Trailer Trash: Sadhuram 2 (2016)

This one has me intrigued. Sadhuram 2 is clearly a Saw knock-off, so it is either really late to the party, or it is ahead of the curve (or at least ahead of Saw VIII. 

However, it claims to be "India's first Philanthropical Thriller" - I'm not at all sure what that means - and also "the first ever movie in India where the second part is getting released before the first part". As someone with a pet interest in horror sequels, that marketing strategy has hooked me. 

I'll definitely be checking this out, if only to find out how they will combine Saw's misanthropy with a "philanthropic" agenda.

Un/Certainty

A while back I posted this question on Aeon Ideas: 'Is there anything that we can have absolute certainty about?' Tushant Jha posted a response that is so elegant that I thought it worth sharing here too:

“Let us say that we are certain of proposition X. Then we are certain of the proposition “There exists a proposition we are certain about”. And also be certain about the proposition “There are at least two propositions we are certain about”. and Ad Infinitum.

However, let us say, that there is nothing we are certain about. Then, not strangely, we cannot even be certain about this assumption that “nothing is known certainly”. This is indeed getting caught up in a strange loop.

Thus, without answering the question, one could really remark at the philosophical beauty of this query, of which on one side lies an unending staircase of infinite regress, and on other a self-referential strange loop. Truly remarkable.”

Self-Knowledge for Humans

Quassim Cassam (Warwick) has launched a website in support of his latest book Self-Knowledge for Humans. The site includes a handy "beginners guide", reading suggestions and a lecture podcast, all of which offer interesting ways into the topic of self-knowledge, especially for the uninitiated.

http://www.self-knowledgeforhumans.com/

Neuroscience's Greatest Rap Battle

...here.
When I say "greatest", I might really mean "only".

First-Person Account of Cotard's Delusion

I have recently written a piece about the film Pretty Dead (see my review) for my upcoming Zombies and Sexuality collection. The film tells the story of a medical student who may be turning into a zombie, or may be suffering from Cotard's Delusion (a schizoaffective disorder characterized by the patient's belief that they have died).

In her article ‘Perdition Days: On Experiencing Psychosis’ (published at The Toast), Esmé Weijun Wang recounts her experiences of Cotard's Delusion. For anyone interested in this area of selfhood or mental health more generally, it is highly recommended reading. The first-person perspective is highly evocative. 

fMRI Scan Data Invalidated?

If the authors of this article in Human Brain Mapping are right, much of the recent buzz around fMRI data  - which has been touted in some circles as a potential pathway towards unlocking the brain's "secrets" - may have to be revised.

Below is the abstract:

Respiration phase-locks to fast stimulus presentations: Implications for the interpretation of posterior midline "deactivations"

Huijbers W1, Pennartz CM, Beldzik E, Domagalik A, Vinck M, Hofman WF, Cabeza R, Daselaar SM.

The posterior midline region (PMR)-considered a core of the default mode network-is deactivated during successful performance in different cognitive tasks. The extent of PMR-deactivations is correlated with task-demands and associated with successful performance in various cognitive domains. In the domain of episodic memory, functional MRI (fMRI) studies found that PMR-deactivations reliably predict learning (successful encoding). Yet it is unclear what explains this relation. One intriguing possibility is that PMR-deactivations are partially mediated by respiratory artifacts. There is evidence that the fMRI signal in PMR is particularly prone to respiratory artifacts, because of its large surrounding blood vessels. As respiratory fluctuations have been shown to track changes in attention, it is critical for the general interpretation of fMRI results to clarify the relation between respiratory fluctuations, cognitive performance, and fMRI signal. Here, we investigated this issue by measuring respiration during word encoding, together with a breath-holding condition during fMRI-scanning. Stimulus-locked respiratory analyses showed that respiratory fluctuations predicted successful encoding via a respiratory phase-locking mechanism. At the same time, the fMRI analyses showed that PMR-deactivations associated with learning were reduced during breath-holding and correlated with individual differences in the respiratory phase-locking effect during normal breathing. A left frontal region-used as a control region-did not show these effects. These findings indicate that respiration is a critical factor in explaining the link between PMR-deactivation and successful cognitive performance. Further research is necessary to demonstrate whether our findings are restricted to episodic memory encoding, or also extend to other cognitive domains. Hum Brain Mapp, 2014. © 2014.

Glass Brain Flythrough

What do we learn from seeing how impulses travel though the brain? Probably something useful if you are a neuroscientist. The rest of us can make do with not learning a great deal, but being impressed with how damn pretty the brain looks/how beautiful thought is. 

What do colours sound like?

What do colours sound like? Well, it depends what technology you use. This is a mind-boggling experiment in phenomenology:



Excerpt from Hack My Hearing (BBC Discovery/Frank Swain 11/3/14)
Please support the creators by listening to the full programme, which is currently available to stream here: www.bbc.co.uk/i/p01t5q2q/
and is well worth checking out.
Also, here is a link to Action on Hearing Loss (which is mentioned in the show): www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/

Do Deaf People Hear an Inner Voice?

An interesting article from Psychology Today  on an intriguing question: Do Deaf People Hear an Inner Voice?

The Voices Within

On the voices in our heads

by Charles Fernyhough, Ph.D.

An interesting thread on Quora.com (registration required) asks 'Does someone who was born with a hearing loss "hear" an inner voice?' Several people who have experienced hearing loss have contributed to the discussion, and their responses make fascinating reading. 

First, why is the question of interest? As I mentioned in my last post, researchers are approaching the phenomenon of inner speech, or the 'voice in the head', with renewed vigor. Inner speech seems to be a common phenomenon, and it has been associated with a number of important functions, from controlling one's own behavior to developing a sense of self. 

Bottom of Form

What's more, one developmental view of inner speech sees it as emerging from social interactions that are mediated by spoken language. What's the story, then, for someone who doesn't use spoken language? Is there a kind of 'inner sign' that does all the things that spoken inner speech seems to do?

A number of the Deaf respondents to the Quora question suggest that this is indeed the case. One participant states, 'I have a "voice" in my head, but it is not sound-based. I am a visual being, so in my head, I either see ASL [American Sign Language] signs, or pictures, or sometimes printed words.' For this respondent, sound is not a feature of the experience. Another respondent experiences a mix of modalities: '[M]y inner voice is figuratively speaking to me and I hear it as well as lipread it.' In this case, the experience has both auditory and visual properties. 

The age at which hearing loss happens is likely to be important in determining the modality of inner speech/sign. One participant who lost his hearing at age 2 says he thinks in words, but words without sound, while another individual with early hearing loss describes 'hearing' a voice in dreams in the absence of signs or lip movements. 

What does it mean to hear a 'voice' when the experience doesn't seem to have any sound attending it? One way of thinking about this question is to ask about the properties of inner speech reported by hearing people. According to Vygotsky's theory, the process of internalization of linguistic exchanges results in many of the acoustic properties of language being stripped away, resulting in what I have termed 'condensed inner speech'. Arguably, condensed inner speech sounds like a voice, but a voice with nothing very 'speechy' about it. 

Several studies have shed light on how individuals with hearing loss use inner sign. There is evidence that inner sign mediates short-term memory in signing individuals, just as inner speech mediates short-term remembering in hearing people. In a neuroimaging study, areas of the brain associated with inner speech were activated when signers thought to themselves in sign, suggesting a common neural pathway to thinking in language that is independent of the modality of that language. 

Private and inner signing seem to be of potential benefit to hearing people as well. One (hearing) researcher on the Quora forum reports that private signing helps her sometimes to find English words, and that inner sign can even enter her dreams after she has been interacting with other signers. 

This topic has been very much on my mind since a fascinating talk given to our Hearing the Voice project by Dr Joanna Atkinson of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre at University College London. Jo's work has looked at the experience of voice-hearing among those with hearing loss, and I'll be writing about it in a future post. If some voice-hearing experiences involve the misattribution of inner speech, can something similar happen with inner sign? 

 

David Cronenberg's Sinister Installation

David Cronenberg is involved in a sinister art installation that smacks of some kind of 21st Century Videodrome infection

Check out the trailer below:




Embark on the journey here

Transparent Brains

It is that time of year again - the usual 'ten things' run-downs [click-bait] are being replaced by 'ten best of 2013' lists. 'Tis the season to ignore.

However, I did find this hidden amongst one such list. I remember the Nature article this is based on, but I missed the accompanying video regarding the CLARITY technique: removing lipids from the brain to expose its connections. The result is a transparent brain map. Prepare to sit slack-jawed through this insane video. The advances made in neuroscience this year are staggering.