Category: Science

Top 10 Common Judgment Errors

Jun. 01 Science 1 comment

Is your brain processing information correctly?

The human brain is amazingly fast at processing data.  For example, you may be consciously thinking  of only one thing, but your brain is processing thousands of bits of data on a subconscious level.  Unfortunately, our thinking processes are not perfect and we suffer from what psychology calls cognitive biases: patters of deviations of judgment that occur in certain situations.

The list of these judgment deviations is extensive and numbers close to 100.  Some of these sound like things we encounter every day:  false memories, hindsight bias, selective perception, stereotyping, and the hostile media effect.  Others are a bit more obscure:  hyperbolic discounting, Semmelweis reflex, availability heuristic, and the bandwagon effect to name a few.

Not all cognitive biases are bad.  Some even allow us to reach a conclusion or make decisions faster.  However, there are some that lead us to distorted perceptions, and inaccurate or illogical interpretations.

Listverse.com has compiled a list of the top 10 common faults in human thought.  As you read these think about whether you or someone you know have experienced any of these.

10. Gambler’s Fallacy: the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality, they are not. Example:  Flip a coin 37 times and each and every time the probability of landing heads is exactly 50% each and every time.

9.  Reactivity: the tendency of people to act or appear differently when they know that they are being observed. Example:  Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to type accurately when someone is looking over your shoulder?

8.  Pareidolia: when random images or sounds are perceived as significant. Example:  Seeing Jesus on a piece of toast or hearing messages when a record is played backwards.

7.  Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: engaging in behaviors that obtain results that confirm existing attitudes. Example:  Telling yourself that you have bad luck and then falling, tripping, or bumping into things constantly.

6.  Halo Effect: the tendency for an individual’s positive or negative trait to “spill over” to other areas of their personality in others’ perceptions of them. Example:  When your sister arrives late to every family gathering and you conclude that they don’t care about the family.

5.  Herd Mentality: the tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict. Example:  Peer pressure in all its forms.

4.  Reactance: the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice. Example:  Not doing something you know is good for you just because your parents told you to do it.

3.  Hyperbolic Discounting: the tendency for people to prefer a smaller, immediate payoff over a larger, delayed payoff. Example:  Taking a $20 million lottery payoff today rather than $100 million in five years.

2.  Escalation of Commitment: the tendency for people to continue to support previously unsuccessful endeavors. Example:  Continuing to put money into a business that you repeatedly lose money at.

1.  Placebo Effect: when an ineffectual substance that is believed to have healing properties produces the desired effect. Example:  You start a clinical trial for a prescription medication that is supposed to cure your cold symptoms.  The symptoms disappear and you attribute it to the medication, but it turns out that you were taking sugar pills the entire time.

 

To see the original list at Listverse go here.

To see a comprehensive list of cognitive biases go here.

 

Physics and the Immortality of the Soul

May. 31 Science no comments

What does physics say about life after death?

In a recent article in Discover Magazine, Sean M. Carroll tackles the often controversial subject of whether there is life after death.  Sean concludes that although a majority of people (more than 50% according to the Pew Research Center) believe in some form of afterlife, current day understanding of scientific laws make it highly improbable, if not outright impossible.

Most of the information that we have regarding the existence of an afterlife comes from people’s accounts of near death experiences (NDE’s) and encounters with ghosts and spirits, or from religious teachings.  Scientists have yet to prove that these NDE’s are real and not just a figment of the imagination.  Regarding religious teachings, these are based on faith and not on scientific inquiry and knowledge. In order to believe in an afterlife, one must believe there there is some form of consciousness that persists after our bodies deteriorate.  Most people refer to that “consciousness” as a soul.  This leads to further questions of what that soul is, what it is comprised of, and how it interacts with the atoms that make up our bodies.

Even if you don’t believe that human beings are “simply” collections of atoms evolving and interacting according to rules laid down in the Standard Model of particle physics, most people would grudgingly admit that atoms are part of who we are. If it’s really nothing but atoms and the known forces, there is clearly no way for the soul to survive death. Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that “new physics” to interact with the atoms that we do have.

Sean points out that the mathematical equation that describes how electrons behave in our everyday world is called the Dirac equation.  Roughly speaking, this equation describes the relationship between the velocity of an electron and its inertia, and electromagnetism and gravity.  However, Sean admits that the equation is not complete as it hasn’t taken into account nuclear forces and the existence of the elusive Higgs boson (or God particle).   Could the inclusion of these help create that “new physics” that Sean requires in order to allow for the existence of a soul, and by extension, the existence of an afterlife?

Reader responses

Perhaps more interesting than the article itself, is the back and forth commentary of its readers.  In a period of 9 days, Sean’s article has garnered 170 responses.   As one would expect, there are a lot of consenting and dissenting views on the topic.  However, most agree that the subject needs more consideration and more variables in order to be fully accepted or dismissed.  Consider the following responses:

From davidstarlignm:

The general assumption — among physicists who believe in Christ, or Christians who believe in physics, or any combination of the two — is that the spacetime governed by the Standard Model is a subset of a more complete reality. Whether you want to use the extradimensional analogy of Flatland (the brain is to the soul as a cube is to a tesseract) or the computer science analogy (the brain is to the soul as the user input is to the user) or any other visualization, it isn’t that confusing.

If the spacetime we know and see and test is but a tiny slice of a larger reality, and the larger reality only regularly interacts with ours in a few controlled ways (consciousness, etc), there is no reason to presume that we would be able to detect any portion of that reality that is necessarily located outside our own, any more than we would expect a computer program to be able to tell you anything more about its hardware components than the signals it is receiving from them.

From Jesse M:

But in an infinite multiverse, isn’t it likely that somewhere out there a pattern of information identical to our own brain’s last conscious experience will arise somewhere, and will survive to have additional experiences? This would seem especially natural in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, leading to the theory of quantum immortality.

From Andrew S:

There is no evidence for life after death, supernatural phenomena, free will, unnecessarily complicated physical theories, or any number of other fantastical things. The reason why many people believe such things anyway is because if they didn’t, then they would probably conclude that existence is the ultimate trap in which they have no power, no control, and no purpose. Thus, natural selection will favor those that believe in these things (even if these beliefs are false) to the extent that such beliefs allow or encourage them to reproduce rather than kill themselves in despair.

From Raghavan Jaganathan:

Consciousness without material is possible . But material without consciousness will merely be stone and mud. ( quarks and electrons).

 

To read the original Discover Magazine article and/or participate in the discussion go here.

Photo courtesy of HDRenesys.

New Evidence for Innate Knowledge

May. 28 Science no comments

Scientists in Switzerland’s Blue Brain Project have discovered new evidence that proves that humans are born with some form of innate knowledge.

When the scientists tested in vitro neuronal circuits from different rats, they all presented very similar characteristics. If the circuits had only been formed from the experiences lived by the different animals, the values should have diverged considerably from one individual to the next. Thus, the neuronal connectivity must in some way have been programmed in advance.

This might help explain why we all seem to share a basic sense of the physical world around us.  While it still holds true that the memories we make and the things we learn come from experience and sensory perception, this recent finding might prove that we might have already come programmed with the basic and fundamental building blocks.   The finding by the Blue Brain’s neuroscientists  opens up a whole knew way of thinking about the human brain and provides a great opportunity for more extensive research.

On a related note, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are working on a project that will enable them to grow a brain in a petri dish complete with memories.  They have managed to produce neural activity for up to 12 seconds.  The picture included in this article isn’t an artists rendition, it comes directly from these scientists’ findings.

To produce the models, the Pitt team stamped adhesive proteins onto silicon discs. Once the proteins were cultured and dried, cultured hippocampus cells from embryonic rats were fused to the proteins and then given time to grow and connect to form a natural network. The researchers disabled the cells’ inhibitory response and then excited the neurons with an electrical pulse.

The research and advances that are occurring in the field of neuroscience are advancing more rapidly day by day.  The implications of their findings are wide and varied.  These include: the ability to validate the idea of collective consciousness, the regeneration of a person’s brain, artificial intelligence with organic brains, and new psychological insights into human thought processes.

To read the innate knowledge article go here.

To read the study from the University of Pittsburgh go here.

Faith and Psychiatry

May. 26 Science 1 comment

Spirituality and/or religion are often integral to helping fix some of the emotional problems that send average Americans running into the offices of mental health specialists.  For example,when a patient is depressed, they will often ask what the point is in continuing their lives.  Sometimes the answer can be obtained by having the psychiatrist integrate the patient’s spiritual or religious beliefs with traditional psychiatric treatment to find out what gives their lives meaning.

The need to integrate a person’s spiritual or religious beliefs into their treatment is embodied by Victoria Maxwell.  In 1992, Victoria had a psychotic event where she ran around shouting “I am one with God”.  That episode began a series of treatments which didn’t really address the root of the problem: 

“The one element, which could have helped me accept treatment more readily, was overlooked. My spiritual beliefs were not only ignored, but more accurately actively avoided. Care providers were reluctant to discuss spiritual topics for fear of destabilizing my mood…  But this was a most heartfelt dilemma and conflict I needed to reconcile in order to start the healing process… Because facets of my psychoses felt life changing, I was at odds with the medical profession. How could I label something of such significance as only pathological? I sat on the edge of my hospital bed, despondent and unclear as to how to reconcile accepting that I had a mental illness without abandoning my spiritual insights by calling them delusional.”

Victoria would be glad to know that if she had faced the same problems today, things might have turned out a bit differently.  On Friday, May 20, 2011, one hundred experts in the field of psychiatry came together  to discuss this very subject. The conference was held in Vermont and was  titled “Spirituality in Clinical Practice: Exploring Advantages and Pitfalls in Addressing Client Spirituality.”

At the conference, psychiatrists stated that now that they’ve actively decided to integrate a patient’s spiritual beliefs with treatment, they face two distinct challenges:  1) not letting their own beliefs interfere with the patient’s needs and 2) patients feel guilt or mistrust of psychiatry because they are not giving God a chance to heal their suffering.  In the past, psychiatrists have solved issue # 1 by tactfully and respectfully refraining from discussing their own beliefs.  However, this has started to change as some psychiatrists start working with local pastors and other local religious leaders to find a way to help their patients.  Regarding issue # 2, one man’s answer was: “I’m going to sound simplistic, but the key question (for the patient) is do you know all the ways God heals? And perhaps a follow-up. Aren’t you limiting the ways God can carry out healing (by) creating a distinction that what we’re trying to do in psychotherapy is unfaithful or ungodly.”

Finding the right kind of help is of utmost importance for a rapid healing and recovery process.  Therefore, if you or someone you know is in need of psychiatric treatment, don’t be afraid to ask your practitioner if they are willing to incorporate your spiritual or religious beliefs into the treatment.  The worst thing that could happen is that they refer you to another psychiatrist.  And that wouldn’t be so bad would it?

 

To read the Bennington Banner article go here.

To read Victoria Maxwell’s story go here.

Photo courtesy of nondani.

Has Science Explained Life After Death?

May. 23 Science 3 comments

Does science have an explanation for NDE’s and OBE’s?

Science has explained away Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) and Out of Body Experiences (OBE’s) separately, but what happens when both occur at the same time?  In How Stuff Works, Josh Clark recounts the story of Pam Reynolds.  In 1991 she was undergoing brain surgery and for the 45 minutes that the doctors worked she was clinically dead.  When she came to she reported having experiences while she was on the operating table.  These included having conversations with dead relatives but also being able to see her body as they operated on her.  She remembered the whole experience and was able to provide details including the saw the surgeons used on her skull.

So what does science make of Pam’s experience?  Technically, when you are brain dead you shouldn’t be able to form new memories.  A study from the University of Kentucky posited that NDE’s happen in the brain stem:

Researchers there theorize that the mysterious phenomenon is really an instance of the sleep disorder rapid eye movement (REM) intrusion. In this disorder, a person’s mind can wake up before his body, and hallucinations and the feeling of being physically detached from his body can occur.  If this is true, then this means the experiences of some people following near-death are confusion from suddenly and unexpectedly entering a dream-like state.  The area where REM intrusion is triggered is found in the brain stem — the region that controls the most basic functions of the body — and it can operate virtually independent from the higher brain. So even after the higher regions of the brain are dead, the brain stem can conceivably continue to function, and REM intrusion could still occur [source: BBC].

Regarding out of body experiences, while Dr. Olaf Blanke conducted a brain mapping test, he was able to induce OBE’s by stimulating the Temporal Parietal Junction:

The temporal parietal junction (TPJ) is responsible for sorting through this disparate information and putting it together into a coherent package.

The TPJ also happens to be the region that controls our comprehension of our own body and its situation in space. Blanke believes that a misfiring of this region is responsible for OBEs. If any of the information being sorted by the temporal parietal junction becomes crossed, like where we are in space, then we could seemingly be released from the confines of our body — even if only for a moment.

So it seems like science has been able to explain both NDE’s and OBE’s separately.  But what about when they happen at the same time?  NDE’s happen when the brain stem is active even if the higher brain is dead.  OBE’s happen when the higher brain is stimulated, but it’s supposed to be dead remember?  Therein lie the areas of further research and study.  In the meantime we can continue to analyze the content of these NDE’s and OBE’s. As physician Dr. Melvin Morse wrote, “Simply because religious experiences are brain-based does not automatically lessen or demean their spiritual significance.”


To read the full HowStuffWorks article go here.

Hands on Healing, Science and Bonding

May. 14 Science 4 comments

There is a lot of skepticism in the scientific community about the effectiveness of healing through laying of the hands.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, this process involves having someone (healer) lay their hands either directly or in close proximity of someone who is sick (healee) or injured and making a conscious decision/prayer/intention to heal their injured cells.

Dr. William Bengston is a professor of sociology at St Joseph’s College in New York, the president of the Society for Scientific Exploration and author of the book The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-on Healing.  Dr. Bengston has specifically been working with attempting to heal mice who have been injected with cancer.  Through his experiments he found that not only was he 100% effective in curing the diseased mice, he was also able to positively affect up to 80% of the control group.  These findings led him to study the interconnectedness of not only mice but people as well.

In a paper published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Dr. Bengston describes his findings while using Electroencephalograms:

Under Jay’s technical direction we procured a couple of very sophisticated EEGs to be able to test two people at the same time. One person, the healer, was in one room and another person, the healee, was placed in a different room. The healer produces a specific brain state, which is seen to be mirrored in the healee.

Based on the experiments he’s conducted over the years, Dr. Bengston is convinced that living beings have a bond with each other that can be measured in a scientific way.

I am sure at this point that mice can become bonded together; that humans can become bonded together. I am sure at this point that the bonding is not permanent. Just as everyone has probably had the subjective sense of connection, they also have the experience that the subjective sense of connection is not fixed, it’s a fluid thing.

A person can be attached to things, places, people, and pets, and the same is true of mice. They can grow closer together and they can grow farther apart. Perhaps this is where a conscious aware connection comes in, but I am speculating of course. I don’t really see how consciousness or awareness affects healing all that much, but the healing does appear related to connection. In so far as some kind of connection is involved in healing, it seems that it would only be some kind of indirect method or indirect means by which consciousness would affect healing.

To read the full Super Consciousness article go here.  To find out more about Dr. Bengston go here.

Photo courtesy of Bengston Research.

Scientists Glimpse Universe before the Big Bang

May. 04 Science no comments

Recent studies by physicists have encountered patterns in cosmic radiation that lead to the possibility that when one universe collapses, a completely new universe is born.

In general, asking what happened before the Big Bang is not really considered a science question. According to Big Bang theory, time did not even exist before this point roughly 13.7 billion years ago. But now, Oxford University physicist Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia have found an effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that allows them to “see through” the Big Bang into what came before.

The discovery doesn’t suggest that there wasn’t a Big Bang – rather, it supports the idea that there could have been many of them. The scientists explain that the CMB circles support the possibility that we live in a cyclic universe, in which the end of one “aeon” or universe triggers another that starts another aeon, and the process repeats indefinitely. The black hole encounters that caused the circles likely occurred within the later stages of the aeon right before ours, according to the scientists.

Read original PysOrg.com article here.

Photo courtesy of NASA.