Mirror neurons and their alternative uses

When we watch a person doing something, we create an internal simulation of their actions using the same cortical structures required for the observed action. We use that simulation to predict the person's intent and emotional status. So say the "mirror neuronists".

What is the relationship to sleep and dreaming? What is the relationship to the observer effect that some say collapses quantum envelopes? What alternative uses could some brains put that network to? Since dogs are supposed to be uniquely good at anticipating human action, how much of their brains are mirror neurons?

Cells That Read Minds - New York Times
January 10, 2006
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

... The monkey brain contains a special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action and when the animal carries out the same action on its own.

...The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.

The discovery is shaking up numerous scientific disciplines, shifting the understanding of culture, empathy, philosophy, language, imitation, autism and psychotherapy.

Everyday experiences are also being viewed in a new light. Mirror neurons reveal how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music and art, why watching media violence may be harmful and why many men like pornography.

Found in several areas of the brain - including the premotor cortex, the posterior parietal lobe, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula - they [mirror neurons] fire in response to chains of actions linked to intentions.

... "When you see me perform an action - such as picking up a baseball - you automatically simulate the action in your own brain," said Dr. Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies mirror neurons. "Circuits in your brain, which we do not yet entirely understand, inhibit you from moving while you simulate," he said. "But you understand my action because you have in your brain a template for that action based on your own movements.

"When you see me pull my arm back, as if to throw the ball, you also have in your brain a copy of what I am doing and it helps you understand my goal. Because of mirror neurons, you can read my intentions. You know what I am going to do next."

... Language is based on mirror neurons, according to Michael Arbib, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. One such system, found in the front of the brain, contains overlapping circuitry for spoken language and sign language. [jf: see also sign language and the evolution of reading]

In an article published in Trends in Neuroscience in March 1998, Dr. Arbib described how complex hand gestures and the complex tongue and lip movements used in making sentences use the same machinery. Autism, some researchers believe, may involve broken mirror neurons. A study published in the Jan. 6 issue of Nature Neuroscience by Mirella Dapretto, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A., found that while many people with autism can identify an emotional expression, like sadness, on another person's face, or imitate sad looks with their own faces, they do not feel the emotional significance of the imitated emotion. From observing other people, they do not know what it feels like to be sad, angry, disgusted or surprised.

... Nevertheless, a study in the January 2006 issue of Media Psychology found that when children watched violent television programs, mirror neurons, as well as several brain regions involved in aggression were activated, increasing the probability that the children would behave violently. [jf: another recently published functional imaging study has greatly strengthened the connection between observing violence and acting violently]

People who rank high on a scale measuring empathy have particularly active mirror neurons systems, Dr. Keysers said.

... Humiliation appears to be mapped in the brain by the same mechanisms that encode real physical pain, he said...

I'm particularly interested in alternative uses of the mirror neuron subsystem. That system is doing a lot of work at a high metabolic cost. In some humans it could be used to provide alternative functions, sacrificing social prediction. Evolution could allow this as a backup system for brain injury, or as an alternative path in relatively secure social environments. Isaac Newton, one of the great geniuses, was famously rude and unempathic. If gene defects cause widespread problems with neural connectivity (one subtype of "autism"), then could the mirror neuron network be partially repurposed? What about those persons missing a hemisphere who still manage to function well?

Update 1/10/06: Hmm. So in multiple personality disorders, do the mirror neuron subsystems take on a life of their own?

Dean is back: PZ Myers tells the tale

I miss Howard Dean. Maybe I'll hear more from him. PPZ Myers (Pharyngula) quotes a Dean interview with Blitzer:

Dean: "There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, not one, not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a Republican. Every person under investigation is a Republican. Every person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal. There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money. And we've looked through all of those FEC reports to make sure that's true."

... how pathetic and desperate Wolf Blitzer looks—he tries to spin the whole thing into the usual Republican talking points, and Dean just burns him to the ground with a glance of his laser-beam eyes.

I want to get a T shirt that says "I scream for Dean". To heck with rational, calm, acceptable candidates. I bled for Kerry. I'm ready now for a raving populist. (It helps, of course, that I believe Howard Dean is very much a rationalist at heart.) I'd rather go down in flames with 30% of the vote than rust away with 48% ...

DeLay: using foster children to launder bribes

Molly Ivins wonders which charities Republicans are dumping their radioactive Abramoff funds into:

WorkingForChange-Proud to be an American:

'Over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists and other special interests.

'Public documents reviewed by the Associated Press tell the story: at least 48 visits to golf clubs, and resorts with lush fairways, 100 flights aboard company planes, 200 stays at hotels, many world class, and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $2,000 for a dinner for two.

'Instead of his personal expense, the meals and trips for DeLay and his associates were paid with donations collected by the campaign committees, political action committees and children's charity the Texas Republican created during his rise to the top of Congress.'

The DeLay Foundation for Kids was set up 18 years ago and works on behalf of foster children. But it is also a way for companies to give unregulated and undisclosed funds: It's a way for companies to get into DeLay's good graces or, as Fred Lewis from Campaign for People says, 'another way for donors to get their hooks into politicians.'

I read somewhere that DeLay, at one point in his life, was genuinely interested in the welfare of children. I think this man 's life deserves at least an article in the Atlantic. He has fallen very far.

Completely not secret numbers

So I'm scanning medlogs, and I see the combinations for those locks I posted -- on Gordon's Notes! Darned dementia. I was supposed to post them to our semi-secret family blog where I keep little tidbits like that.

Sorry.

Rebates -- and why I won't buy from Brother

I bought myself a Brother MFC-7820N multi-function device about 10 weeks ago. It's got some bugs, but on the whole I'm very pleased with it.

Even so, I won't buy from Brother again.

Why?

It came with a $50 rebate. I don't make buying decisions based on rebates, but this was enough money it was worth submitting. After 8 weeks I wrote the rebate site asking what had happened. No response. Now it's been 10 weeks. I don't have time to pursue this further.

I'm human though. And humans, as we know, are programmed to punish cheaters. It's a large part of what has made us a successful intensely social species. Brother cheated. Logically, since the device is worth more to me than what I paid for it, I should still recommend buying it. In this case though, I'll go with my biological imperative.

I won't buy from Brother again. Cheaters.

How I finally found a home for my maps

File this one under life's small victories.

I collect maps of places I've been. Roadmaps, place maps, city maps. Maps are my kind of souvenir; sentimental, compact, and useful. Some of the maps, like of the area of Bangkok I lived in 25 years ago, are of lost places. Now I take pictures to create persistent memories, but for much of my life I used maps.

Great, except I never knew how to store the buggers. I've used boxes and hanging files. Miserable failures. One day, however, I saw a shoe rack and thought that might work. I ended up buying a ClosetMaid "StackAShelf" SO25 25 cube storage organizer. At Target. Cheap.

The maps are a perfect fit. I file them by country outside of NA, and by Province or State in NA. Cities go into the state/province pile in alphabetic order. If I fill this stack, assuming I can find someone selling this thing, I can stack another atop it.

I am so pleased with this.

PS. Why the photo of the face of the assembly directions? I hate filing paper, but I'll stick this photo in my reference pile. It's sufficient resolution I can read the document. Faster than scanning. Sometime I'm going to post on my visual database of our attic storage.

The purgatory of the no fly list

James Moore is on the no fly list, and he can't get off. Ted Kennedy was on the same list, but he got off it. James probably has to call Ted's office.

There's supposed to be a form to submit to get off the list. This is terminally stupid.

Update 1/9/06: Ok, I'm suspicious now. I posted a comment pointing out the form to submit to deal with false inclusion on the watch list. It's been several days and the comment has not appeared. Hhhmmm. Maybe James likes something about this situation?

The Fermi Paradox: From the Edge question of the year

Edge likes to ask celebrity scholars questions. Last year it was the biggest idea you couldn't prove, this year it's "the most dangerous idea". I read through last year's. Some were good, some were dull. Mostly I thought the contributors were playing it safe.

I haven't read through this year's answers, I figured I'd let others do the work. Then I read somewhere that an evolutionary psychologist had dared to address my favorite topic -- The Fermi Paradox. One of the reasons I'm agnostic rather than atheistic is this paradox. Here's what Geoffrey Miller (looks terrifyingly young, but mostly I'm ancient) wrote:

GEOFFREY MILLER
Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The Mating Mind

Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox

The story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence with some other physicists. They were impressed that our galaxy holds 100 billion stars, that life evolved quickly and progressively on earth, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked simply, "So, where is everybody?". That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence is common, why haven't we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi's Paradox.

The paradox has become more ever more baffling. Over 150 extrasolar planets have been identified in the last few years, suggesting that life-hospitable planets orbit most stars. Paleontology shows that organic life evolved very quickly after earth's surface cooled and became life-hospitable. Given simple life, evolution shows progressive trends towards larger bodies, brains, and social complexity. Evolutionary psychology reveals several credible paths from simpler social minds to human-level creative intelligence. Yet 40 years of intensive searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence have yielded nothing. No radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close encounters of any kind.

So, it looks as if there are two possibilities. Perhaps our science over-estimates the likelihood of extra-terrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self-limiting, even self-exterminating. After Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make colonizing space-ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later. Perhaps extra-terrestrial intelligence always blows itself up. Fermi's Paradox became, for a while, a cautionary tale about Cold War geopolitics.

I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi's Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.

The fundamental problem is that any evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself. We don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that tended to promote survival and luscious mates who tended to produce bright, healthy babies. Modern results: fast food and pornography. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote our real biological fitness, but it's even better at delivering fake fitness — subjective cues of survival and reproduction, without the real-world effects. Fresh organic fruit juice costs so much more than nutrition-free soda. Having real friends is so much more effort than watching Friends on TV. Actually colonizing the galaxy would be so much harder than pretending to have done it when filming Star Wars or Serenity.

Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. The printing press is invented; people read more novels and have fewer kids; only a few curmudgeons lament this. The Xbox 360 is invented; people would rather play a high-resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson's King Kong than be a perfect-resolution real human. Teens today must find their way through a carnival of addictively fitness-faking entertainment products: MP3, DVD, TiVo, XM radio, Verizon cellphones, Spice cable, EverQuest online, instant messaging, Ecstasy, BC Bud. The traditional staples of physical, mental, and social development (athletics, homework, dating) are neglected. The few young people with the self-control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute — the MIT graduates apply to do computer game design for Electronics Arts, rather than rocket science for NASA.

Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality: cars, airplanes, zeppelins, electric lights, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, bras, zippers. In 2005, most inventions concern virtual entertainment — the top 10 patent-recipients are usually IBM, Matsushita, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology, Samsung, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Sony — not Boeing, Toyota, or Wonderbra. We have already shifted from a reality economy to a virtual economy, from physics to psychology as the value-driver and resource-allocator. We are already disappearing up our own brainstems. Freud's pleasure principle triumphs over the reality principle. We narrow-cast human-interest stories to each other, rather than broad-casting messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems.

Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period of fitness-faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species — to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children.

Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Those who persist will evolve more self-control, conscientiousness, and pragmatism. They will evolve a horror of virtual entertainment, psychoactive drugs, and contraception. They will stress the values of hard work, delayed gratification, child-rearing, and environmental stewardship. They will combine the family values of the Religious Right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace Left.

My dangerous idea-within-an-idea is that this, too, is already happening. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, and anti-consumerism activists, already understand exactly what the Great Temptation is, and how to avoid it. They insulate themselves from our Creative-Class dream-worlds and our EverQuest economics. They wait patiently for our fitness-faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical-minded breeders will inherit the earth, as like-minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve Contact, it will not be a meeting of novel-readers and game-players. It will be a meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery.

Well, it's both affirming and disappointing. Affirming in that it's similar to the explanation I and many before me have come up with: it's a general property of all sentient organisms that they either become extinct or change to something that's not interested in roaming the galaxy. Virtual environments is only the most comprehensible of "post-singular" states that could account for a disinterest in physical travel.

It's disappointing in that it's not particularly original. Also, his 'resistant strain' idea doesn't make sense. If such resistance could emerge, even in 1/50 cultures, we wouldn't have the Fermi Paradox. I did, however, mention in my essay on the falling cost of havoc that religious fundamentalists might be instinctively struggling against a genuine transcendental threat -- the singularity.

I've also had the idea of resistant cultural strains in a different context. I've long been puzzled by the demographic transition -- why it is wealthy nations have fewer children. It seems so contraditory to our evolutionary programming. Whatever the explanation, I assumed that we'd evolve cultural groups that were immune to the anti-child effect of wealth -- Mormons for example. They'd eventually become the dominant group.

Check your dog food - or kill your dog

I pay attention to the papers, but I had no idea these brands of dog food had been recalled. Have I been asleep?

The food smelled and tasted bad to dogs, though most dog owners bypassed this by mixing more attractive foods. This changes the way I think about a dog losing interest in a favored food.

Dogs still dying

Even though [19 brands of] Diamond, Country Value and Professional brand dog foods have been recalled for containing highly toxic aflatoxins, they have caused at least 100 dog deaths in recent weeks, say Cornell University veterinarians, who are growing increasingly alarmed. Some kennels and consumers around the nation and possibly in more than two dozen other countries remain unaware of the tainted food, and as a result, they continue to give dogs food containing a lethal toxin.

... Currently, about two-thirds of dogs that show symptoms after eating the tainted food die.

'Entire kennels have been wiped out, and because of the holiday these past few weeks, the dispersal of recall information was disrupted...

Diamond has a web site listing all the brands. Not all are labeled "Diamond":

Diamond Premium Adult Dog Food
Diamond Hi-Energy Dog Food (Sporting Dog)
Diamond Maintenance Dog Food
Diamond Professional for Adult Dogs
Diamond Performance Dog Food
Diamond Puppy Food
Diamond Low Fat Dog Food
Diamond Maintenance Cat Food
Diamond Professional Cat Food
Country Value Puppy
Country Value Adult Dog Food
Country Value High Energy Dog Food
Country Value Adult Cat Food
Professional Chicken & Rice Adult Dog Food
Professional Puppy Food
Professional Large-Breed Puppy Food
Professional Reduced Fat Cat Food
Professional Adult Cat Food

Unless I heard very persuasive evidence that this company did everything perfectly, I would never buy anything from them again.

This was hard to figure out, even when a group of dogs were sickened all at once. I wonder how often less severe aflatoxin poisoning is missed. Human food preparation is not all that well regulated, one can only imagine the state of the pet food indutry. Maybe we really do need to start making our own pet food ...

Super Soaker wax removal

A super soaker, in the right hands, can be used to flush wax from an ear. In the wrong hands, one can imagine perforated drums, amazing otitis externa, obscure brain abscesses, etc. On the other hand, physicians with wax problems may be prone to experiment. The author used low pressure ....

The meaning of the $5 AM/FM clock radio

I bought a clock radio for the kids today. It was $5.00. I'd normally not bother with anything that cheap, but in this case all we wanted was a working, viewable clock. Also, I wanted to see what I got for $5.00.

Target : TruTech AM/FM Clock Radio - TCR1276
Big red LCD readout
Top snooze button is easily accessible
UL listed
2-1/4Hx5Wx5-4/5L"; 1.05 lbs.

It seems to work. Optional battery backup. As well laid out as any I've bought. Simple to use. Sounds better than it should. Comes in a solid cardboard box with some bubblewrap and directions (battery not included).

What does it mean that Target can sell an own-brand clock radio for $5.00? I'd have thought shipping, packaging, shelf-space, etc would eat up most of that. Did that radio cost $1 to manufacture?

So we see why the Fed has stopped raising interest rates ...

Connect the dots: Harpers on China, The Economist on GE

It's not all that hard to connect these two dots. The Economist reports that GE is making a huge bet on the importance of "green technologies":

The greening of General Electric | A lean, clean electric machine | Economist.com

NEXT month General Electric's corporate bosses will drop a bombshell on the hard-charging managers of its global businesses. In future they will be judged not only by all the usual measures, such as return on capital, that investors typically care about: they will also be held accountable for helping to save the planet.

Every GE business unit will have to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main greenhouse gas (GHG) behind global warming, by a different target.

... GE's new goal is to cut its overall GHG emissions by 2012 to 1% below their level in 2004. That might not sound ambitious, but if no climate policies are enacted, the company's projected revenue growth would increase its GHG emissions by 40% above 2004 levels.

... Jeffrey Immelt, GE's boss, is leading the effort himself, campaigning for it both inside and outside the company, as well as backing it with large amounts of new investment.

... Mr Immelt is so convinced that clean technologies will be the future of GE that, invoking the colour of American money, he has made his new mantra: “green is green”.

... The company vows to double its revenues from 17 clean-technology businesses, ranging from renewable energy and hydrogen fuel cells, to water filtration and purification systems, to cleaner aircraft and locomotive engines.

... Mr Immelt and other senior GE officials now publicly proclaim that global warming is real, and also call for American government regulations to deal with it.

... Back in the 1980s and 1990s, many blue-chip firms, ranging from DuPont and Dow to big French and British water companies such as Suez, forged into environmental services. Many were confidently predicting long-term double-digit growth and some invested heavily in developing-country markets.

Alas, by the late 1990s many of these firms had scaled back their investments...

Meanwhile, Harpers has published a long survey of China (emphases mine). It's sympathetic, bullish, and tries to avoid cliche and extreme simplification. Towards the end of the article it gets down to brass tacks (btw, multiply all numbers by 1.8 to include India and the rest of the industrializing world)...

Harpers: Scenes from China's Industrial Revolution

... It used to be said that the point of travel was to see your own home more clearly. So let's look. When you're standing in Shanghai, at the city's urban-planning exhibition, admiring the basketball-court-sized model of the city's future plan, with every skyscraper and apartment complex carefully detailed, you just viscerally know that there are two countries that really count right now. You just viscerally know that this is the story that will define the future. China and the United States are now the world's biggest consumers of raw material, and of food, and of energy. Are they therefore morally equivalent?

... Sometime between 2025 and 2030, China will pass the United States as the largest carbon emitter in the world - already it produces sixteen percent of the world's CO2 compared with our 25 percent. That is, they are now joining us in the task of undermining the planet's physics and chemistry.

... We have nearly the same number of cars as we have people. In China the number of automobiles is growing fast. But if the Chinese sell six million cars this year, that will be eleven million less than the United States - in a population more than four times as large.

In fact, the size of China's population queers every discussion of numbers.... Zhao Ang, my translator, has as much right to the sky as I do, which is to say as much right to a car or a big house. And measuring by people, in 2025 or 2030, when China passes the United States as the world's largest carbon emitter, the average Chinese will still be producing only a quarter as much carbon as the average American. And of course it goes deeper than that - the reason the atmosphere is filled to the danger point with carbon is because we've already been filling it for two centuries, burning coal and oil to get rich while the Chinese have been staying poor. As Ma Jun - a daring environmentalist who's taken big risks to write his books - told me one day, "Nearly eighty percent of the carbon dioxide has come from 200 years of the industrial world. Let's be realistic. Those historic burdens have to be shouldered by those countries that have enjoyed the benefits." In any just scheme, it's not morally required of the Chinese to help solve global warming, any more than it's your kids' responsibility to work out the problems in your marriage.

... it seems intuitively obvious when you're in China that the goal of the twenty-first century must somehow be to simultaneously develop the economies of the poorest parts of the world and undevelop those of the rich - to transfer enough technology and wealth that we're able to meet somewhere in the middle, with us using less energy so that they can use more, and eating less meat so that they can eat more.

... try to imagine the political possibilities in America of taking Chinese aspirations seriously - of acknowledging that there isn't room for two of us to behave in this way, and that we don't own the rights to our lifestyle simply because we got there first...

There's a rich history of mis-predicting ecological trainwrecks. Malthus got it wrong (ok, except for Rwanda where he got it right) because several breakthroughs in food production moved his collapse into the indefinite future. Worldwatch got it wrong yearly for the past 30 years because they way too confident about timelines (and thus earned both fame and infamy). If we do avoid this trainwreck, however, it will most likely be through new technologies -- not some dramatic enlightenment of the American (or European) troglodyte. GE is making a bet on a 5-20 year timeline in which those technologies will become fundamental.

I think it's a safe bet. If it doesn't pay off, market cap will be the least of our concerns.

Warren Buffet on the US trade deficit

Buffett wrote Squanderville versus Thriftville (Warren Buffet over a year ago. It's a good read. I'd like to see DeLong comment on it.

The spirit wanes -- the Onion

The Onion reports on America's return to baseline:

Important Christmas Lessons Already Forgotten | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

... The positive, soul-enriching sentiments associated with the holiday season are shared by almost all Americans, regardless of religious beliefs or cultural backgrounds,' Samuelson said. 'But it is only through our regular mean-spirited shallowness the rest of the year that the spirit of Christmas can, by contrast, move us so deeply, deluding the populace into thinking their lives are actually beautiful. If everybody behaved so kindly to one another all year round, Christmas wouldn't seem special at all. And then, the magic of Christmas would be lost forever, swallowed up by a year-round sense of basic human decency that would rob the holidays of their warm glow, ruining Christmas for all the little children of the world.'

Excellent! One of their better pieces.

bin Laden is dead (I think)

Another message from Zawahiri ...

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Al-Qaeda leader airs new message

.. Zawahiri is likely to have made the tape before Mr Bush gave his comments. Al-Jazeera says the video carried the date of the Muslim lunar month which ended in December.

Zawahiri is regarded as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man. The two have evaded capture since US-led forces brought down the Taleban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks on the US.

I've believed for about a year that bin Laden was dead. It happens. He has lots of enemies, he's not young, he was rumored for a time to have kidney and/or vascular disease, he's been traveling rough. It's hard to believe a megalomaniac like him could be quiet for so long.

Maybe we ought to stop talking about capturing bin Laden and start talking about getting Zawahiri. I've long thought he was he was the more important of the two.