Triple Track Razor...

Image from: Cubic Awareness Online
Richard Janczarski, webmaster

Invalidity
"Religious beliefs are irrational and invalid. They cannot be considered to be true. Their supernatural elements are superfluous, lacking real basis: therefore, Occam's Razor rejects them."
(Occam's Razor is a rational principle. For more rationality, see The Rational Belief.)"

...''Because you'll believe anything.''

ONCE upon a time, razors with multiple blades were a joke. The first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" included a mock commercial for the "Triple Track," a three-bladed razor, featuring the slogan: "Because you'll believe anything."

--Nick Berns, Skin Deep; Shaving With Five Blades When Maybe Two Will Do

Chris at Developing Intelligence has an interesting post on Why The Simplest Theory Is [Almost] Never The Right One, in which he suggests that Occam's Razor isn't a very useful principle in the life sciences, developmental psychology, or cognitive neuroscience. A heated and lively discussion ensues in the comments.

Sweet and divine
Razor of mine
Sweet and divine
Razorblade shine

--Foo Fighters, Razor

What is Occam's Razor?

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

[As an aside, I always thought that parsimony was overrated...]

Eh-oh!

Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the folksy, small-town preacher who used the power of television to found the Moral Majority and turn the Christian right into a mighty force in American politics during the Reagan years, died Tuesday at 73.

. . .

Tinky Winky

Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.

Not to make light of anyone's death (and condolences to his family and friends), but Falwell was known for blaming...

the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.

...for the attacks of 9/11/01.

I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'

And Tinky Winky too.



UPDATE: Tinky Winky says bye-bye to Jerry Falwell

Is It Bad To Gamble When Sleep Deprived?

In the annals of the incredibly obvious, researchers have shown that "late-night gambling is a risky game":


Obviousman by Wiley Miller

Blame boneheaded bets on your tired brain
Scientists pinpoint why late-night gamblers lose big time

By Linda Carroll

. . .

Scientists set up experiments in which people have a choice between a high-risk gamble with the opportunity for a big payout and a low-risk option that offers the prospect of more moderate gain. They compared the decisions made by well-rested gamblers and those who’ve been up for hours on end.

Sure enough, the studies showed that when sleep is curtailed, people are drawn to risky, but high-paying, options.

Was it really that incredibly obvious? No. That is not what the study by Venkatraman et al. (2007) showed at all:

There was no significant difference in risk preference between the 2 states. Subjects earned an average bonus of $35.50 (SD = $6.71) for the rested-wakefulness session and $35.70 (SD = $10.08) for the sleep-deprivation session.

To be fair, though, the authors did brain scans on these sleepy gamblers to assess changes in gain/loss sensitivity with sleep deprivation, and other media outlets were a little less tabloid-ish with their headlines (and more accurate in their reporting):

Sleep Deprivation Can Threaten Competent Decision-making

. . .

The authors found that the nucleus accumbens, an area in the brain involved with the anticipation of reward, becomes selectively more active when high risk-high payoff choices were made under conditions of sleep deprivation. Further, the number of high risk decisions did not increase with sleep deprivation, but the expectation of being rewarded for making the high risk gamble was elevated. Allied to this finding was the observation that there was an attenuated response to losses in the insula, a part of the brain involved with evaluating the emotional significance of an event.

Stay tuned for more on the nucleus accumbens!

Reference

Vinod Venkatraman, YM Lisa Chuah, Scott A Huettel, Michael WL Chee (2007). Sleep Deprivation Elevates Expectation of Gains and Attenuates Response to Losses Following Risky Decisions. Sleep 30:603-609


Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Overuse Theory of Alzheimer's Disease

"Past and Future Self" by Austin Houldsworth

Exploring the parallels between an expanding/contracting universe and human development.

Shown at the 2006 Darklight Festival (among other places). View the 1 min video at perpetual art machine.

As part of the symposium on Projecting the Past Into the Future: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Prospective Thought, Randy L. Buckner from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University spoke about his previously published hypothesis (Buckner et al., 2005; Buckner & Vincent, 2007) on how "overuse" of the default brain network contributes to the development of Alzheimer's disease [see also an earlier paper by Greicius et al., 2004]: the high metabolism of the "default mode" areas induces a toxic cellular cascade that can lead to the formation of plaques.

To quickly review, the default mode of brain function (Raichle et al., 2001) engages a certain network of brain regions (posterior cingulate and precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex) during "rest." These regions become DEactivated when people are engaged in the typical types of cognitive tasks they're asked to do in a scanner. So it's really only a "resting state" when compared to performing some active task. When asked to rest and stare at a plus sign, you may think about what you'll do over the weekend or remember where you went for dinner last night.

This default network shows a high level of resting activity (Buckner et al., 2005).


amyloid beta-containing plaques in the brain of a person who had Alzheimer's disease.

One possibility is that lifetime cerebral metabolism associated with regionally specific default activity predisposes cortical regions to AD-related changes, including amyloid deposition, metabolic disruption, and atrophy.

taken from Figure 6 (Buckner et al. , 2005): Convergence and hypothetical relationships across molecular, structural, and functional measures. Each image represents the projection of data ... onto the cortical surface of the left hemisphere. Three patterns emerge. First, regions showing default activity in young adults are highly similar to those showing amyloid deposition in older adults with AD, including both posterior cortical regions and anterior regions. Second, atrophy and metabolism disruption in AD prominently affect the posterior cortical regions also affected by amyloid deposition and less so the anterior regions. Third, the regions affected in AD and those active in default states in young adults overlap memory networks showing retrieval success effects during recognition in young adults.


Figure 7 (Buckner et al. , 2005): A schematic illustration of one possible configuration of lifelong events that lead to AD. Conducive metabolic conditions, associated with default mode activity patterns, may lead to regionally specific amyloid deposition. In turn, atrophy and dementia may then result. This metabolism cascade should be considered a hypothesis.

Plausible or not?? The posterior cortical areas are especially affected, but medial prefrontal cortex not so much. And what is the toxic cellular cascade that leads to amyloid deposition?

References

Buckner RL, Snyder AZ, Shannon BJ, LaRossa G, Sachs R, Fotenos AF, Sheline YI, Klunk WE, Mathis CA, Morris JC, Mintun MA. (2005). Molecular, structural, and functional characterization of Alzheimer's disease: evidence for a relationship between default activity, amyloid, and memory. J Neurosci. 25:7709-17.

Buckner RL, Vincent JL. (2007). Unrest at rest: Default activity and spontaneous network correlations. Neuroimage Jan 25; [Epub ahead of print]

Greicius MD, Srivastava G, Reiss AL, Menon V. (2004). Default-mode network activity distinguishes Alzheimer's disease from healthy aging: evidence from functional MRI. Proc Natl Acad Sci 101:4637-42.

Raichle ME, MacLeod AM, Snyder AZ, Powers WJ, Gusnard DA, Shulman GL. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 98: 676–682.

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future

Symposium Session 4 at the CNS 2007 Annual Meeting was on Projecting the Past Into the Future: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Prospective Thought.

Summary: Humans spend a significant amount of time envisioning possible future events, yet the bulk of cognitive neuroscience research has focused on how humans re-experience past happenings. Such an oversight is surprising as future-oriented thought makes it possible for humans to anticipate events, formulate strategies based on previous experiences, and override momentary needs in pursuit of longer-term goals. In this symposium we present findings that suggest the brain evolved sophisticated mechanisms for envisioning the future. Schacter's work suggests that to deal effectively with the future people utilize the psychological and neural processes involved in remembering the past. Based on her recent findings, McDermott suggests that the ability to envision future events involves the simulation of behavior and the reinstatement of visuo-spatial contexts. Buckner will present data suggesting that one fundamental function of the brain is simulating alternative strategies and perspectives. Finally, Bar presents a framework linking perception, memory and predictions and argues that the mind is constantly anticipating "what's next" based on analogies with past experiences. As a package, these findings suggest that one core component of human cognition is anticipating possible future scenarios based on memories of past events.

The Neurocritic wrote about this topic (and the papers by Addis et al., 2007 [Schacter Lab], Szpunar et al., 2007 [McDermott Lab], and Hassabis et al., 2007 [Maguire Lab]) back in February. Was anything new presented? Not too much. The audience laughed [audibly] when Kathleen McDermott described the experimental control condition for imagining one's own future (imagine former President Clinton doing...) and how participants could easily imagine him in various scenarios. I snorted [inaudibly] when she admitted that interpretation of her results [i.e., activation of posterior cingulate cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, and occipital regions reflect autobiographical memory and spatial navigation] relies on reverse inference¹. McDermott did describe a new study with an alternate control condition asking the participants to imagine themselves in an unfamiliar future situation (e.g., scuba diving, bullfight, jungle), so that self-referential (not Clinton-referential) processing was involved in all three conditions. The original result was replicated (Future familiar = Past familiar > Future novel).

Schacter mentioned a paper under review that looked at the effects of aging on the level of detail produced when imagining future events. This experiment followed from the findings of Levine et al. (2002), which demonstrated that older adults show a reduced level of contextual (episodic) detail when recalling autobiographical events; instead, they rely more on "semantic details not connected to a particular time and place" than do young adults. The new Schacter et al. results found the same thing in elderly participants imagining the future.

For his conclusion, Schacter acknowledged that no regions of the brain were more active for remembering the past vs. imagining the future in his study (Addis et al., 2007). It's a confounded comparison: we should imagine an alternate past instead of recalling an existing one.

What about Buckner and Bar? Certain aspects of their talks merit future posts of their own...

¹ inferring the participants' emotional state from the observed pattern of brain activity.

References

Addis DR, Wong AT, Schacter DL. (2007). Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration. Neuropsychologia 45: 1378-1385.

Hassabis D, Kumaran D, Vann SD, Maguire EA. (2007). Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104: 1726-31.

Levine B, Svoboda E, Hay JF, Winocur G, Moscovitch M. (2002). Aging and autobiographical memory: dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychol Aging 17:677-89.

Szpunar KK, Watson JM, McDermott KB. (2007). Neural substrates of envisioning the future. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 104:642-7.

"Without A Theory The Facts Are Silent"

-- Friederich A. von Hayek

Hayek was the Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 1974 and co-originator of The Hayek/Hebb Synaptic Model. Haven't heard of the Hayek/Hebb Synaptic Model (it's just Hebbian learning, right)? Greg Ransom explains why.

Dr. Joaquin Fuster, distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, won the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience at the CNS 2007 Annual Meeting. He began his lecture with the above quote by Hayek and summarized his work on the network model of cortical cognition (e.g., Fuster, 1999, 2003), providing an historical overview of work on the Perception-Action Cycle (Fuster, 2004).



Fig. 1 (Fuster, 2004). Representational map of the human lateral cortex. (a) Schema of the hierarchical organization of memory and knowledge. (b) Approximate topographic distribution of memory networks, using the same color code as in (a).

In contrast to the outdated (Fuster, 2000) Modular Paradigm (in which cognitive functions and the contents of cognition are localized in discrete regions dedicated to the specific functions and domains), Fuster has long supported the Network Paradigm where higher cortical functions are distributed across brain regions, showing extensive intersection and overlap. In this scheme, one neuron can be part of many networks.

The thing about a lot of contemporary cog neuro research (including some presented at this conference) is that it conforms to the Modular Paradigm of extreme localization of function:

Cognitive neuroscience is not a new field, though its precise origin is difficult to trace. It was born whenever and wherever scientists began to ponder the logical relations between brain and mind and to explore those relations by observation and experiment. Most certainly, it was not born in Squaw Valley, California, where in the summer of 1993 a group of neuroscientists met to give it a name and to give themselves an agenda. [NOTE: this is not a snide remark, oh no]

. . .

...they presumably wanted the all-encompassing coverage to support their main agenda, which was the cognitive science of the cerebral cortex. That extended coverage diluted the agenda, but not enough to obscure a central concept that appears in various forms in many of the chapters. That concept is the cortical module of cognition: a discrete and continuous piece of cortical tissue specialized to serve one cognitive function or to represent one essential aspect of the information processed by it. ...

. . .

In the higher levels of that theoretical edifice, anatomists and physiologists met neuropsychologists, who were eager to localize in the brain their own constructs of cognitive function—mostly derived from studies of the effects of cortical damage. The result of the intellectual alliance of those three groups of scientists was, in the humble opinion of this reviewer, something not too distant from a new phrenology more or less legitimized by the scientific method. One of my purposes in this review is to caution the reader about some of the problems with the neuromodular principle of cognition and the methods used to support it. Another is to point out the pressing need for a more apt and useful model of cognitive organization in the cortex.

There is no greater impediment to a unified cognitive neuroscience than our inveterate Aristotelian tendency to consider cognitive functions as separate entities...

References

J.M. Fuster - Memory in the Cerebral Cortex: An Empirical Approach to Neural Networks in the Human and Nonhuman Primate. Cambridge, MIT Press, (paperback), 1999.

J.M. Fuster - The module: crisis of a paradigm (book review, "The New Cognitive Neurosciences" Second Edition, M.S. Gazzaniga, Editor-in-Chief, MIT Press). Neuron 26:51-53, 2000.

J.M. Fuster - Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition, Oxford University Press, 2003.

J.M. Fuster - Upper processing stages of the perception–action cycle. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8:143-145, 2004.

The Neurocritic Does New York

The Neurocritic will be going to New York to attend the 14th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

With spring in the air, the 2007 meeting will have a new program line-up that is fresh and promises to pique the interests of all attendees. The meeting will be kicked off on Saturday, May 5, by the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience Lectureship, which will be followed by a reception and the first poster session. Poster sessions will continue from May 6–8, with additional sessions added on Sunday and Monday to accommodate the increasing number of submissions (1,100 are expected this year).

Poster-making has superceded blog posting as of late...but stay tuned!