A recent study published in Cerebral Cortex has uncovered additional evidence of the role of the mirror neuron system in learning. They studied a middle-aged women who was born with no arms or legs. When she observed others performing acts that she could perform activated her mirror system (as it would in everyone). But the intriguing thing is that observing tasks that she could not perform herself, such as tapping a finger, the appropriate mirror neuron systems became activated but so did other regions of the brain that have been shown to be involved in "mentalizing", mentally simulating behaviors in order to understand the actions of others.
Here's a link to the ScienceNews article where I learned about this.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Science News website: Fill up on some science!
The reviews are in: the new Winnie the Pooh movie is a winner!!
A great example of how popular perception can clash with the evidence
"The picture painted of America's southwestern border with Mexico is a bloody one, in which the drug violence decimating northern Mexico has spilled onto U.S. soil and turned the region into a war zone."
Thus begins an article recently appearing in USA Today.
What first appeared to be another article covering the swelling, out-of-control lawlessness and violence in towns close to the Mexico border, actually turned out to be a report by USA Today in which they analyzed actual crime data covering a 10 year period (1999-2009) from 1600 local law enforcement agencies across the 4 states bordering Mexico. And the story the data told were very different from what almost everyone expected. The data show that crime rates in towns both big and small that are within 50 or 100 miles of the Mexico border actually have lower crime rates than their state average! Check out the article for the details.
The perception of an environment riddled with drug-fueled smuggling, violence, and other crimes has been the impetus for the expenditure of millions on hiring hundreds of more border agents, fortifying fences, passing the controversial and arguably unconstitutional laws such as the one in Arizona making it legal for police to stop, question and search anyone they happen across who they believe may be in the U.S. illegally.
But the evidence tells a different story. As Galileo put it after being forced to recant his proposal that the earth revolves around the sun: E pur si muove, "and yet it moves".
Thus begins an article recently appearing in USA Today.
What first appeared to be another article covering the swelling, out-of-control lawlessness and violence in towns close to the Mexico border, actually turned out to be a report by USA Today in which they analyzed actual crime data covering a 10 year period (1999-2009) from 1600 local law enforcement agencies across the 4 states bordering Mexico. And the story the data told were very different from what almost everyone expected. The data show that crime rates in towns both big and small that are within 50 or 100 miles of the Mexico border actually have lower crime rates than their state average! Check out the article for the details.
The perception of an environment riddled with drug-fueled smuggling, violence, and other crimes has been the impetus for the expenditure of millions on hiring hundreds of more border agents, fortifying fences, passing the controversial and arguably unconstitutional laws such as the one in Arizona making it legal for police to stop, question and search anyone they happen across who they believe may be in the U.S. illegally.
But the evidence tells a different story. As Galileo put it after being forced to recant his proposal that the earth revolves around the sun: E pur si muove, "and yet it moves".
Friday, July 15, 2011
Pain as warning of potential injury
Although there have been some recent advances in our understanding of how acute pain develops into chronic pain, the process, and more importantly, the reason why this occurs largely remains a mystery. I would like to posit that some of the mystery may clear if we look at pain from a slightly different perspective than usual.
Pain is most commonly considered to be a sign of injury. That is, the primary purpose of pain is to signal injury. The stronger the pain, the worse the injury. But the fact is that pain can arise before any injury has taken place in order to signal that injury is imminent unless action is taken to prevent it. Touching a hot bulb, for example, will elicit pain in advance of any tissue damage. This setup has obvious adaptive advantages. After all, better to prevent an injury altogether than to have to heal after injury has occurred.
But what if all pain amounted to a signal that the brain was predicting injury unless action was taken to prevent it? In other words, what if pain was first and foremost a warning of injury? Put yet another way, pain may be part of a homeodynamic system that is designed to maintain the integrity of the body in the face of threats to this integrity. Many systems can operate without behavioral intervention but some require the organism to perform certain activities. Maintenance of blood sugar and body temperature of 2 examples of the former, whereas hunger and thirst are examples of the latter. It may be that pain may also be an example of the latter.
When thinking of pain as a signal of injury, it becomes quite puzzling why pain might persist even after the instigating injury has healed. We might wonder what kind of crappy system evolution has evolved that would lead to persisting pain long after the injury has gone and the pain has served any useful purpose. But if we look at pain as a motivator to perform a behavior aimed at maintaining or restoring bodily integrity then the chronification of pain seems a bit less mysterious. Here's why...
When an injury occurs, the purpose of pain is not merely to signal injury. What good would it do? What are we supposed to do with this information beside suffer the aversiveness of the experience? Instead, pain is a signal that the brain has reason to believe that some part of the body is at risk and that some form of behavioral response is necessary. With this signal
Pain is most commonly considered to be a sign of injury. That is, the primary purpose of pain is to signal injury. The stronger the pain, the worse the injury. But the fact is that pain can arise before any injury has taken place in order to signal that injury is imminent unless action is taken to prevent it. Touching a hot bulb, for example, will elicit pain in advance of any tissue damage. This setup has obvious adaptive advantages. After all, better to prevent an injury altogether than to have to heal after injury has occurred.
But what if all pain amounted to a signal that the brain was predicting injury unless action was taken to prevent it? In other words, what if pain was first and foremost a warning of injury? Put yet another way, pain may be part of a homeodynamic system that is designed to maintain the integrity of the body in the face of threats to this integrity. Many systems can operate without behavioral intervention but some require the organism to perform certain activities. Maintenance of blood sugar and body temperature of 2 examples of the former, whereas hunger and thirst are examples of the latter. It may be that pain may also be an example of the latter.
When thinking of pain as a signal of injury, it becomes quite puzzling why pain might persist even after the instigating injury has healed. We might wonder what kind of crappy system evolution has evolved that would lead to persisting pain long after the injury has gone and the pain has served any useful purpose. But if we look at pain as a motivator to perform a behavior aimed at maintaining or restoring bodily integrity then the chronification of pain seems a bit less mysterious. Here's why...
When an injury occurs, the purpose of pain is not merely to signal injury. What good would it do? What are we supposed to do with this information beside suffer the aversiveness of the experience? Instead, pain is a signal that the brain has reason to believe that some part of the body is at risk and that some form of behavioral response is necessary. With this signal
TED Conferences
Science is Sexy!
Anyone who listens to PBS will know who Ira Flatow is. He hosts a very popular weekly program on PBS called "Science Friday".
I stumbled across this great lecture he gave back in November 2010 on why he believes that science can be as sexy and cool as any other topic. A lotta fun to watch. Highly recommended, if only to give those of us who carry the torch for science some powerful weapons to promote public appreciation for science.
I stumbled across this great lecture he gave back in November 2010 on why he believes that science can be as sexy and cool as any other topic. A lotta fun to watch. Highly recommended, if only to give those of us who carry the torch for science some powerful weapons to promote public appreciation for science.
Let's Talk Pain
This was taken from their website:
"Let's Talk Pain is a Coalition dedicated to improving awareness and understanding of pain management and is made up of leading pain advocacy groups committed to improving pain care throughout the nation. Our goal is to encourage people affected by pain and their healthcare professionals to talk more about pain, to listen actively, and to act in ways that improve care for people who live with acute and chronic pain."
"Let's Talk Pain is a Coalition dedicated to improving awareness and understanding of pain management and is made up of leading pain advocacy groups committed to improving pain care throughout the nation. Our goal is to encourage people affected by pain and their healthcare professionals to talk more about pain, to listen actively, and to act in ways that improve care for people who live with acute and chronic pain."
You too can become a feedback junkie -- check out "Quantified Self"
For the past 3 years, I have been studying the role of feedback in pain as well as many other conditions (such as social anxiety) and working on the development of feedback-targeted treatments. Over this same period of time there has been an explosion in the availability of software and devices that enable people to track so many different aspects of their lives and then receive feedback in various forms.
The Quantified Self is a website devoted to the endeavor of self-tracking and it's worth a gander.
The Quantified Self is a website devoted to the endeavor of self-tracking and it's worth a gander.
Research center developing sensor technologies relevant to in vivo research
The popularity of in vivo studies (where data about people's activities and health status are captured while people go about their daily lives -- that is, while in vivo) will flourish as inexpensive devices are systems are made available to automate data capture as much as possible. You don't want to ask people to stop what they're doing to take their pulse and blood pressure. The best systems will be those that unobtrusively just record these data, with minimal intervention. Technologies and apps are increasingly appearing to take advantage of the sophisticated capabilities and sensors (camera, accelerometer, gyro, etc.) already built into the most popular smartphones!
The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) is a research center at UCLA working on all sorts of different sensor technologies. They're not all health-related (many are environmental sensors) but I don't see any reason why the technologies they're developing can't be applied for in vivo research.
The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) is a research center at UCLA working on all sorts of different sensor technologies. They're not all health-related (many are environmental sensors) but I don't see any reason why the technologies they're developing can't be applied for in vivo research.
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