The Truth About Your Brain

I've blogged in the past about Ben Carson, and all the problems when he tries to demonstrate expertise in an area that isn't neuroscience or medicine more generally. So I'm surprisingly not surprised by this speech where he got a lot of things wrong about the human brain:

It remembers everything you’ve ever seen. Everything you’ve ever heard. I could take the oldest person here, make a hole right here on the side of the head, and put some depth electrodes into their hippocampus and stimulate, and they would be able to recite back to you verbatim a book they read 60 years ago. It’s all there; it doesn’t go away.

Ben, please stop. You're making everyone with a doctorate look bad.

Memory is tricky. Your brain isn't a recorder or a computer that commits everything that ever happens to you to some storage compartment. An electrode or hypnosis or sharp blow to the head won't suddenly make these instances come flooding back, and even if they did, those instances would probably be horribly inaccurate. Your brain is a complex organ inside an unbelievably complex system that allows us to navigate the world and have a semblance of self by actively interpreting what we encounter. It isn't the book we read that gets committed to memory - it's our brain's interpretation of it and how we connect it to previously learned information that (sometimes, not always) gets written to memory.

In fact, all our memories are interpretations, with our brain filling things in with previous experience and expectations. And it isn't just during encoding that mistakes can be introduced; it's during retrieval as well. Have you ever remembered a time in your past and somehow remember a person being there you didn't even know at the time? This happens to me a lot. There's no way I could have even known about that person then, let alone remember seeing them. But my present life gets mixed up with the past. It's a little like writing a paper and saving it to your computer only to find years later that it was accidentally merged with newer files. That's what your brain is like.

And a lot of research has shown how easy it is to implant false memories that feel just as - maybe more - real than actual memories.

Carson's speech was apparently extemporaneous, but still, when talking about something you've dedicated your life to, you should be able to talk off-the-cuff without resorting to misinformation and tropes from bad movies:

Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and the ABCD of Personality

I've blogged many times about the human brain, taking time to discuss the various brain regions and what behaviors and processes they control. Your brain is an amazing demonstration of evolution in action, even in terms of its structure.

The lowest parts of the brain (the hindbrain - the cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata) control the basics of life: breathing, heartbeat, sleep, swallowing, bladder control, movement, etc. The midbrain/forebrain* controls processes that rank a little higher on the continuum, but still not what we'd consider high-level processing: emotion, sleep-wake cycle and arousal, temperature regulation, and the transfer of short-term to long-term memory (the very basics of learning), among other things.

Finally, the cerebral cortex, the outer-most part of the brain that developed last evolutionarily speaking; it is responsible for what we call consciousness, and this part of the brain in particular is responsible for many of the traits that differentiate humans from other animals - memory, attention, language, and perception. Other animals have a cerebral cortex as well but not nearly as developed as our own.

These various brain structures work together, and sometimes a lower part of the brain will take over for the higher parts of the brain, especially when there is some kind of disorder of higher brain function. Sandeep Gautam over at The Mouse Trap discusses the work of Paul McClean, and refers to activity coming from the lower brain areas as "bottom-up" and activity from the higher brain areas as "top-down." In his post, he discusses the ABCDs - affect (emotion), behavior, cognition (thought), and desire - and links these bottom-up/top-down processes to different personality traits, offering an eight-part structure of personality: a bottom-up and top-down trait for each of the ABCDs:

• Affective
• Bottom-Up: How we respond to stimuli, specifically Introversion/Extroversion
• Top-Down: Analyzing the situation for things that require increased vigilance and potentially anxiety, a trait called Neuroticism (aka: Emotionality)
• Behavioral
• Bottom-Up: Basic response to stimuli, Impulsivity or Impulsive Sensation Seeking
• Top-Down: A more thoughtful response to stimuli, including considering how that response might impact oneself and others, which could lead to inhibition. This trait is known as Conscientiousness
• Cognition
• Bottom-Up: Degree of distractibility or focus when encountering new things, which manifests as the trait Openness to Experience
• Top-Down: Making connections between concepts, a trait known as Imagination
• Desire/Drives
• Bottom-Up: Degree of aggression in one's reactions, a trait known as Agreeableness
• Top-Down: A process driven by expectation, which impacts one's desire to help or hurt others. He refers to this trait as the Honesty-Humility dimension

This structure is a departure from the Big Five personality traits. Obviously, it includes those 5 (Extroversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and Agreeableness), but adds 3 more (Impulsivity, Imagination, and Honesty-Humility). As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of the Big Five (more on that here), so I find this new structure interesting but a little strange. Probably what is strangest to me is that 3 of the Big Five are considered bottom-up processes, rather than the more thoughtful, controlled top-down. I would have thought Agreeableness and Openness to Experience were the result of higher-level processing.

It's a somewhat artificial divide of course. Except in the case of injury to a higher-level part of the brain, even bottom-up processes are going to be shaped by higher-level thinking. Your degree of Introversion/Extroversion, for instance, may influence your most basic response to social stimuli, but it's going to take higher-level processing to understand how best to handle that reaction and also determine what you need in that situation (that is, I'm feeling X, so do I need alone time or time with others?).

What do you think about this new taxonomy?



*These two areas tend to be differentiated from each other, but I was always taught about them in combination, under the title "midbrain." The forebrain includes structures like the amygdala, hippocampus, and so on. They rank higher up than the hindbrain, but are still considered "subcortical."

Birthday Weekend

Another year, another birthday. I spent the evening before my birthday at the opera and hanging out with friends, and also making some new friends - everyone wants to buy you a drink when it's your birthday. So yesterday, the actual day, was really low-key: sleeping in, Netflix, reading, takeout. I opened gifts from my family and went to bed early. It was the perfect counterpoint to my wild Friday night. Today, I'm doing more reading, and hopefully doing some long-overdue writing, before going to one of my favorite restaurants this evening.

Birthdays have always been tough for me. Being the coldest time of the year, it's usually difficult to organize outings. Years ago, a cousin committed suicide on his birthday, and when I reached his age, every birthday after that was a reminder: I'm older now than he will ever be. In fact, I'm sure birthdays - turning a year older - are hard for most people. A friend on Facebook said wishing someone happy birthday is like cheering at regular intervals while someone's life runs out. That's not really how I think about, but I suppose it's accurate.

Growing up, one of my good friends had the same birthday as me, though she was a few years younger. And several years ago, at a friend's wedding, I met a true birthday buddy: someone born the same day and year as me. There's an interesting concept known as the birthday paradox, which is a great demonstration of probability.

The birthday paradox is essentially that in a room of 23 people, the chance that two people will have the same birthday is about 50%. How could this possibly be? Better Explained offers a post that demonstrates the math behind this concept. But to summarize, most people get hung up on the probability that a specific day will be someone's birthday: 1/365. But the math behind the birthday paradox deals with paired comparisons. The chance of two randomly selected people having different birthdays is 1-1/365, or 0.9973. When we have 23 people to choose from, we have 253 paired comparisons. And when we examine this kind of probability, we use exponents. The probability that all 23 people have different birthdays is (1-1/365)^253, or 0.4995. Meaning the probability that at least 2 people have the same birthday is 1-0.4995, or 0.5005.

On Memory and Dogs

I've been a dog person pretty much my whole life. Growing up, we always had dogs and I can't wait to have a dog myself. Anyone who has had a dog has probably made more than one comment about their dog's memory. There are a variety of things your dog remembers: name, home, who you are, and so on. But when something negative happened in your dog's life, you probably also commented that s/he wouldn't remember it. But a new study suggests dogs may remember events after all.

As a quick recap, there are different kinds of memory. Semantic memory refers to knowledge and information; an example of a semantic memory for me is knowing the different kinds of memory. Episodic memory refers to events, things that have happened in your life; for me, an example would be remembering that I've written posts about memory before. The two are obviously connected, and influence each other. A memory of an event (episodic memory) may teach you a lesson or rule for living (semantic memory). And remembering that I've written posts about memory before (episodic memory) includes remembering the content of those posts (semantic memory).

The researchers examined episodic memory in 17 dogs using an unexpected recall task. If you know you're going to be expected to recall something, you "memorize" it, meaning committing it to semantic memory (also referred to as explicit encoding - you stored it because you know you'll need it later). But if you don't expect that you'll have to recall the information, when you are suddenly asked to recall it, you'll draw on your episodic memory (also referred to as incidental encoding - you stored it even though you didn't expect to need it). They tested this same phenomenon in dogs using a "Do As I Do" task:

Dogs were first trained to imitate human actions on command. Next, they were trained to perform a simple training exercise (lying down), irrespective of the previously demonstrated action. This way, we substituted their expectation to be required to imitate with the expectation to be required to lie down. We then tested whether dogs recalled the demonstrated actions by unexpectedly giving them the command to imitate, instead of lying down.

They found that dogs were able to imitate even when the command was unexpected, though their success rate decreased with longer recall periods (such as asking a dog to remember something from an hour ago - this is a test of memory decay, the loss of a memory as time since the event increases). So they were less able to imitate after a 1 hour delay, but some still could imitate.

Dogs may not be able to hold memories as long as humans can, but these results suggest that dogs can hold episodic memories: "To our knowledge, this is the first time that a non-human species shows evidence of being able to recall complex events (i.e., others’ actions) without motor practicing on them during the retention interval—thus relying on a mental representation of the action that has been formed during incidental encoding, as assessed by an unexpected test."

"Okay," you say, "my dog can remember events. So what?" George Dvorsky, over at Gizmodo, interviewed the study researchers, where they discuss that episodic memory is connected to self-awareness:

As noted, episodic memory has been linked to self-awareness, which is the ability to see oneself as an entity that’s separate and different from others. “So far no test has been successfully applied to study self-awareness in dogs,” Fugazza told Gizmodo. “We believe that our study brought us one step closer to be able to address this question.”

When the Evidence is Wrong

I've blogged before about the issues with memory, particularly when eyewitness testimony is used in trials to convict. That doesn't get at the whole story though; the problem isn't really memory, it's how eyewitness evidence is obtained that introduces issues. Psychologists who study memory in the context of eyewitness testimony have often made recommendations for how police and other legal personnel should question eyewitnesses. In fact, one of these experts, Iowa State University professor Gary Wells, has spent a lot of his time studying police lineup procedures, where they can go wrong, and how to do them properly.

Fortunately, people in general seem to have gotten the message about the issues with memory. Unfortunately, they tend to put too much faith in other types of evidence, which can be just as fallible.

DNA evidence is viewed by many as the gold standard in forensic evidence. But just as there is a right and wrong way to obtain eyewitness evidence, there are strict processes that must be followed in examining DNA evidence, or you run the risk of invalidation.

An article in the APS Observer discusses a cold case that was "solved" with DNA evidence. However, the story needed to explain that evidence is convoluted, and the possibility that the DNA evidence was contaminated seems much more likely. APS Fellow John Wixted explains:

As part of the “Psychology & Law” class that I teach, I set out to illustrate the point that contaminated forensic evidence of any kind (not just contaminated eyewitness evidence) can lead to a wrongful conviction. Because DNA evidence generally is regarded as the gold standard of forensic evidence, I decided to use that as my example. To find an illustrative case, I conducted a Google search using terms like “DNA contamination” and “wrongful conviction.” That’s how I stumbled upon the story of Gary Leiterman.

The story begins with a tragic event: 23-year-old University of Michigan law student Jane Mixer was shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun in the early morning hours of March 21, 1969, and her body was dumped in a graveyard. She had arranged to meet a stranger named David Johnson at the student union on the evening of March 20, 1969, and he was supposed to drive her home to Muskegon, Michigan (about a 3-hour drive). She never made it. She was initially thought to be a victim of the infamous “Co-Ed Killer” (later found to be John Norman Collins), who was murdering women in the area at the time, but no direct link to him was ever established.

Mixer’s murder remained unsolved until a cold-case analysis of DNA from the crime scene was conducted in a Michigan State Police forensic lab in 2002. That analysis uncovered two previously undetected DNA profiles that matched the profiles of two men who were included in a federal DNA database because they had recently committed crimes. One of those men was John Ruelas, who murdered his mother in early 2002. His DNA was found on a blood spot taken from Mixer’s hand in 1969. The other was Leiterman, who recently had forged a prescription for pain medication. His DNA was found on a piece of pantyhose that Mixer had been wearing that day. Because Ruelas was only 4 years old in 1969, he was ruled out as a suspect, so only Leiterman remained a suspect. In 2005, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The problem is, that because the prosecution viewed the DNA evidence as accurate, they had to explain how 4-year-old Ruelas's DNA made it onto Mixer's hand. Their explanation was that he was also present at the crime, and bleeding. Mind you, the crime took place around 3am. It seems highly unlikely that a 4-year-old would be there, nor is there any reason to believe Leiterman and Ruelas knew each other. And the plot thickens:

The timing of the DNA analyses is striking. On October 24, 2001, the Mixer evidence from 1969 was pulled out of storage and taken to the Michigan State Police crime lab for processing. It was analyzed in March and April of 2002. Independently, evidence from the 2002 Ruelas murder case arrived at the lab on January 29, 2002, and was analyzed on February 20 and 21, 2002. At this point, it was unclear who had murdered Ruelas’s mother, so the evidence was sent to the lab to help with the investigation. On February 22, 2002, a mouth swab from Leiterman arrived in the lab for initial processing so that his DNA profile could be entered into the federal database.

So these three people, who were previously considered unconnected, all had DNA evidence being analyzed at this lab at the same time. The DNA evidence obtained from Mixer's pantyhose, which the lab said belonged to Leiterman, was not blood or semen, but saliva, the exact kind of sample sent to the lab for processing. Further, Wixted continues discussing the Co-Ed Killer John Collins, who was active in that area, at that time, and many of his crimes matched the details of the Mixer case. It seems much more likely that Collins, not Leiterman, committed the murder. The problem is that, if you can't trust the DNA evidence, what can you trust? What additional evidence could possibly be found to overturn Leiterman's conviction?

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Worth Psychology recently tweeted this link to a New York Magazine story, "5 of Humanity's Best Ideas of What Dreams Actually Are." Believe it or not, I learned a thing or two in the article:

The earliest recorded dream is from the Sumerian king Dumuzi of Uruk, who ruled just before Gilgamesh, sometime around 2500 BC. “An eagle seizes a lamb from the sheepfold,” a translation reads. “A falcon catches a sparrow on the reed fence … The cup lies on its side; Dumuzi lives no more. The sheepfold is given to the winds.” The king was freaked out about his dream, and occasioned the first recorded dream interpretation, care of his sister, who was evidently a professional at these things. Sister’s advice: Some bad shit is about to go down, so you’d do well to hide.

The article then goes through the 5 theories, offering some background and explanation for each. Unfortunately, they give a lot of attention to the Freudian/psychoanalytic perspective, that dreams are your brain trying to tell you something.

• Dreams are pragmatic prophecies - This is not to say dreams are actual prophecies, but rather, that because we know our situation well and because human survival comes from our ability to think about and prepare for the future, we could have dreams about things that we expect to happen. Dreams in this theory are about preparation, so that we are ready to deal with situations in our wakeful life.
• Dreams tell you what to do - Unfortunately, for this item on the list, they really just followed along with the previous item, even delving into actual prophetic elements (such as mentioning that Lincoln dreamed of a White House funeral days before his assassination). However, one story they share, about Descartes, gets at a different aspect of dreams - that of consolidating and synthesizing information, and using that to solve problems:

"In the 17th century, René Descartes, the great doubter, had his life course shifted by a series of dreams he had one November evening. In Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind, historian-psychiatrist George Makari reports that Descartes had a series of sleeping visions that prompted him to realize that 'spatial problems could become algebraic, which crystallized a vision of a natural world underwritten by mathematical laws,' thereby changing his life and eventually the popular, scientific conception of reality."

This realization was likely not a sudden insight, but an issue Descartes had spent a great deal of time thinking about. Because of the memory consolidation aspect of sleep, combined with dreaming about something that had been on his mind, Descartes was able to solve his mental puzzle.

• Dreams are communications from the unconscious mind - The good old "Your dreams are trying to tell you something" hypothesis. I've blogged before about my thoughts on Freud and psychoanalysis, and why social psychological findings are a much better explanation for some of the things Freud and his ilk observed. And of course, I would argue that this "theory" differs very little from the first and second items on this list. (I would also argue that none of these first three items meet the definition of theory, hence the quote marks.)
• Dreams are data - This one is not actually a theory at all, but rather a thinly veiled reason to share the Sleep and Dream Database, a crowdsourcing site that has catalogued 20,000 dreams (which, to be fair, is a cool idea, and a site I'll be visiting myself). Using these data, researchers have been able to examine psychological themes, and the results suggest that, because we are rarely alone in dreams and we tend to dream about people we are close to, we use dreams to explore the quality of our relationships with others. Honestly, that would have been a better bullet point for this list.
• Dreams are your memories in action - And finally, the author mentions the memory consolidation and learning aspects of dreams. Of all these "theories," this is the only one for which they offer research support over anecdotes. The author hints at the neural network aspect of memory, and also shares findings from a study on learning that allowed some participants to nap afterward, resulting in enhanced learning. (In fact, many such studies have been performed.) But they also discuss a study on male zebra finches that also provides support for this theory. Birds aren't born knowing how to sing certain patterns, but instead learn them. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that male zebra finches showed the same patterns of neuron firing while sleeping as they were when they were singing, suggesting they may be practicing the songs in their dreams.

Personally, I ascribe to the last (and really only) theory on the list. But that's not to say that aspects of the other items on the list can't be true. In fact, as is the case with the Descartes anecdote, they can be easily combined with this theory. The human brain is an incredibly complex machine. Even with advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we have not even begun to truly imitate the human brain's incredible pattern recognition ability or attention to context. This is arguably an evolved trait, because the best way to learn (something humans excel at compared to most other species) is to connect it to something already learned. This strengthens neural connections, and not only enhances our ability to learn the new thing, it changes our understanding of what we've learned previously. This can, of course, have some pesky effects when it comes to memory of events. But all in all, this ability is a good thing.

While we're awake, we think through things and examine patterns, but we also have to devote a lot of energy to being awake and interacting with the world, making decisions that takes up space in our limited working memory. Sleep is a time of rejuvenation, when our body replenishes, heals, and repairs. Our cognitive resources are free to work through problems, and our brain is consolidating memories, getting us closer to a synthesized solution. And because our problems range from intellectual (like Descartes's) to social and psychological, the content of our dreams can also range from thought problems to interpersonal issues.

Sweet dreams, everyone!

Personality Traits and Choking

As a social psychologist, I believe the situation has a strong influence on behavior, over and above a person's traits. Of course, I do recognize the existence of personality - I'm a big fan of the Big Five theory, which states that our personality can be summed up by where we fall on five continua: openness to change, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. When I've measured personality in past studies, I used a measure developed to assess the Big Five (take one such test here).

A recent study also used the Big Five traits, to try to understand why people choke under pressure. According to their work, one of the Big Five explains who choked under pressure: people high in neuroticism:

Previous research, conducted by Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr, has shown that although individuals may be highly competent in low-pressure contexts, their performance may significantly decrease once the pressure is on. One explanation for why this happens is that anxiety acts as a distractor, sapping cognitive resources such as working memory away from the task at hand and ultimately harming performance.

On the basis of this previous work, Kaileigh Byrne, Crina Silasi-Mansat, and Darrell Worthy hypothesized that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism would experience greater performance anxiety, leading to worse decision-making strategies under pressure.

“This theory offers a potential mechanism by which neurotic individuals may fail when they most need to succeed,” Byrne and colleagues explain.

They conducted two studies, one that created pressure by telling individuals their decisions would impact a (fictional) team member, and another creating pressure with deadlines. In both studies, they found people high in neuroticism performed less well than people low in neuroticism when the pressure was on. In the low pressure conditions, there was no difference.

The Cube Personality Test

If you've been on Facebook the last few days, you've probably at least seen links to the so-called "cube personality" test. A video from Buzzfeed reveals that it is a "Japanese psychology game" meant to reveal hidden aspects of your personality:

Because I'm sure people will ask what I pictured: the cube was quite large and clear, and sitting on the ground. The ladder was leaned against it. The horse was chilling by the cube, without a saddle or reins. I pictured 3 flowers, along the bottom of the cube. And the storm in the brewing background was a sand storm. So according to the test, I have a big ego, I'm open, grounded, and am available to support my friends. I like wild relationships (wild horse), want 3 kids, and I'm seriously stressed out. According to the test, anyway.

What I'm curious about is: how many of you got something similar? The instructions are full of cues, such as asking if the ladder is leaning on the cube. That question may have influenced me to picture the ladder against the cube. In fact, any of the questions throughout the video probably influenced the final picture in my mind of the various objects. And all of that happened so quickly and at such a nonconscious level, I may not have even realized it was happening, believing instead that was how I pictured the scene all along.

We would call these leading questions. And a lot of research says they have a strong impact on memory. Our memory is very fluid, and new information can have a strong impact on memory. One of the top researchers on this topic is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. In one of the most famous studies on the topic, Dr. Loftus and John Palmer tested the "confabulation effect" - where the wording of the question could change the memory of the event. Participants watched clips of automobile accidents.

They were later asked questions about the crash they viewed, including one question where the verb was manipulated: "About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?" They found that the estimated speed varied by which verb was selected: "smashed" - 40.8 mph, "collided" - 39.3 mph, "bumped" - 38.1 mph, "hit" - 34 mph, and "contacted" - 31.8 mph.

In a second experiment, they added one more piece of misinformation. They used only two verbs, "hit" and "smashed", plus one control condition using neither. But they also asked people if they saw broken glass. Though there was no broken glass on the ground after the accident, over 19% of participants reported that they saw broken glass. And participants were more likely to report seeing broken glass if the question about speed included the word "smashed" (32% of people in the "smashed" condition reported broken glass, compared to 14% in the "hit" condition and 12% in the control condition) - because if the cars were going fast, there would probably also be broken glass.

As I've said before, memory is tricky. When you start asking questions, especially leading questions, the memory will probably change. Whether the "pure" version of the Cube personality test (without the leading questions) is accurate, I don't know. In fact, it may actually be a pickup artist trick. But the version linked above, and the version that has been circulating, really won't tell you much about your personality.

So picture whatever kind of cube/horse/ladder/storm you want.

Childhood Abuse, Reliability, and Measurement Error: More from Sara's Week in Psychological Science

This morning, I attended a great session on methodological issues in studying trauma. One of the presentations was about studying childhood abuse. Many measures of childhood abuse are done retrospectively, among college students/adults, asking about past experiences. Researchers have noted a variety of issues with this approach, including the issue that reports of childhood abuse seem to vary over time - that is, a person may report that they were abused as a child at one timepoint, but not at another.

This leads some to conclude that reports of childhood abuse may be influenced by current levels of distress - people may misremember or misreport childhood abuse depending on how distressed they are feeling as adults. We know that current experiences can color past experiences, which we see in any kind of memory research; memory is highly malleable. However, any time we measure something in people, we also have to worry about measurement error. Poorly worded questions, respondent fatigue, and other factors may affect how well the measure "works."

The great thing about structural equation modeling (SEM) is that it separates measurement error out, so we can get a more pure read of how much particular constructs relate to each other. Some people have used this as mark against SEM, that it shows a "perfect world" relationship that we would rarely see in practice. But in many cases, SEM is a great technique to use as a way to answer questions about reliability due to measurement error versus systematic sources of variation.

The researchers measured past experiences of childhood abuse at the same time as they measured symptoms of distress, using a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) checklist. Two weeks later, they measured these two variables again. They built a model where time 1 PTSD predicted time 2 PTSD, time 1 reports of childhood abuse predicted time 2 reports, and time 2 PTSD predicted time 2 reports. What they found was that time 2 PTSD predicted less than 2% of the variance in time 2 reports of childhood abuse. Time 1 abuse reports was highly predictive of time 2 abuse reports, and once measurement error was factored out, they found reliability in abuse reports above 0.80 (which in measurement world is considered excellent reliability).

What this means is that, when it looks like people are saying different things at different times, measurement error is a much more likely culprit than how a person is currently feeling. Obviously, the study was done over a short timeline (2 weeks), so results may be different if that time period is longer. This was also a college sample, and reports of abuse, especially physical and sexual abuse, were low. But this study gives some guidance for studying reports of childhood abuse in other samples, and highlights a time when separating measurement error from systematic variation (i.e., actual differences in reports of childhood abuse) is the optimal approach.

The Lost Blog Post Topic and State-Dependent Memory

I posted the other day about luck and serendipity. Last night, after staying out a little too long and having a little too much fun with some friends, I thought of the perfect blog post topic for today. Sadly, I didn't write it down, and this morning, I have no idea what that topic was. I had a notebook and pen with me. I had my phone where I could leave a note for myself. I had options, I just didn't use them because as usual, I thought I would remember.

After I finished searching my brain for some semblance of the topic and coming up with nothing, I remembered a psychological concept known as state-dependent memory or state-dependent learning. I laughed as I realized that this had happened to me... then decided I'd stumbled upon the perfect blog topic.

State-dependent memories or learning are memories or information that can be recalled when people are in the same internal state as they were when they learned it. This concept has frequently been studied when people are in states of consciousness brought on by alcohol. However, it could also apply to other kinds of internal states, like moods.

I remember learning this concept in college, and my classmates and I joked about getting drunk to study, then getting drunk to take the test. Of course, I should point out that state-dependent learning isn't magic that's going to dramatically improve your ability to retain information. It may make it a little easier to recall that information on command, but you're going to be limited by how good your memory is usually. Motivation also comes into play - you have to be motivated to learn or commit the information to memory.

But the way you can apply this information to your life - if you discover you're having difficulty recalling something you learned, you can enhance your recall of that information by recreating the conditions under which you learned that information. So this is more a tool at your disposal - as opposed to a strategy going in.

What this means is, I could probably get that blog topic idea back if I recreated the condition from last night. No thanks. I'll just stick with coffee and serendipity.

Your Brain on Stress

Speaking of brain activity and responses, a friend shared this video with me - how stress affects your brain:



This video gives a nice overview of many important brain systems and what they do, while talking about the effect of stress. The video also talks briefly about the epigenetics, the ways in which the environment can trigger certain genes to express. This means that, even if you have a genetic predisposition to stress and anxiety, a nurturing environment can keep that gene from expressing.

An important extension of this concept is the biopsychosocial model, which states that biology, psychology, and social environment combine to determine health across one's lifespan.

Experience can change the brain, though your brain becomes less plastic (changeable) as you age. This is why a small child may recover from a head injury that would be fatal to an adult. The brain is able to rewire itself, especially prior to the age of 6. And while the brain changes discussed in the video are real, they represent a worst-case scenario of stress response. If you experience normal amounts of stress or only occasional instances of high stress, you'll probably be fine. But if you experience high chronic stress, you'll want to do something to cope with that - whether it be talk therapy, lifestyle changes to minimize stress, and/or medications for anxiety.

The Language of Music

I come from a very musical family. Both of my parents were in choirs in school, my brother writes and performs music, and music was almost always playing at home or in the car. So it's unsurprising that I developed a love of music very early in life - my mom would argue from infancy - and kept making music continuously up to now, on the piano or my flute, or with my voice. Even after I changed my major from theatre to psychology, I kept performing in my college choir.

Most of my friends are also musicians, or musically inclined, and I married a fellow musician. So music is, and probably always will be, an important part of my life. As a psychologist, though, I'm always fascinated by the experience of music and the brain activity involved with listening to or producing music. This is especially true because I notice that my husband and my experiences of music seem to differ from each other, and I think it comes down to brain activity.

Just to note some of the social differences between us: my husband minored in music, plays piano and organ incredibly well, and is at ease with many styles, including jazz, classical (choral and orchestral), showtunes, and church music/hymnity. My exposure growing up was mainly to classic rock and showtunes, my (minimal) vocal training is in musical theatre, and I played the flute in my school band (so lots of pep band/marching band music).

My husband loves listening to music when he's working or reading. I listen to a lot of music during the day, but if I'm reading or writing and need to do some heavy cognitive processing, I find the music can be distracting. But I also notice that this occurs, regardless of whether I'm listening to music with words or without. That is, it seems that my language center in my brain is processing the music, even when it's instrumental.

I'm not the first to notice this connection. Brown, Martinez, and Parsons (2006) examined the similarities of music and language in the brain. Their participants were amateur musicians, who heard snippets of melody and spoken phrases, and were asked to improvise melodies or phrases based on those snippets. Positron emission tomography (PET scan) was used to look at brain activity during these activities.

Direct comparisons of the two tasks revealed activations in nearly identical functional brain areas, including the primary motor cortex, supplementary motor area, Broca’s area, anterior insula, primary and secondary auditory cortices, temporal pole, basal ganglia, ventral thalamus, and posterior cerebellum. Most of the differences between melodic and sentential generation were seen in lateralization tendencies, with the language task favouring the left hemisphere. However, many of the activations for each modality were bilateral, and so there was significant overlap.

To put this in more common language, they found overlap in many major brain areas - including Broca's area, the so-called language center of the brain - and also found that, while language tasks tended to involve the left hemisphere of the brain, which is where the language center is located, more heavily than music tasks, they both showed activities in both sides of the brain. In fact, while I was looking into the specific brain areas involved, I found this article, which references this handy graphic:

So one possibility is that music activates my language center more heavily, which makes it difficult to complete another linguistic task at the same time. Another potential factor is choice in music. At home, if I'm reading or writing, I'm usually at my desk or on the couch with a book or laptop, while my husband is at the "main" computer, where we store our music files. So in this scenario, he's in charge of what music we listen to. It's possible that the distraction factor is because I didn't select the music. We may react differently to music we are "forced" to listen to and music we select. This could be one reason why Christmas music is so annoying.

In any case, research shows that music is a linguistic task. Not only that, it activates many areas of the brain, including the motor cortex (we tap our feet or dance), the amygdala (we feel emotions in response to the music), and the hippocampus (we associate memories with the music). There are so many positive impacts of music on brain and skills development. Even in those few instances where I find music distracting, I know it has made me a better person.

Tonight, my choir, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, is performing the first of two concerts featuring music of Broadway. If you're in the Chicago area, be sure to check it out!

Writing Good Survey Questions (or Why I'm Not the Person You Want Responding to Your Surveys)

As I've said before, we all see the world through the lens of our discipline. And the things that irk us tend to be silly and overly specific to the outside observer.

This is why, when I receive a link to a survey, I usually don't respond. Of course, this results in others pointing out that I should be helping my fellow researchers out when I qualify for a survey. But sometimes, it's very difficult to ignore issues with those surveys: poorly worded questions, bad response options, and sometimes nonsensical instructions make it very difficult for me to respond and not be distracted. And if they have a spot for open comments - if the survey was especially bad - I let them know some of the mistakes there.

Yes, it's totally obnoxious and I can't help it. So I find it better to just ignore the survey.

I recently received a "survey question" - which was clearly meant to sell something - at which I rolled my eyes and immediately decided to write a blog post on writing good survey questions. The question was: "Do you want to be your healthiest self?" Like I said, they were selling something, and rules for good survey questions don't really apply in those situations, because the purpose is not to gather information. But I've seen some similarly worded questions on actual surveys.

So here are some of the mistakes I frequently see in survey questions:

1. Loaded questions - Loaded questions encourage a person to respond in a certain, usually socially desirable way. More specifically, they show the bias of the researcher. The question above is one such example, but many examples are available. For example: Most Americans prefer to purchase products manufactured in the United States. Do you prefer to purchase products manufactured in the United States?


2. Double-barreled questions - These are questions that ask about two things at once. One of my favorite examples I used when I was teaching research methods came from our course evaluations: The instructor explained concepts in a clear and concise manner. It's definitely possible to be clear but not concise, or concise but not clear. So this question really only works if the instructor is both clear and concise, or neither clear nor concise. If both of these concepts are important to you, you need to have two separate questions.


3. Ambiguous response options - Let's say I'm surveying researchers and want to know what they use to enter data, and I include response options of: Excel, Access, a spreadsheet program, a database program. If someone uses Excel, they could also select a spreadsheet program. Probably I mean that option to be if they use another spreadsheet program besides Excel, in which case, I should state other spreadsheet program instead. You should of course list the other major options, before offering the other option. I would also recommend including a blank for people to specify the other program, because you'll get people who select other and write one of the answer options in; this way, you can recategorize them later.


4. Unspecific timelines - For example: Have you felt sad or depressed? Yes, we all have, even the most mentally healthy of us. This question won't tell you anything about who has a current issue with sadness or depression. Worse yet is a question that asks the number of times you have done something, like How many times have you used Facebook? This would be impossible to recall. But add one simple instruction: In the past 7 days, have you felt sad or depressed? or In the past 7 days, how many times have you used Facebook? Now people can recall their feelings or behaviors from a more specific time, and you're more likely to get useful information.


5. Asks about sensitive topics without guaranteeing anonymity - If you're going to ask about topics like drug use, sexual activity, etc., you need to make sure respondents feel secure that their answers won't be compromised. Otherwise, they may not respond truthfully, and then what's the point of doing a survey? True, some people aren't shy, and you'll get accurate information from them. But a) you won't know who is being truthful and who is not and b) your data won't represent your whole population.


6. Too much or unclear branching - Sometimes you want additional information for people who respond in a certain way, and everyone else can skip to the next question. But if you have to do lots of branching, you risk confusing respondents, who may just throw away the survey in disgust. If you find you have a lot of branches, ask yourself if it's necessary, and if it is, is it because you're really only interested in a certain subgroup? You might want to consider either reformatting the survey, putting all the non-branching questions first, and then ask your specific group to fill out the rest, or even focusing on that particularly subgroup when sampling. If branching is minimal, find ways to format the survey to make it really clear, like putting a box around the branched questions and/or adding an arrow to show where to go next. (Note: This is really only relevant to paper surveys. Phone or internet surveys are perfect for branching, so you might explore those options instead.)


7. Negative wording - It's never not a bad idea.


8. Trying to cram too many questions on one page - We do this to make a survey look shorter and less burdensome to respondents, and it's a bad idea on all counts. If you need to make your survey look shorter, it's probably too long. Second, people are more likely to skip questions if they're crammed together, because they didn't see them. In short:
   
   


9. Asymmetrical response options - I've definitely seen response options along the lines of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree. If you have positively worded options, you should try to have an equal number of negatively worded options, such as: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree or Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.


10. No metric for numerical answers - If you ask a question requiring an open-ended numerical answer, you need to let them know what metric they should be using. A question like How far do you live from your primary care doctor's office? followed by a blank could be answered in many ways. You may think people will give you miles, but if they only live 5 blocks away and you don't tell them to think in miles, you'll misinterpret their answer. Same goes for hours and minutes if you're asking about travel time.


11. Making respondents rank too many things - I've taken surveys where I'm asked to rank a list in order of importance. If that list has more than 5 items, don't make people rank all of them - just ask them to rank the top 5 (and actually, top 3 is best). When an online survey once made me rank 10 items (and wouldn't let me continue until I gave every item a rank), I closed the survey.


12. Relatedly, too many response options - Psychologist George Miller found that people can only keep about 7 (between 5 and 9) things in their head at once. If people can pick more than one (a check all that apply question), you should still limit, and if there are that many potential options, try to split into more than one question. But you shouldn't have more than 7 forced choice options; otherwise, people might forget the first option before they reach the end of the list.


13. Open-ended questions when you should use a close-ended question - On one large survey I worked on, the surveyor included an open-ended question for something that could have been summed up with 4 or 5 options plus an other, specify option. As I feared, the open-ended data were a complete disaster and totally unusable. Every once in a while, I think I should go through and try to categorize, because it's an important question, but then I see the breadth of responses and curl up in a ball.

Now, in some of the above examples, I gave neutral options. This is a hotly debated topic in survey research. Some think neutral options are a bad idea and prefer to force people to "pick a side." On the other hand, others think neutral options are necessary, because people may not have an opinion on an issue and may skip the question entirely if they don't have an option they agree with. I'm generally a fan of neutral options, but there's really not a right or wrong answer here.


The best thing you can do when creating a survey is cognitive testing. What this means is giving your draft survey to a small number of people one-on-one, and asking them to "think out loud" as they read the questions. You may also ask them to paraphrase questions, to get better wording and make sure the question makes sense. This gives you a glimpse of how people approach your survey and if they're struggling with any of the issues identified above or other issues entirely, like unfamiliar terms (jargon) or important topics not assessed by the current questions (which we call "content omission").

As with most topics on this blog, I'm oversimplifying, and there are more nuances to survey design than I've discussed here. In addition to what I've recommended above, you really should have a survey methodologist on board, especially for very large surveys. Most of these considerations aren't intuitive (and that's okay - you don't have to be an expert in everything!), and designing a good survey can be an iterative process, with cognitive testing and even pilot-testing needed. Find an expert to do that dirty work, and wait for the data to come rolling in!

On Book Challenges, Science Fiction, and the Trouble with Memory

I’ve been participating in a 26-book challenge for 2015: one of the items on the list is to re-read a book I love. I decided to revisit Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. I read this book dozens of times during my childhood. During the summer, when most families were on vacation, I would spend every day at the library. We couldn’t afford to go on a lot of trips, and hey – a good book is even better, because it can take you anywhere!

Yes, I was that kid. What, you’re surprised?

During those visits to the library, I would pick up books indiscriminate of subject, author, or even targeted age group – if it looked interesting, it was going home with me. If on one of those trips I couldn’t find anything that interested me, I would check out The Martian Chronicles. There was something about it that always drew me in: his poetry-like writing, its subject matter about adventure and exploration, perhaps even the allure of visiting another planet.

It wasn’t until recently that I finally purchased my very own copy of The Martian Chronicles. And I hadn’t read it since I was a child. Perhaps just like those old toys and childhood games, we leave them behind when we make it to adulthood, until at some point we reminisce over them. So, I decided it was finally time to return to the Martian landscape that had so enraptured me as a child.

Like many things from childhood, my memory of it turned out to be a bit fuzzy, and my reaction to the work was quite different. While I found the first few stories fascinating as a child, my adult eyes were horrified at the treatment of the early astronauts. Not that I was fragile as a child, but still – I was amazed that I so loved a book where fear and misunderstanding led to the deaths of many people.

I mean, I’m that kid who bawled and covered my eyes when I was forced to watch a pet snake eat a mouse.

Memory is an interesting thing. Though in the past (and even today), psychologists have thought of memory in terms of technology (e.g., video camera, computer), social psychologists understand that memory is malleable, to say the least – and painfully biased, to say the worst.

We really think of memory in 3 stages: acquisition (obtaining the memory), retention (storing), and retrieval (calling it up). Bias can occur at various points in creating and storing memories. Of course, our strongest memories are for recent events – though even they can become biased – which results in some contamination of the present with the past. We may misremember important people in our lives being present for events they couldn’t possibly have attended, because they are such an important part of our life now.

Our view of the future is also biased by the present. Not just in terms of our own life circumstances, but even in terms of what the future will be like technologically and socially. If you look at artists’ renditions of “the future”, you’ll see that they are highly colored by the present. For example, this vision of the future from the 1950s:

Though this picture shows technological advances, some of which we've seen - flat screen TVs, web-cam, and so on - it still reflects societal values of the 1950s. The women are in the kitchen, preparing dinner, the husband comes home (in his helicopter).

Even Bradbury’s view of the future is colored by his present, and this is perhaps what struck me most in my re-reading. In The Martian Chronicles, obviously, there is “futuristic” technology – hovercraft, rocket ships that can take off and land as easily as an airplane, food tablets, and so on.

But socially, the situation is not futuristic at all. Who are the astronauts? The early explorers? The big thinkers? Men. Later, after the planet has been settled, they talk about sending the women: their wives and girlfriends.

But what might Mars have looked like if Bradbury had written his masterpiece very recently instead? Perhaps the early explorers and astronauts would have been groups of men and women. Perhaps the settlers would send not just for wives and girlfriends, but husbands, partners. We might see blended families, gay marriages… At least, when I think of what 2030 will be like, that’s what I hope to see – a society more accepting of love in all forms, and one in which gender does not determine one’s place in society.

This is not to criticize Mr. Bradbury – simply to recognize his influences. This is a flaw with many works of science fiction. While they may be able to predict advances in technology, changes to society are usually much harder to predict, and as a result, the social aspect of science fiction is often a reflection of the time the work was written.

But even more, re-reading this book gave me an interesting perspective about memory. We don’t always get to re-experience something from the past again, but when we do, we often notice some inconsistencies. Classrooms revisited as adults “seem smaller”, places that frightened us seem harmless, and our favorite stories seem, well, different. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, and sometimes just different.

I enjoyed getting to revisit Mars, now as an adult. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll return and get something new out of it again!

Thoughtfully yours,
~Sara

Your Brain on Smells: Memory, Emotion, and Scent

In my approximately 30 years on Earth, I have developed many allergies. Some I've had since the beginning (e.g., lactose intolerance), others I discovered much later (e.g., aspartame, the chemical name of Nutrasweet). While I would love to explore what the heck is up with all these crazy allergies, I'm instead writing about what happened as a result of my latest allergy discovery. I recently learned that I'm allergic to an ingredient in a product I use pretty regularly (for the sake of brevity, I won't go into detail); this ingredient is so commonly used in this product that to get a product free of this stuff, I had to go to Whole Foods.

First of all, never go grocery shopping hungry. I've been told this before, but had to break my rule this time because of scheduling constraints. Second - and this rule is even more important than the first - never go to Whole Foods hungry - ever! Going to my regular grocery store hungry is bad enough; everything looks so appealing and tasty. Whole Foods is something else. Not only is the store very visually appealing, it smells how I think Heaven will smell. When you walk through produce, you smell the vegetables. The fish smells like fish (the good, fresh kind - the way fish is supposed to smell). The cheese section... need I go on?

Not only did I want to eat everything in sight, I savored the smells so much that I think I fell in love. Yes, I might have fallen in love with Whole Foods.

This, of course, got me thinking about psychology. But then, everything makes me think of psychology, so perhaps we should be more concerned if I walked out of Whole Foods thinking nothing more than, "I'm in love."

Our brains are fascinating. I really mean it. Our brains are just about the coolest invention ever. Not only are they highly efficient, processing machines (that definitely make important, but predictable, errors), so many of the systems are interconnected in really amazing ways. The connection among smells, memory, and emotions is one example.

To really briefly summarize, the lowest parts of our brains are the parts that developed (evolutionarily) first. They handle the basic functions: breathing, sleeping/waking, etc. These very basic functions are handled by parts of the brains directly connected to our brain stems. As you get farther up in the brain and away from the brain stem, you get to the higher functioning systems that developed last. Our olfactory bulb, which is involved in perception of smells, is on the under part of our brain, close to our nose. So one of the first systems to develop, but slightly higher up the chain than breathing.

The olfactory bulb is the yellow structure above the nasal cavity.

Because of the location of the olfactory bulb, it is closely tied into the limbic system, a region in the middle of your brain that contains (among other structures) the hippocampus (involved in storage of memories) and the amygdala (involved in emotion) - the reward pathway I discussed in my very first blog post resides in this region.

It should come as no surprise then that emotions, memory, and smells are closely related, and that stimulation of one of these systems (such as the one for memory) can activate another system (such as emotion). Certainly, memories elicit emotions (you remember an event that made you happy, and you feel happy again), and emotions can elicit memories.

But what about smells? Ever smell something and suddenly find yourself thinking of an event from childhood? Pumpkin pie, turkey, certain candies - these all remind me of holidays at home and feeling happy. Certain flowers, particularly those in my bridal bouquet, remind me of my wedding day.

Which is probably why I felt this strong feeling of love. As I was entering Whole Foods, I smelled the exact flowers from my bouquet. And of course, being a foodie, the other fantastic food smells certainly gave me something to savor. In the words of Jim Gaffigan, "I like food... a lot." All of these wonderful emotions, memories, and smells combined to make me think I love Whole Foods.

Wait, you mean I'm not actually in love with Whole Foods? What am I going to do with all these love poems?!

Thoughtfully yours,
Sara

Forgiveness and the 10-Year Anniversary of 9/11

Today, we remember the 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th. In church today, the message was one of forgiveness. There are many religious and spiritual arguments for the importance of forgiveness that I won't go into. Psychologists also have explored this concept, and have discovered how forgiveness (and its converse, unforgiveness) influences an individual's mental and physical health.

Forgiveness is defined in many ways, but all of these definitions add up to one thing: forgiveness is something a wronged person offers to the one (or ones) who perpetrated the wrongdoing. It is generally viewed as a process that the forgiver works toward through many emotions and behaviors. Forgiveness is also often viewed as a personality trait; some people are simply more forgiving than others.

A lot of evidence suggests that being in a state of unforgiveness is damaging to both your mental and physical health (read one of many reviews here). Conversely, forgiveness is associated with better mental and physical health. Forgiveness is something you do, in part for the other person, but also for yourself. Refusing to forgive and continuing to hold a grudge is, for lack of a better word, toxic to your well-being.

This is because, in refusing to forgive, we often dwell on the wrongdoing. Psychologists refer to this constant dwelling on the negative as "rumination", and refer to rumination about perceived wrongdoing as "vengeful rumination". Research on rumination in general finds negative effects. Rumination is negatively correlated with sleep quality (abstract), as well as alcohol misuse, disordered eating, and self-harm (full paper). It makes focusing attention and problem solving difficult, because ruminators tend to be less confident in their problem solving abilities (full paper), and also because rumination uses working memory that could be devoted to the problem (full paper). Ruminators generate more biased interpretations of negative events, are more pessimistic about the future, and are poorer at solving interpersonal problems, as well (full paper).

Rumination is also associated with poor physical health. High ruminators show physiological stress markers, such as increased salivary cortisol (full paper here and abstract here) and immune system activity (full paper). People who ruminate also take longer for their heart rate and blood pressure to return to normal after being made to feel angry, which can put them at risk for organ damage over time (full paper).

Forgiveness is not "letting someone off the hook". It is not the same as condoning or absolving someone of wrong-doing. The old adage of "forgive and forget" doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes, mainly because of the forgetting part. It is good to forgive, but not necessarily good to forget. Forgetting means failing to learn a lesson - a lesson that may be very important for you later on. This leaves the "forgiver" in a rather difficult position; one in which he or she must remember the wrongdoing without holding a grudge.

How, then, do you forgive? And how do you think about the act in such a way, that you can find forgiveness without simply ruminating on the event? Rumination has one key component - it is dwelling on the negative without trying to find a solution for the negative. You're stuck in the mud and simply spinning your wheels without really getting anywhere. Reflection, on the other hand, involves thinking through an event and trying to find closure. Reflective thought leads to a change in the thinker.

The review I linked to above (linked again here) discussed some of the reflection “forgivers” engage in. One cognitive process is empathy, in which the forgiver puts him- or herself in the other’s shoes, and attempts to experience the same emotional state. Not only do “trait forgivers” experience more empathy, but people who are randomly assigned to engage in empathy are also able to experience forgiveness. This provides some evidence that anyone, even people who are not naturally empathetic, can use this experience to forgive.

Forgivers are more generous in their appraisals of the one(s) to be forgiven, seeing them as more likable or having more likable traits. They are also better at understanding another person’s explanation for the behavior. In essence, they try to see the situation from the other person’s point-of-view. You don’t have to accept another person’s explanation, but rather, try to understand where they’re coming from. At the very least, this understanding can aid in finding a solution or determining a path to reconciliation. People often have a very self-centered view of the world in that they have difficulty recognizing that other people do not see things in the same way or have the same knowledge (a good blog post for another day).

Of course, one thing that may make forgiveness such a difficult process in the case of 9/11 is the severity of the wrong as well as the fact that the group responsible has such different worldviews. In a previous blog entry, I talked about stereotypes and ingroup/outgroup, all of which is definitely relevant here. Our tendency to dehumanize the outgroup makes forgiveness complicated, because forgiveness is a between-human experience. Forgiveness in this case is not impossible, but would have to involve an even greater degree of understanding and attempts to characterize the other group’s point-of-view.

Forgiveness is a process. Even 10 years later, the emotions are still very raw, but we can still continue moving forward.

Thoughtfully yours,
Sara