Science is the Wonder!

So, I was roaming for my daily TED talks while taking a 'study' break and I found this...

If you didn't actually watch the video and just skipped to this hoping that I was going to explain it, well... I think you would gain more from this post by taking the time to view Robin Ince's talk. Believe me, it's well worth viewing.


As Robin explains, Science has long been held as polar to the Wonders of life like art, religion, and yes, even the love of animals (what with so many scientist doing experiments on rodents). 


Here's my view of this.


Let's just say science and wonder are not dichotomies. Why should science not be viewed as a wonder in itself? Science has given us a vast majority of knowledge and experiences that in this modern age we so meekly take for granted. Let me lend credence to my view of why science is not just an education, a (future) career, and a hobby, but a joy and passion that I hold so dearly.


In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus put science in the spotlight and religion (or was it the Church?) on the back burner by establishing the sun, not the earth, was in the center of the universe. Since that time, we have had so many shifts in paradigms that I am not sure where to begin. 


Let's skip forward a few hundred years and look at Gregor Mendel in the 1850s. The Austrian monk and Botanist was a keen experimenter with pea plants which later led to his proposition of Mendelian Law of Inheritance. If you have forgotten your high school biology lessons, the law states that every individual receives 'alleles' separately from each parent and that separate genes for separate traits are passed on independently from the parents. This discovery of course would only be the beginning (both for him and myself when I learnt it) and Mendel later became known as the father of modern genetics.


This leads me to my next scientific wonder. Now if knowing that you received alleles and traits from your parents doesn't tickle your fancy, well that's cool. What if I explained to you the discovery of DNA being a double helix by Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin (yes there was a woman involved in that discovery, contrary to popular belief) in 1953 and the Human Genome Project which started in 1990 are a result of the ideas created by Mendel. The Human Genome Project is a particularly wondrous undertaking. It was initially developed by the United States and was later supported by the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. It took 13 years, costs more than $3 billion, required major advances in computer science (yes computing is a scientific field) and genomics, but eventually gave us an estimated 20 000-25 000 sequences for our genes. Seriously, consider that computers run on binomials of 1 and 0, we humans have a large many more codes for who we are which is an extraordinary discovery. 


Genetics is one of those things that is really difficult to grasp if you are not really interested, myself included. But it is key discoveries like these that make understanding genes and genetic diseases possible. Let me ask you, how many genetic diseases do you know? Surely (don't lie now) you would have thought of one or two, or maybe, you know one or two people who have or have had a genetic disease. But it is not just genetic conditions that are important, but the foundations of these discoveries has allowed important discoveries about viruses, RNA, and proteins which has then created a domino effect for other great inventions in medicine and pharmacology. These inventions have saved countless lives, and truly the wonder is in being able to preserve precious life and ensure our species survival.


Yes I said survival of our species so you're probably guessing I am about to dive into Darwinian theology. Indeed I shall. Evolution and the theory of natural selection is one of my favourite concepts in science. Why being a psychology student requires wonder itself to manifest about where we come from to understand how we came to be. So Charles Darwin's 1858 Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection rates as one of the greatest theories in all of science (to me anyway). 


Another of the great ideas is E=mc^2. However, am I the only one who knows the equation but have absolutely no idea what it means? If someone ever tells me what it means exactly, I would be extremely grateful and hopefully I can finally sleep easier. Physics is not one of my favourite sub-disciplines, but Isaac Newton and his Laws of Motion did give us all a pretty good ending to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Ok let's try not to bag out physics too much because without it, I probably would not be able to write this post on the couch while my laptop is unplugged from the power point. Alessandro Volta and Humphrey Davies inventions of the first-ever batteries in the 1800s has allowed billions of modern humans to enjoy travelling with music (yes it was scientists, not Steve Jobs, who made the iPod possible), a mobile phone, and countless other digital devices..


Why batteries is just the tip of the iceberg. Have you ever stopped to ponder about how it's possible for you to even read my blog? Blaise Pascal in 1642 invented the mechanical calculator which, I guess you could say, was the first ever form of computerized technology. It did take over 300 years before the the actual microprocessor-powered personal computer was revolutionized by Intel (who ironically were developing the processor chip for a calculator before realizing its potential for computers). The World Wide Web was, again contrary to popular folklore, developed by people at CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. All our immense leaps of technology is made possible by sciences like computer science and physics. But even that, to me, is not the most wondrous thing about science, which leads me to my final point. 


What do you think the most powerful processor is in our known world? The Human Brain. No really, it is. It has been said to be capable of processing 100 trillion instructions every second. It is the largest of all Earth's vertebrates and the most evolutionary advanced structure in the known universe. It's characteristics have been contemplated by philosophers, scientists and everyday people for thousands of years, studied extensively and rigorously for three decades, and still we have only discovered a small part of its potential. The vast amounts of functions it can exhibit and the variety of those (particularly language) is unique to human brains. And it is with biology, anatomy, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology that has made these discoveries possible. 


In science, there is no one singular greatest concept, idea, paradigm, theory etc. But perhaps one of the most exciting, and remarkable, has been the plasticity potential of the human brain. Neuroplasticity is a vague term that describes the potential for the the neurons in the brain to change as a result of input. For decades we have come to believe that the brain in unchangeable. Others have argued that humans are "blank slates" that can be moulded from birth and subject to changes by the environment where the brain is a "black box" that spits out behaviors. But the discovery of neuroplasticity, genetics and evolution has turned these ideas on its head and given us hope for even greater potential in ourselves. Imagine that for the first 22 years of your life you have failed to use your brain to its fullest (sounds a bit like me). This discovery heralds hope for you. Whereas before people believed that after a certain period your brain is less receptive to new learning, now, it has been shown that even debilitating neurological conditions cannot stop the amazing brain to change itself. That is the wonder of the brain (which I will explain more in another post).


That is the wonder of science. The wonder is in understanding how beautiful, immaculate, and near-perfect we are, and how much potential we have to dream and achieve something, anything that can make an impact for generations and possibly eternity. 


For other great science discoveries you can visit the Science Channel here.


And for a much better explanation of the potential of the brain, you can view the clip below.

Singing in the Rain!

In light (actually, it's rather dark and wet outside) of Sydney's terrible weather today and the numerous negative comments I've read on Facebook, I have decided to add this lighter piece to my new blog.


The weather has long been held as a major contributing factor to human psychology on days like today. I thought I might just add a few short pieces of information from some studies that investigated this effect:

Sydney Morning Herald Report 23-11-201

• Performance on memory tasks peaks at 22°C and declined with warmer or cooler temperature (Allen & Fischer, 1978)
• High mood has been associated with a number of factors such as low levels of humidity (Sanders & Brizzolara, 1982), high levels of sunlight (Parrot & Sabini, 1990) and high temperature (Cunningham, 1979)
• High temperature is reliably associated with violent behavior (Anderson, 2001)
• High temperature and sunny weather is associated with increased mood as time spent outside increased (Keller et al., 2004)
• Improved working memory capacity is associated with high barometric pressure or sunny weather (Keller et al., 2004)
• Mood is also higher if you spent time outside on a clear, sunny and warm day (Keller et al., 2004)

The moral of the story is for the next few days (since the Sydney Morning Herald article says its going to be raining till Saturday), I would advise: don't attempt to study unless you can increase your room temperature to 20°-22°C; if your spouse or friend has a low mood it might be because of the weather and not whatever you just did to annoy them; don't piss a drunk off because they are more likely to be violent; spend some time inside with artificial light.

While not all the studies I have read show a conclusive and clear effect of weather on mood, those details that I have selectively presented show that weather can be a small factor involved with cognition and mood. Then again, I was only writing this post to create a lighter mood because looking outside doesn't make me feel that way at all.

The weather does give me a chance to sing this song:

Reference:

Allen, M.A., & Fischer, G.J. (1978). Ambient temperature effects on paired associate learning. Ergonomics, 21, 95-101

Anderson, C.A. (2001). Heat and violence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 33-38.

Cunningham, M.R. (1979). Weather, mood, and helping behavior: Quasi-experiments with the sunshine samaritan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1947–1956.

Parrott, W.G., & Sabini, J. (1990). Mood and memory under natural conditions: Evidence for mood incongruent recall. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 321–336.

Sanders, J.L., & Brizzolara, M.S. (1982). Relationships between weather and mood. Journal of General Psychology, 107, 155–156.

Keller, M. C., Fredrickson, B. L., Ybarra, O., Coˆte´, S., Johnson, K., Mikels, J., et al. (2005). A warm heart and a clear head: The contingent effects of weather on mood and cognition. Psychological Science, 16, 724–731.

Wood, A. (2011, November 23). Wet until Saturday, weather bureau warns. Sydney Morning Herald.

100% Debatable!

While having my coffee this morning, I spent some time reading this article in the Association for Psychological Science Journal. The paper is titled 'False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant'. Remembering that I have an exam this week for research design and statistics, I thought it was rather ingenious using this paper to write a post instead of procrastinating with something completely unrelated (if you must ask, no, I am yet to peruse my social networking accounts).

I have observed in the general population a tendency to use statistics and claim them as factual when trying to make a point. This regularly occurs when one wishes to compares things. I find this particular use of statistics to be a sadly narrowed view of anything in life. One of the more common usage of this behavior can be found in sports - particularly sports like the NBA and baseball. My friends who know I have an absolute passion for Kobe Bryant will regularly use LeBron James and Michael Jordan's 'stats' as a way to compare and judge. They seem to always converge on the same conclusion, but does this make their judgement right? In everyday life, people love using percentages, ratios, and all kinds of numbers to make their point appear supported. Educators also use averages and numerical marks to rank students. But does this mean the numbers tell the whole story?

In science, particularly a science like psychology, statistical analysis is one of the most important tools of the trade. Like any tool, it can be used correctly to produce the desired result or misused (through either lack of understanding how it should be used or intentional manipulation) to fabricate a desired result.

The complexity of statistics and its varied analytic methodologies give the tool the power needed to produce an outcome. You would probably want to assume that this is an advantage of such a tool. But as Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn (2011) argue in their paper, a construct they term the "researcher degrees of freedom" (which I like to interpret as a personal choice for use of certain complex statistics) can lead to false-positive conclusions to be reported. It is the premise of research in psychology to find "statistically significant" results so they can reject the null hypothesis (this is like the nagging voice in your head that tells you not to do something because it can't be done). A false-positive is the incorrect rejection (or muting the volume) of this nag.

They also go on to state "it is common (and accepted practice) for researchers to explore various analytic alternatives, to search for a combination that yields statistical significance, and to then report only what worked." Put simply, this statement can explain what most of us tend to do - we explore different percentages, ratios, and stats, search for the combination that best fits our argument and then we report them to our friends. While many methods in research have been developed to rid us of this simple but flawed occurrence, the researchers of this paper nonetheless report it to transpire regularly - even among what is supposed to be objective and highly intellectual individuals. They then go on to explain this as being the result of "ambiguity in how best to make (these) decisions" and "the researcher's desire to find a statistically significant result." The former can be interpreted simply as a layman's lack of absolute understanding for whatever it is they are arguing and the latter as a self-serving bias because humans tend to want to be right.

While this paper goes on to produce its own experiment and simulations to make their case, I will not be continuing to analyse the rest of the paper for this post. I am personally not reviewing this research paper, but I do have something to add. While most scientists aspire to find the truth about human nature, I do not believe they would willingly endanger our species with fabricated results. Much of statistics is built upon being objective, but the initial input and final interpretation of this data is subject to human intervention. As humans we can never be perfect (ironically it was psychologists who showed us this) and thus we must admit that mistakes are possible and will happen (luckily, even when psychology studies are wrong, they don't necessarily cause harmful physiological damage). To be wrong is a necessity to eventually finding the truth if we are willing to explore further. Any attempt to find the truth the first few times something is investigated is a difficult ask. As social beings, collaboration should be encouraged to undertake further research and that way, the truth cannot be subjected to just one human mistake (or in some cases, human manipulation).

Exploration is important for humans. When people make their case by promptly bringing up some supporting statistic, they are hindering the opportunity to explore. If we as a species are handcuffed by this with a narrowing of our views based on statistics, the possibilities of learning are now redundant. There are many human factors that affect an outcome in our human world. To simply boil these down to a number would be like viewing our world in the machinery of robots and computers.

For anyone that is rather bored and wishes to explore numbers visually, here is a link to Gap Minder (yet another brilliant Google collaboration).

And for anyone who has 6 minutes to spare, this is a really funny use of statistics for TED Talks.

Reference:

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science, 22, 1359-1366.

A Paradoxical Sight

Almost everyone has heard of the saying "seeing is believing." My question to you is, do you believe you are aware of everything you see? Well, up until a few months ago (even though I study science and understand there are some strange complex things that occur in our brain we are not aware of), I would claim this is very much true.

What changed my belief of this was a lecture on the visual pathway and processing structures in the brain. To summarize what I have learnt without going into too much detail. Visual perception occurs when a light hits the back of your retina and stimulates the rods and cones to send a nerve impulse (an electrical stimuli similar to your power cables) to your brain. A specific area in the back of the brain called the primary visual area (V1) is one of the important structures that allows you to perceive what you see. Now the important thing is, V1 has been described by neuroscientists as necessary but not sufficient for 'conscious' awareness of visual stimuli. The other side of the story are specific extrastriate areas required to communicate with the V1 area for awareness of visual phenomenons like motion, color, and shape.

So what does all of this have to do with awareness? The thing I find remarkable about neuroscience is that they can only study certain aspects of brain function when and if there is someone with a lesion to specific structures. This means they're in the business of proving the saying "you don't know what you've got until it's gone."

Now one of the more interesting things that has been studied in the past 10 years has been blindsight. In 1996, Weiskrantz et al., did experiments on a patient with a lesion to the primary visual cortex (his name was D.B.) who, when prompted to do so, was able to identify visual figures and follow targets with his fingers while reporting to do so in the absence of visual consciousness. Remember I said before that V1 is necessary for conscious awareness of what you see? How is it possible then that someone with damage to V1 can be aware of something they cannot possibly see? The experiments found that D.B. was able to discriminate between two possible stimuli such as an X vs. an O or horizontal lines vs. vertical lines with an above chance performance. In later studies, it was described by D.B. as having "a strong feeling of something being there" despite not being aware of it.

So it seems (from a visual perspective in any case) that we are not always 'aware' of everything we see. In the video below, Dr. V. S. Ramachandran attempts to explain this requirement as a necessary feature of everyday life. It is indeed staggering if you stop for a second to consider how many physical phenomenons your brain has to perceive in a short time for you to do something as simple as crossing the road at a traffic light (e.g. the motion of moving cars, the position of your body relative to the car, the colour of the light etc). It is indeed necessary for us to be unaware of a large amount of processing for you to be able to function.

If you still don't believe you are not aware of everything. Well, try this test:

Reference:

Overgaard, M. (2011). Visual experience and blindsight: a methodological review. Experimental Brain Research 209: 473-479.

Hello!

So... what is this blog all about you're wondering?

Inspired by my love for human nature and the complexly intricate human mind, I have decided to share with you my journey as I learn about its workings. I am psychology student who loves explaining to others how they behave and why. And that very question, 'why', is the foundation of this blog.

Am I here to blog about why you exist or the meaning of life?

Well, no.

What I aspire to write about are those idiosyncrasies you never thought had any meaning. Those little peculiar, eccentric, quirky traits that make each and every one of us individuals and collectively humans. Along the way, I hope to use just some of those research papers psychologists and neuroscientists have written to show to you why we do certain things.

If you are wondering if my blog will be just another one of those psychology blogs written by professionals and PhD academics, then you should probably stop right about now. To begin with, I just want to make it clear I do not claim to be a psychologist or a distinguished member of their society. But as it is my hope to one day join them, I thought it would be good practice to polish my writing skills. So while I will spend some time analysing journal articles and research papers, I purposely started a blog because I know for certain I won't be given a numerical or academic mark for my entries. To me, its amazing when you can learn without worrying about an assessment. And this is where I hope to take my blog: a destination of learning and freely speaking my mind without the burden grades and scores.

Now while I wish to write freely, I understand that I am not unhindered by criticism and evaluation. In fact, I hope that readers of my blog will find the time to give me their opinion of the topics I write about. This blog is about practice and training my writing skills, and if I am not open to critics then I guess I will never learn. So if you like what you read, and don't like the way you have read it (or vice versa), then please tell me so. I will endeavour to read all your comments and regularly update my writing style to make sure the quality is in line with other bloggers and writers.

Finally, I would like to say I live my life reading and finding meaning in quotes. So here are a few I would love to share in my first entry.

Aristotle once said "all men by nature desire knowledge" (and I guess in this modern age, we must also politically remember that women deserve the same acknowledgement). For this reason, I love learning and I hope you do too. Learning about concepts and ideas is one of the many wondrous abilities of the human mind. Learning about ourselves and who we are is perhaps one of the greatest of our abilities.

A few hundred years after our Greek philosopher, Albert Einstein said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I find this quote to apply to my blog. As I have already explained, I do not consider myself an accomplished or expert writer. I simply wish to compose entries about the psychology of humans in as simple terms as I possibly can. As the years progress and I go further into my education, perhaps with the help of my academic institution and this blog, I will become a proficient writer.

Good reading everyone and I hope you've enjoyed it enough to come back again soon. I will have my next post as soon as possible.


A. Che