intellectual vanities… about close to everything

Reading a book by Franz Kafka –– or watching a film by director David Lynch –– could make you smarter.

According to research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia, exposure to the surrealism in, say, Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” or Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions. “The idea is that when you’re exposed to a meaning threat –– something that fundamentally does not make sense –– your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article. “And, it turns out, that structure can be completely unrelated to the meaning threat.”

Meaning, according to Proulx, is an expected association within one’s environment. Fire, for example, is associated with extreme heat, and putting your hand in a flame and finding it icy cold would constitute a threat to that meaning. “It would be very disturbing to you because it wouldn’t make sense,” he said.

As part of their research, Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and the article’s second co-author, asked a group of subjects to read an abridged and slightly edited version of Kafka’s “The Country Doctor,” which involves a nonsensical –– and in some ways disturbing –– series of events. A second group read a different version of the same short story, one that had been rewritten so that the plot and literary elements made sense. The subjects were then asked to complete an artificial-grammar learning task in which they were exposed to hidden patterns in letter strings. They were asked to copy the individual letter strings and then to put a mark next to those that followed a similar pattern.

“People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure,” said Proulx. “But what’s more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did.”

In a second study, the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. “You get the same pattern of effects whether you’re reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity,” Proulx explained. “People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they’re motivated to learn new patterns.”

Thus far, the researchers have identified the beneficial effects of unusual experiences only in implicit pattern learning. It remains to be seen whether or not reading surreal literature would aid in the learning of studied material as well. “It’s important to note that sitting down with a Kafka story before exam time probably wouldn’t boost your performance on a test,” said Proulx.

“What is critical here is that our participants were not expecting to encounter this bizarre story,” he continued. “If you expect that you’ll encounter something strange or out of the ordinary, you won’t experience the same sense of alienation. You may be disturbed by it, but you won’t show the same learning ability. The key to our study is that our participants were surprised by the series of unexpected events, and they had no way to make sense of them. Hence, they strived to make sense of something else.”

Psychological Science
Volume 20, Issue 9, Date: September 2009, Pages: 1125-1131
doi 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02414.x
Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar
Travis Proulx, Steven J. Heine

ABSTRACT—In the current studies, we tested the prediction that learning of novel patterns of association would be enhanced in response to unrelated meaning threats. This prediction derives from the meaning-maintenance model, which hypothesizes that meaning-maintenance efforts may recruit patterns of association unrelated to the original meaning threat. Compared with participants in control conditions, participants exposed to either of two unrelated meaning threats (i.e., reading an absurd short story by Franz Kafka or arguing against one’s own self-unity) demonstrated both a heightened motivation to perceive the presence of patterns within letter strings and enhanced learning of a novel pattern actually embedded within letter strings (artificial-grammar learning task). These results suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning patterns are enhanced by the presence of a meaning threat.

Bring water, bring wine, boy,

With Eros I don’t want to fight.

… Anakreon had it in the 6th century B. C. Praise the wine before drinking it!

Psychosocial factors are bound to play a role when it comes to its taste: indeed, scientists do not exclude the possibility that avid wine drinkers and connoisseurs might change their opinion, and therefore their rating, afterwards to save face. This issue should be examined in more detail in future studies. For now, however, the scientists have a practical tip for restaurants and hosts: always stress the quality of the wine before it is tasted!Wine tastes different to those who are given information on the product before a wine tasting, tests where the test people received information on the wine before and after the tasting have shown.

Many a wine grower trembles at the prospect of a visit from Robert Parker, one of the most famous wine critics in the world. His “Parker Points” have a similar impact to the Roman Emperor’s thumb, deciding the success of a winery instead of life and death. The extent to which product information like Parker’s ratings influence the consumer is revealed in a study by Michael Siegrist, Professor of Consumer Behavior at the Institute for Environmental Decisions, and his post-doc Marie-Eve Cousin from ETH Zurich.

The two scientists wanted to find out how information of that type influences the sensory experience by testing their hypothesis that the wine critic’s opinion affects the sense of taste – and not just the rating.

Good and bad information

163 test people tasted the Argentinean red wine “Clos de Los Siete Mendoza” (2006), which Robert Parker had given 92 points out of 100 and thus had rated as an exceptional wine. The two scientists divided the subjects into five groups: one was told about Parker’s positive appraisal before the tasting; the second group also received the information beforehand, but was told that the wine had only scored 72 Parker Points and was thus average. Two more groups received the positive or negative information after they had tasted the wine but before they had rated it themselves. The final group was not given any information at all and served as the control group.

The test people, who tasted the wine separately, were asked to rate the wine on a 10-point scale, ranging from “didn’t like it at all” to “excellent”. They were also supposed to state how much they would be prepared to pay for the wine.

Advance information influences senses

The analysis of the test results revealed that the test people who had been given the ratings with 92 or 72 points before the tasting rated the wine differently to those who weren’t given the Parker rating until afterwards. In the first two groups, the test people who had been given negative information rated the wine considerably worse than those who proceeded on the assumption that the wine was good. Those who knew beforehand that the wine had been given 92 Parker Points also found the wine better than those who only discovered the rating after they had tried the wine.

The information not only influences the sense of taste, but also how deep we are prepared to dig into our wallets: again, the test people with negative advance information were prepared to pay the least.

The researchers feel their initial hypothesis has been confirmed and conclude that the opinions of wine critics do have an impact on a wine drinker’s sense of taste. Surprisingly, the subjects did not change their opinion if they received the information after tasting. “People therefore were not simply trying to show themselves in a good light; the information really did alter their sense of taste”, says Siegrist.

So it what remains of Parker’s opinions then, if he himself is, as one might assume, more influenced by the marketing informations that drown him? Better taste your own…

Appetite Volume 52, Issue 3, June 2009, Pages 762-765
doi:10.1016/j.appet.2009.02.002
Expectations influence sensory experience in a wine tasting
References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Keywords: Sensory evaluation; Taste; Perception; Consumer experience

A woman looks familiar, but you can’t remember her name or where you met her. New research by UC Irvine neuroscientists suggests the memory exists – you simply can’t retrieve it.

Using advanced brain imaging techniques, the scientists discovered that a person’s brain activity while remembering an event is very similar to when it was first experienced, even if specifics can’t be recalled.

“If the details are still there, hopefully we can find a way to access them,” said Jeff Johnson, postdoctoral researcher at UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and lead author of the study, appearing Sept. 10 in the journal Neuron.

“By understanding how this works in young, healthy adults, we can potentially gain insight into situations where our memories fail more noticeably, such as when we get older,” he said. “It also might shed light on the fate of vivid memories of traumatic events that we may want to forget.”

In collaboration with scientists at Princeton University, Johnson and colleague Michael Rugg, CNLM director, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of students.

Inside an fMRI scanner, the students were shown words and asked to perform various tasks: imagine how an artist would draw the object named by the word, think about how the object is used, or pronounce the word backward in their minds. The scanner captured images of their brain activity during these exercises.

About 20 minutes later, the students viewed the words a second time and were asked to remember any details linked to them. Again, brain activity was recorded.

Utilizing a mathematical method called pattern analysis, the scientists associated the different tasks with distinct patterns of brain activity. When a student had a strong recollection of a word from a particular task, the pattern was very similar to the one generated during the task. When recollection was weak or nonexistent, the pattern was not as prominent but still recognizable as belonging to that particular task.

“The pattern analyzer could accurately identify tasks based on the patterns generated, regardless of whether the subject remembered specific details,” Johnson said. “This tells us the brain knew something about what had occurred, even though the subject was not aware of the information.”

However valuable these results are, they seem to be missing half of the picture. At least in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotional control, scanning for neuronal activity would not be enough in order to trap the building of memory. Next to neurons themselves, their embedding matrix too is involved in memory protection and recollection.

Neuron, Volume 63, Issue 5, 697-708, 10 September 2009
doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2009.08.011
Recollection, Familiarity, and Cortical Reinstatement: A Multivoxel Pattern Analysis
Jeffrey D. Johnson1, 4, Go To Corresponding Author, , Susan G.R. McDuff2, 4, Michael D. Rugg1 and Kenneth A. Norman2, 3

In adult animals, fear conditioning induces a permanent memory that is resilient to erasure by extinction. In contrast, during early postnatal development, extinction of conditioned fear leads to memory erasure, suggesting that fear memories are actively protected in adults. We show here that this protection is conferred by extracellular matrix chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) in the amygdala. The organization of CSPGs into perineuronal nets (PNNs) coincided with the developmental switch in fear memory resilience. In adults, degradation of PNNs by chondroitinase ABC specifically rendered subsequently acquired fear memories susceptible to erasure. This result indicates that intact PNNs mediate the formation of erasure-resistant fear memories and identifies a molecular mechanism closing a postnatal critical period during which traumatic memories can be erased by extinction.

It would be difficult to find someone who has never felt shame in their life.

Shame is a common reaction when someone feels that they have fallen below social norms or their own standards. From being intoxicated in front of one’s peers and superiors to failing an important test at school or being rejected at the school dance, shame can be an internal alarm that ensures that we know when we are at risk of finding ourselves outside the lines of societal acceptance and desirability.

University of Alberta researcher Jessica Van Vliet’s study, published in the British Psychological Society journal, Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, indicates that, while it may seem difficult when one is stuck in shame, there is hope for moving beyond this painful emotion.

“Shame can prompt us to make changes that will help protect our relationships and also preserve the fabric of society. It’s important to emphasize that shame is essential and has value,” said Van Vliet. “The problem is when people get paralyzed with shame and withdraw from others. Not only can this create mental-health problems for people, but also they no longer contribute as fully to society.”

Van Vliet’s research shows that people who feel debilitated by shame tend to internalize and over-personalize the situation. They also seem resigned to being unable to change their feelings or their fate.

“When people experience shame, they may say to themselves ‘I’m to blame, it’s all my fault, all of me is bad, and there’s nothing I can do to change the situation,’” said Van Vliet. “They identify so much with shame that it takes over their entire view of themselves. That leads to an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.”

Van Vliet notes that one of the key components to overcoming these feelings is to step back from the problem and view the picture in a different light. When sufferers can identify external factors that contributed to their actions or situation (for example, discrimination or peer pressure) and differentiate between being a bad person versus doing something bad, they can begin to break the grip of hopelessness that plagues them.

“When people move from a sense of uncontrollability to the belief that maybe there’s something they can do about their situation, such as apologizing or making amends for their actions, it starts increasing a sense of hope for the future,” she said.

Van Vliet found that one of the key steps to overcoming a profound sense of shame is making connections, be it with family and friends, a higher power, or humanity as a whole. While it is one of several aspects of moving forward, Van Vliet notes that the step can often blend or lead into others.

“Connecting to others helps to increase self-acceptance, and with self-acceptance can come a greater acceptance of other people as well,” said Van Vliet. “People start to realize that it’s not just them. Other people do things that are as bad or even worse sometimes so they’re not the worst person on the planet. They start to say to themselves, ‘This is human, I am human, others are human.’”

Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, Volume 82, Number 2, June 2009 , pp. 137-152(16) DOI: 10.1348/147608308X389391
The role of attributions in the process of overcoming shame: A qualitative analysis
Van Vliet, K. Jessica1

Affiliations: 1: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Abstract:
Objectives:While attributions have been found to play an important role in the experience of shame, little is currently known about attributions that occur as part of shame reparation. This exploratory study investigated the attributions associated with recovery from shame, based on the perspectives of participants.
Design:Grounded theory was used in data collection and analysis. This approach has been used extensively for developing understandings of how people construct meaning, interpret events, and act on the basis of their beliefs and interpretations.
Methods:The participants were nine women and four men between the ages of 24 and 70. Data came from interviews in which the participants recalled a distressing shame experience and described how they recovered. Emphasis was on the participants’ subjective perspectives, meanings, and interpretations.
Results:Shame involved global and stable dispositional attributions where the entire self was regarded as flawed and unattractive, and participants perceived themselves as powerless to change an unwanted identity. Internal causal attributions and self-blame were present in most but not all shame experiences. Recovery involved a movement towards specific and unstable attributions that enhanced self-concept and maximized a sense of power and control over the future. Shared and external factors that contributed to the event were also identified.
Conclusions:When applied to psychotherapy for shame-related distress, these findings point to the importance of exploring clients’ attributions related to specific shame events and using interventions that promote attributional change. Directions for further research are discussed.

Medically, crying is known to be a symptom of physical pain or stress. But now a Tel Aviv University evolutionary biologist looks to empirical evidence showing that tears have emotional benefits and can make interpersonal relationships stronger.

New analysis by Dr. Oren Hasson of TAU’s Department of Zoology shows that tears still signal physiological distress, but they also function as an evolution-based mechanism to bring people closer together.

“Crying is a highly evolved behavior,” explains Dr. Hasson. “Tears give clues and reliable information about submission, needs and social attachments between one another. My research is trying to answer what the evolutionary reasons are for having emotional tears.

“My analysis suggests that by blurring vision, tears lower defences and reliably function as signals of submission, a cry for help, and even in a mutual display of attachment and as a group display of cohesion,” he reports.

His research, published recently in Evolutionary Psychology, investigates the different kinds of tears we shed — tears of joy, sadness and grief — as well as the authenticity or sincerity of the tears. Crying, Dr. Hasson says, has unique benefits among friends and others in our various communities.

For crying out loud (and behind closed doors)

Approaching the topic with the deductive tools of an evolutionary biologist, Dr. Hasson investigated the use of tears in various emotional and social circumstances. Tears are used to elicit mercy from an antagonistic enemy, he claims. They are also useful in eliciting the sympathy — and perhaps more importantly the strategic assistance — of people who were not part of the enemy group.

“This is strictly human,” reasons Dr. Hasson. “Emotional tears also signal appeasement, a need for attachment in times of grief, and a validation of emotions among family, friends and members of a group.”

Crying enhances attachments and friendships, says Dr. Hasson, but taboos are still there in certain cases. In some cultures, societies or circumstances, the expression of emotions is received as a weakness and the production of tears is suppressed. For example, it is rarely acceptable to cry in front of your boss at work — especially if you are a man, he says.

Streets awash with tears?

Multiple studies across cultures show that crying helps us bond with our families, loved ones and allies, Dr. Hasson says. By blurring vision, tears reliably signal your vulnerability and that you love someone, a good evolutionary strategy to emotionally bind people closer to you.

“Of course,” Dr. Hasson adds, “the efficacy of this evolutionary behavior always depends on who you’re with when you cry those buckets of tears, and it probably won’t be effective in places, like at work, when emotions should be hidden.”

Dr. Hasson, a marriage therapist, uses his conclusions in his clinic. “It is important to legitimize emotional tears in relationships,” he says. “Too often, women who cry feel ashamed, silly or weak, when in reality they are simply connected with their feelings, and want sympathy and hugs from their partners.”
Evolutionary Psychology www.epjournal.net – 2009. 7(3): 363-370
Emotional Tears as Biological Signals
Oren Hasson,
Biomathematics Unit, Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel. Email: behavior@orenhasson.com

Abstract: Emotional tears have been shown to enhance the interpretation of sadness that is inferred from facial expressions. The current paper puts emotional tears in an evolutionary context. By using biological signaling theory, it first looks at the distinction between cues and signals, both of which provide information to recipients, except that signals have evolved for that purpose. The conclusion is that a signaling function has yet to be shown. Nevertheless, as emotional tears are likely to function as signals, an analysis of certain inevitable effects of tears on the individual hint at more than a single signaling function, depending on the context in which tears are produced. Emotional tears decrease the perception of gaze direction or of changes in pupil size, and may function as attenuators of intentions. Emotional tears are more likely, however, to function as handicaps. By blurring vision, they handicap aggressive or defensive actions, and may function as reliable signals of appeasement, need or attachment.
Keywords: Emotions, tears, signaling, handicap, intentions.

A study in the Aug. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an effective treatment for older patients with osteoarthritis and comorbid insomnia.

Results showed that treatment improves both immediate and long-term self-reported sleep and pain in older patients with osteoarthritis and comorbid insomnia without directly addressing pain control. Participants who received CBT-I reported significantly decreased sleep latency (initially decreased by an average of 16.9 minutes and 11 minutes a year after treatment) and wake after sleep onset (initially decreased by an average of 37 minutes and 19.9 minutes a year after treatment), significantly reduced pain (initially improved by 9.7 points and 4.7 points a year after treatment) and increased sleep efficiency (initially increased by 13 percent and 8 percent a year after treatment). These improvements persisted in CBT-I patients (19 of 23) who were further assessed for sleep quality and perceived pain at a one-year follow-up visit.

According to lead author Michael V. Vitiello, PhD, professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Wash., results indicate that insomnia is not merely a symptom of osteoarthritis but rather a co-existing illness. Vitiello said improving sleep can result in an improvement in osteoarthritis, which is particularly important because, at least in older adults, insomnia rarely exits by itself, rather it typically coexists with other illnesses, pain conditions and depression.

“The particular strength of CBT-I is that once an individual learns how to improve their sleep, study after study has shown that the improvement persists for a year or more,” said Vitiello. “What we and others are showing is that CBT-I can not only improve sleep but that improvement of sleep may lead to improvement in co-existing medical or psychiatric illnesses, such as osteoarthritis or depression, and in the case of our study, that these additional benefits can be seen in the long term.”

A total of 23 patients with a mean age of 69 years were randomly assigned to CBT-I, while 28 patients with a mean age of 66.5 years were assigned to a stress management and wellness control group. Participants in the control group reported no significant improvements in any measure.

CBT-I intervention consisted of eight weekly, two-hour classes ranging in size from four to eight participants. All classes were conducted in an academic medical center in downtown Chicago and were spread out over the calendar year. Participants received polysomnographic assessment in their home in order to exclude individuals with sleep apnea. Sleep and pain were assessed by self-report at baseline, after treatment, and (for CBT-I only) at one year follow-up. Sleep logs were recorded prior to and after treatment and at the one year follow-up and included information about sleep latency, wake after sleep onset and sleep efficiency. Subjects were required to be over the age of 55, have insomnia symptoms that have persisted for at least six months and have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis. A majority of the sample was female. Volunteers were recruited from placements of brochures, memos and flyers in places where medical patients who qualified for the study might see them.

According to the study, sleep quality is a major concern for people with osteoarthritis, with 60 percent of people who have the disease reporting pain during the night. Chronic pain initiates and exacerbates sleep disturbance; disturbed sleep in turn maintains and exacerbates chronic pain and related dysfunction.

The findings indicate that successful treatment of sleep disturbance may improve the quality of life for patients in this population. The authors recommend that CBT-I, which specifically targets sleep, be incorporated into behavioral interventions for pain management in osteoarthritis and possibly for other chronic pain conditions as well.

J Clin Sleep Med 2009;5:355-362.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia Improves Sleep and Decreases Pain in Older Adults with Co-Morbid Insomnia and Osteoarthritis
Michael V. Vitiello, Ph.D.1; Bruce Rybarczyk, Ph.D.2; Michael Von Korff, Ph.D.3; Edward J. Stepanski, Ph.D.4

1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA;
2Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; 3Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, Seattle, WA;
4Accelerated Community Oncology Research Network, Inc., Memphis, TN

Study Objectives: Osteoarthritis pain affects more than half of all older adults, many of whom experience co-morbid sleep disturbance. Pain initiates and exacerbates sleep disturbance, whereas disturbed sleep maintains and exacerbates pain, which implies that improving the sleep of patients with osteoarthritis may also reduce their pain. We examined this possibility in a secondary analysis of a previously published randomized controlled trial of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) in patients with osteoarthritis and co-morbid insomnia.
Methods: Twenty-three patients (mean age 69.2 years) were randomly assigned to CBT-I and 28 patients (mean age 66.5 years) to an attention control. Neither directly addressed pain management. Twelve subjects crossed over to CBT-I after control treatment. Sleep and pain were assessed by self-report at baseline, after treatment, and (for CBT-I only) at 1-year follow-up.
Results: CBT-I subjects reported significantly improved sleep and significantly reduced pain after treatment. Control subjects reported no significant improvements. One-year follow-up found maintenance of improved sleep and reduced pain for both the CBT-I group alone and among subjects who crossed over from control to CBT-I.
Conclusions: CBT-I but not an attention control, without directly addressing pain control, improved both immediate and long-term self-reported sleep and pain in older patients with osteoarthritis and co-morbid insomnia. These results are unique in suggesting the long-term durability of CBT-I effects for co-morbid insomnia. They also indicate that improving sleep, per se, in patients with osteoarthritis may result in decreased pain. Techniques to improve sleep may be useful additions to pain management programs in osteoarthritis, and possibly other chronic pain conditions as well.
Keywords: CBT-I, sleep, pain, osteoarthritis, insomnia, co-morbid

What do abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and epileptic seizures have in common?

According to a paper published this week in the journal Nature, all share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead.

In the paper, Martin Scheffer of Wageningen University in The Netherlands and co-authors, including William Brock and Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., found that similar symptoms occur in many systems as they approach a critical state of transition.

“It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds — ‘tipping points’ — at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” write the scientists in their paper.

Especially relevant, they discovered, is that “catastrophic bifurcations,” a diverging of the ways, propel a system toward a new state once a certain threshold is exceeded.

Like Robert Frost’s well-known poem about two paths diverging in a wood, a system follows a trail for so long, then often comes to a switchpoint at which it will strike out in a completely new direction.

That system may be as tiny as the alveoli in human lungs or as large as global climate.

“These are compelling insights into the transitions in human and natural systems,” says Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which supported the research along with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.

“The information comes at a critical time — a time when Earth’s and, our fragility, have been highlighted by global financial collapses, debates over health care reform, and concern about rapid change in climate and ecological systems.”

It all comes down to what scientists call “squealing,” or “variance amplification near critical points,” when a system moves back and forth between two states.

“A system may shift permanently to an altered state if an underlying slow change in conditions persists, moving it to a new situation,” says Carpenter.

Eutrophication in lakes, shifts in climate, and epileptic seizures all are preceded by squealing.

Squealing, for example, announced the impending abrupt end of Earth’s Younger Dryas cold period some 12,000 years ago, the scientists believe. The later part of this episode alternated between a cold mode and a warm mode. The Younger Dryas eventually ended in a sharp shift to the relatively warm and stable conditions of the Holocene epoch.

The increasing climate variability of recent times, state the paper’s authors, may be interpreted as a signal that the near-term future could bring a transition from glacial and interglacial oscillations to a new state — one with permanent Northern Hemisphere glaciation in Earth’s mid-latitudes.

In ecology, stable states separated by critical thresholds of change occur in ecosystems from rangelands to oceans, says Carpenter.

The way in which plants stop growing during a drought is an example. At a certain point, fields become deserts, and no amount of rain will bring vegetation back to life. Before this transition, plant life peters out, disappearing in patches until nothing but dry-as-bones land is left.

Early-warning signals are also found in exploited fish stocks. Harvesting leads to increased fluctuations in fish populations. Fish are eventually driven toward a transition to a cyclic or chaotic state.

Humans aren’t exempt from abrupt transitions. Epileptic seizures and asthma attacks are cases in point. Our lungs can show a pattern of bronchoconstriction that may be the prelude to dangerous respiratory failure, and which resembles the pattern of collapsing land vegetation during a drought.

Epileptic seizures happen when neighboring neural cells all start firing in synchrony. Minutes before a seizure, a certain variance occurs in the electrical signals recorded in an EEG.

Shifts in financial markets also have early warnings. Stock market events are heralded by increased trading volatility. Correlation among returns to stocks in a falling market and patterns in options prices may serve as early-warning indicators.

“In systems in which we can observe transitions repeatedly,” write the scientists, “such as lakes, ranges or fields, and such as human physiology, we may discover where the thresholds are.

“If we have reason to suspect the possibility of a critical transition, early-warning signals may be a significant step forward in judging whether the probability of an event is increasing.”
Nature 461, 53-59 (3 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08227
Early-warning signals for critical transitions

Abstract: Complex dynamical systems, ranging from ecosystems to financial markets and the climate, can have tipping points at which a sudden shift to a contrasting dynamical regime may occur. Although predicting such critical points before they are reached is extremely difficult, work in different scientific fields is now suggesting the existence of generic early-warning signals that may indicate for a wide class of systems if a critical threshold is approaching.

Folk wisdom usually has it that “seeing is believing,” but new research suggests another meaning to this adage – at least when it comes to perceiving other people’s emotions.

An international team of psychologists from the United States, New Zealand and France has found that the way we initially think about the emotions of others biases our subsequent perception (and memory) of their facial expressions. So once we interpret an ambiguous or neutral look as angry or happy, we later remember and actually see it as such.

The study, published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science, “addresses the age-old question: ‘Do we see reality as it is, or is what we see influenced by our preconceptions?’” said coauthor Piotr Winkielman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. “Our findings indicate that what we think has a noticeable effect on our perceptions.”

“We imagine our emotional expressions as unambiguous ways of communicating how we’re feeling,” said coauthor Jamin Halberstadt, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, “but in real social interactions, facial expressions are blends of multiple emotions – they are open to interpretation. This means that two people can have different recollections about the same emotional episode, yet both be correct about what they ’saw.’ So when my wife remembers my smirk as cynicism, she is right: her explanation of the expression at the time biased her perception of it. But it is also true that, had she explained my expression as empathy, I wouldn’t be sleeping on the couch.”

“It’s a paradox,” Halberstadt added. “The more we seek meaning in other emotions, the less accurate we are in remembering them.”

The researchers point out that implications of the results go beyond everyday interpersonal misunderstandings – especially for those who have persistent or dysfunctional ways of understanding emotions, such as socially anxious or traumatized individuals. For example, the socially anxious have negative interpretations of others’ reactions that may permanently color their perceptions of feelings and intentions, perpetuating their erroneous beliefs even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Other applications of the findings include eyewitness memory: A witness to a violent crime, for example, may attribute malice to a perpetrator – an impression which, according to the researchers, will influence memory for the perpetrator’s face and emotional expression.

The researchers showed experimental participants still photographs of faces computer-morphed to express ambiguous emotion and instructed them to think of these faces as either angry or happy. Participants then watched movies of the faces slowly changing expression, from angry to happy, and were asked to find the photograph they had originally seen. People’s initial interpretations influenced their memories: Faces initially interpreted as angry were remembered as expressing more anger than faces initially interpreted as happy.

Even more interesting, the ambiguous faces were also perceived and reacted to differently. By measuring subtle electrical signals coming from the muscles that control facial expressions, the researchers discovered that the participants imitated – on their own faces – the previously interpreted emotion when viewing the ambiguous faces again. In other words, when viewing a facial expression they had once thought about as angry, people expressed more anger themselves than did people viewing the same face if they had initially interpreted it as happy.

Because it is largely automatic, the researchers write, such facial mimicry reflects how the ambiguous face is perceived, revealing that participants were literally seeing different expressions.

“The novel finding here,” said Winkielman, of UC San Diego, “is that our body is the interface: The place where thoughts and perceptions meet. It supports a growing area of research on ‘embodied cognition’ and ‘embodied emotion.’ Our corporeal self is intimately intertwined with how – and what – we think and feel.”

Psychological Science Early View (Articles online in advance of print)
Published Online: 31 Aug 2009
Emotional Conception: How Embodied Emotion Concepts Guide Perception and Facial Action
Jamin Halberstadt 1 , Piotr Winkielman 2 , Paula M. Niedenthal 3,4 and Nathalie Dalle 3,4

ABSTRACT—This study assessed embodied simulation via electromyography (EMG) as participants first encoded emotionally ambiguous faces with emotion concepts (i.e., “angry,”"happy”) and later passively viewed the faces without the concepts. Memory for the faces was also measured. At initial encoding, participants displayed more smiling-related EMG activity in response to faces paired with “happy” than in response to faces paired with “angry.” Later, in the absence of concepts, participants remembered happiness-encoded faces as happier than anger-encoded faces. Further, during passive reexposure to the ambiguous faces, participants’ EMG indicated spontaneous emotion-specific mimicry, which in turn predicted memory bias. No specific EMG activity was observed when participants encoded or viewed faces with non-emotion-related valenced concepts, or when participants encoded or viewed Chinese ideographs. From an embodiment perspective, emotion simulation is a measure of what is currently perceived. Thus, these findings provide evidence of genuine concept-driven changes in emotion perception. More generally, the findings highlight embodiment’s role in the representation and processing of emotional information.

Music is one of the surest ways to influence human emotions; most people unconsciously recognize and respond to music that is happy, sad, fearful or mellow. But psychologists who have tried to trace the evolutionary roots of these responses usually hit a dead end. Nonhuman primates scarcely respond to human music, and instead prefer silence.

A new report by Charles Snowdon, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and musician David Teie of the University of Maryland shows that a monkey called the cotton-top tamarin indeed responds to music. The catch? These South American monkeys are essentially immune to human music, but they respond appropriately to “monkey music,” 30-second clips composed by Teie on the basis of actual monkey calls.

The music was inspired by sounds the tamarins make to convey two opposite emotions: threats and/or fear, and affiliation, a friendly, safe and happy condition.

The study reported that the monkeys could tell the difference: For five minutes after hearing fear music, the monkeys displayed more symptoms of anxiety and increased their movement. In contrast, monkeys that heard “affiliative” music reduced their movements and increased their feeding behavior — both signs of a calming effect.

Snowdon, a longtime researcher into primate behavior, says the project began with an inquiry from Teie, who plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra: Had Snowdon ever tested the effects of music on monkeys? When Teie listened to recordings made in Snowdon’s monkey colony at the psychology department at UW-Madison, he readily discerned the animal’s affective state, Snowdon says. “He said, ‘This is a call from an animal that is very upset; this is from an animal that is more relaxed.’ He was able to read the emotional state just by the musical analysis.”

Teie composed the music using specific features he noticed in the monkeys’ calls, such as rising or falling pitches, and the duration of various sounds, says Snowdon, who notes that monkeys are not the only ones who use musical elements to convey emotional content in speech. Studies show that babies that are too young to understand words can still interpret a long tone and a descending pitch as soothing, and a short tone as inhibiting.

“We use legato (long tones) with babies to calm them,” Snowdon says. “We use staccato to order them to stop. Approval has a rising tone, and soothing has a decreasing tone. We add musical features to speech so it will influence the affective state of a baby. If you bark out, ‘PLAY WITH IT,’ a baby will freeze. The voice, the intonation pattern, the musicality can matter more than the words.”

Snowdon, who has sung in choirs for most of his life, adds, “My talking does not necessarily tell you about my emotional state. When I add extra elements, change the tone of voice, the rhythm, pitch or speed, that is where the emotional content is contained.”

Monkeys interpret rising and falling tones differently than humans. Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to the heavy-metal band Metallica.

The study opens a new window into animal communication, Snowdon says. “People have looked at animal communication in terms of conveying information – ‘I am hungry,’ or ‘I am afraid.’ But it’s much more than that. These musical elements are inducing a relatively long-term change in behavior of listeners. The affiliative music is making them calmer; they move less, eat and drink at a higher rate, and show less anxiety behavior.”

This change in behavior suggests that for cotton-top tamarins, communication is about much more than just information. “I am not calling just to let you know how I am feeling, but my call can also stimulate a similar state in you,” Snowdon says. “That would be valuable if a group was threatened; in that situation, you don’t want everybody being calm, you want them alert. We do the same thing when we try to calm a baby. I am not just communicating about how I am feeling. I am using the way I communicate to induce a similar state in the baby.”

The similarities in communications between monkeys and people suggest deep evolutionary roots for the musical elements of speech, Snowdon says. “The emotional components of music and animal calls might be very similar, and from an evolutionary perspective, we are finding that the note patterns, dissonance and timing are important for communicating affective states in both animals and people.”

Biol. Lett. published online before print September 2, 2009, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0593
Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music.
Charles T. Snowdon and David Teie
Author for correspondence (snowdon@wisc.edu).

AbstractTheories of music evolution agree that human music has an affective influence on listeners. Tests of non-humans provided little evidence of preferences for human music. However, prosodic features of speech (‘motherese’) influence affective behaviour of non-verbal infants as well as domestic animals, suggesting that features of music can influence the behaviour of non-human species. We incorporated acoustical characteristics of tamarin affiliation vocalizations and tamarin threat vocalizations into corresponding pieces of music. We compared music composed for tamarins with that composed for humans. Tamarins were generally indifferent to playbacks of human music, but responded with increased arousal to tamarin threat vocalization based music, and with decreased activity and increased calm behaviour to tamarin affective vocalization based music. Affective components in human music may have evolutionary origins in the structure of calls of non-human animals. In addition, animal signals may have evolved to manage the behaviour of listeners by influencing their affective state.

* music evolution
* vocal communication
* affective responses
* tamarins
* species-specific music

Chronic alcohol consumption blunts the biological clock’s ability to synchronize daily activities to light, disrupts natural activity patterns and continues to affect the body’s clock (circadian rhythm), even days after the drinking ends, according to a new study with hamsters.

The study describes the changes that drinking can produce on the body’s master clock and how it affects behavior. The research provides a way to study human alcoholism using an animal model, said researcher Christina L. Ruby.

Alcohol consumption affects the master clock, located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) section of the brain. This clock controls the circadian cycle, a roughly 24-hour cycle, which regulates sleeping and waking, as well as the timing of a variety of other physiological functions, such as hormonal secretions, appetite, digestion, activity levels and body temperature. The SCN synchronizes physiological functions so that they occur at the proper times and keeps these functions synchronized with daylight. Disruption of the clock dramatically increases the risks of developing cancer, heart disease, and depression, among other health problems.

The researchers used hamsters to find out how alcohol affects circadian rhythms. Although hamsters are nocturnal, light synchronizes their clocks, just as with humans. The animals were divided into three groups, differing only on what they drank. The control group received water only. A second group received water containing 10% alcohol and the third group received water containing 20% alcohol. Hamsters, when given a choice, prefer alcohol, which they metabolize quickly.

The animals drank as much as they wanted and lived in an environment that provided 14 hours of light and 10 hours of darkness each day.

The researchers recorded the activity levels of the three groups throughout the day. Late in the dark cycle, about three hours before the nocturnal animals would normally be settling in to sleep, the researchers put on a low-level light for 30 minutes. The light was similar to the dim light of dawn. At another time, the groups received a brighter light, akin to the light in an office building. Hamsters exposed to the light late in their active cycle will normally settle down to sleep at the same time, but will wake up earlier. In effect, the light pushes their circadian clock forward.

In addition, the researchers tracked how long it takes alcohol to travel to the master clock in the brain. They also took regular readings of subcutaneous alcohol levels, which are akin to blood alcohol levels. In the final phase of the experiment, the hamsters that received alcohol were switched to regular water to examine the effects of withdrawal.

The study found that:

* The hamsters that drank alcohol had the hardest time shifting their rhythms after exposure to the dim light, and the more alcohol they drank, the harder it was to adjust. Exposure to dim light caused the water-only hamsters to wake up 72 minutes earlier than they normally would. The 10% alcohol group woke up 30 minutes earlier and the 20% alcohol group woke up only 18 minutes earlier.
* Exposure to bright light helped the alcohol-consuming hamsters to wake up sooner, greatly reducing the difference in wake up times among the groups. The control animals woke up 102 minutes earlier compared to the 20% alcohol group that woke up 84 minutes earlier.
* Total time spent active during the 24-hour period was the same for all three groups. However, the hamsters that consumed alcohol had fewer bouts of activity that lasted longer than the water-consuming controls. The control group had more bouts of activity over the course of the day.
* When the hamsters were withdrawn from alcohol for 2-3 days and then exposed to the same light treatment again, they woke up much earlier than the animals that had drunk only water. The hamsters that were withdrawn from alcohol woke up 126 minutes sooner compared to the water drinking controls, who advanced 66 minutes. This exaggerated response persisted even up to three days later, when the experiment ended.
* The hamsters drank the most heavily shortly after the beginning of the dark cycle, when they would naturally be most active. A peak in alcohol reached the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain 20 minutes later.

Human applications?

The researchers aim to apply the research to people, who also show circadian disruptions from drinking. Specifically, the study suggests the following:

* People who drink alcohol, particularly late into the night, may not respond to important light cues to keep their biological clocks in synch with daylight over the next 24 hours. Even low levels of alcohol may impair the response to light cues, said Ruby.
* After the first 24 hours, the circadian cycle continues to be affected, even without further consumption of alcohol.
* Exposure to bright light in the morning may reduce the disruption of alcohol to the biological clock.
* Chronic drinking continues to affect the biological clock even after withdrawal from alcohol. The hamsters withdrawn from alcohol woke up much earlier in response to light than they normally would, just like people who are trying to stop drinking. Getting a person’s circadian rhythm back in line after quitting may be why staying abstinent is so difficult.
* Chronic drinking may affect activity patterns, making drinkers less active at times of the day when they should be active and more active when they should not be, such as late at night.

Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 297: R729-R737, 2009. DOI: 10.1152/ajpregu.00268.2009
Chronic ethanol attenuates circadian photic phase resetting and alters nocturnal activity patterns in the hamster.
Christina L. Ruby,1 Allison J. Brager,1 Marc A. DePaul,1 Rebecca A. Prosser,2 and J. David Glass1

1Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio; and 2Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee

Submitted 13 May 2009 ; accepted in final form 22 June 2009

Acute ethanol (EtOH) administration impairs circadian clock phase resetting, suggesting a mode for the disruptive effect of alcohol abuse on human circadian rhythms. Here, we extend this research by characterizing the chronobiological effects of chronic alcohol consumption. First, daily profiles of EtOH were measured in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and subcutaneously using microdialysis in hamsters drinking EtOH. In both cases, EtOH peaked near lights-off and declined throughout the dark-phase to low day-time levels. Drinking bouts preceded EtOH peaks by ~20 min. Second, hamsters chronically drinking EtOH received a light pulse during the late dark phase [Zeitgeber time (ZT) 18.5] to induce photic phase advances. Water controls had shifts of 1.2 ± 0.2 h, whereas those drinking 10% and 20% EtOH had much reduced shifts (0.5 ± 0.1 and 0.3 ± 0.1 h, respectively; P < 0.001 vs. controls). Third, incremental decreases in light intensity (270 lux to 0.5 lux) were used to explore chronic EtOH effects on photic entrainment and rhythm stability. Activity onset was unaffected by 20% EtOH at all light intensities. Conversely, the 24-h pattern of activity bouts was disrupted by EtOH under all light intensities. Finally, replacement of chronic EtOH with water was used to examine withdrawal effects. Water controls had photic phase advances of 1.1 ± 0.3 h, while hamsters deprived of EtOH for 2–3 days showed enhanced shifts (2.1 ± 0.3 h; P < 0.05 vs. controls). Thus, in chronically drinking hamsters, brain EtOH levels are sufficient to inhibit photic phase resetting and disrupt circadian activity. Chronic EtOH did not impair photic entrainment; however, its replacement with water potentiated photic phase resetting.

suprachiasmatic nucleus; glutamate; microdialysis; drinking rhythms