Story Archives of 'neuroscience'

Imagine a surgery that could triple your IQ with the nick of a scalpel. That’s what happens to Charlie Gordon, the developmentally-disabled protagonist of the 1958 novel Flowers for Algernon.

A lab mouse named Algernon is the first to get the experimental surgery. Suddenly he can wind his way through intricate mazes in seconds. Algernon easily beats charlie, leaving him to wonder why this mouse is smarter than he is. Then Charlie’s teacher secretly tells him that the mouse he’s been pitted against is no ordinary rodent.

In labs across the country, researchers are experimenting with smart mice that learn more quickly using neuroenhancing drugs. But these same mice get scared more easily, have higher rates of cancer, and can’t seem to solve some simple problems.

As pharmaceutical companies race to develop the next generation of neuroenhancing drugs for humans, scientists are discovering what can get lost when using pills to learn faster and think more clearly.

Science writer Jonah Lehrer delved into the world of cognitively enhanced mice for Nature News. He’s contributing editor at Wired and author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, and he joins us with more.

The Frontal Cortex: Smart Mice

(Photo by Michail Pishchagin via Flickr/Creative Commons)

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that disappearing elephant thing is a trick. And all those lovely magicians’ assistant sawed in half and then put back together, sources now reveal that those sequined ladies weren’t cut in two after all! From Harry Houdini to Penn and Teller, the illusionist manipulates our attention and exploits the human tendency to get distracted while pulling a fast one.

It turns out that neuroscientists can learn a lot about how our brains work by studying the way magicians trick us. The basic trick of the magician: use some sort of gimmick to mask the real action while making something appear to change or dematerialize. It turns out that magicians not only use "visual illusions," but also something called "cognitive illusions." For example, the video below originated from two Harvard researchers. The goal is for viewers to count how many times a team of basketball players pass a ball around:

It’s an example of "covert blindness" called "inattentional blindness". But there's another kind of "covert blindness" called "change blindness." Here's a video example, a "color changing card trick":

Magicians rely on misdirection – get the audience to focus their eyes somewhere else while the magician tricks them with slight of hand. But studies show that it doesn't matter where the audience is looking – you can still trick the eye, even if it stays focused on the action. How? Two investigators measured the eye movements of observers while scientist/magician made a cigarette "disappear" by dropping it below a table. The results were clear: it made no difference where they were looking.

Some scientists even hope that investigating the techniques of magic could lead to new diagnostics and treatments for patients suffering from attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's disease, or brain trauma.

These studies also reveal a lot about the power of expectation in the human brain. More specifically, our desire to apply causation to actions unrelated to one another. A magician may pour water on a ball, then the ball disappears. We assume it's because of the water, but of course it's not.

Today, the magic of radio brings us back to an earlier conversation with John Rennie, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine, where you can find the article "Magic and the Brain."

(Photo by Andres Pinto Sánchez)

We already know quite a bit about how the brain works – using brain imaging technology and molecular biology, we can see which synapses fire during certain types of mental activity. But that’s still a limited understanding of what’s happening in the brain. Now, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen is investing heavily in a radical new endeavor – to create a roadmap of our brains’ genetic code.

Here to break it down for us is science writer and frequent guest Jonah Lehrer. His latest book is How We Decide.

Jonah Lehrer in Wired: "Scientists Map the Brain, Gene by Gene"

(Photo courtesy Reigh LeBlanc via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Unless Pinocchio is the subject, fabrications cannot be observed. So, prospective employers, cops and intelligence officers rely on the polygraph, or lie detector test, an imperfect measure of activity in the body associated with a lie.

Now scientists are using new resonance tools to look into the brain for the origins of deception. Some of these experiments in brain imaging are detailed in the new issue of Scientific American Mind. John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, joins us with more.

(Photo courtesy Josh Bancroft)