative writing class that I titled "Opposite Sides of Continuity". The second paper, I wrote for a Cell Biology class during my junior year about the biological basis of Shamanic medicine. Lastly, also during my junior year, I wrote a paper titled "Psychedelic Psychotherapy" for my Abnormal Psychology class. So I am delighted that this article was featured on the front page of today's New York Times. I think that it is another sign for potential change in our culture.

When psychedelics first became popularized in Western culture in the late fifties, I don't think that we were necessarily ready to handle it. We were still making people use different drinking fountains based on the color of their skin. We hadn't been to the moon yet. People thought rock and roll was the devil's music. Star Wars hadn't come out yet. In sum, our minds were so tiny, so naive, so superstitious, that people were either terrified of the idea of psychedelics or went way overboard with them -- fearing them as false idols, or embracing them as such. The immature initial reaction of psychedelics in Western culture would ultimately pit the soft-minded and fearful against the hard-headed Tim Leary's of the world. Neither were appropriate spokespeople for the movement, and their collision resulted in the locking away of psychedelics. We were not ready, and decades of personal and scientific research were supplanted by propaganda and irresponsibility.

When I think about the benefits of psychedelics medicine (Tierney mentions some of them in his article), I am disappointed by the decades of lost opportunities for education. How might the 20th century have changed had we had those opportunities? How would the pharmaceutical industry operate? How would science be different? How would interpersonal relationships with each other and the environment have been different?

Today's article in the NY Times underscores a growing upswell of people looking for a direction in the virtual reality we've created in our society where television, consumerism, celebrity, pavement, progress, sharp lines and regulations, unabashed hatred and judgment, and unapologetic individualism reign supreme. Who among us has not longed, even if unconsciously, to connect with nature, to love our neighbors and families better, to find self-worth independent of our possessions or jobs, to rediscover a beauty that we once knew to be true in the world, but so often seems hidden? The response to our current state of society, and to those aforementioned inner longings, have been a burgeoning interest in meditation, in yoga, in reiki, in dance, in community building, in hope, in love, and in psychedelics.

The alternate state of consciousness (ASC) is a unitary experience that has been a part of humanity since the shamanic cultures of thousands of years ago. Such alternative state experiences are well noted in the South American hills and forests, in indigenous peoples of Mexico and the United States, in the monks of Asia, in the tribes of Africa, and in the aborginiees of Australia.

In the coming years, we should be optimistic, forthright, and active in reclaiming and rediscovering those human values that have rung true for thousands of years across the globe. But in this renaissance, we must be careful not to make old mistakes. I am fearful that practices like meditation, yoga, psychedelic practice, will become systems. All systems are traps, and those traps soil the spirit of the practice and can turn beauty into disease. Jesus and the Buddha weren't even able to elude poachers who caged their ideas and put them on display for a price in the human circus.

In closing, take note of Tierney's article. Take note of where it was published. Take note of the research and the results, and consider your relationship to altered states of consciousness. Is your perspective the product of fifty years of propaganda that has told us that psychedelics make your brain bleed or cause chromosomal damage? Remember, he who tells the best story wins. Fortunately for us, and Tierney's article is testament, some new and better stories are coming out. Ultimately, you must find out which stories are true for yourself.

Crummy News

2010-04-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

It turns out that I'm not National Science Foundation material. Not even worth honorable mention. I applied for the NSF predoctoral fellowship a few months ago, and heard back today that they regret to inform... So it goes. Here's what they thought of me:

Rating Sheet 1

Overall Assessment of Intellectual Merit: Very Good

Explanation to the applicant:

This is an especially strong application from a very promising young investigator. The intellectual merit of the applicant and his proposed project permeate most sections. His level of productivity is good and is likely to increase exponentially with time. Letters of support clearly indicate this candidate is capable of functioning as an independent (within reason given his experience) researcher.

Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts: Very Good

Explanation to the applicant:

This applicant demonstrates an impressive grasp of what it means to conduct research in a way that will have broad impact. That is, he describes existing and planned strategies for incorporating diverse, underrepresented, and minority groups in his immediate research and throughout his research career. The application would be strengthened by a brief section describing how the proposed research could be translated to have direct benefits to society as a whole.

Rating Sheet 2:

Overall Assessment of Intellectual Merit: Good

Explanation to the applicant:

The applicant presents good academic preparation and a variety of previous research experiences which are strengths of the application. Moreover, the applicant has been active in both publication and presentations. The research plan is logical with a clearly stated hypothesis and reasonable experimental design, however, overall, the proposal is not as strong as the top group of applicants

Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts: Good

Explanation to the applicant:

The applicant demonstrates a good track record in the area of science outreach at the undergraduate and graduate institutions, however the level of participation in these outreach efforts is not on par with that of applicants ranked in the top group.

It's hard not to be sour grapes about the whole thing. Particularly when it it had been repeatedly emphasized to avoid mentioning any translational or clinical applications of one's research, and especially when I have been repeatedly criticized by PIs and administrators for spending too much time doing volunteer work and not enough in the lab. Once again, so it goes. It turns out that I'm not as good a bullshitter as I thought I was -- unable to pull the wool over the eyes of the NSF and convince them I want to dedicate my life to lab science. I tried my best though:

I am optimistic that science will save us. As a genuine humanist, I have always believed in the tremendous potential of humankind, but I didn’t always wager that belief on science. Not so long ago, hungry to heal the world and to understand myself, reality, and our place in the universe, I buried myself in psychoanalytic, philosophical, and spiritual exploration. Back then, I thought of science as a pedantic killer of art, potential, and creativity. While I didn’t have an inspirational high school science teacher that taught me to love science, I did have Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Buckminster Fuller. Those scientists demonstrated for me that science is more than just math and the atomic weight of boron. When practiced correctly, as a holistic endeavor, it is a way of life and understanding that champions imagination, open-mindedness, awareness, and rationalism. Ultimately, I believe that science has the unique potential to teach us, empirically and indisputably, that compassion, consideration, and love are part of a healthy lifestyle and a healthy society. I believe that that is worth working for, worth telling the world about, and why I’m in science and not on a surfboard.

Having for so long been a nonbeliever, it took some time for me to learn to be a scientist. I am eternally grateful to my first scientific mentor, who took me in as a sophomore at the time, little more than a Jungian tire technician who happened to have read a really fascinating book about the brain. Though that book comprised the extent of my knowledge about neuroscience, she never let that excuse my not getting involved in experiments or not showing up on time for lab meeting. She supplemented my curiosity and speculations with the invaluable skills of organizing, planning, and communicating research, and I owe so many of my successes and opportunities in science to her unrelenting support and enthusiasm. When I started in her lab, I never imagined traveling across the country to spend the summer working with a world-renowned scientist or being awarded the honor of Outstanding Student in Biopsychology of all things. By the end of my undergraduate tenure, she had equipped me to perform the research, the writing, and the presentation of the top honors thesis in psychology, and to gain admission to outstanding graduate programs across the country. Now – after working in a number of labs, researching a number of hypotheses, and even being included as an author on a recently accepted paper – I proudly consider myself to be a neuroscientist, complete with interesting questions and the skills to investigate them. In spite of that, I think that there is more to a scientist than his or her abilities in the lab.

I firmly believe that the genuine scientist lives the lifestyle of a holistic scientist, not confining him or herself to the lab, but promoting, by example and outreach, the principle ideals of science for the betterment of society. I have become increasingly compelled throughout my scientific edification to expand the influence of my training into culture at large. To this end, I sought out volunteer opportunities during my undergraduate education to promote in the community the fundamental principles of science that I hold dear. As a peer educator in the Suicide and Depression Prevention Program, I organized the first annual Mental Health Awareness Day, which was inspired in large part by the things I had been learning about stress in the lab at the time. I wanted to help de-stigmatize mental distress among college students, and say, “we all get overwhelmed, and it’s important that we ask for help.” During my senior year I volunteered in an underprivileged school as a teacher’s aide in a seventh grade science class. The enthusiasm of those kids – their hunger for knowledge and understanding in a confusing world – really began to cement my faith in science. As graduation neared, I saw graduate school as providing the opportunity to become a better scientist both in and out of the lab.

Despite the rigors of obtaining a graduate education, the holistic scientific lifestyle remains a priority and a key aspect of my education. At times, it has been exhausting to manage my love of research in the lab and in the literature with my passion for working in the greater community – particularly in a community as rich as Philadelphia – but part of my education has been learning to make it work. An important part of that process has been my commitment to the “Big Brothers, Big Sisters” program. I find myself motivated to work even harder so that I have the time to hang out with my Little Brother, and even bring him into the lab to expose him to the notion of college and of science. I cherish the opportunity to mentor someone – to answer his questions, show him around the lab, to expose his little mind to ideas he might never have imagined, and to watch him grow emotionally and in maturity before my eyes. Living by example is so important for we scientists. One of my favorite days of the month is dragging my guitar to work so that I can go right to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania afterward and play music for people in their rooms. I relish in the look of disbelief on their faces after I sing them a song and, when they ask, tell them that I’m a graduate student in neuroscience. I know in that moment that I’ve opened their mind to the idea that scientists are more than an abstract “They,” and that there’s more to science than lab coats and brushed metal.

I foresee my training in science to lead me to a career in which I am able to advance, in some capacity, scientific open-mindedness, awareness, and rationalism in our society. Science has become so ingrained in our culture that that aspiration could be achieved through a career in laboratory science – unraveling the mysteries of the brain and inner space – or working in government, media, or community organizing. While I admire science journalists, the grassroots innovators driving the Green movement, and teachers, I am inspired by individuals like Oliver Sachs, who can integrate their research in the lab with the community as a whole. I feel that the spirit of the NSF fellowship coincides with my goals and my desire to continue to enrich my training in the style of an integrated holistic scientist. Specifically, the funding and the gravitas included in the fellowship will support my freedom to pursue interests in and out of the lab that might not otherwise be accessible. In this way, my aspirations as scientist may be relieved of some limitations.

I am so interested in how the brain creates our reality. Science not only reveals truths about that process and that reality, it also creates whole new realities within our culture (what was illness before the germ theory of disease?). For a long time we tried to convince our culture with science that everything was separate – quanta, phylum, mind-body – but science has since changed course, proving instead a fundamental unity. Growing up under the influence of my Navajo culture, the idea of unity has always held significance for me. That idea is why I believe science will be our salvation, bringing us together, rather than dividing ourselves. That is why I practice science in the lab with the utmost diligence and pride. That is why I am committed to making myself a visible presence in the community, whether by direct interaction or through the science blog that I started last spring. I believe if I strive enough as a holistic scientist, I can get closer to satiating what got me thinking in the first place: the hunger to heal the world and to understand myself, reality, and our place in the universe.

Ph.Ds, Culture, and Evolution (surprise, surprise)

2010-03-25T11:36:00.001-07:00

It seems like I don't really write about much else than the three topics of the presently titled blogpost, but, dammit, they're the few things that persistently pervade my mind. Currently, I'm elbow deep in writing my preliminary document, which describes the research that I plan to do over the next few years. I've got a new teapot by desk, so between frequent trips to the mens' room, I'm staring blankly at a white computer screen and wondering why I so enjoy pain.

All is not lost though. For the first time in a long time, I've actually got some ideas. Some scientific hypotheses about things related to the brain and the world. And while I'm not currently comfortable sharing them (because I think they are really really good ideas) I can assure that, if I were to continue to a career in science, they will be really very cool experiments.

I've been thinking a lot lately about culture, and I've related it to this animal behavior class that I've been taking. We talk a lot about evolution, selection, speciation, genes, and behavior. The one thing that I've most gleaned from the course is the idea of the "selfish gene". Now, I have a strong distaste for Richard Dawkins. I think that he is pompous, derisive, and a hypocrite. He approaches his theories about how the world works with same gusto and closed-mindedness as any fundamentalist. If one is truly confident in their wisdom, they don't have to go around trying to convince people of it, or tear down their particular beliefs.

Anywho, the idea of the selfish gene is essentially that life and evolution is all about the DNA, and we (the individuals temporarily possessing DNA) are just vehicles or test-tubes to see what works in a constantly changing environment. The whole of evolutionary history exists within our DNA, from the first little squirming bit of life trying to scrape by on a mostly uninhabitable planet, all the way up to us, the very same dividing and multiplying DNA has been changing and learning to make it in the world. The way that it does that is through random recombination of the genes. A gene is simply a piece of DNA that codes for a particular trait or function, and sometimes a number of genes work together to code for larger, more complex functions. For example, genes determine your hair color, but they also determine whether or not you have webbed flesh between your fingers. DNA randomly mixes stuff around from time to time, ends up in an organism, and tests, by trial error, whether the animal (a) survives and (b) has offspring. Sometimes things work out very well for the genes, and so they'll keep being passed on in that new form. Other times, they don't. Which brings me back to the idea of the selfish gene. The genes don't care if you get made fun of in school for having webbed feet. They only care that if there so happened to be a flood during third period, duck boy would survive, and everyone else would die. Then there'd just be duck boys. Essentially, we're all just test tubes for a competition to see which particular organization has the most viable offspring under the particular set of pressures in its environment.

This brings me to culture -- or rather, "selfish culture". Because culture is in many ways similar to the genes. Culture doesn't care about the individual person. It only cares that culture continues to exist, and continues to be passed on from generation to generation. If that means that you have to be drowned because you were born a girl in China, so be it. If it means that you are shunned for being a homosexual or a different color, too bad for you. If it means that you're too short, too tall, too fat, too this, too that, well, you're just not going to get laid. And you won't have more fat children, and you won't mess up the way the culture is working. Culture is self serving, and it does this by making counter-culture a faux-pas, a taboo, a no-no. And though culture changes with time, it maintains this stranglehold on our behavior and identities. Just like the genes, it is a massive library of information that has been compiled, edited, and organized since the first social groups and civilizations arose thousands of years ago, to be a machine that maintains control.

However. We are learning in science, that the genes are necessarily determinist. We are learning that the way that our DNA works actually changes as we develop and experience things in life. We are learning that if we snort cocaine, the way our DNA works changes. If we go on a diet, it changes. If we decide to be a fireman instead of a grocery bagger, our DNA will change. And, presumably, if we are aware of the changes that can occur, we can promote those changes. We can put ourselves in environments that will influence our DNA. In the same way, we have control over our culture. We can make subtle changes in our lives and our social interactions that begin to change the way that culture works. We cannot destroy culture, but we can modify it, put it in perspective, and be aware of the way in which we behave so that we do things that are beneficial and not destructive.

Which brings me finally to evolution. Our consciousness is evolving. The way we interact with each other is changing. And we can already see culture's immune system kicking in. The tea party. Glenn Beck. The Hurt Locker. Easter. All of these things desperately attempting to call us back to what the "real America" is. Don't buy in. Continue to do those things that extract you from that idea. Meditate. Do yoga. Spend time with family outdoors. Say hello to your neighbors. Take a day off work to just relax and enjoy your life. Buy less stuff. Eat less fast food. Grow a garden. Conserve water. These are the things that are going to help us evolve. Culture wants you to stay stagnant. It wants you to believe in it. Because if we don't believe in a culture, it will cease to exist. And if I had to choose parts of culture to go away, it would be entitlement, wastefulness, idolization of property, selfishness, ego, celebrity, information worship, the belief in being right the time, and closed-mindedness.

To end, a poem about our intermittently lovely weather:

Put another coat of paint on the porch,
Bring those rocking chairs out,
Fill your pipe up with the best of your stuff,
'Cause springtime is coming around.

Daffodils stare with amazed widened eyes,
At the ground they just sprung out from,
And night bugs sleep late,
Lying in wait,
For the 7 o'clock setting sun.

Oh please don't rain,
On my sunny day,
Cover my shoes up with mud,
My windows are open,
I ain't gonna close em,
Til' the cold wind of winter comes.

Cool wind is warming like a young girl's heart,
To a boy's persistent advance,
And the birds in their nests,
Snuggle up with their best,
Lady or fella in the world.

Good-bye old coat, dear scarf, and warm hat,
Parting is such a sweet thing,
I'll be back, until then,
Rest well with your friends,
Cause springtime is coming around.

Oh please don't rain,
On my sunny day,
Cover my shoes up with mud,
My windows are open,
I ain't gonna close em,
Til' the cold wind of winter comes.

So goodbye cold winter,
I ain't gonna miss you,
I hope that you never come back,
And if you come knockin,
I'll start a'walking,
Southbound on back to Tempe.

100th Post!

2010-03-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

Well, the blog first began to crawl at the end of November '08, and what a ride it has been. From day-to-day life in the lab, to blogging from a conference, talking about swine flu, and physics, and spirituality, and psychedelics, and mostly complaining -- I thank everyone who has followed this blog, over the last 16 months. I hope that you have found it entertaining, interesting, or worth the five minutes of time killed at work. In commemoration of this 100th post, I'd like to re-visit my first post and mission statement.

I intend for this blog to become a place for people from all backgrounds to read about and discuss the fascinating things going on in the field of neuroscience. The tremendous intricacy and mystery in our wads of white and gray matter provide a playground upon which our minds may run amok. Its ever-changing dynamics interact in synergy with the world around it -- both material and untouchable -- to both bring us together under a canopy of biology and drive us apart through our vain attempts at understanding infinity.

This name and the spirit of this blog derives from a quotation fr0m Aldous Huxley's "the Doors of Perception":

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born — the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

Though many of the posts that I will make on this blog may be derivative of science -- that's where go when I wake up in the morning -- my hope is that a community will form to develop and nurture the "mind at large" in all of its facets -- art, writing, creativity, science, magic. I believe that science is a tremendous springboard from which to jump into worlds that are utterly unscientific. To this effect, I hope that the articles that I write about directions in, and the process of, science inspire people to ask questions, posit outrageous hypotheses, and learn more about what makes them tick. I believe that one of the greatest gifts of neuroscience is the knowledge that we have far more control over our thinking and our behavior than we may believe (i.e. self-awareness, meditation, visualization).

So, in closing, I hope that this blog will become a daily dose of consciousness. Whether you're at school, work, or the library, I hope that this blog will spark curiosity, inspire inquisitiveness, make you marvel at the strange and wonderful things in our heads, and to contribute little bits of your own consciousness to the public. Let us widen our "reducing valve".

Yes, pretty heady stuff. I would like to return a bit to the science and art, and focus a little less on the day-to-day frustrations of science. But today, I'd like to give props to some other blogs and people.

First, the Super Secret Science Club will feature a talk and a music set by NYU's Joe LeDoux, who is a giant in the field of my research. The event is in Brooklyn on Tuesday, March 9th at 8pm. Come check it out if you live in the area. Alternatively, and Philly readers who want to make the journey out there with me are more than welcome.

Second, my roommate Nate is a pretty good artist and graphic designer. Check out his blog where he posts his most recent work and take a look inside the head of an artist.

Third, and repeating from a previous post, check out Camden + Cake, which is trying to begin as a company in the stationery, textile, and graphic design business. These girls are putting a ton of time, effort, and money into this venture. Considering that their learning everything as they go along, they're doing quite well. Show some support.

Once again, thank you to those who have made my life a little part of your life. Everyone's comments have been a blessing, and I hope that the next 100 posts are even better than the last.

Peace and more peace,
S.M.

What to Expect When You're Expecting (a PhD) and !TIME WASTING EXPEDITIONS!

2010-03-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Graduate school is a bit like chasing a carrot hanging from the end of a stick. Only, you can't see the carrot, relegating you to taking everyone's word that there's one out there somewhere.

In his retrospective, "What to Expect When You're Expecting (a PhD)," Dr. Philip Schwarzkroin imparts wisdom gleaned from years of observations and experiences as an academic neuroscience researcher to give young or aspiring scientists some tips and insights about graduate school. It's a neat idea. From my own experience, acculturating to the informal gravity of academic sciences can be a difficult and wholly unintuitive process. In a field where any interpersonal communication not aided by a data-laden 68" x 44" inch color glossy poster or a powerpoint presentation is left to mind-reading, it's a marvel that Schwartzkroin actually pulled off such a feat. I have subsequently been inspired to mention a few things that I would tell people to expect when you're expecting (a PhD).

1. Time and effort will not correlate in a positive linear manner with productivity or success. Sure, you'll get more data and faster results if you work forty hours instead of fifteen, but working long hours does not in any way assure that you will be more productive than if you don't. Many a midnight has been wiled away over a lab bench for little to no added benefit. Save yourself the heartache and set reasonable goals.

2. Though rarely the prom king or sports hero in high school, you will find that a scientist's ego is as big as anyone else's. What separates the prom king from the winner of the science fair is that one cares more about being right than being liked. Intellectual superiority is the primary currency in the sciences. Self-worth is established by gaining the high ground at all costs and in all situations. Just try standing opposite a scientist in the "Mac or PC?" debate, and watch the sparks fly. People will corner you, criticize you, and give you condescending grins throughout. Few demographics like to hear themselves talk more than scientists.

3. Technology will be your best friend, and a source of perpetual frustration and anxiety. Your laptop, flash drive, and PDA will save you incalculable amounts of time and make in-person communication a thing of the past. However, they will tempt you like sirens to time-wasting expeditions, embarrass you in front of your peers before and during presentations by taking a siesta, and do disappearing acts with un-saved documents in progress. Nothing can replace a simple scratch-pad, white board, post-it, or handshake.

4. Weekends and holidays will be little to look forward to. The salad days of Saturdays sitting by the pool or July 4th barbecues will be but pastoral memories. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays science experiments from needing to be done, and unlike for the bold couriers of the US Postal Service, Sundays and national holidays are fair game.

5. Hard work and interesting findings will be their own -- nay, only -- reward. There are few gold stars in science and certainly no performance-based promotions or raises.

I would love it if any other folks in the sciences had their own nuggets of wisdom to impart. I still have much to learn myself, and would humbly appreciate any maxims of what to expect when you're expecting.

Lab Update

2010-02-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a busy few weeks. I think it all started two weeks ago when "recruiting" began for our little neuroscience program here at Penn. Each year, students around the globe begin applying to graduate programs in neuroscience. Most of them, it turns out, go about the opposite way that I did -- applying to far more than four programs, doing it well in advance of the deadlines, and, oh yeah, not applying as a fallback to other things that didn't work out. Those applications having been reviewed, neuroscience departments then set about selecting a number of students they deem worthy of further scrutiny, and also whom they believe are candidates worthy of wooing. As such, the school pays for them to visit the school, including travel expenses, accommodations, and meals.

Those of us well-entrenched in the system are employed as the primary bait for said candidate students. It's our job to make them think that graduate school in our program is the best. This involves lots of hanging out, glad-handing, and drinking.

So, during recruiting weekend (which starts on Wednesday and runs through Saturday) was where the excitement started -- balancing free lunches, with free dinners, and nights out, and classes, and experiments. Since then, it's been busy, busy, busy.

Since tricking hapless students into devoting the better part of their twenties to the thankless life of a graduate student, I've actually been having some success with my experiments. Having put behind me a load of negative findings and attempts to replicate previous results, I'm now on my way to actually doing experiments that are based on my own ideas and that I'm excited to do. In addition, I've taken on a couple of collaborations that promise to be quite fruitful.

While the science is going well, I've had some issues with lab mates who insist of bugging me. Whether it's nagging post-its left on my desk, nagging e-mails in my inbox, hogging all of the lab space and equipment, or just being difficult, I find myself in a coffee-fueled rant mode at least once a day.

Which brings to what else is up: I'm looking for a new therapist. I love therapy. For me, it's the equivalent of going to the gym, or dusting, or eating my vegetables. Since moving to Philly, however, I've had some trouble finding a good therapist. I have a couple appointments this week, and I'm pretty confident that one of these people will be a good fit. I've found it difficult to find a good person to work with. Having gotten my degree in psychology, being in the process of getting my doctorate in neuroscience, dabbled with mind-expanding experiments, read a more than average amount of philosophy, and spending a ton of time in my own head, it's not easy finding someone who can keep up, let alone take me somewhere I haven't been yet.

Currently, I'm feeling my characteristic restlessness: the feeling that I'm done here, not growing, need to run away and live on a farm or the street, need to take advantage of my youth before it's gone. I feel this way roughly every five months. I think it has to do with the generation I grew up in, that encouraged me move forward, get educated, and achieve, achieve, achieve. As a result, I find myself in a Ph.D program, working on a third novel, doing volunteer work, planting an indoor garden, trying to get back into music, and planning a weekly meditation workshop at school. But, still, the open road, the open field, the sun going down on city streets, and the strange smells of places unknown call to me. Do I live in the moment? Or do I run to the moment that calls to me?

For the time being, I'm going to live in the moment. That's where the therapy comes in. I don't think that I'm ready at this point to run away, but I need to get stuff in order so that I can remain happy in this moment while I'm here. Be here now, remember.

Running Cold

2010-02-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a tip: don't go running in sub-freezing temperature without proper attire. I went for a jog this morning in about 24 degree weather wearing a long-sleeve shirt and shorts. Bad idea. I figured that I'd warm up while I ran, and to that effect, I was right. I wasn't cold at all. But my body was angry. My muscles tightened. My head stared hurting. My stomach twisted up. And I couldn't run anymore. Fortunately, I was at the APEX(!) of the loop I planned to run when it hit me. So I had to tough it out for the mile and a half back home. It took a long hot shower and a nap to get back to normal. I'm always afraid of overheating and getting sweaty from wearing too much, but in the future it would be wise to throw on some pants and a hat.

Plug

2010-02-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not talking about the gross little wad of Elmer's glue-like mess that we look for in mouse J-eye-knees to know if they're pregnant. I'm talking about a plug. For a website. Go to it. Cheers.

http://camdenandcake.com/HOME.html

Peace and more peace.

Gift Economy

2010-01-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

When I was about ten years old, my mother taught me that money was a "tacky" gift, and that it was good for to remove the price tag from gifts. The idea, I think, was to dissociate the symbolism or the value of the gift from the money spent on it. In my mother's eyes, it seemed that the fiscal weight of the gift diminished the emotional intention of it. Such is the essential value, in my opinion, of gift economy, or the exchange of services within a community that does not rely on money.

Consider, if you will, your daily interactions over money. Are your interactions with the store clerk, the plumber, the waiter, or the bus driver remotely intimate, or do you let the money do the talking? And at your own job -- how do you approach customers, and how do they approach you? At least in my own life, I find that the vast majority of the contact that I make with people through cash, check, or card is limited to the exchange of money, and restricting to the exchange of humanness. How many of these interactions do we have every day? How does that quantity compare to the number of intimate interactions that we have in the same day? Gift economy circumvents this dilemma by removing the money from the relationship, by taking the tag off of the gift, and replacing it with the intrinsic value of the exchange.

Gift economy requires you to ask yourself, "What are my gifts? What do I have to offer my community?" For myself, I am can sing, make music, cook, garden, lift heavy things, fix stuff around the house, car, and bicycle, I write, I can teach, I can talk, I can listen. It took me a while to really think of the things that I offer my community. Having done that exercise, I feel it tremendously important and overlooked in our society. What do we offer our communities?

And then you ask yourself, what do I need? Personally, I need to borrow a car from time to time, someone to look after my cats when I'm gone, people to play music with, counseling, a space to garden, help designing my living space. Once you've identified your gifts and your needs, the value of the gift economy can be illuminated.

Rather than paying someone to restore your porch or change your oil or loan you car, you find people within your community to offer you these things. And rather than allowing the money to speak for you when the job is done, you have a member of your community working in your yard. You invite them into your home. You offer them a meal. You ask them about their lives. Ultimately, you exchange more than services and currency. You exchange humanity.

Clearly, this is not a system that can stand alone. Money is required to pay for the replacement parts for the car, or the materials for the building project, or the electricity to run the lawn mower. The gift economy is a complement to our current economy. It builds communities and enhances our human interaction with the world.

These initiatives are underway as we speak. They are called "time banks," and they are systems in which the time involved in a service is its currency. The internet has made this type of system a reality. Check out this website and consider joining a time bank in your community.

Right Down the Drain

2010-01-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

It's Monday, and I'm already exhausted. Work has been slow this month. I've been trying to learn how to "genotype" mice in our colony, as it was my duty last week. It is a task that has brought much frustration upon me. Briefly, "genotyping," for our purposes, is a process by which one determines whether an animal has this or that specific gene. In our case, we are concerned with knowing whether or not "phenotypically" identical mice (or identical in physical appearance) have a gene for "dopamine beta hydroxylase" -- the enzyme that makes the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Because we cannot distinguish these animals by sight, we have to get into their DNA and look for our gene of interest.

To get a sample of the animals' DNA, we first take tissue from the animal. This tissue is then broken down by a chemical that destroys all the protein in the tissue, leaving only the DNA. Then we mix up a magic potion that, when added to the remaining tissue sample, will give us an indicator of whether or not the animal's DNA has our gene of interest. This process should take 2-4 hours a day for roughly three days. I've been working on it now for five days.

One particularly frustrating thing has been the difficulty my lab mates have had in explaining how to do it. I admit that it is difficult to explain this stuff to me. I have never done it, and having most of my experience in psychology, not biochemistry, I am essentially a tabula rasa. So most, if not all, of the words, chemicals, and ideas are completely foreign to me.

The height of my frustration came on Thursday. Feeling sick (sore throat, feverish, runny nose) and toiling over my mystery compounds, the room stank of rats. My lab mate had clogged the sink with rat food and feces and began helplessly thrusting at the drain with an old plunger for forty-five minutes. Then came the one-man fire line, moving buckets of the muddy water from one sink to another. This was followed by more plunging, a few fetid rogue splashes on my head, and more water. Throughout this, I worked on, occasionally looking over, bewildered by the rudimentary tactics employed by this future Ph.D.

Finally, after six hours of work, I had finished. However, my lab mate was still fighting with the sink. So, using whatever mental faculties pipetting and mixing had spared, I fashioned a rooter out of a wire hanger, shoved my lab mate aside, and jammed the hanger down the drain. Within seconds, the drain coughed as though it had been resuscitated from drowning, or as if it had cleared a piece of unchewed london broil from its windpipe. For all of the work that I had done that day, all of the effort to genotype some mice for our research, that sound, and the

downward spiraling water that followed it, was the highlight of my day-- nay, my week.

Which reminds me of something I learned in the spin class that I've started. "This is like your life!" shouted the officious little lady through her headpiece microphone like a football coach shouting plays into his quaterback's ear from the sideline, "You have to learn to deal with pain! Only then will you overcome life's obstacles!" And that's true, I think. Sitting in the smelly lab working angrily on something that brings me little to no satisfaction, and perhaps even less gratitude, might make me a better person. However, I think the metaphor that rings more true with me, is sitting on a bike, with twenty other people on bikes, spinning my wheels as fast as I can to some cover song from the cast of "Glee," and going nowhere. That's why spin class makes me laugh as much as I sweat, and why every squeeze of the pipette should make me giggle. As Tom Robbins once wrote: "Ha-ha-ho-ho-hee-hee."

UPDATE (1/25/10; 11:51 am): SUCCESS!!!! The lines that have three bands are animals that have both alleles for the Dbh gene, the ones with only two bands have only one allele. The big line is a "ladder" that is like a measuring stick.

Quick Shots

2010-01-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things that have been on my mind lately:

1. Playoff football. The AZ Cardinals are heading into the second round of the playoffs hoping to come out the other end as one of the two teams playing for the NFC championship, who will ultimately go to the Super Bowl. It's been a great run so far. Saturday. 4:30. Be there.

2. School work. The last few weeks have been devoted to composing a two page document giving a brief synopsis of the research question I hope to address during the next 3-4 years of graduate school, and in 500 words or less, how I intend to do it. These are one's "specific aims". After Friday, I will begin writing the 20 page document that describes exactly how I intend to address the stated research problem, and the present it and defend it in the Summer. Yipee.

3. Human progress. Humanity seems to be the closest thing to perpetual motion that we have on this planet. Every precipice of achievement seems to present another opportunity to ask, "where do we go from here?" Technology is always moving forward. An economy or profit that doesn't grow is a failure. The never ending career path that begins at birth and moves from pre-school, to grade school, to college, to grad school, to job, to promotion, to retirement. Generally, that movement has been a reasonably good thing. We've made conquest across land, space, seas, nature, knowledge, technology, and social institutions. Human history is built upon constant movement upward.

The desire for upward mobility continues to this day, moving us up, and up, and up--toward what? What are we moving up toward? Is it heaven? I suppose at some point, there is such a place. It could be a cloud where god lives, but it could also be a point past space, time, and imagination where perpetual motion and infinite rest and stasis co-exist. While perpetual motion seems to be code for the immortality that mankind has yearned for, stasis and rest are more like joy.

Is it possible that the Tower of Babel o we are building with all of our progress could be relinquished for what we have right here? Resting in the infinite nature of the present moment, and loving both the infinity and the nothing of it.

4. Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert) In the sixties there was a man named Timothy Leary who became famous across the land for his psychedelic obsession and his proclamation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out". Before all that, he was on the faculty of Harvard University as a professor and researcher of psychology. Richard Alpert was the same. As a result of their personal experimentation, and experiments on students, both professors were fired from Harvard. While Leary raged across the country, drug-addled and often imprisoned, spiraling deeper and deeper into the psychedelics, Alpert went to India. He had found some sort of spirituality in the drugs he was taking and wanted to go somewhere where they seemed to be living it. There, he was introduced to the Maharadji, and returned to the U.S. years later as a spiritual guru under the name Ram Dass. I recently heard a little sound clip of Ram Dass speaking to Leary roughly 15 years after they were fired, and here are a few things that he said that really got to me.

"The Great Way is not that difficult for those who have no preferences."

"The ultimate act of creation is at the edge of the form and the formless."

"Play in the world of good and evil without getting caught in righteousness."

In response to Leary talking about the importance of individualism: "I don't want to be not 'you and me,' but I don't want to be only 'you and me'.

In response to Leary mocking him for talking about mooshy gooshy spiritualism: "The fact that you're reacting to those words or semantic meanings is your problem, your attachment. I use 'god' the way I use it. Why should that upset you? It's none of your business what words I use to talk about the model. They're just scenarios. God is a mystery. It has nintey-nine names. None of which say what it is, but all doors lead to the same place."

5. The earthquake in Haiti. Whatever your beliefs, say a prayer right now for those people who are enduring so much human struggle right now.

Sorry?

2010-01-14T07:51:00.001-08:00

Well, apparently some people see me as an "unapologetic bigot". As if my self-esteem wasn't low enough already. Thanks, "anonymous". Now I have another thing to add to the list of reasons why I think strangers won't like me or have no interest in me.

Despite my admitted low self-esteem, I do have self-respect; enough of which to feel remorse if I've said something that has offended anyone. So if my last post did offend anyone, I apologize. I complain a lot, about a lot of things, oftentimes without any real solution to the problem that I've perceived, and I expect people to inherently take those complaints in the spirit that they're intended: half-baked and reactionary. Does my penchant for often loudly proclaiming my distaste for this or that make me asshole? Probably. But a "bigot"? I think to be a bigot you have to have some semblance of an understanding of truth, and to adhere to it in, nay impinge it upon, the faces of others' beliefs. I don't think that's the person I am. I hope my eyes are not so clouded that I don't see that.

Anywho, what an awesome way to start the day. Thank you "anonymous" for your shrewd assessment of me. I'll be talking to my therapist about this.

Ooooooh Boy

2010-01-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

Well everyone, it's two weeks into the new year and I am fired up. When I graduated from Arizona State University 20 months ago, I was thrilled. I couldn't have been more delighted to be through with that awful monster, so big and filled with numbskulls that couldn't see past its own beer goggles. I held so much resentment for that place, and looked forward to finally going to a place that had its head on straight: the University of Pennsylvania. But after being here for seventeen months, I finally understand why I didn't realize that UPenn was an Ivy League school until months into being here. It doesn't act like one.

The indictment about to follow solely regards the university as an entity. I have no complaints about my department, graduate group, or the people associated with it. On the whole, I have really liked and valued my experience as a graduate student. The impetus for said indictment comes from a year's worth of pent up frustration with the University and the straw that broke the camel's back today.

Let me begin by pointing out that Arizona State University claimed over 51,000 full-time undergraduate and graduate students for the Fall 2008 semester. While the report for UPenn adds up to roughly 12,200 full-time undergraduates and graduate students, they claim about 18,800. So, if them's the rules, ASU has a grand total of 67,000 students. So it should be known that ASU is managing a far larger student body over several different campuses, as opposed to UPenn's single campus and comparatively paltry student body.

Now I don't know who's in charge of making decisions at this school, but I never in all my years at ASU thought that I'd be singing the praises of Michael Crow. I take my hat off to Mr. Crow and apologize for nasty things I said about him. For while Mr. Crow may make unpopular decisions, they are generally seem to be thought out, calculated, and not ridiculous. UPenn seems to make its decisions based on some sort of inferiority complex that causes it to spend its money on gentrification of all sorts (on campus and off) to draw in more students that they hang out to dry. While you may have trouble finding them on the enormous campus, ASU at least spent its money building new research facilities or developing a cutting edge School for Sustainability.

In the past, my complaints have mostly been small. The fact that all students have to pay to use the athletic facility in addition to their tuition. God forbid the scrawny students who need physical exercise should be encouraged to do so. Moreover, despite the exorbitant price of membership, they can't turn the air conditioning on for the basketball courts during the summer, and the place all but closes for the four weeks between the end of December and the middle of January -- as if there aren't people on campus who use the facility and people who need the hours to pay their bills. None of these things were problems at ASU. Neither was trying to get a book at the library. ASU's Hayden Library kept great hours all year long. UPenn's library this time of year is more like a bank. And here's an idea for UPenn: how about not allowing students to keep books for seven months before having to return/renew them, so that we can actually check out a book when we need it.

Anyway, those are pretty petty complaints, but today really pissed me off. It turns out that UPenn does not have an institutional department to aid underrepresented graduate students. Harvard does. Princeton does. Cornell does. ASU does too. Now UPenn will wax on and on about how many minority graduate students it has, but once those people get here, there is little to no effort to retain them or support them in the uphill battle of their career path. Now you say, "Uphill battle? That's so last century." Today, sitting with a group of students, none of us could account for more than three faculty members of color. And to top it off, many students identified those faculty members as not wanting to disclose that information if possible.

As of yet, there is no 'office of diversity' at the University of Pennsylvania. They rely on student organizations to take care of that. Essentially, asking the students to who they've recruited to retain themselves, and don't spend too much doing it. The student groups in charge of retention don't even have an office space to work out of. That's too much to ask. While, the school certainly spares no expense to fly around the country to recruit and hand pick the best and brightest young people of color to put in their brochures, they offer them little assistance at the school itself. So now perhaps you're beginning to get the picture about this school: it's all about the picture. It's about the colored faces in the crowd and the gentrified exterior of the school and surrounding neighborhoods, but the inside is hollow.

So let me give some advice to any parent or future parent who wants little Johnny or Jane to grow up and go to a fancy East coast school. Save your money. Though it was easy to get lost in the often low IQs and massive expanse of ASU, the opportunities were there for anyone who wanted to grab them. The resources were there to help you. And isn't that what education should be about? Finding the resources at your disposal and taking charge of your own education. I know there are lots of people who graduate from ASU with a diploma and no sense between their ears. There are plenty of people who graduate from UPenn or Harvard that are the same way. The people who really benefit from a college education are those interested enough to seek out opportunities, and, frankly, large public schools have more of them as a result of them being large.

Farewell 2009

2009-12-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've made a post here. Trying to squeeze in holidays that I don't observe in between experiments with negative [albeit ACTUAL(!)] results and the approach of playoff football has got me running on all cylinders. But I'll take a quick breather here to follow in the suit of the many media outlets by compiling my own collection of noteworthy stories in 2009.

1) The US inaugurated its first black president, and then quickly went back to what they were doing.

"Yes we did!" was the rallying call for many Americans after George W. Bush shuffled off back to his ranch. But, when the American people realized that an Obama administration would ask them to do more than stand in line and vote -- make sacrifices, to pay more attention to their kids, to turn off the light when they left a room, to pay more taxes, to inflate the tires on their cars, to use public transportation -- they folded their feverishly clapping hands and turned on "Two and a Half Men". And in turn, almost as punishment, the Obama administration put aside the things it had promised: legalization and taxation of marijuana, legalization of gay marriage, the end of American war (see Afghanistan), accountability (see Goldman Sachs, et al). We've shown that we don't want a democracy in this country. Frankly. it's too hard to govern ourselves and make intelligent decisions, so we're happy to let other people do it for us.

2) While the Iranian citizens fought for a toehold on democracy.

It's Iranic (pun obviously intended) that the people that we perceive as terrorists and opponents of freedom are the ones protesting for their own democracy. On the other hand, I suppose that it shows that crime pays, as the lunatic fundamentalist that the majority of the people in Iran think is a lunatic fundamentalist is still running the goddamn country.

3) Showing that crime pays.

Try hard enough and you too might be able to win an election you've lost or get a bonus from companies you've run into the ground. It just does to show that those of us working hard and trying to be good people are suckers.

4) And the criminals are winning.

Because the while Detroit is quickly becoming a destitute ghost-town and the middle class is being priced out of health care and locked out of jobs, the stock market is moving back up. So the people who matter are happy. Hurrah.

5) But nobody wants you to know about it.

Because the newspapers are going the way of the dodo. The innovation that empowered early American people during the 18th century with knowledge about the goings on of the municipality is slipping away for bloggers and CNN.com. Journalists and reporters have no place in a society that doesn't want to read and doesn't want to know. And the powers that be love that. The less you know, the more they can get away with.

So let's drink to 2009. And let's drink to the 2000s. We've at least come a bit of a way from the Y2K scare. Ah, those capricious days when we feared computers, not terrorists. Ten years is a long time. As I recount where I've come from being thirteen, it's as if I've sleepwalked through the decade. So for this new year's resolution, for this new decade resolution -- at the end of which we will all be 10 years older -- let's make a commitment to being aware of ourselves and the world. To read our newspapers, to work for a better community and country, to hold the criminals and litterbugs and inconsiderates and mean-spirited and selfish accountable, and to support our friends across the oceans that want the same freedom to be lazy that we have.

Using Intelligence

2009-12-16T20:08:00.000-08:00

I had a remarkable epiphany yesterday, and it wasn't in the lab. I volunteer at a hospital about once a month, going through the halls and offering to play a little music for people in their rooms. I do the work through a national program called Musicians On Call, and I really like doing it. It's usually about 50-50 in terms of how many people actually agree to hear some music, and those who accept the offer really seem to appreciate it. There are always lots of smiles for the patients, their family and friends, and myself. Yesterday was a particularly good day, and it felt like I was really able to give people something. One man in particular stood out to me. An older man, he lay in his bed alone, attached by tubes to a number of machines, and despite those machines he said he wasn't feeling too well that day. I asked him if he'd like to hear something upbeat or more mellow, and he preferred mellow. So I played a rendition of "Across the Universe" by the Beatles. When I had finished, he was getting steamy in the eyes, and he reached out to me. And in that moment, letting my own emotions have their way with me, I looked at him, looked at the machines, and looked around the room. And I realized that all of those technological innovations keeping him alive couldn't talk to him, or sing him a song, or give him a hug. So I wondered to myself, "what is the spirit of our intelligence and our innovation?"

The universe and nature are terribly cold things. Stars and planets are destroyed, animals eat each other's mothers and children, floods and fires kill so many things in their wake, all without the slightest apology. It all seems so...procedural. And it's not malicious or evil. It's just the way things in this world work. And then there's us. Our "intelligence" and consciousness make us tip-top at the procedure of the game. Many of us have more than enough food to eat, shelter to live in, and safety from nature's harsh grinding. But there's also something else there in our intelligence and consciousness that the rest of the things in the universe and nature seem to lack (although I would never say it's not inherently present in either): love and compassion. Mankind as whole, if not as individuals, has always had a nagging remorse about it's necessary adherence to the rules of the game. We have to eat and we have to be safe from grizzly bears. Native peoples thanked the Earth. Religious people thanked their gods. And we established, where nothing else that we know of has, moral codes and ethics.

Now, despite our achievements as moral beasts, it seems as though, in the course of human existence, we have become distracted by that part of our intelligence that innovates, invents, and makes us good at the game of nature: the cold and procedural part. We want to build things bigger, have more and have it faster, make things easier, live longer lives, and know what makes a rainbow. And what we've gotten from that preoccupation has been a mixed bag. The expansion of communication has allowed middle eastern countries to find a reason to hate us, weapons kill, cars pollute, etc. And on the other hand, e-mail saves trees, cell phones have created a planetary network, irrigation has made more food, and dialysis keeps us alive longer. Our innovative instincts have had collateral effects that actually spread love beyond our neighbors and into the whole planet.

I think that that often incidental effect is because love and compassion are in our DNA. They are a component of who we are as human beings. And this brings me back to the man in the hospital room.

For all of our innovation, technology, and prowess at survival -- though that man was being kept alive longer than he would have a hundred, or even twenty, years ago -- he was alone. And there's no substitute for the loving aspect of our intellect and consciousness. So when we hear people talk about progress and technology and innovation, without talking about love and compassion, we have to understand that they are terribly flawed. I don't know, it just feels like maybe we built the light bulb to see each other better, but instead got hung up trying to see if we could flip the switch and run out of the room before the lights came on.

Graduate School

2009-12-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

Though graduate school for the sciences doesn't really run on a semester system -- working in the lab is a full-time job with no officially alloted vacation time -- the fall 2009 semester is winding down. I am now sixteen months into my graduate school career, which means the classroom aspect of the program is dwindling and the research aspect is growing. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The great thing about this is that I hate having to go to classes, even when I'm interested in the subject-matter. I just hate having to be anywhere. Chances are, if I ever decide to put an end to my high-octane, whirlwind, nonstop exhilarating lifestyle and settle down, that I'll hate having to be at my own wedding. So not having to sit through classes several hours a week, and being liberated of the guilt of not showing up to said classes on a regular basis, is great. However, with the gearing up of lab work comes the stress, constant disappointment, and thankless job of experimental research.

To wit, for the last month I have been trying to run an experiment which has yet to go smoothly enough to even begin collecting data that would either support or weaken my hypothesis. Briefly, in order to do my experiment, a mouse has to learn to associate the sound of a high pitched tone with the experience of being shocked, so that when it hears the tone in the future it anticipates a shock. This, however, is nearly impossible when inexplicable high pitched beeping sounds are coming through the walls from who-the-hell-knows where. And if it's not that, it's something else. Ultimately, much of the day, and much of the week, feels like a colossal waste of time.

Also adding to the worries that come with the end of the semester is what is referred to as the "candidacy exam". This examination, which culminates in an thirty-minute presentation, followed by a subsequent question-and-answer session, occurs in late May/early June. Before that time, one must write a paper in which one 1) develops a novel hypothesis in relation to their research field, 2) decides on some specific goals in the investigation of their hypothesis, 3) defend the hypothesis, 4) defend the feasibility and merit of the goals, 5) give an idea the experiments one would like to carry out over the next three years, 6) defend those experiments, 7) make some predictions about what might happen in those experiments, and 8) consider what might go wrong in the experiments or why they might be open to scrutiny. In writing out this explanation, it actually sounds like a pretty cool process. Frankly, I'm not all that worried about it. But something that has plagued me throughout my life has been stress and anxiety by osmosis. Everyone else who is also going through this process -- as well as the people who have already passed the milestone and professors involved in the process -- is conveying the stressfulness and the difficulty of writing the document and preparing for the examination. And therefore, though I am not inherently worried about being given six freaking months to write a paper and prepare a presentation, I am getting nervous because other people are getting nervous -- doubting myself, worrying, thinking that there must be something wrong with me for not being freaked out. So now I'm also having a personal introspective and social crisis. Awesome.

Such is the life of a graduate student in the sciences. You're just sort of floating around in the ether with out even a false sense of direction and a pocket full of hope. You can't see the carrot at the end of the stick, but you can see the stick, and therefore, though an inherently unscientific inference, you assume that the carrot is out there somewhere, and that when you get it, you'll be happy. I can't say either of those things are true. So I mosey through the day, running my frustrating experiments and trying to come up with ideas about how we remember emotionally charged memories. Free lunch in 23 minutes. Dope.

The McKenna Files

2009-12-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

Terence McKenna was a fellow known mostly for his forays into the jungle to experiment with psychedelic substances. In fact, he became one of the foremost spokespeople for the use of these substances. If you have not heard of him, it's no surprise. Unlike Tim Leary, he didn't speak at college campuses or get thrown in jail or vilified. Rather he quietly wrote a few anthropological books about the South American rainforest, indigenous cultures, metaphysical realities, and aliens. Despite the intrigue of his few written works, I have found him to be a much better orator, and within his speeches is threshed out rather intuitive and subconscious philosophies about our lives as individual and societal creatures. In this blog post, I'd like to give to you a few excerpts from a talk he gave more than a decade ago about science, society, and nature. If you're interested, check out the "psychedelic salon," where you can download many of his talks in podcast format.

“Nature builds on previously established levels of complexity. This is a great general, natural law that your own senses will confirm for you, but has never been allowed into the canon of science.”

I find this to be a very intuitive observation -- essentially a simple explanation of evolution for example. His last statement about the canon of science is funny to me, as I have often marveled at the surprise often found in science when something is 'discovered' about nature that had long been looking it right in the face. I think that science recognizes this simple property of nature, but often fails to see the forest past the trees. In fact, McKenna says at a different time:

“Nothing is unannounced. You have to be really not paying attention to be fully astonished by something unexpected. In fact, it’s a discgrace to be totally astonished, because it means you must probably have not been paying attention to what was going on.”

.............

“We have been told that we are unimportant in the cosmic drama. But we now know from the feedback that we’re getting from the impact of human culture on the earth that we are a major factor shaping the temperatures of the ocean, the composition of the atmosphere, the general speed and complexity of speciation on the planet. So a single species – ourselves – has broken from the ordinary constraints of animal nature and created a new world, an epigenetic world. Meaning a world not based on gene transfer and chemical propagation and preservation of information, but a world based on ideas -- on symbols, on technologies, on tools -- on ideas downloaded out of the human imagination and concretized in three-dimensional space, as choppers, aeropoints, gene sequencers, spacecraft. All of this complexification occurring at a faster and faster rate.”

This is a remarkable, and again intuitive, observation about our relationship with the world. I mean, consider how a child born today will differ from one born fifty years ago -- its upbringing, moral assumptions, understanding of limits of communication or the size of the world. And all those children born today will use that new information, unavailable fifty years ago, to make themselves antiquated -- just as racist grandpa who doesn't know how to use a cell phone antiquated himself by having children who had children. We're essentially like computers, made to become obsolete for the purposes of progress of our society and species.

"Now it’s no coincidence that if you analyze biology – what it is – it’s a kind of conquest of dimensionality. The earliest forms of life were probably slimes of some sort, stabilized on a clay surface: immobile, unable to perceive light, with no sense of time. Literally a fingernail- or a toe-hold on existence. And then if you look at the entire fossil record, what you see is the evolution of sensors – sensory perceptors and organs of locomotion. The perceptors – the eye, the hand – bring into the cognitive field the sense of things at a distance (second dimension), and then language provides models for these things at a distance. Similarly, fins legs, and so forth, means of locomotion carry us through space (third dimension). This is a journey of dimensionality. And simply what animals are that plants are not are lifeforms mobile in a very conscious way in the spatial dimension. This is why from the point of view of evolutionary biologists animals are somehow more advanced than plants. Well, if conquest of dimensionality is the criteria, then notice that we again occupy a special and privileged position in nature. Because we cannot only run with the best of them, see with the best of them, but we can remember and anticipate like crazy. Other animals aren’t doing this. They do not analyze experience and extrapolate it toward the hidden domain of the future. And consciousness is the generalized word that we use for this coordination of complex perception to create a world that draws from the past and builds a model of the future, and then suspends the perceiving organism in this magical moment called the ‘now’, where the past is coordinated for purpose of navigating the future."

“Intelligence is a grand experiment upon which a great deal has been risked. But if it proves inadequate, nature will cover it over with the same kind of cool impunity with which She covered over the dinosaurs and the trilobites and all those other folks who came before. So what we must do, I think, is see our future in the imagination. Catalyze the imagination. Form symbiotic relationship with the plants, affirm archaic values, and spread the good news that what is out of control, what is in fact dying, is a world that had become too top-heavy with its own hubris. Too bent by its own false value systems and too dehumanized to care about what happened to its own children. So I say good riddance to it. Bring on the archaic revival and let’s create a new world. And that’s it.”

What he means by "archaic revival" is the reestablishment of indigenous values such as unity, harmony with nature, and functional community. In our modern world, where we for the first time possess the technologies to apply these values, not to just a small surrounding group, but to the whole world, such values would have a profound effect on this planet and our species. Instead, up to this point, our intelligence and technology have created a system of values and assumptions about the world that are not in line with the reality of the Nature that created us. We are not living in harmony with that reality, and, as history has shown, we are unable to do this, nature will simply continue doing what it's doing, and roll over what is not living in line with it deems suitable. We are not so powerful or privileged as to be impervious to the motions of nature.

“I would like to believe that connectivity is the precondition for love. I’m surprised to keep coming back to this word, because I’m rarely a ‘love-bug’. But understanding is a form of worship I think, and the form of worship that it induces a kind of awe. I’ve talked before about this phrase out of Heidegger: 'Care for the project of being.' He said this is what you’re supposed to be doing. Primarily, this means recognizing there is existence, and then positioning yourself in a stance of relating to it appreciatively. In other words, everybody should pull on their own oar, try to push the canoe forward, to care for the project of being. And the way you know that this is happening is that love becomes manifest. It’s a funny composite of things, considering I’m pretty dark. I’m aware of the vicissitudes of history, like Auschwitz, but my view of the last thousand years is that it’s been pretty progressive. And, yes, we’ve probably killed more people in the 20^th century than in the 10^th, but there was more regret about it. More soul searching afterward. More questioning ‘why did we do that?’ So it’s not to say that the 20^th century is better – it is less brutal. It’s numbers are more impressive. From the Magna Carta on, the entire dialogue of Western civilization has been trying to get the cop, the king, the somebody off the common person’s back, so they could grow their garden and have their pig. And I think there has been real progress with that. Part of what has made progress difficult to discern are burgeoning populations, and then the abusing of ideology so that people are not invited to live simple lives of devotion to their children and their estates. But instead they’re invited to fetishize, consume, believe, join, vote, buy, own, invest. And all of these things bleed energy away and disempower, and make people not fully human, but rather participating cogs in some much larger mechanism that serves its own end. Our humanness is constantly being inroaded.”

I think that this jag is best illustrates when McKenna means about the archaic revival, living those simple lives in devotion to our children and estates. As Voltaire put it at the end of Candide, "to tend our gardens." We live in a world where we are "participating cogs in some much larger mechanism that serves its own end," yet it hasn't always been this way. The archaic revival is a way to reclaim our innate humanness, and to do this we must care for the project of being. And on caring for the project of being...

"...much of what has been said is really saying that the distance between human beings and ecstasy -- God, perfection, perfect love -- is not in the hands of some cult or some messianic program. It’s in nature, and it’s in the human body, and the accessibility of this has always been explicit from the start. It’s about dissolving the ego and getting with this message that is universal in its outline and transcends historical cause and effect. It transcends life and death. In fact, as far as anyone can tell it is the primary value on the page. It sets the arrow of time, it redeems biology from just being as Darwin saw it: ‘red in tooth and claw.' It’s far more than that. It’s an architecture. It’s a plan. It’s an unfolding. And it seems to me that in the universal discourse on these matters, with Western civilization having held more or less together since Greece, we have enough under our belt now to see that this is what its all about. It’s the business of creating beauty as a bridge, as a stepping stone, to creating love, as a stepping stone to redeeming the cost of the march that got us here, which is about a hundred thousand years of habitat destruction and species degradation and beating on your neighbor’s head and all the rest of it."

Oftentimes, when waxing hopefully about a world without hate and violence and the desire for power, people say that these things are in our nature as animals. The way I see it, our animal nature is not an excuse; it is a limit. And as a species, our history has been the composite of going beyond the limits set before us -- crushing notions that the hill is too steep to climb, or that we cannot fly, or that one group of people is inherently less valuable than another. We posses a capacity for love, compassion, and understanding, and we must be implored to use them. Animals also rape, murder, and steal, yet we have made these things social and moral decrements. So too must we rise above our animalism to achieve our potential, to use our technologies not for destruction and separation, but for unity and integration. In many ways, we have taken control of this planet. We influence it largely every day. As such, we possess the ability to infuse the nature of the planet with love and compassion. To rise above the procedural machinations of nature -- the lion that eats the antelope because it has to -- and add to its cold movements a bit of empathy -- ultimately, a love that often seems to be lacking in the hurricanes and famines that nature strikes upon life on this planet. We must strive to be better animals, and care for the project of being.

Swine Flu?

2009-11-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

Has anyone heard of this swine flu (H1N1)? It turns out that the fever I've had for the last four days has been because of it. As such, I have a few recantations to make.

1) Vaccines might not be a government conspiracy.

2) Eating stuff off the ground is not a substitute for vaccines.

3) I am not impervious or invincible.

4) Swine flu is not something only for people in second and third world countries.

For those of you who haven't gotten your vaccine, I'd say get it. I've felt like absolute crap for the last three days and had a fever of 103.7 this morning when I went to the doctor. He gave me a prescription for something called Tamiflu, but said that it doesn't really do much for you if you don't take it within the first couple days of being sick. So when I went to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled and overheard that it would cost $86, I laughed a sick, infected laugh in the pharmacist's face, turned around and left. The doctor's instructions were to isolate myself until my fever is gone for 24 hours. Being in Arizona right now, I've decided to put own spin on "isolation" which has involved sitting by the pool in the sun, eating chocolate, and drinking lots of water. It's a lovely 73 degrees out without a cloud in the sky. Isolate that.

Nassim Haramein: The Black Hole Nature of Reality

2009-11-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I wrote about how Nassim Haramein's investigations of the Unified Field Theory led him to understand the fractal nature of reality. Today, I'm going to use some of the stuff that I explained yesterday, to describe Haramein's theory: that the universe is essentially a black hole.

Haramein begins to explain this theory using a popular analogy for understanding the expanding nature of the universe. In this analogy, gluing pennies (galaxies) to a balloon (space vacuum) and then inflating the balloon is supposed to show that the universe expands but the galaxies stay the same -- in effect, moving the galaxies apart. Here is the cartoon:

Much of study in physics has focused on understanding the expansion of space and the radiation of energy -- the inflating balloon. But Haramein then famously asks, "where's the equation for this guy?" He then adds his own doodling to the cartoon, drawing the trachea and lungs of the man, showing that, in order for the balloon to expand, the man's lungs must contract. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. This deceptively simple observation and question serves as the basis for his understanding of how the universe works -- if the observable universe is expanding, then there must be something that we don't see that is contracting.

Expansion, says Haramein, is the reality that we have been able to measure – the electromagnetic radiation of energy. All particles emit electromagnetic energy, and we are able to see and understand those particles as they relate to the energy they emit within the electromagnetic spectrum. The following figure shows the spectrum of energy released by matter, all of varying wavelengths.

The electromagnetic force, says Haramein, is the expansive force in the universe, and represents the universal fractal (what I wrote about yesterday) moving outward toward infinitely bigger and bigger divisions of space – atoms, coffee mugs, headlights, planets, stars, galaxies.

As in the balloon analogy, in which the expansion of the balloon requires the constriction of the lungs, Haramein points out that there must be an opposing force to the electromagnetic expansion. Something has to constricting inward to support all electromagnetic radiation that we can observe. He describes the contractive force that pulls the universal fractal down and down into infinitely smaller divisions of space as gravitational force. This gravitational force – this contraction of the lungs that expands the balloon – he says resides within the vacuum of space.

Remember that the atom is 99.99999% empty space, and forces within that space hold atoms together. It makes sense then, that the force within that space – within all of space for that matter – isn’t the expansive force, but is actually the contractive force. If the 0.000001% of the atom thatisn’t space is emitting electromagnetic radiation, that energy has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is the space. So, contrary to the logic that space is empty, space is actually filled with energy. And if space comprises 99.99999% of the universe, then the universe is actually held together by the invisible, unmeasured, constrictive force, not the observed expansive force that we assume constitutes reality.

Now if we think about this in terms of the balloon example, the expanding balloon is part of the universe that we can see. It represents electromagnetic energy moving outward. Up until now, that is the type of force and energy that we have focused on and upon which we’ve staked our reality. But from somewhere unseen is the contractive force that we assume is empty. And though we cannot see this force, it is actually what creates our visible universe. The expansive force that represents that universe, on the other hand, is more of a destructive force – explosions, fire, smashing. In this we observe a yin and yang, a creation and destruction, a constriction and expansion.

Which finally brings me to the notion that the universe is actually a black hole. As I said, the observable universe is comprised of explosive and expanding forces. Because energy can be neither created nor destroyed, the universe is infinitely full of expansive energy. If that energy radiates into the vacuum of space, space must be able to accommodate that infinite radiation. Therefore, the constricting force of space that spirals the fractal downward into infinitely smaller divisions must be infinitely large. And since the universe is 99.99999% space, then the universe is actually a black hole that absorbs all of the energy in the universe.

This feedback between emittance/expansion and contraction, says Haramein, is what creates all of the forces in our reality. And, therefore, it is this interplay that creates the ultimate unified theory of reality. In essence, a snake eating it’s own head.

Finally, much of physical investigation has focused on looking at the expansive part of our universe, building bigger and bigger particle accelerators to see the tiniest expansive piece of matter to understand how it expands -- essentially trying to find the smallest dot within the dot. Haramein suggests that rather looking for how small the universe will make something, we should be looking at the force that keeps everything together within the universe – the contractive force conferring singularity. That force is movement inward. And so he purports that rather than looking into the expansive world to understand reality, we should be moving inward through mediation to better understand the essence of our world.

Nassim Haramein: The Fractal Nature of Reality

2009-11-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

A fractal is essentially a geometrical equation that when carried out to infinity, creates repeating patterns at smaller and smaller resolutions out to infinity themselves. What you get is simply a repeating pattern of a pattern. The

most famous example of this phenomenon is the Mandelbrot set, seen as a plotted out diagram here:

In these images, you can see that, despite magnification of the original pattern from 6 to 2000 times, that same pattern continues to appear again and again. Continuing to magnify the image ad nauseum would continue to repeat the pattern infinitely.

Nassim Haramein is a physicist investigating the holy grail of the Unified Field Theory. First theorized almost 200 years ago, it implicates the existence of a single fundamental field that holds together or permeates all forces (i.e. electromagnetic, gravitational) and particles in the universe. One of Haramein’s observations has been the fractal nature of the universe.

Although opposite to this very sentence which ends with a dot, the universe begins with a dot. The dot in space does not exist, because it has no dimensions. It’s kind of a silly concept. I mean, if you say there’s a dot there, how can it not exist? This how I think of it: take pencil or a pen, and hold it to a piece of paper. Now you assume you’ve made a dot, but you can’t really know, because the pen/pencil is covering the dot you assume is there. So, at that moment, the dot doesn’t actually exist. Imagine the same thing happening in the vacuum of space.

Now, imagine that the dot floating in space, invisible, isn’t actually a dot, but has a long straight tail behind it. Now it’s a line, possessing one dimension – length. Now, if you take four lines and connect them, you get a square, giving you an object with two dimensions – length and height. Now if you take six squares and put them together into a cube, you have a three dimensional figure.

But, if the first dot doesn’t exist, then how does the line exist, and how does the square exist, and how does the cube exist? How does anything exist?

According to Haramein, this is just a matter of perspective. What dot are you talking about. Is it the dot in the night sky 430 light-years away that we call the North Star? Or is it the dot of dust floating through the air? Or is it the atom inside the dot of dust? Essentially, says Haramein, all there is is a dot, every point containing the same essential repeating pattern moving toward the infinitely small. It doesn’t matter if it’s the North Star or the speck of dust. Dividing each of those dots enough times gets you to the same place – inifinity. Just like in a fractal, it doesn’t matter how far up or down the equation or image you start doing the dividing. You will still see the same thing again and again in both cases on to infinity. And each of those points is therefore connected to all other points in the pattern.

Now, you might ask how this is possible if both the North Star and the dust speck have finite boundaries to them. Well, try taking the area within those boundaries and dividing it by two repeatedly. You never get to zero because there are infinite iterations within that finite outer boundary that are moving toward an infinitely small lower boundary that never reaches zero. But again the outer boundary is a matter of perspective. Assuming that your outer boundary is the universe, then all things within that universe are connected as divisions of higher divisions and so on.

Haramein has a better way of illustrating this infinitely fractal nature of the universe, moving from infinitely large to infinitely small, that is not conducive to a blog post, so bear with me.

To sort of wrap this up from the theoretical to the physical, let’s look at the atom:

The atom, pictured here with the nucleus (two protons + two neutrons) surrounded by an electron cloud, is 99.99999% space. You might you wonder, if the atoms that make up all matter in the universe is overwhelmingly empty, why you don’t just fall through your chair right now (or why the chair doesn’t fall through you). That’s because atoms are held together by a force within the space between them. You don't fall through the chair because the forces that hold your atoms together are pressing up against the forces holding the chair together.

Now if the atom is 99.99999% space, the universe must also be mostly empty. Therefore the vacuum of space in the universe is actually way of divided into portions by the atom. In the same way, a drum divides silence and time. And if we take the atom, we can watch how it grows bigger and bigger in its divisions of infinite space – from dust, to human, planet, to star, to galaxy -- and we can also watch how it gets smaller, moving toward the infinite lower boundary. These infinite iterations of division of space make our reality an infinite and repeating fractal, and this develops the concept that the space vacuum is actually a structured vacuum.

See for yourself:

And to tie this idea of a conserved and repeating pattern in nature to neuroscience, observe the conservation of form in organisms that lack a nervous system to the divisions that actually create the nervous system:

The Short-Sighted Law Student (a microcosm of society)

2009-11-05T13:36:00.000-08:00

Per request, I shall recount the parable of the short sighted law student...

...and the toe-headed law-student said to his companion, "if we're just animals, then there is no reason to help anyone. If the goal is to continue your genes, then putting yourself on the line is antithetical." Said his companion, shivering at the cold night air, "Yeah that sounds like a good answer." And the two students turned their thoughts to other matters, like football and girls.

Now I wasn't going to bore you with this topic, because I thought it was a little arrogant of me to be so judgmental. But considering the recent headlines about the lengths that people will go (or won't go) for self-preservation, I feel I must.

Earlier this week, a rape occurred. "10 people watched the attack without calling 911, police say."

Now, according to the short-sighted law student's argument, none of the 10 people should be prosecuted -- if we're just animals trying to pass on our genes. But the short-sighted law student doesn't recognize that there examples of "morality" and "self-sacrifice" in nature -- sharing of resources and parenting young that aren't one's own, for example. The more important principle that the law student has overlooked is that living in a group or a community requires a degree of sacrifice if the group is to work. Groups and communities are often adaptive, increasing the probability of survival and mating. Freud understood it and Hobbes understood: you have to give certain things up to reap the benefits of a group.

The benefits are huge. It is not hard to think that at some point, there were particular individuals much stronger and larger than the rest who wrought havoc on all the other individuals: taking their food, their mates, their territory. To defend against these individuals, the little folks made groups to protect themselves. But within these groups, there had to be rules. And anyone who didn't follow these rules was kicked out.

This is an ample metaphor for the news story I mentioned earlier. We live in a society, and there are people who don't want to follow the rules of our society. Some of these people are far more egregious in their non-conformism than others (rapists, violent criminals, etc.). As a society, it is our job to FUCK THESE PEOPLE UP and maintain a working society.

So, it is not evolutionarily beneficial for you to stand and watch while someone rapes, beats, attacks, or accosts someone, because you are allowing the fabric of our naturally selected society to be worn away. You are allowing the thing that has catapulted us to the olympian heights of our evolution to crumble. I hope all onlookers to crimes are prosecuted, because they are also guilty of committing a crime against society by not defending it.

So if, god forbid, you happen to witness a violent crime, do something. Call the police. Shout for help. Get in there and throw a punch, bite, scratch, kick. In doing so, you are protecting the society that protects you from harm and permits you to push your genes on.

I know it might be little cliche at this point, but take a page out of the book of the water buffalo. Oh yeah, and short-sighted law student? Roll that page up, put it your pipe, and smoke it.

And Another Thing...

2009-11-03T12:20:00.001-08:00

Though it inconvenienced me some today, I fully support the Transport Workers Union strike that began this morning in Pennsylvania.

There's this sentiment that we have in this country about working and the French. We are defined by our work -- plumber, banker, scientist, doctor, lawyer, busdriver -- and that's why we average 13 days of paid vacation and the French average 37*. And I think that's also why it's a popular American inside joke to have a distaste for the French and their "laziness" and "bitterness". But the fact is, the real difference between us and the French is that their government and their big business are forced to respect their citizens. There is a fair amount of fear of the people to counterbalance fear of the government. But in this country, our government has no fear of its citizens. We are afraid to strike. We are afraid to protest. We are afraid to exert our will as citizens of a country.

So, yeah, I'm willing to be inconvenienced by this strike. I don't care what the strike is about. The Union could be wrong. I am in support of citizens standing up for themselves when they feel that they deserve something else.

* NOTE: Japan, Korea, Canada, UK, Brazil, Germany, and Italy all average more vacation days than the US.

Evolutionary neuroscience: stories of music, language, and bigger brains

2009-11-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

For my dollar, how our brains and behaviors have evolved is atop the list of the most fascinating directions in neuroscience. Those of us who use animal models do our own version of evolutionary neuroscience every day, but, for the most part, neuroscience tries to understand the brain as it is today without thinking too much about its history. Clearly, that method of study is useful, but looking at our evolutionary history affords us its own unique, often bigger, perspectives. Looking through the lens of evolution requires that we consider the brain not just as a black box, filled with gears and machinery that determine behavior, but as a dynamic and integrated part of the environment -- a heap of cells that, if it is to survive, is at the mercy of the world around it.

The environment wields "selection" like a typhoon, and the only defense is the high ground of adaptability. This allows us to speculate as to what factors have made us who are today, and these speculations make for some of the most riveting stories. I think two of the most fascinating stories come from language and art. Let me don my evolutionary neuroscientist cap:

Long ago, before we mastered the terribly complex orchestration of all the muscles in our lungs, lanryx, jaws, tongues, and faces to make words, early man used art to communicate. While visual art, as we know from anthropological discoveries, was an important feature of early cultures, the primary method of social cohesion was likely music and dance. Drumming to make a single rhythm was one of the first ways for a group of pre-humans to communicate a social structure through sound. As a result, early indigenous peoples had much more of a group perspective than an individual perspective. As language developed, so too did inner talk and the development of a sense of individuality: a sense of "I" and the "other". Consider the difference between communicating group cohesion when everyone is talking at once or when everyone is drumming at once.

So what was the purpose for the evolution of language and the idea of the individual 'I'? Where did that change occur? What changes in the environment precipitated changes in the brain that brought about modern language?

One issue addressed in evolutionary neuroscience are changes in brain size over time, and what those changes mean. Specifically, these researchers like to look at changes in regional brain volume. For example, the human brain is larger that the chimp brain, but this difference is primarily accounted for by increases in more frontal regions of the brain, as opposed to changes in regions important for perception and motor output. Put simply, we don't necessarily perceive things that the chimp doesn't, and we aren't necessarily a great deal more dextrous or mobile. We are, however, able to use those skills in a more complex and adaptable way. For example, a chimp may see all the evidence from a crime, but he won't be able to use that evidence to find the criminal. As such, one explanation for the increase in brain size is increased complexity.

Neurons can be compared well to ants. Ant colonies have a perhaps unsurprisingly complex social system that allows for the coordination of thousands, even millions, of individual entities. However, the individual ant has something like four basic instinctual communication responses to odor cues. Essentially, the individual ant is not very "smart". But on the whole, the ant colony is a remarkably complex organism. In the same way, an individual neuron has a limited number of possible functions, and is quite useless on its own. The ability of billions of neurons in our brains to work together makes us who we are. And you can extrapolate this to human behavior as well. Some argue that an isolated individual has little use for language. For example, there are noted cases of children growing up in isolation lacking communication skills. [I am of the belief that language skills are important independent of other individuals for the purposes of remembering experiences explicitly (i.e. developing a mental procedure for accomplishing a goal)]

Regardless of your opinion about human language skills, it is true that what has made humanity such a marvelous experiment has been the complexity of our cultures and societies. And, if it holds true that the whole society is actually more intelligent/useful than the individual, then therein lies the purpose for the development of music: keeping a cohesive group of individuals is preferable over isolated individuals. Subsequently, just as the environment of culture influences our brains, behavior, and development today -- your nutrition, morals, assumptions, habits, and expectations -- the cultural climate of the early establishment of cohesive groups that work and live together may have required a paradigmatic shift. Namely, the development of language. One of the more fascinating things about evolutionary neuroscience, one of the things that it offers where the rest of neuroscience might not, is opening our minds to where we are headed behaviorally and biologically -- writing future unactualized stories. Those stories are written by looking at how our current environment is changing who we will be a hundred years from now.

BlogPost Impending

2009-11-01T18:11:00.001-08:00

I've been absolutely overrun this last week. I'm applying for a couple of different fellowships, which has entailed an exhumation of "why I love science" and a seemingly impossible amount of self-promotion. I've also been responsible for making sure that our mouse colony keeps making babies. That has been an exhausting and often disgusting responsibility. I'll definitely post a couple things this week. Possible topics:

- Evolutionary neuroscience: stories of music and language, bigger brains, and the short-sighted law student

- How they made Claritin

- Seasons of the Bird Brain

- Psychiatry: the Shawn Bradley of Medicine

Later peeps.

And I hope everyone had a happy halloween.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

2009-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

There's this movie coming out in November called "The Men Who Stare At Goats," which is based on an actual initiative in the between the 1970s and 1990s in which the U.S. Armed Forces tried to develop parapsychological methods of war and interrogation. These initiatives relied on neuroscience research for new ideas and methods, which included, but were not limited to, playing loud music to wear down enemies and telepathic power.

There are a couple of points here that I think are important to consider:

1) Neuroscience research has the potential for great good and great evil. In my opinion, using neuroscience for an advantage in war is a contradiction of science. The spirit of science relies on rationalism, open-mindedness, and awareness. Without adherence to these principles, one cannot be a scientist. The precipitation of war is based on an opposition to these principles, and were these principles enforced, it would be rather difficult indeed to find a good reason for war. Therefore, to allow the use of neuroscience for an advantage in war is not scientific at all. If science were truly being used in war, it would be used as a way to stop the war, not win it.

2) The ideas investigated by the Armed Forces in the aforementioned movie are based on a book called, "The First Earth Battalion," which actually promotes the idea of a peaceful warrior (a "warrior monk") who reconcile wars rather than win them by force. LTC Jim Channon, played by Jeff Bridges in the movie, wrote a handbook about using eastern practices on the battlefield. The Armed Forces' enthusiasm to use the Channon's ideas to make soldiers more deadly rather than in the spirit of Channon's book illustrates the one track mind of our DoD.

3) Read Channon's handbook, or at least peruse it. He talks about things like mediation, hypnotherapy, eco development, and unity. These are principles that are becoming more and more prevalent in our society, rather than in the army. I wonder if it's possible that we are becoming this "First Earth Battalion" without realizing it.

Either way, the movie looks great. But I think it's important to be aware of how principles of neuroscience can be misused by the government and that the best way to end war is not to make better weapons, but to make more compassionate humans.

Today's Report

2009-10-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

So here's a list of the things that I found most interesting: a way to remind myself what I saw and also give everyone else the scoop too.

1) Dopamine firing in the VTA is inhibited during aversive experiences and increased during rewarding experiences. This inhibition was hypothesized to be mediated by the lateral habenula and some other region that now escapes me.

2) Compound conditioning. This is a process whereby you train an animal to associate an unconditioned stimulus (like a shock) with two different conditioned stimuli (i.e. a light and a tone). If you train the animals to both CSs separately, you can extinguish them separately. That is, after training an animal to predict a shock when you turn on a light, if you present the light many times without a shock, it stops predicting. However, it continues to predict a shock when it hears the tone. That seems pretty rational. The interesting thing is that if you train the animal to associate the light being turned on and the tone being played with a shock, they will respond to them independently when you present one or the other, but when you extinguish one of them, they continue to respond to the other. This suggests that there are distinct pathways that encode the light and the sound, but converge on a similar fear memory.

3) Rats can communicate fear or danger through ultrasonic vocalizations. First, you train Rat A to associate a tone and a shock, and you don't train Rat B, but just spook it with a shock. Then you put the two animals in different cages, and play the tone. Rat A will remember the association and freeze because it's afraid of getting shocked. Rat B won't freeze because it never learned to associate the tone with the shock. The tone is still neutral to Rat B. But if you put them in the same cage and play the tone, both animals will exhibit fear behavior. This appears to be because Rat A emits ultrasonic vocalizations from the fear the tone elicits of being shocked. Rat B hears this vocalization, and having been shocked before, retrieves the memory of being afraid. Pretty sweet.

Sea Anemones and Hyena Weiners

2009-10-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

So the highlight of my day was talking to the Blanchards of the University of Hawaii who have done a lion's share animal behavior studies. A number of different behaviors that are used to quantify performance in a behavioral task (i.e. freezing behavior in rodents as a measure of fear) comes from their observations.

Today Caroline Blanchard was presenting a research poster about the evolution of aggressive behaviors. First of all, I was amazed that a researcher of such standing was actually presenting her own material, as I've found it rare in my experience that well-known principle investigators continue to do so. Second, I was equally astounded that her poster was relegated to the area of the, what she called "one off" section of the poster session, where they put the research that doesn't seem to fit in any particular category.

Anywho, I found her little talk very fascinating, beginning with the idea that aggressive behaviors can be tracked down the evolutionary ladder as far as the sea anemone, which interestingly is one of the earliest metazoans to possess a nervous system. What is the explanation for this overlap of the development of a nervous system and aggressive behavior? Did one lead to the other, or did they arise independently? And moreover, as we continue to evolve, does aggression become less important than it was a some millions of years ago?

Who knows? Dr. Blanchard broke down aggression as a necessary consequences of three things: a resource with value, scarcity, and that can be sequesterable. Which makes me wonder, what are the things in our first world country that elicit aggression? Pride? Money? Possessions?

She then went on to discuss a variety of different evolutionary adaptations to aggression, such as a lion's mane, which protects its neck, or our own hair and beards(!). Presumably, the easiest way to kill someone is by an attack at the neck or skull, and she argues that as we became more bipedal, exposing more of our necks and heads, that we required some sort of protection. And a hundred thousand years ago, before Suave or Pantene, our hair was nappy, hard, and, well, helmet-like.

The last thing that kind of fascinated me was the off topic question that led to her mentioning that hyenas are a matriarchal social system in which the females have a pseudo-phallice. A penis-like thing through which they urinate and birth. Who knew?

Society for Neuroscience Convention

2009-10-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

Every year 30,000 nerds descend on some hapless city like ants on an abandoned lollipop to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Over the course of a week scientists from around the globe frolic about -- powered by continental breakfasts and caffeine -- in an thoroughly overwhelming ecstasy of presentations, innovations, and education. As we speak, the official SfN tote-bags and program guides are being prepared, the carpets are being broomed, and the vast exhibition space is being prepped for the thousands of research posters that will be hung up beginning on Friday at the convention center in...Chicago(?!). Apparently, it wasn't cold enough in Washington, D.C. last year.

One would think that intellectuals such as scientists would know better than to schedule an Autumnal convention in the coldest place in the continental United States. Well they don't, and now I have to pack a large bag to fit my parka and my Snuggie. I am, however, looking forward to the conference. Call me a nerd, but something about all that science makes me happy, and it turns out neuroscientists especially know how to have a good time. It's great to be able to meet up with old friends from different labs and spend some time learning about other people's research, rather than just focusing on your own.

I'm also looking forward to the conference because of this:

"Thank you for applying to be an SfN Neuroblogger for Neuroscience 2009. Your blog application was reviewed, and we would like to invite you to be an official Neuroblogger! As we begin to post final URLs of the accepted bloggers, SfN Interactive will be displayed on www.sfn.org/am2009 page and General Attendees drop-down menu. Announcements will also be made on the main SfN home page, Facebook, and next week’s Neuroscience Nexus."

Whoo! Free publicity. I'll be making posts and taking pictures at least once a day with all sorts of interesting nuggets and hilarious descriptions about the conference. So keep checking in beginning Friday October 16th, when the fun, and the freezing, begins.

The Origins of Synapses

2009-10-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

November 24^th will mark the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s seminal work, the Origins of Species, from which the theory of natural selection and evolution spread into the collective unconscious. The origin of consciousness has perplexed and divided humankind for many generations, frustrating scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike. For scientists, who staunchly support the theory of evolution, unraveling this mystery begins with understanding the synapse.

One simple way to understand the synapse is the circuit of neurons that mediate reflexes. A bump on the knee sends a signal to specialized neurons with that can detect the bump and transmit the information to the spine. At the spine, the sensory nerve forms a synapse with another specialized neuron that makes a B-line for the brain. The terminal ending of the sensory neuron has all sorts of specialized proteins to help release neurotransmitters. The receiving end of the spinal neuron has its own set of proteins for receiving the signal and propagating it to the brain.

The synapse allows brain cells to communicate in totally interactive and adaptive ways, and they facilitate a complexity that may be responsible for the evolution of consciousness. But before getting all the way to consciousness evolutionary biologists look billions of years back to understand how the first synapse originated and how it developed into what it is today.

Components of the modern functional synapse date back as far as 1 billion years in single-cell organisms like yeast. 25% of the proteins in the protein-enriched area of post-synaptic neurons overlap with the proteins found in rudimentary yeast synapses. Many of these proteins are responsible for sensing changes in the environment or internal milieu of the cell, and then helping the system make small changes to adapt. It’s possible that proteins evolved to sense pertinent information about the environment and initiate the action that ensures survival. This function is remarkably similar to the fundamental purpose of our own brains: to sense information about the world and ourselves, and then adapt. When it’s cold outside, we get goosebumps or decide to find a sweater. When we feel sad, we do things to make ourselves feel better.

Evolutionary biologists use two tools to look for clues in evolutionary history that may help them understand how the synapse developed. The first tool, called genomics, looks at the genetic codes of different species to find genetic similarities between them that suggest conservation. This, however, does not tell you very much in the case of specific functions or proteins in the organism. To do this, they use another tool called proteomics, which allows researchers to identify the shapes and functions of individual proteins and then trace their genetic history using genomics.

Using the human genome and human proteomic information, these researchers look back at very old organisms, beginning with those that first developed a nervous system. Jellyfish, coral, and anemones developed neurons millions of years ago, and though they appear to lack human consciousness, their synapses have the proteins that are involved in forming synapses in our brains.

However, the synapses in we vertebrates are not entirely the same as those in the invertebrates. The proteins in vertebrate synapses, though similar to those in invertebrate synapses, appear able to achieve more functions, making our synapses more complex. This suggests that the synapse is still under continued evolution, potentially growing more complex as the environments they are meant to interact with become more complex as well. For example, a human synapse only fifteen years ago didn’t have to deal with the Internet.

The continued evolution and growing complexity of the synapse has made us human. The diversity and complexity of our synapses shapes our behavior and how we interact with our environment. It is interesting to consider what the future holds for the synapse. To speculate about this, scientists look for mutations in human synaptic proteins. However, most of these mutations have been associated with disease states such as schizophrenia and ADHD. In principle, though, it is likely that mutations also exist that confer selective advantages. Will we be around long enough to see how such selective advances in complexity and diversity influence human behavior?

Just Blowing Bubbles

2009-09-30T13:25:00.001-07:00

Our conception of Self extends varying lengths beyond our heads and shoulders, knees and toes, into the space known as "the bubble". Nobody explicitly tells us that we have "the bubble", but we certainly know when someone else is in it. Like on the subway during rush hour, when you're crammed into a car with the suits and smells and bags of every other person trying to get home on the 1-train going uptown, smashed up against a greasy metal pole, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Bing. Canal street -- here come two dozen more. Or on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when every other bargain-hunter in the city is crawling over you to get one of those marked down digital cameras you want to get for that special someone, and you realize that the holiday spirit isn't goodwill, but rage. Or at a bar, where two dozen people bent on inebriation are squeezed in beside you vying for a piece of bartop to throw their money on and order their mojitos from. You getting antsy yet?

Our bubbles are like tiny territories that we carry around with us, and, just like tigers in Burma, we get agitated when someone else gets in them. It turns out that the amygdala, the same part of our brains that drives our most basic emotions -- fear, anger, joy, sadness -- is involved in regulating our personal space by making us feel uncomfortable when people violate it.

Some researchers at Cal-Tech recently observed this phenomenon in a patient (S.M.) whose amygdala had been made permanently dysfunctional by a genetic disease. Using some pretty rudimentary techniques, like slowly approaching her and waiting for her to say how close was too close, they found out, much to the discomfort of the people actually doing the experiment, that S.M. seemed to have no problem with people getting even nose-to-nose while carrying on a conversation. Interestingly, S.M. still appeared to retain a conception of the idea of personal space, acknowledging that she might be making someone else uncomfortable by getting too close.

This is a pretty fascinating aspect of our psychology, because it seems to be one that is very pliable -- our bubble changes sizes based on different variables. At a rock concert or a sporting event, highly social and group-oriented environments, a bubble can shrink. When you kiss someone, the bubble seems to disappear. It seems like the mood you're in at the moment can change the size of your bubble. If you're amygdala is telling you that you're really happy, then it probably will take more of a violation of your space to make it turn 180 degrees and give you signal that says "this is uncomfortable". And if you're in a crummy mood, your amygdala already giving off signals of discomfort, then it's going to be a lot easier to make you uncomfortable.

I have a feeling Larry David and/or Jerry Seinfeld have serious bubble issues...

Remember when...?

2009-09-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.

- Soren Kierkegaard

One of the most studied avenues in memory research is how the brain reconciles this tragic paradox: the ability to maintain important memories, while being able to perpetually update them.

Evolution has long favored the animals with the best memories. These were the animals that remembered where the watering hole was, or where they buried their cache of food over the winter, that they saw a pride of lions lurking around a particular area the day before, that the buffalo herd travels a particular path every morning, or that they have an important meeting two weeks from now at noon.

Neurologically, this is a pretty simple thing to understand. There are parts of the brain responsible for encoding sensory information into a memory. These memory centers -- the amygdala and the hippocampus -- intercept incoming sensory information and organize them into memories in an initial process called "acquisition". The process or remembering something that has been acquired is called "retrieval".

Acquisition and retrieval are pretty simple principles, and at their simplest are just the process of forming and accessing cause-effect associations. In our lab, we use mice to observe these processes. We put a mouse in a chamber and simultaneously play a tone (like a "test of the emergency broadcast system": beeeeeeeeeep) and administer a shock (it's more surprising than painful). The next day, when we play the tone, the animal tenses up expecting to be shocked. Hence, the animal acquires a memory about the stimulus tone, and retrieves that memory when he hears it again.

Now, you can understand how this type of memory might be helpful. If you don't know anything about a mysterious glowing red coil, you might touch it, at which point you form a memory that touching hot stoves hurts. The perpetual formation of memories is how we understand the world, and understand ourselves. Take speed-dating for example. Everything that you tell a person about yourself is a memory: where you're from, what you like to do, where you work, how many siblings you have, your favorite ice cream flavor, or how you got to the JCC. And the person you're talking to is in the process of associating you with all those things, and the place that you're in at that very moment.

But herein lies the paradox of Kierkegaard's quote and the conundrum in memory research. For the best memory is not just the one that can remember the most or the longest, but the one that makes the most accurate predictions. So the big question is: how do we update our memories?

In our experiments, we observe that if we play the remembered tone to a mouse for a long period of time, or in many separate instances, without shocking it, it stops expecting to get shocked. It seems like a pretty simple behavior: if you move to London, it's bad form to keep driving on the right side of the road even though you've been trained your whole life to do so. But we have no idea how this happens -- how long-term memories can be unlearned, changed, or maintained.

The theory that most people studying memory buy into is called "reconsolidation". After you acquire a memory, it may undergo a process called "consolidation", which strengthens a memory so it can be retrieved long after it is acquired. If you prevent the biological processes that support consolidation, a mouse won't remember the next day that hearing the tone means they'll be shocked -- they're unable to retrieve the memory. According to the theory of reconsolidation, every time a memory is retrieved, it becomes de-consolidated, and then reconsolidated to allow that memory to be updated. A normal animal will continue to remember the tone for about a week, and eventually, they'll realize that they probably aren't going to get shocked. But if you block the biological processes involved in reconsolidation, the animal may remember the tone today, but they won't remember it tomorrow. Essentially, you've given the animal a drug that erased its memory.

This theory has some serious holes to it. Like, the fact that sometimes, when you block reconsolidation, the animal won't remember the tone the next day, but then they will three weeks later. Or, what's the point of completely demolishing a perfectly good memory just to update it?

Take some time to think about how you remember stuff and update your memory. It's pretty bizarre stuff.

Freshman Biology (BIO188)

2009-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

God bless Gregor Mendel. For while his brethren at the monastery masticated on the empty calories of celibacy, while they recited lines of their faith until they pressed lonely furrows around the mouths upon their faces, Gregor did the buttons on his jacket and sowed promiscuous peas in the garden. Each harvest of Gregor’s calculated fruits of necessity swelled and swelled his sticky obsession for the mysterious and arbitrary artistry of the pea – a feat unnoticed even by the Bishop, whose wrinkly mouth devoured the hapless seeds, but forbade the study of their mysteries.

Prohibited by the church from asking aloud questions of biology, Gregor wondered quietly in the garden where the Lord purchased his paints. Were they from the heavens? Brought to Him by some angel frequenting a bustling celestial bazaar? Might they be buried somewhere in the ground, brought to life from the soil like dry watercolors by the rain? Or did the Lord purchase His paints from the lowly snake, who, privy to the mystery within the peas, protected the garden from intruders as if each plant was its own child?

In time, the promiscuous peas, made strong by his love, rubbed off on Gregor. His resolute celibacy failed to contracept the seed that would become the modern theory of genetics. Like the other child of virgin birth, Gregor’s child had a message. It wasn’t one of simple inheritance or heredity, but of pease.

The peas whispered to Gregor that the conquest of dominance is but a probability. Forced upon nature enough times, dominance must eventually suffer defeat by a quieter hand. That victory – the recessive victory silently suffered for – is most times the most beautiful. Plants are full of good wisdom.

True to the lessons of the quiet pea, quiet Gregor’s bookish peers elected him to the abbot’s position of power. Yet for Gregor, this proved a rather contrary position. His tendency for the sensual turned him to take up the study of the bees, but the toils of his new position soiled his craft, such that he bred a marvelous bee – a bee that produced more honey than any other, but a bee that stung even the flowers from which it gathered its pollen. He brought forth a creature that did not follow the way of the pea, but rather chose a path of domination led by its stinger.

Just as his savior, He born of the virgin, his work in the gardens and the woods were filled with honey, but wrought more pain that sweetness. In the end, the bees were destroyed and Gregor died, but the peas lived on and on. If you’re ever in Austria, bury a pea in the ground and remember which prevails: the peas or the bees.

The Healing Journey

2009-09-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

We sat in a casually drawn circle on pillows and big plushy chairs. That's how we meet up every month to drink tea and talk about changing the world. This month, the topic of conversation was "The Healing Journey". As expected, the discussion quickly turned to the health care issue in this country, and as hyperbolic hippie-dippie platitudes sailed across the room, so too did the ultra-pragmatic liberalism, toting stacks of papers, petitions, and long-winded factoids about the government. I just laid there on a pillow and listened, and despite a lot of things that I found a bit suspect, some real good things came out of the conversation, and the meeting ended on a really powerful note. Here are a few things that I think are very important to consider when thinking about health care in this country:

1) Is health a commodity? Go look in your bathroom: NyQuil, Neosporin, Tylenol PM, Exedrin Migraine, toothpaste, floss. Yeah, health is indeed a commodity. But is there a point at which our health should be de-commoditized? Where we don't feel like dollar signs.

2) Are we as a society ready for health to be de-commoditized? Personally, I don't think this is perfect time. Just look at what we've done with Purell -- mothers are bathing their kids in it and weird germ-a-phobes would have it on a IV drip if they could. Imagine what it'd be like if going to the hospital little more trouble than a squirt here and a squirt there. You've already got people who call 9-1-1 when they're stuck in traffic or have a stomach ache. Can we trust people to use the system responsibly?

3) Does it matter if people use the system responsibly at first? One of the things that most fascinated me was the idea that this "single-payer" idea is sort of like health care 2.0 -- a Beta version that will be updated later. People at this meeting seemed to understand that there would be growing pains, but that ultimately a first step has to be taken. The first airplane wasn't a learjet, and our first universal health care system probably won't fly as smoothly either. But we have to give it a try, and hope that in time we'll figure it out.

4) But are we really ready? Is the system, our culture, in a proper place for this health care reform? I've related it to Jung's idea that when we are confronted with mental distress, it is an opportunity for personal growth. Is switching to this system at this point merely popping pills to numb the pain instead of looking at the deep seated issues at hand? Issues like the fact that kids in West Philly don't get fruits and vegetables at their lunches, that pharmaceutical companies are marketing their drugs so hard on television and in magazines that the placebo effect for these drugs has gone through the roof, that we use Purell every time we shake someone's hand, that people in this country think health is just not being sick or hurt, that most people in this country don't understand how much control they have over their own health, and that for many health is less a point of personal pride than the car they drive.

5) And instead of fretting about whether or not this bill gets passed in Washington, D.C. should those of us who are aware of the cultural things that need to change be working to help make other people aware, and to help make it easier for them to transition to a healthy outlook on life? Instead of watching MSNBC or FoxNews, listening to the talking heads and peeking in on town hall zoos--Er...meetings, but still not having the slightest idea what the bill actually means (apparently it's over 1000 pages long) should we be going to a nutritionist, or picketing the capitol to fund healthy school lunches, or teaching people about holistic health and mind-body training.

Finally, at the end of the meeting we stood in a circle, and thought about how we all are individual healers in the world. When we see somebody in pain or ill, we instinctively want to help because we are natural healers. We went around the circle proclaiming in one word or one sentence how we are healers. Some said they share Reiki. Other's were listeners. Others were musicians. And though I do quite a bit of volunteer work to try to heal the world, I couldn't really think of a way that I am a healer. Ultimately, sort of sweating in the palms, I sheepishly came up with the word "striving," because in that moment I realized that I need to strive to heal the world, and to do it with other people. So I encourage everyone to ask themselves how they are healers. And if you're like me, and can't think of anything, then you need to think really hard about how you can heal. Because if everyone in the world thought of themselves as a healer, if we were all working together to make a healthy society and to heal each other...I don't know. I think things would be different. Maybe better.

By the way, if you're interested in getting involved in these meetings, they have them every month in the following cities:

Ashville, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boulder, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, FLAGSTAFF, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Nashville, Naples (FL), NYC, New Orleans, Philly, Portland (OR), Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Fransisco, Santa Fe, and Seattle.

Go here http://evolver.net/healing_journey to link to your city's Spore group, or start your own if you're city doesn't have one.

Lab UpDATE

2009-09-16T06:50:00.001-07:00

Okie dokie. So it's been a real long time since I made a post here, and there are plenty of reasons for that. First and foremost, football season has started, and both my Arizona Cardinals and Oklahoma Sooners are off to less than admirable starts. Less importantly, I've had a ton of trouble finding a lab to work in. It turns out that even we grad students -- salaried, protected from termination, and so wacked out on caffeine that it's likely if we ever were terminated we'd spackle someone into the wall of one of our many dark subterranean lab spaces. The trouble that I had run into was one part pickiness and two parts financial, and when I'd finally found a lab that I really enjoyed, it turned out that they didn't have the money to support my thesis research.

So that left me going from lab to lab with my hat out, hoping someone doing something that excited me would be able to support me. In the end, I found a lab. The research here is rather interesting, and, though it doesn't pertain to depression research, it does have some fascinating implications for post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll explain more later -- after I've read more and can do a better job of explaining -- but let's just say it may have something to do with erasing memories.

Other than that, the most recent development is my new interest in PR and Marketing. As I look at the world around me -- the influence of religion and government and media and industry and business and academia and culture at large -- I am learning more and more that the ability to make a real difference in the world isn't so much about what you know, or even who you know, but about how you market yourself and your ideas. Two words: "Death Panels". Now, if you do know some stuff, you're all the better for it. I figure, as a guy who, at 27 years old, could potentially have a degree in Psychology and a Ph.D in Neuroscience, I could really contribute something to society at large if only I knew how to market it to the public. What am I talking about? I don't know, yet. The importance of compassion, love, and art? The dissolution of fear mongering in government and media.

In any event I'll be back to posting pretty soon. On a separate note, if you shop at Whole Foods, they're taking donations at the register for a program to empower schools to reform their lunch programs. Lunches in underprivileged schools are a serious issue for kids. My "little brother" Nassir is a ten year old kid who absolutely loves fruits and vegetables (even brussel sprouts!) but they don't offer them as part of the lunch at his school. Pizza, corn dogs, hamburgers, potato chips are all okay though. I urge you to make whatever donation you can, as it seems like we are systematically dooming these kids for disease and unhealthy habits.

How to Research Depression

2009-09-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

So I've been terribly busy in the lab with all sorts of crap trying to wrap up the Summer here. The weather has been splendid, and I have been indoors for much of the time, chilled to the bone by the abominable air conditioner.

Today's brief post will sum up the theme of the research that I've been doing this Summer: how to research depression. It turns out that animals respond to stressors in similar ways to us. Generally, if you expose a rat or a mouse to enough stressors over enough time, they will develop some behaviors that are very similar to human depression and anxiety. And just like in humans, some rats and mice are more prone to developing stress-induced affective disorders than others.

Most research done on affective disorders has looked at people diagnosed with those disorders using stress-induced animal models of those disorders. Some studies looked at how their brains differed in molecular, electrical, and global function after exposure to chronic stress. Others looked for ways to treat the disorder after stress exposure, and treatments like SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants are now essential tools in studying depression. But in every study like this there are those pesky subjects that simply don't develop any of the symptoms you'd expect to see after chronic exposure to stressors. Usually, when you have an animal like this, you don't use them in the rest of your study.

But there's something to learn from these animals that get thrown out of these studies, and rather than exclude them from their investigation, the research being done in this lab is taking those animals and doing a new investigation. The question being investigated is: what makes these animals resilient? What makes one person who survives a traumatic experience develop a disorder, and another person who survives that same trauma live the rest of their lives without mental distress?

The molecular mechanisms of depression are far from well understood. Ironic -- or perhaps telling -- considering the variety of anti-depressants on the market and the number of them prescribed each year. As a result of this ambiguity, 50%-60% of diagnosed patients appear to be resistant to pharmacological treatment. So rather than look at the sick people, whose symptoms and behaviors vary over a wide continuum, we look at subjects that seem resistant to stressors.

Briefly, a handful of genes have been identified that are expressed at different levels after chronic stress depending on whether a subject appears "depressed" or resilient. An even smaller number of genes have been identified that appear to be expressed similarly in both formerly "depressed" subjects after treatment with antidepressants and also in resilient subjects. In the future these genes will be studied to determine whether they are predisposing factors for developing affective disorders.

The Future of Science and Society

2009-08-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

I went to the gathering last week organized through this new social networking site called evolver.net, which is geared toward individuals interested in collaborating in improving the quality of our culture. Gatherings like the one I attended are called "spores," and they happen once a month in several US cities and in a few other countries as well. It was a pretty cool notion to be sitting around chatting with these like-minded individuals knowing that similar ideas were being cultivated at that very moment around the globe.

The topic of this particular meeting -- the theme changes for every monthly meeting -- was shamanism, and the arc of the discussion we shared that night really galvanized my belief that the path to re-educating our culture in principles of love, compassion, patience, and understanding will ultimately be through the idea of HEALTH.

When you think about it, our culture has become concerned with health more than ever. I have to believe that there are more gym memberships, cyclists, runners, swimmers, and hikers than ever before. Today's food culture has become a massive force, with things like farmer's markets popping up left and right, the organic food movement, veganism, the growth of companies like Kashi, and the growing public outcry against fast food. The health care policy has expanded as an issue out of Washington and into every person's home, which speaks further to our culture's growing obsession with health.

Ultimately, as we continue to focus more on health, people are becoming more in touch, in tune, and aware of their bodies. I support this awareness wholeheartedly, but it is important too to begin incorporating aspects of psychological, spiritual, and social health into the health-focused paradigm. I emphasize social health because personal health in any capacity -- physical, psychological, spiritual -- is useless if the healthy person lives in an unhealthy environment.

I think that the growing movement toward healthiness offers a tremendous opportunity to those of us in the science and medical fields to influence the principles and practices of our culture as a whole. Intuitively, we know that social aspects of love, compassion, patience, and understanding are healthy behaviors, actions, and feelings. And yet we often fail to actually put these ideals into practice. Why not, as a scientists and clinicians, begin to promote these ideals just as we promote exercise, mental stimulation, and stress reduction? Why not make a pamphlet?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here's a second thing that I've been thinking about:

I've been reading this new book by Jeff Sharlet called "The Family". It's an expose of the clandestine machinations of Christian fundamentalism within government and culture around the world. It's a really fascinating scary read, on which I plan to comment once I finish reading. Briefly, however, the message has been that much is not what it appears to be.

One thing that occurred to me while reading this book is this:

The American forefathers spoke of the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I think that this could be expanded upon to say that all people are of the desire for happiness, healthiness, and love. It is important to recognize, however, that such desires cannot be had at all times, for it is the unfortunate nature of life to often be uncontrollably unhappy, ill, or unable to achieve a desired love.

It is the place of government not to satisfy the desires for happiness, healthiness, and love, but to provide, through governance, a means by which many different people living in close proximity may work individually and together to achieve those ideals. As such, a government ruled by the people it governs (i.e. democracy) is the optimal system of governance in that it works in or against its own favor.

Religion should never intersect with government, for it is the individual's personally selected path to happiness, healthiness, and love. While religion should stay out of government, freedom of religion is an integral part of policy because it represents a particular method of achieving the aforementioned ideals. But equally important is freedom from religion if one so chooses that as a part of their own path to happiness, healthiness, and love. No one aspiring toward an elected post in government should ever be judged for choosing such a lifestyle.

But religion pales in importance when compared to education. If a government is to be ruled by its people, as in democracy, it is of utmost importance that all it governing officials -- from the wealthy to the poor -- are educated so as to make decisions that promote the pursuit AND sharing of happiness, healthiness, and love. As such, grade school eduction must be focused in large part toward teaching an awareness of the universal human pursuit of those three ideals. Our system of education must also have mechanisms in place that foster compassion, patience, and understanding in its students.

Only then when these capacities are instilled in our students can lessons of math, reading, history, and science be used toward the betterment of our society. Without training and emphasizing compassion, patience, and understanding, skills like math are merely sterile tools, like that of the cold and pitiless procedures of a universe that destroys planets, stars, and galaxies without so much as a parting wave.

Which brings me to the importance of teaching evolution in schools. For a rational and logical human being, the debate over teaching evolution in schools is preposterous. One has to wonder why particular politicians and lobbies are so against such lessons. On the surface, it would seem that the opposition is guided by offense at the disregard for religious principles. But the real issue comes down to power -- the political power of religion. The fact that someone running for an elected position in government has to say outright that he or she is practicing whatever in order to get elected is a prime example of the political power of religion. That George W. Bush was put in office by the christian right is another example. However, if you start teaching things that undercut religious mythology to children at a young age -- and if you allow them to develop critical thinking skills -- you weaken the power of the mythology, and weaken the influence of religion in politics. There are individuals in this country that benefit from strongly held religious fervor, and the idea their influence could be weakened by telling every child in America that God might not have created all of the universe in seven days threatens them. It is the mythology that these individuals benefit you believing in, not the actual message of Jesus Christ: to work toward love, compassion, patience, and understanding.

Emotional Sudoku

2009-08-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

It has become pretty much common knowledge that if you wish to remain cognitively virile into old age you need to challenge your mind everyday. As a result, sudoku has become something of a phenomenon, much like jogging in the 1980s. Challenging oneself physically and mentally has become well-accepted as a necessary part of a healthy lifestyle.

Recently, I have become am interested in the importance of challenging oneself emotionally. Much like the discomfort involved in pushing oneself aerobically or muscularly, training the emotional body can be a horribly uncomfortable practice. But I believe that it is one wholly worth the work.

Last Friday, I attended a monthly meeting of the "New York Shamanic Circle". I had been drawn to this gathering by my interest in shamanism and by previously rewarding experiences in the practice of the drum-guided meditative practice of shamanic "journeying". However, what I encountered in this experience was something wholly unexpected and emotionally uncomfortable.

The room in the community center on Sullivan Street was dark, lit only by the dozen-or-so candles flickering amidst the rattles, corn husks, and woven bowls that made up the "altar" in the center of the room. Along every inch of the walls around the room sat the people. A perfect microcosm of the Manhattan melting pot. They sat upon multi-colored gym mats, that the place seem more like a circus or a daycare center. Yet the beating of drums and shaking of rattles seemed to hide this by feeding the flames on the altar.

I am an introvert. I find social extraversion with strangers to be a chore, not a pleasure. So this strange place, a circus masquerading as a sweat lodge, roused my cynicism. Then they came, the daubing us with feathers and spritzing them with spray bottles filled sage extract -- a replacement for the burning of actual sage. I was ready for the drum to beat steadily, to lead me to my silent introspective spiritual journey, but I would first have to brave worlds of unfamiliar emotional expenditure.

First there was the greeting of the directions -- North, South, East, West, Above, and Below -- which consisted of shouting, hooting, meowing, howling, and other expressions of greetings to these spirits in the corners of the silly room. Then we danced around the altar, "kissing the ground with our feet." Then we held hands in concentric circles around the altar, and danced together chanting again and again what sounded like "see-my-poo...now-where-my-poo".

My emotional body found great discomfort in these activities. I do not hoot and howl, I do not dance around altars, and I do not share myself in communities like this. But then, the energy of the people there began to infect those predispositions -- break them down and weaken their power -- and I began to feel an emotional release like stretching of a muscle. And as the intimate community interaction continued, I no longer found it silly or uncomfortable or "not me". I began to see myself as someone who does howl, who does dance, who does kiss the earth mother, and who is a "warrrior of love".

I felt great afterward. Walking the streets of Greenwich Village, my typical disdain for the average hipster or diva seemed absent. My small interactions with people didn't feel like a chore, but felt like something completely natural. I felt as if I had broken through the wall that we hit when training for a marathon.

The emotional body may be the most difficult to train. Our emotions are so powerful and so ingrained in our behavior and self-image that to challenge or stretch them causes us both physical and mental pain. And as we age, this emotional body, like the neurons in our brains or the muscles in our backs, becomes less pliable. We become grumpy old men, and cantakerous old maids. We become like the lady who sat at the entrance of the community center who scowled at every person who walked through the door and shouted at them when they asked her a question.

So I encourage you to challenge yourself emotionally as well as intellectually and physically. Welcome situations in which you are uncomfortable, and do your best to acquiesce. For I believe that emotional fitness may be the most important fitness to the well-being of our culture and society as a whole.

Perhaps start here.

CNN vs. Onion #5

2009-08-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

"Gym shooter attended seminars on dating"

Vs.

"Area man uses 'Big Buck Hunter' Score to Determine Ability to Drive Home"

Mind Control

2009-08-06T08:33:00.001-07:00

I had a really fascinating conversation last night with a fellow who just finished a Master's program in anthropology. We discussed a number of topics from the power of the media, to the obstacles toward cultural globalization, to the "Pepsi Challenge" and "Whopper Virgins". It was on this last point that my thoughts really hung suspended in a type of disbelief.

There was this scientific study done five years ago, published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron, by a group of researchers from Baylor University who were curious about the brain regions and activity involved in soft drink preferences and the effect of marketing on those preferences. On the surface, this seems like kind of a kitchsy idea. There are reward and pleasure centers in the brain that tell us that we like lots of things: foods, drinks, drugs, sex, etc. So whether someone prefers Pepsi or Coke should be a simple thing to study: throw them into a brain monitor and see which beverage in a blind taste test lights up those reward/pleasure centers more. Simple.

So that's what they did. First they did a battery of tests outside of the brain scanner, and found no differences in subjects "stated preferences" for Coke or Pepsi. Neither did they find a difference in their "behavioral preferences" (which did they prefer based solely on taste?) in taste tests when brand information was withheld. In fact, people chose Coke nearly the same number of times in blind taste tests regardless of whether they said that they preferred Coke or Pepsi. This incongruity between a subject's stated preference and their actual behavioral/taste preference suggests that there are other factors outside of the actual taste that influence people's preference for Coke or Pepsi at the vending machine.

There is another factor: marketing. The researchers found that when they put Coke in all the cups given to the subjects, but only labelled half of them with the Coke insignia, subjects overwhelmingly said they preferred the labelled cups. But this was not just a result of a label being on the cups, because when they did the same thing with the Pepsi insignia, the subjects showed the same lack of preference observed in the blind taste test. This showed that the Coke label, for whatever reason, elicited a stronger preference in the test subjects. Essentially, Coke has a better marketing campaign.

Next, the researchers looked at how brain activity correlated with the subjects' behaviors and preferences. Inside the brain scanner (functional MRI) the researchers watched how a beverage's taste information and brand information influenced both brain activity and subsequent behavioral preference. In the blind taste test, they found that activity in a part of the brain called the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, a part of the brain previously associated with motivation for pleasure and reward, correlated with the subject's preference for one drink over the other.

Next, the researchers looked at how knowledge of the brand influenced the brain and subsequent behavior. Does the brain actually prefer the Coke label too? To do this, they gave the subjects a priming image of either a brand insignia or a circle of light before giving them the taste of the beverage. The brain data matched the behavioral data. When subjects were shown the Coke insignia, three different areas of the brain showed increases in activity that were not observed when they were shown the circle of light. And when the same thing was done with Pepsi and the Pepsi insignia, no differences in brain activity were observed, regardless of whether they showed them the insignia or the circle of light. The brain prefers the Coke label.

The parts of the brain that increased activity in response to the Coke label were areas involved in affective behavior and memory, suggesting that subjects had developed some sort of emotional memory tied to Coke that they did not have for Pepsi. And, despite the brain's inability to distinguish between Coke and Pepsi -- shown by the increased activity in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in response to both tastes -- Coke's label and marketing campaign, but not those of Pepsi, were able to elicit enough activity in affective and memory areas that the brain actually established a preference that wasn't there before it had knowledge of the brand.

This study wasn't just about soda, but about the influence that culture, society, and media have on our brains and our behaviors. Coke and Pepsi just happened to present a perfect model to test this: they are similar in appearance and general flavor (Cola), they are high in sugar, which is a substance that activates pleasure and motivation centers in most animals from hummingbirds to humans, and people tend to have a distinct preference for one over the other. What these researchers showed was that effective marketing can actually change a person's behavior and psychology regardless of what their natural neural response is. Propaganda and marketing rely on making you form emotions an memories that will overpower your natural brain function and subsequent decisions. Kind of scary, huh?

It makes this writer and thinker, with a degree in Psychology, working on a Ph.D in neuroscience, think maybe he has a future in the marketing business. And it also shows that that guy at the restaurant who turns his nose up when the waiter/waitress asks him "is Pepsi okay?" isn't exhibiting the sensitive nuances of his palate, but rather showing just how easily manipulated his soft and mushy of brain/will is. If you happen to be a waiter or waitress and come upon one of these people (or maybe you're grabbing lunch with them), consider that a big sign that says, "take advantage of me." And also keep an eye on them if scents of facism or nationalism begin to hang in the air.

It's interesting if you think about it under the guise of culture. We all have these basic Ventromedial Prefrontal decisions to make about what motivates us and makes us happy -- what we think is good, true, just and beautiful. Cultures are essentially ravenous beasts fighting each other for our minds. It is your Irishness, Jewishness, Mexicanness, Americanness, Scientistness -- race, religion, homeland, and job -- that are firing up those areas that will influence our decisions. And just like the guy who vehemently scoffs at the notion of Pepsi(!?) we do the same thing with each other on this planet. Which is to suggest, that the decisions that we make within our cultures are based, not necessarily on what we really want or like as a living organism, but rather subject to and influenced by the marketing campaigns of culture -- taboos, normalcy, television, music, ostracism. I encourage everyone to try to be aware of this, for the ravenousness of cultures threaten to ultimately tear us apart. And it would be sad for our species and this planet to go up in nuclear flames over whether Pepsi or Coke, Judaism or Islam, Han or Uigher, Western or Eastern, etc, etc, is better.

And it's totally possible as well to avert such a tragedy, because, as this study shows, for every person who says that they prefer Coke, there is someone else who says they prefer Pepsi. And for whatever reason, despite the effect of media and marketing, these people continue to say loud and clear "Pepsi, please." The article didn't really address this. They didn't say why some people went against their brains in their "stated preferences," but I think that's the essence of it. We as a species need to be able to make a statement that says, "No" to war, avarice, domination, power grabbing, fear, and hate, even when our brains and our culture so desperately want us to proceed. Think about it.

The Master and the Apprentice

2009-08-02T19:43:00.001-07:00

Me and my "little brother" doing work in the lab.

Quality Day

2009-07-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

Spent all day in the lab injecting mice and testing their behavior. In today's task, the animals were tested for how their exploratory behavior changes with and without the presence of another (meaner) mouse. The catch is that these mouse spent five minutes out of ten consecutive days getting beaten up by this bigger mouse. To make matters worse, they had to share a cage with each other (separated by a plastic partition), meaning this test mouse was bullied physically and psychologically for a week and a half. So we put the test mouse in this large box that has a tiny little empty cage in it for 150 seconds, and we watch where it goes in the box. There are two specific areas that we're looking at. First, we're looking at how much time the mouse spends around the tiny empty cage. As natural foragers in the wild, they're naturally curious about new things that could be food or promise food later, so they tend to sniff and climb up on the tiny cage. Mice are also naturally a bit frightened by things and its that general tendency to avoid new things as well as investigate them that protects them from being eaten. So the second area of that box that we measure their time spent in are the corners opposite of the tiny little cage (corners and walls are generally safer places to be, as opposed to being out in the open. Think birds.) Once their 150 seconds are up, we place a mean mouse inside the tiny cage and watch how their investigative behavior changes. I've provided a diagram showing where the tiny cage is (shown with a mean red mouse in it) and also highlighting the two areas of interest for us (around the the tiny cage and in the corners opposite it).

An ordinary mouse with no experience of being bullied will usually spend the same, or eve more, time around the tiny cage when there's a mouse in it. That is, their curiosity overpowers their tendency to avoid unfamiliar or suspicious things. Mice that get bullied (or "socially defeated") tend to spend much less time around the tiny cage when there is a mouse in it, and far more time in the corners. I should mention briefly that this is not always the case, and that it is common that socially defeating a mouse won't make it avoid the area around the other mouse, and there are specific changes in the brains of these mice that don't occur as they do in mice that become more avoidant following social defeat. This suggests genetic predispositions in little mice against social defeat. Cool.

This procedure -- socially defeating the mice (or not defeating them as a control measure) and then testing their social behavior -- is our model for depression. Essentially, a "depressed" mouse will exhibit more avoidance and less interest in social interaction. Furthermore, socially defeating a mouse can also increase other depressive-like behaviors, such as anhedonia (loss of interest) and despair.

All of that was well and good. I sat in a small dark room in full surgery garb (more to protect the mice than myself) and put a mouse in the box, waited...took the mouse out, put the bully in the tiny cage, put the mouse back, waited...got the mouse out, got the bully mouse out, cleaned the box, put a different mouse in the box, waited...took the mouse out, put the bully in the tiny cage, put the mouse back, waited...and on and on and on.

What made today a quality day was the conversation I had with my boss about our research. I was really surprised to find out that he had a lot of the same speculations about the research that I do: that depression may not be an a cultural artifact and not an actual illness, that treating depression is like rehabilitating a limb and requires a lot of work (psychotherapy) to rebuild healthy pathways, that antidepressants should augment the effects of therapy. He also had some really good new insights that I'm still mulling over to decide what I think. Anywho, it was a really reassuring conversation, and I really hope that our data comes out so that he can get the grant money to keep me in his lab. Otherwise, I may have to find a new home.