Intriguing riddles such as these often necessitate interdisciplinary brilliance to solve. Theoretical biologist and neuroscientist Mark Changizi has been stockpiling research in these areas for much of the last decade, fixated on some of the fascinating but imperfectly understood precincts of human perception. Not content with asking how our central nervous system functions, Changizi is determined to provide explanations of why its architecture and inter-operative functionality exist as they do. The Vision Revolution, should it withstand the scrutiny of peer review, is a groundbreaking work in vision science that brings forward original research into the evolution of the human visual system.

In the book he pivots between four core ideas, each of which are given mystical titles:

(1) Color telepathy:  “Color vision was selected for so that we might see emotions and other states on the skin.”

(2) X-ray vision:  “Forward-facing eyes were selected for so we could use X-ray vision in cluttered environments.”

(3) Future-seeing:  “Optical illusions are a consequence of the future-seeing power selected for so that we might perceive the present.”

(4) Spirit-reading:  “Letters culturally evolved into shapes that look like things in nature because nature is what we have evolved to be good at seeing.”

Each entrée of this technical collation is truly mind-altering, and it is a joy to tag along as Mark architects the empirical struts of his developmental theses. Let’s dive right in.

Color Vision

His first course of business is to provide an alternate explanation of the origin of color vision in primates. While we take it for granted today, color sensing is a relatively recent adaptation in the mammalian order. Until now, the default view among vision scientists is that color was selected for to distinguish between various types of fruit and leaves. The regnant explanation has survival value on its side, but Changizi believes it is not the complete answer. After all, not all mammalian diets are alike, but our color sensors and attendant properties are strikingly continuous with other color-sensitive primates.

Changizi instead makes the case that color acuity evolved to detect changes in skin oxygenation. When blood and oxygen levels fluctuate, we see an instant feedback effect on our skin. These shifts in skin tone and color signal us to changes in mood and emotion states and, more importantly, alert us to physiological dysfunction. A mother who can sense the full range of hue, saturation and brightness deviations in her baby’s face and body is in a better position to detect when something is amiss and take proper action.

This hypothesis puzzles out well enough for bare-skinned animals like humans, but what about hairy primates – the ancestors which supposedly evolved these traits long before our debut? It turns out there is a neatly correlated distribution between color vision and bare-faced primates. Changizi surveys the animal kingdom and finds that primates lacking color vision have furry faces, while those with hairless spots on their faces and body tend to have color vision just like us. He notes that this more “fleshed-out” explanation does not swear mutual exclusivity with the dominant explanation; indeed, they could be co-occurring drivers of selection.

X-ray Vision

Have you ever wondered why we have forward-facing eyes, as opposed to sideways-facing eyes like most reptiles, birds and fish? As Changizi demonstrates, this element of our physiology was selected for to better suit the habitat in which our ancestors evolved. This might at first seem like a non-intuitive proposition, as surely our survival would be better served by the ability to see both in front of and behind us (as animals with sideways-facing eyes most certainly can). But there’s a more marvelous, some might say superhuman reason our current orientation was favored.

Close one of your eyes. Notice how your nose is suddenly visible. The result is the same when you close your other eye. With both eyes open, however, the portion of your visual field occupied by your nose is no longer blocked. You are, effectively, able to see through your nose. Remarkably, this trick can be reproduced with any object whose width is narrower than the width of your eyes. Hold up your hand, position it vertically in front of your face, and you can see through it to read the screen behind it.

According to Changizi, this ability was helpful in leafy habitats, enabling our predecessors to see through grass and other foliage to spot predators and food. As life transitioned from water to land, those acclimatizing to heavily verdant environments gradually evolved the optical design shared by humans today. The binocular region for animals with sideways-facing eyes, on the other hand, is far too narrow to be effective, explaining why this arrangement is less commonly found in lush surrounds. While we may be manifestly less dependent on this feature today, it is nonetheless fascinating that evolution has gifted us with a passive form of X-ray vision.

Optical Illusions (and why they trick us)

As we move into the book’s third unit, we listen in as Changizi disassembles the aura of visual illusions. It’s estimated that eyes first evolved around 500 million years ago. Why then, after all this time, aren’t our eyes and brains complex enough to avoid being fooled by simple visual tomfoolery? Shouldn’t we process these images correctly by now?

The answer lies in the communication protocols linking our optical and brain arrays. The deep relationships governing the brain and the eye help us function appropriately in a three-dimensional world. The architecture of our central nervous system is such that a gap of 1/10th of a second exists between the moment light first hits our photoreceptors and when that signal is processed by the brain. Our brain then compensates for this delay by projecting images 1/10th of a second into the future.

Courtesy of Comics & Memes

These premonitions aid us in catching a thrown ball, for example, but can trick our senses when viewing static imagery on a two-dimensional plane. In effect, our in-built neural lag causes us to intuit motion-like characteristics to inert images, per the example above. Alas, our future-seeing ability is too favorable to our survival to ever part with, so the minor bug of awkwardly processing 2D geometry will remain an acceptable trade-off.

Nature’s Alphabet

“Spirit-reading” is Changizi’s nimble way of referring to all of the knowledge, thoughts and ideas nesting in the world’s books, literature and other written material. Thanks to language and writing, we have the ability to peer into the minds of our ancestors. And what an uncanny ability it is! Written language is not a technology we could have guaranteed would mesh well with our biology. So how did it come about? And why was it such a glowing success?

Changizi seeks to explain the contagion of written communication by linking its design to the shapes and contours found in our natural environment. If the basic strokes, junctions, marks and symbols of writing were adapted from familiar objects in nature, then our streamlined visual system would be well-prepared to process this information effectively. In fact, if we rewind the clock to our most ancient writing systems, we find they are unmistakably logographic (object-like), including Sumerian cuneiform (the very first writing system ever developed organically ~3200 BCE), Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, and the independently derived writing of the Mexican Indians appearing sometime before 600 BCE.

Through some involved visual linguistic analysis, Changizi submits that the fundamental structures of letters are akin to object parts observed in nature. The more common configurations we find in nature tend to find prevalence in human writing schemes. This relationship was no accident; our ancestors mimicked natural scenery to optimize information retrieval through the instrument of writing. In this sense, the clues to writing’s triumph are lurking in the letters themselves.

Closing Thoughts

There should be more books like The Vision Revolution. Changizi presents a highly compelling, evolutionarily grounded case for four intriguing ideas, distills the related focus areas into readable prose, and tailors it to the nonspecialist. The abundance of visual aids is a thrilling, effective way to convey his ideas and goes a long way toward making this more engaging than the average non-fiction work. The Vision Revolution is concise, well-argued, easy to wade through, and comes enthusiastically recommended. These ideas will change the way we think about vision and our perception of the world, and I hope it spawns even more exciting research going forward.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

 
 
From science writer and TED-Ed speaker Garth Sundem comes a Pandora’s box of brain taffy to stuff somewhere in your hippocampus, the bulk of which you’ll probably lose all recollection of shortly after consumption. In a quixotic attempt to ward off this neurological misdemeanor, I’ll take some moments to queue up any residual anamnesis I still have of Garth Sundem’s vat of brain confectionery.

In some ways, I enjoyed Brain Candy, but not in the ways I normally enjoy a book. Also ‘book’ is not perchance the proper term (something that would not have come as a surprise had I leafed through it pre-purchase rather than spasmodically tossing it in my Amazon shopping cart). Brain Candy is a mixed bag of trivia, brain trials, and interactive questionnaires, spiked with adages about the brain and the latest research, all divvied up into small chunks in more or less random sequence. As such, it’s more of an entertaining coffee table accoutrement, or something you’d place within short reach of the lavatory, its viscid morsels laced in such a way that you don’t linger too long.

As someone who has scoffed down every crumb tucked between the bindings, I can say it’s meant to be approached in episodes, committed to near-term memory and put aside until a later instance warrants its re-attention. The pages lurch from one topic to the next in such rapid-fire fashion that you’re forced to switch up your train of thought just as it is building speed. No need to overload your cerebrum; I’d hate to see you hopped up on all those sweets anyway. But you want more.

Surface treatment is the enemy of all enemies. And indeed, many topics simply do not sit well with this format. Dissecting the extent to which human and non-human behavior is genetic or environmentally conditioned requires more than a family of paragraphs (p. 90). Probing how human empathy is continuous with other primates and prosocial animals is not an area you can properly canvass in a sub-two-page serving (p. 149). Deconstructing addictive behavior and its underlying neural substrates does not go hand in hand with brevity (p. 125). The differential brain states of those with and without religious convictions is simply not something that can be paraphrased in a sectioned-off word salad (p. 142). Neuroethics? Free will? Don’t even bother.

Alas, this is not recommended for obsessive-compulsives or for those magnetized to detail. Yes, people like yours truly. The narrow snippets prefacing each study are embarrassingly, tantalizingly terse and frequently left me with more questions than answers. Are some people better at thought suppression than others? When interrogating a potential suspect, how does one determine what is and is not an extraneous detail? Is Mr. Sundem available for a Skype Q&A?

A soothing reprieve to the madcap formula served up here is that full citations are provided for many of the excerpts in the back of the book. If one of the topics in particular seizes your interest, you can always follow up with the original research paper. Brain Candy hence registers as a depthless collation priming you for the main entree, if you’re so inclined. Of course, there’s no reason the ADHD types won’t gobble this up. If hastily digestible chestnuts are more your speed, Brain Candy‘s a fine recipe.

There are other treats Sundem crams onto the dinner table. The book is chock full of brain teasers, psychometric and other pop-personality tests, and further topped with visual illusions and “eye hacks” that will infuriate your occipital lobe. Some of the brain teasers are worthwhile, while others barely rise to the level of time-wasters. And missing entirely is the crowning glory of all brain twisters: four men in hats. No excuse for its absence.

The optical legerdemain, moreover, consists of illusions you’ve probably seen before if you’ve had any exposure to the internet. Along the way you’ll also be forced to slurp down a glossary of phobias that I have my doubts are even real. (Automatonophobia — who knew we had created a word for people frightened by ventriloquist dummies?) Some might call much of this filler. Those people would be right. Any more, and I would have unhesitantly slapped on two stars.

Lastly, I cannot close out this review without mentioning the most savory bite in the book. Sundem enumerates a few hapless men who found themselves with nails (yes, nails) and other pointy objects lodged in their brain (p. 60). One man was found to have a two-inch nail embedded in his skull for twelve years before symptoms prompted him to consult a doctor. Another’s suicidal run-in with a nail gun backfired after having twelve nails plunged into his skull. What did he do except stroll into his local hospital complaining of a “mild headache”? Yet another nail gun incident involved a construction worker unbeknowingly firing a four-inch nail through the roof of his mouth, which penetrated clean through to the brain, stopping directly behind his right eye. The man gathered he had a toothache, which he sat on for six days before seeking help from one profoundly bemused dentist. And many of these men recovered with no neurological deficits whatsoever. Extraordinary.

Closing Thoughts

With neuroscience some twenty years or more behind genetics and other interoperable disciplines, it takes some effort to enlist the reader on an empirically sound, up-to-date voyage of the field. Brain Candy may well have been formed with other goals or target audiences in mind, and that’s fine, too. As a mere intellectual stimulant, it gets the job done.

I’m hesitant to label this ‘pop’-science, given the aforementioned citations and scholarly references abutting much of the synopses. But it sure reads like it. Sundem’s an entertaining writer, to be sure, but he leaves too much to the imagination, culminating in a book that’s long on fun and short on substance, like a hyper-condensed Radiolab podcast. There’s also a lot of dull filler that could have, to great benefit, been replaced by meatier exposés on the less permeable topics.

I’m just one taste-tester, however. If a heavily staccatoed collection of brain facts and toothsome studies, logic puzzles, and neurovisual tricks appeals to you, Brain Candy might be the perfect complement to your reading or living room décor.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Feature image credit: Deviantart user mynorthshadow

 
 
As the most complex structure known to man, the brain has been a highly valued area of study, and it’s only relatively recently that we’ve developed the technology to truly do so. In the process, we’ve gathered some key insights for successful learning.

If we are to learn how to learn, then brain research, specifically involving how its comprehension and memory mechanisms are impacted by external influences, must be given primacy. Empirical findings from psychology- and cognition-based studies continue to affirm the most profitable methods for learning, agnostic of individual characteristics or propensities. While it’s true that people are more amenable to certain learning styles, all of us can benefit from specific approaches and techniques that best aid information transfer and retrieval. Whether you’re trying to pass a naturally difficult course this semester, sharpen your memory and recall power or learn how to compete effectively at a new sport, the mechanics of the brain reveal some “inside” information into best practices for achieving success.

We will be drawing from the work of Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab and the guy who has practically written the book on cognition-driven learning. His book, Successful Remembering and Successful Forgetting, is encyclopedic in scope and a popular textbook choice for psychology programs around the country. This and other notable research is interspersed here that marries learning with the underlying science.

Integration

A common learning tactic many employ is trying to master a single concept before moving on to another. It turns out this is not very effective. Psychology tells us an integrated approach to learning is much more productive than the rigidly linear approach we tend to take.

Moving on to a new concept can reinforce our understanding of ones before it, allowing us to arrive at our goals—e.g., a deeper understanding of calculus or higher proficiency in tennis—earlier. For example, rather than sinking all of your time practicing your long-distance drive in golf, you might mix in some putts, chips, pitches and bunker shots. The idea is to not focus solely on one concept as if it were independent, as our time is used more efficiently when working in several interrelated concepts together. This deepens our understanding of the topic and eases the absorption process of higher-level information to which we have not yet been exposed.

Note that the order in which we learn certain concepts is still important, particularly for language acquisition, science and mathematics. This is why great care is taken in academia to structure curricula logically. Just be wary not to spend an inordinate amount of time on one concept before transitioning to the next.

Spacing Effect

Bjork also makes a clear distinction between memory retention and memory retrieval. Apparently we never actually forget the things we learn, as they are permanently stored in the hippocampus, the brain’s long-term memory repository. These neuronal connections just become increasingly difficult to revive over time.

Though you might not be able to recall precisely the address where you lived as a child, for example, it’s still tucked away in the stygian recesses of your brain. Research has shown that once you are reminded of the address, you will be able to recall it much easier and more quickly than an entirely unfamiliar street address. In this way, retaining information is more of a default process, while retrieval is something we must work at to improve.

To do this, we should apply what psychologists call the “spacing effect” to our study routines. If we learn new material and review it too soon afterward, we limit our potential for long-term memory retrieval. In the same way, if we wait too long before revisiting it, we may be unable to retrieve the information unassisted, even though it still resides within our neural networks.

It seems there is a critical interval between initial exposure to and subsequent revisitation of study material that optimizes information recall. According to Frank Dempster, research psychologist at the University of Nevada, this interval should grow increasingly longer after each retrieval to maximize recall power.

One theme which interlaces many of these studies is the harder we have to work to pull information out of our memory banks, the easier recall will be for that information in the future. This is why reviewing material too soon after it’s first presented is ineffective. Similar to how people ask a cashier to swipe their card a second and third time after the first attempt was declined, the outcome of gap-free study sessions is no different. Our routines should be more interstitial in nature.

Continuous studying leading up to an exam is thus cognitively disadvantageous. While we often think of repetition as building immunity to forgetfulness, it is actually working against us in the long run.

Delayed Note-Taking

Most of us probably think that note-taking is essential to getting the most out of a class or lecture. The practice of vigorously jotting down every important-sounding tidbit we hear bears a two-fold problem, however. First, part of our cognitive faculty is assigned to putting our thoughts to paper that could otherwise be devoted to a more acute concentration on the lecture. As any neuroscientist will tell you, our brains are not designed for competent multi-tasking. And secondly, merely regurgitating a lecture’s exact words immediately after you hear them does not constitute learning. Both handicap our ability to absorb information and get the most out of a presentation.

A better practice is to defer your note-taking until after the class, ideally right after. Having now attained the essence of the lecture, you should try to restate the key ideas in your own words. Your notes may very well reflect a stream of consciousness as you frantically write everything down before you forget it, but this process establishes more potent neuronal connections, easing recall later on.

This method not only forces you to pay greater attention in class but allows you to absorb more information than you would otherwise, both of which should be easier now that you are not writing while listening. It’s simply too easy to write down word for word what the professor says or copy the Power Point slides. Again, more work means higher memory performance when you most need it.

Recording notes in this way also frequently requires you to call upon existing knowledge and experience you already have, since you are not simply copying the lecturer’s slides as you would in class. You’re now applying new information to prior knowledge (which tangentially explains why analogies are so helpful). The reason behind this is straightforward enough. Restating and summarizing information on your own forms new neural connections in the brain, integrating the newly acquired information into existing neural networks. If we think of something first, or form the idea ourselves, we are more likely to remember it. Any time you can appropriately place newly learned information within your existing cerebral storehouse ossifies your understanding of that information and thereby amplifies memory retrieval.

Be aware that this does not suggest that you should record no notes while information is being presented to you. Hard facts, like statistics and other easy to forget numbers, are perfectly acceptable to write down. They may in fact grant you a more comprehensive or big-picture view of the topic down the road.

Re-Representation

This technique is closely linked to the one above. It’s long been proven that taking information in one format and re-representing it in an alternative format speeds up the conversion of information to knowledge. This can involve reinterpreting text-heavy information into visual information or vice-versa. For example, reconstituting something you just read in the form of a graph, chart or other diagram will help crystallize the concept in your mind. Likewise, taking the time to deconstruct statistical charts or graphs and interpret them in your own words will pay dividends during final exams. You will then have two memory retrieval cues to access – the text and the visuospatial representation of the text.

As part of their work in learning science, Diane Halpern and Milton Hakel discuss concept maps, which is a way of breaking down complex concepts into hierarchical illustrations. Consider a complex field of study like Euclidean geometry or developmental psychology. Every so often, it is helpful to concept map everything you’ve learned up to that point, properly taxonomizing and organizing what you’ve covered and how it all fits together. Over time, this equips you with a broader, big-picture informational framework of your area of study.

Location and Activity

Thus far we’ve discussed the recommended hows and whens of learning, but the where is also important. Numerous studies have shown that the location in which you learn and the activity in which you participate while learning are also factors important to a vivacious memory. If you change up your study environment often, there is potential for you to associate that environment with what you learned, thus increasing the chance of recall. Spending 100% of your study time in the university library does not provide a lot of environmental variability for you to attach information.

In the same way, taking part in an activity promotes learning because it adds yet another retrieval cue to your memory register. This is why educators and lecturers sometimes make the learning process into a game. Playing a political science version of Jeopardy will help cement the experience into students’ minds, securing a prominent place in the architecture of the brain. Similarly, it’s common for kinesthetic learners to go on walks while reading a book because they prefer to stay active, and varying the location of these walks can compound its effectiveness.

Visuals

The presence of visuals also aids memory retrieval, regardless of whether you self-identify as a visual learner. Whenever we attach imagery to information, we recruit the occipital lobe in the rear of our brains. Incorporating images such as graphs, flowcharts and other illustrations into our study or teaching materials adds one more retrieval cue for eliciting the desired synaptic response. The aforementioned concept maps and even the simple practice of sketching on paper what you’re learning will be useful in mastering more abstruse topics.

Wrap-Up

Given these insights, you may find it necessary to reengineer the way you learn, prepare for school exams or approach practicing a new sport or skill. Because the applications are so broad, a greater understanding of how the brain operates will consistently lead to tangible improvements in many areas of our lives.

Key ideas:

• Interleaving different but related concepts into our study sessions, as opposed to focusing all our efforts on one, can dramatically reduce total study time.

• Similarly, practicing several tennis, golf or other sports techniques together can result in quicker improvements.

• Being cognizant of the optimal period of time before revisiting studied material yields better learning by strengthening neuronal connections in our brain.

• Assimilating fresh information into our existing knowledge networks by summarizing lectures and seminars ourselves enables a deeper understanding and furthers recall.

• Distilling complex concepts down to more accessible terms or illustrations enables comprehensive knowledge over time.

• Lastly, remember that anything we can do to expand the number of retrieval cues attached to different pieces of information stimulates prompt and thorough recall. Visual imagery, varying the study location, and inserting an activity into the standard routine can all ensure information is readily available when we need it.

Use these learning-based stratagems to boost your cognitive toolkit and make more efficient use of your time.

Sources and further reading:

Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong
Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond, Diane F. Halpern and Milton D. Hakel
The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research, Frank N. Dempster
10 facts about learning that are scientifically proven and interesting for teachers
Experiential Learning Theory: Previous Research and New Directions, David A. Kolb
Experiential learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, David A. Kolb
Engines For Education, Roger C. Schank
Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce, Roger C. Schank

Feature image by CalicoStonewolf at Deviant Art

 
 
Neuroscientist and fiction writer David Eagleman gives a stimulating talk discussing the thorny intersection of neuroscience and law. Its starting point is a question man has debated for centuries: Is the mind separate from the brain? Eagleman, like most neuroscientists and philosophers, posits that it is not. That is, we are our brain. And the ‘mind’ – our emotions, thoughts, beliefs, desires – are simply what the brain does. It’s the basic idea that the brain, consisting of the multifarious neural networks and synaptic relationships therein, gives rise to mind. Eagleman and others advance this a philosophical step further by maintaining we do not truly have free will or, rather, we do not have it to the extent we think we do. Given all the available evidence, he asserts our behavior depends exclusively on our neural chemistry, not on the nebulously independent “mind.”

He points to several forms of evidence in support of these contentions. It has been demonstrated, for instance, that brain tumors affect who you are in very manifest ways, such as drastically changing your personality. In one case he tells of how a wife urged her husband to see a physician after he became involved in pedophilia. A tumor was found in his brain, which was removed, and his pedophiliac behavior ceased. However, the tumor was not fully resected and when it grew back, the man again began gravitating to pedophilia. Following another rescission, his behavior halted once again.

There are many similar cases with the same basic structure, but then there are also those individuals suspected of abnormal brain activity that cannot be observed via neuroscientific methods, such as serial or spree killers who died before they were caught. These individuals’ brains cannot be studied and are thus unable to provide key insights into their brain makeup.

This raises some intriguing, and predictably polarizing, legal questions and concerns. Should we abrogate the universal reasonableness standard upheld by modern law, or should we acknowledge the possibility that there might not be a “universal man” (i.e., not all brains are equal)? Should “criminals” who engage in outward manifestations of their ‘abnormalized’ neural biology be subject to the same consequences as those with more common neural architecture? Should we continue to employ jail sentencing as a “one-size-fits-all” approach, or should we use this biological information to innovate more effective rehabilitation programs? Should our legal systems emphasize deterrence and recovery over punishment and confinement?

Instead of giving us precise answers to these questions, he explains how the field of neuroscience is some 20 years behind the field of genetics and the present technology is still insufficiently powerful to answer these types of questions. fMRI technology is in its nascent stages and is mostly limited to measuring emotional responses and triggers. We still have a ways to go before neuroscience can be relied upon by jurors and the institution of law, but the current information brings to the surface some important considerations for the future.

External Links: David Eagleman – The Brain and the Law, Breivik’s Brain