Skepticblog

Where is the “seat of consciousness” in the brain? This is often presented as an enduring mystery of modern neuroscience, and to an extent it is. It is a very complex question and we don’t yet have anything like a complete answer, or even a consensus. The question itself may contain false assumptions – what, exactly, is consciousness, and perhaps what we call consciousness emerges from the collective activity of the entire brain, not a subset. Perhaps every network in the brain is conscious to some degree, and what we experience as our consciousness is the aggregate effect of many little consciousnesses.

One way to approach this question (really a set of related questions) is to study different mental states – altered states of consciousness. How those differences relate to brain function are likely to tell us something about the contribution of that brain function to full wakeful consciousness.

A new study by scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry in Munich and for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and from Charité in Berlin attempts to do just that. They have studied the brain activity of those in normal dreaming and in a so-called lucid dreaming state.

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According to reports, 21 people had to be treated for burns from walking over hot coals at a Tony Robbins inspirational event.

Robbins is a successful self-help guru with a schtick that depends upon the scientific illiteracy of his audience. After a session of telling people how to “unleash the power within” he demonstrates their new-found power by inviting them to walk barefoot over hot burning coals while thinking about cool moss. This is meant to demonstrate the power of mind over matter. This is, of course, nonsense.

The Hot Coal Deception

Many physicists have used the hot coal demonstration to teach a bit of elementary physics, as there is a very simple explanation for how people can walk over hot coals in their bare feet. I have, in fact, heard three (non-exclusive) explanations. The first, and the one that I think is probably the biggest factor, is that wood coals have a very low thermal capacity and conductivity. This means that they do not hold on to a lot of heat energy, and they conduct that energy very slowly. Therefore little heat is transferred to the soles of the feet – if you walk briskly across them and give little time for heat transfer.

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I am leaving early Monday morning for the west coast and TAM 2012. My first stop in San Francisco where I and the rest of the SGU gang will be meeting with some local skeptics. Then we have a presentation at Google on Tuesday and Wednesday we’re off to Vegas and TAM. As always, I am looking forward to the conference this year – we have some great presentations and events planned.

This is just a short post to let you know I will be doing little to no blogging over the week. I may squeeze in a short post here and there, but I am always incredibly busy at these events doing interviews and preparing for the events. I will come back with lots of great interviews and will resume my usual blogging schedule next week.

Hope to see some of you there. Please stop by the SGU table if you have a chance or just introduce yourself to me. Don’t be put off if I look busy – I always look that way.

One of the themes of this blog is the misreporting of science information in the lay media, so I am always interested in a particularly bad piece of science reporting. Several readers pointed me toward this piece in The Telegraph about studying genetic ancestry. I know newspaper writers usually don’t write their own headlines, but in this case the headline is partly a quote from the article itself: “Scottish lecturer found to be ‘grandfather of everyone in Britain.'”

That is a misleading and useless characterization of the science story covered in the article. The phrase “grandfather of everyone in Britain” does appear as a quote from “scientists”, although no specific name is given. I know from personal experience and talking to other scientists who have been misquoted by the media that the presence of quotation marks does not mean that a real scientist actually uttered those words. It is possible that they did, however. Typically a reporter will interview an expert for thirty minutes or more about the topic of their report, and then use only small bits from the interview, or perhaps none at all. Good journalists will use the expert to help them understand the topic and shape the article they are writing. However, too often journalists (especially those who are not specifically trained as science journalists) will just fish for provocative quotes they can weave into the article they have already mostly written. Even worse, they may put quotes into the mouths of their experts. “Would you say that…”

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Those of us promoting the application of scientific skepticism to medical claims deal with a very broad range of claims, from just at the edge of acceptable science to abject magical thinking. It is useful, and unfortunately necessary, to deal with the full range of pseudoscience, but I admit a particular fascination with the pure magic end of the spectrum. What thought process is going on in people who casually accept the impossible as true?

Take, for example, a recent news report of a Canadian man who apparently has suffered from pain for years. The reporting in the article, not surprisingly, is horrific. There isn’t a hint of journalistic skepticism, no consultation with a medical expert, and not even a token attempt at balance. I have learned that this means the journalist, Doug Hempstead, likely approached the article as a “human interest” story, which means there is no apparent need for any journalistic integrity, accuracy, balance, or important background or story details. All that matters is that there is a human interest and some sensational element.

The core of the story is that Eric Bertrand, who has suffered muscle pain for years despite treatment from real doctors, was finally pressured by his family to consult an alternative practitioner. The article mentions naturopathy – naturopathy, essentially, is medicine without science (or even basic reason and common sense, in my opinion). Naturopaths use a hodge podge of prescientific, fanciful, unproven or even disproved modalities. There is no real theme or consistency to what they use – anything goes.

However, Bertrand consulted Ottawa practitioner, Tony Brunelle, who is a chiropractor. (Brunelle now proudly displays his mention in the Ottawa Sun – nice free advertising).  Brunelle used a technique known as applied kinesiology to diagnose Bertrand’s problem.

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When you see a person for the first time your eyes quickly scan their face and in less than a second your brain has gathered a tremendous amount of information about this person, processed that information, and come to many simultaneous conclusions. Think about all the different kinds of information we quickly and simultaneously process – the age and gender of the person, their race (or more generally, the genetic group with which they belong), their personality and mood, their attractiveness, the status of their health, and whether or not we have ever seen them before (do we know them).

Our brains perform this processing quickly, efficiently, and subconsciously, and so we tend to take it for granted. There are regions of the brain dedicated to processing sensory information about human faces. We are still teasing apart all the various aspects of this subconscious processing, which not surprisingly is very complex and involves multiple layers.

It also always fascinates me to find that there is a scientific community and robust research, complete with ongoing controversies, about the smallest area of knowledge – how we process facial information. Modern science has drilled down deeply on even narrow questions, which I feel is part of its strength.

It is not surprising that humans are so good at facial processing. We are social creatures who live in cooperative groups. The information gained from another’s face can be critical to survival. Since humans are essentially tribal it makes sense that we would specifically process facial information to recognize when someone belongs to our group vs another group – and not just some other group, but which other group. Are they a member of a tribe with which we are currently hostile or friendly? This is apparently the root of stereotyping. When we are not familiar with a specific individual we judge them based upon the only available information that we have, the group with which they appear to belong.

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Recent evidence suggests there is a link between sleep quality and weight control – poor sleep correlates with risk of obesity. The possible causal connection goes both ways. Obesity increases the risk for sleep apnea and other conditions that may interfere with sleep, such as back pain. Recent studies also suggest that sleep deprivation increases appetite and decreases energy ependiture. A recent review summarizes the evidence:

On this basis, the present review examines the role of sleepcurtailment in the metabolic and endocrine alterations, including decreased glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, increased evening concentrations of cortisol, increased levels of ghrelin, decreased levels of leptin and increased hunger and appetite. It will be discussed how sleeprestriction may lead to increase in food intake and result in greater fatigue, which may favour decreased energy expenditure.

All of the hormonal factors listed above would tend to increase hunger and fat storage and decrease satiety. Fatigue also decreases energy output. Resulting weight gain may further worsen sleep, leading to a vicious cycle.

A new study adds another element to the mix. Researchers looked at 23 healthy subjects over two sessions, one with normal sleep and one with sleep deprivation. They then exposed them to various food choices while in an fMRI scanner. They found that the sleep deprived subjects had decreased activity in their frontal lobes while making food choices.

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The history of governments meddling in the practice of science is not a good one. The most infamous case is that of Lysenkoism -Stalin backed the ideas of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko who believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. His ideas became of the official sanctioned science of the Soviet government. Genetics was declared a “bourgeois science,” or “fascist science,” and many geneticists who disagreed with Lysenko were executed or sent to labor camps. Execution tends to have a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas and the practice of science. Over seven decades later genetic science in Russia is still lagging behind.

In the US we have a similar problem – not the Gulag, but political factions that disagree with certain findings of science that are ideologically inconvenient for them. The two biggest issues being targeted (but certainly not the only ones) are evolution and climate change. Much of the focus has been on what should be taught to students in science class (my vote is for science).

Recently the North Carolina legislature proposed House Bill 819 to study the effect of climate change on sea levels, and therefore coastlines. For some reason the legislators felt the need to include in the bill specific restrictions on how the science can be done. Section 2 includes this line:

These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.

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Another step has been taken in the research to develop practical brain-machine interfaces (BMI). The basic concept, as I have discussed previously, is to read electrical activity from the brain, then use a computer to interpret that electrical activity and use it to control something, which can be a cursor on a computer screen, a robotic arm, or any other electrical device.

In order for this technology to be useful it has to be possible for the person whose mental activity is being monitored to learn how to control the cursor or robot with their thoughts. Previous research shows that brain plasticity allows for such BMI prosthetics to feel natural – in other words, it is possible to learn how to control external devices through a BMI just as if they were a part of the body.

There are two basic ways to read electrical activity, through implanted sensors or through scalp sensors. The implanted sensors are much better because they are in direct contact with the brain, but then there needs to be some way for the sensor to communicate outside the brain. This is done currently with wires. This, of course, is an invasive procedure and can have complications. The scalp sensors are much safer and easier to apply, but the resolution is much lower as the electrical activity of the brain is attenuated by the skull and scalp – so it’s like looking through a thick pain of foggy glass. For this reason it seems that the future of BMI will be implantable sensors.

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The subculture of pseudoscientific ghost hunting continues to evolve. Have you heard of a “ghost box?” It seems all you have to do is put the word “ghost” in front of something and it becomes technical jargon for ghost hunters, and also a great example of begging the question. A cold spot in a house is therefore “ghost cold.” An electromagnetic field (EMF) detector becomes a “ghost detector.” And now a radio scanner has been rebranded as a “ghost box.” Of course no one has ever established that any of these phenomena have anything to do with ghosts, so they are putting the cart several miles ahead of the horse.

A more scientific and intellectually honest approach would be to declare such phenomena as anomalous (although I don’t think that they are). Ghost cold would more properly be termed anomalous cold, or a regional cold anomaly, or something like that. One hypothesis for the alleged cold anomaly would be some sort of supernatural entity (call it a ghost) that acts as a heat sink generating cold spots. First, however, researchers should endeavor to find a mundane explanation for the cold. In fact before declaring it an anomaly they should thoroughly rule out any possible explanation. Only when that has been adequately done would they have a tentative anomaly.

It would then be reasonable to generate a hypothesis as to what is causing the anomalous cold, but such hypotheses are only useful if they lead to testable predictions. If the regional cold anomaly phenomenon is the result of “ghosts”, then what might we predict from that and how can we test it? I don’t know of any way to definitively test it, as ghosts are not a well-defined phenomenon, but perhaps there are some preliminary tests that could be done. For example, is there at least a correlation between cold spots and experiences often interpreted as ghosts or hauntings? Perhaps cold spots are just as likely in homes without other such “ghost phenomena.” Such a correlation would not prove the ghost hypothesis, of course, but it would at least be a start, and the lack of correlation would seriously jeopardize the hypothesis.

Ghost hunters, however, skip over all of this scientific methodology and reasoning and simply declare cold spots “ghost cold” and then use them as evidence for ghosts. They are then puzzled when scientists and skeptics don’t accept what they consider to be compelling evidence for ghosts, but what is really compelling evidence for the complete lack of scientific understanding on the part of ghost hunters.

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