“But how did I get here?”: The Rabbit Hole of Human Opinions

Opinions: everyone’s got ‘em. This could not have been made more apparent after the recent result of the EU referendum in the UK. However, this is not intended to be a politically-charged post, nor a canvas for my own personal opinion. Because if recent events have made anything clear it’s that opinions are like the brains they’re made in: downright messy.

Divisive appears to be the most fitting word to describe the whole thing – and not just literally in terms of the outcome, which will now see the UK leave the EU. As the referendum campaigns unfolded, I couldn’t help being struck by how utterly chaotic and misleading the whole process seemed – even for politics. Political parties were split and unable to form their own cohesive standing points on the matter. In the aftermath of the result, I have watched people I know to be rational, intelligent humans, lose it in social media comment fights with people they don’t even know. So, in order to restore an ounce of normality to the world, I’ve decided to address this the only way I know best – talking about brains – and hope that normal service will resume soon…

So what has this got to do with the brain?
In a nutshell, the whole biological point of having a brain is that it allows you to receive information about all the stuff that’s going on around you, make some kind of sense out of it, and then translate this into appropriate actions and decisions which you then carry out. And, as brains go, humans do this pretty darn successfully: our domination of an entire planet being a case-in-point. But sometimes your brain is irrational in ways we’re blissfully unaware of as we bumble through life trying to make the right decisions in the face of quandaries such as: ‘how many consecutive episodes of New Girl is ‘too many’?’, ‘is this cheese really that far past edible?’, and ‘should our nation leave an international  union it’s belonged to for decades?’ Consciously, you might be the most rational and open-minded of people but unconsciously, your brain is still capable of implicit bias on the sly without you noticing, especially in response to things other humans say and do.

‘No, I’M the most opinionated!’
We all know at least one person who will loudly proclaim that they ‘don’t care what other people think’ when it comes to their life decisions. And this may well be the case…as far as they’re aware. However, as social animals, the human brain has evolved so that actually we are very much influenced by what other people think of us – to the extent that patterns of brain activity seen following social rejection are incredibly similar to those associated with physical pain. Our desire to be accepted by social groups has both good and bad sides, but mostly makes for a lot of weird and baffling things happening when a bunch of like-minded brains get together. One well-documented example of this is group polarisation. If you stick a group of people together with the same opinion on something (for example: ‘you should always put the milk in first*‘), rather than conform to the average view of the group (‘tea’s quite nice if you put the milk in first’), individuals’ viewpoints will actually become more extreme (‘the milk should go in first, and anyone who disagrees should be slowly and painfully drowned in a scalding vat of their own incorrectly-made tea, the heathens!’)

#relatable
We identify most strongly with groups of people who are like us, and perceive those who are different, or outside the group, as a threat to its integrity. In keeping with this, there are lots of subtle ways that our brains can generate bias in our perceptions of people different to us. This might be people with different tea-drinking habits to you, or, more scarily, people of a different race to you. Implicit racial bias has been shown in several different types of study. For example, when a group of white American subjects were asked to pin-point when the expression in a gradually changing series of face images changed from ‘hostile’ to ‘happy’. It took them much longer to do this when the faces were black than when they were white, suggesting the possibility that anger was perceived in faces of a different race for a longer proportion of the ‘hostile-to-happy’ spectrum that subjects were shown. I’m sure you can see how this is not particularly great news.

Confidence: being flamboyantly wrong
We generally perceive people who are confident as being more convincing. This has been widely shown but particularly in studies mimicking witness testimonies in courtroom: witnesses who come across as confident when they speak are deemed to be more credible than those who appear hesitant. However, confidence does not always mean someone’s right (I know?!). In fact it’s been repeatedly shown that those who perform worse in a test or task tend to believe they’ve done better than they actually have: not only have they done badly, but they lack the ability to evaluate and recognise this. The reverse is seen in people who’ve done well in a task: they generally assume they’ve done worse than they have. This phenomenon is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So there you have it, people who are wrong – they might be telling outright lies, or spouting incorrect statistics – can dazzle you with their confidence, all the while thinking that they’re doing a tip-top job of whatever it is they’re doing. A memory task in a lab. Trying to convince a nation how to vote in a referendum. Potayto-potahto.

I got the itch to write this post, not so much in reaction to the result of the referendum, but rather as some food for thought in reaction to the bewildering lack of rationality that, for me, seemed to characterise the whole event. I’ve had conversations with people voting both ways, and been amazed that in several cases they’ve been unable to explain to me in what I consider to be meaningful words, the evidence or even the thought processes which lead them to their decision. And so I hope this post serves to highlight something which I think, given recent political events (and future ones, what with the US Presidential Election coming up), we as humans would perhaps all do well to remember: your brain is biased and irrational. Sometimes without you even realising, and especially in the context of groups of people, and especially in the context of groups of people who are different to you. So when it comes to making decisions, no matter what your opinion on a matter is, we owe it to ourselves to first ask: ‘but why do I think that?’
Because opinions can be quite a rabbit hole, with your brain subtly and implicitly pulling the strings. Sometimes, it pays to look for this before you leap.

*I don’t drink tea. Calm down and go and put the kettle on for the mob you’ve just assembled. (Or, on second thoughts, might be safer if you don’t.)

Lights, Camera, Action (Potential)!

Image: arianta

So, it turns out that writing up your lab report dissertation and revising for final year exams takes up a lot of time, energy and sanity. Who knew? However, if you can excuse that, some good has come out of the recent months of radio silence in which this blog has been gathering a fair bit of Internet dust and resident tumbleweeds. Because, as any student knows, with great obligation comes procrastination, and if you live in a house of neuroscientists this apparently means watching as many films as you can find which are at least sort-of neuroscience-related (because ‘it’s not really procrastinating if it’s got brains in it, is it?’)  What with the human brain being so baffling and in many aspects not completely understood, there’s a lot of room to get creative. Unsurprisingly, this means there are a lot of films out there with various takes on what’s going on up there: from more personal and historical stories of neurological disease to playing around with the endless sci-fi ‘what-if’ scenarios the brain provides.  So, without further ado, here are a selection of the weird and wonderful movies we unearthed over the last couple of months in Revision Cave, which I thought I’d share. And of course it goes without saying, feel free to leave any recommendations and suggestions of your own…my next blog post isn’t going to procrastinate itself!

Awakenings
Starring: Robert De Niro & Robin Williams (1990) 

If, like many people (including me) you thought Eddie Redmayne did an incredible job of portraying Stephen Hawking in 2014’s The Theory of Everything, then Robert De Niro is comparatively outstanding here. Awakenings is an adaptation of late and great neurologist Oliver Sacks’ written account of his time working with ‘catatonic’ encephalitis epidemic victims at the Beth Abraham Hospital, New York in the 1960s. De Niro is initially unrecognisable as Leonard: wheelchair-bound, mute and – like the rest of the patients consigned to the bluntly-named ‘garden ward’ –  unable to move, frozen in a Parkinson’s disease-like state. The transformation from living statue to being fully mobile and dancing, thanks to receiving Parkinson’s disease drug L-DOPA, is remarkable (this might just be me and my own general ignorance, but I genuinely didn’t realise it was De Niro until this point!) Awakenings’ account of individuals being brought back to life after being given up on is an honest and unexpectedly funny film definitely worth checking out, but be warned: the laughs and light-hearted recovering-patient-montages only last as long as it takes for the L-DOPA to wear off…

The Science of Sleep 
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal & Charlotte Gainsbourg (2006) 

The phrase ‘there are no words’ springs to mind, however, I’ve decided to think of some to describe what is possibly one of the most bizarre films I’ve seen. Ever. The Science of Sleep ostensibly is the story of Stéphane Miroux (Gael Garcia Bernal), who moves to his mother’s apartment block in Paris after his father’s death, and takes a shine to the quirky, arty girl next door (Charlotte Gainsbourg). So far so cliché, I’m sure you’re thinking. However, the major draw-back here is that, like Stéphane, we’re never quite sure if what’s happening is a dream or reality. The opening scene: a TV studio constructed entirely from cardboard (even the cameras) from which Stéphane presents ‘StéphaneTV’, pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the film from the off. Although it later transpires that this cardboard studio cleverly represents the inner workings of Stéphane’s brain reacting to unfolding  events (imagine Inside Out but with cardboard and a strange middle-aged French guy and you’re not far off). The rest of the film unfolds in a mix of French, English and occasional Spanish (because why not?!) accompanied by creative, but disorientating, stop-motion and visual effects intruding just when you thought you’d found a scene that was ‘definitely really happening.’ Overall, this is definitely a Marmite kind of film, which has a lot of fun playing around with dreams vs. reality: think Inception on a tight budget. However in its defence, The Science of Sleep did successfully lure me into watching the entire thing, in the bewildered hope that at some point – the next bit, surely – I would figure out what exactly I was watching. Of course, this never happened. So the best way to describe this film, I feel is: ‘just watch it and see?!’

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Starring: Kate Winslet, Jim Carey, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst (2004) 

Possibly a bit late to the party with this movie, as it’s probably one of the more well-known ones on this list. Nonetheless, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a fun foray down the rabbit-hole of human memory. In a nutshell: boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy, they inevitably break up and decide to erase the memory of each other from their brains. However, as opposed to listening to copious amounts of Adele and drinking yourself into oblivion, they decide to achieve this via a conveniently-available medical procedure. Whilst reliving his memories as they’re being demolished, Joel (Jim Carey) changes his mind and decides that actually he doesn’t want to forget Clementine (Kate Winslet), and so a frenzied dash through fragmented memories ensues, as he attempts to wake himself up. Whilst it’s got a lot of odd quirks, what’s interesting about Eternal Sunshine is the way it plays around with memory and how, quite often, what we remember is not necessarily always exactly an accurate representation of events. At the beginning things are somewhat hectic, jumping back and forth between past and present, eventually the story pieces together and allows you to figure out just what on earth is going on. Overall, it’s a cleverly back-to-front kind of film, which you’ll either find satisfying or frustrating, depending on who you are – but either way, it’s worth a watch.

The Music Never Stopped
Starring: J.K. Simmonds, Lou Taylor Pucci, Cara Seymour (2011) 

This is yet another, more recent, adaptation of the writing of Oliver Sacks – this time of the case study: The Last Hippie. The story follows a young man who, due to a brain tumour, suffers anterograde amnesia and is unable to remember anything after the late 1960s or form new long-term memories. However, by focusing on music, and the memories certain songs are strongly tied to and able to evoke, Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) is gradually able to connect with his estranged family. The Music Never Stopped is a sincere, heartfelt film which highlights just how far we still have to go to understand how human memory works (the music therapist in the film has some debatable ideas, but then most of what we understand about memory is debatable and the film is set in the 80s…). Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable watch – if only for the great soundtrack – with plenty of laughs along the way.

How human is too human?

‘The last invention humans will ever need to make.’

No, it’s not a surgically attachable selfie stick. In a recent interview, Prof. Stephen Hawking warningly referred to full artificial intelligence, that is, the development of robots with intelligence that equals – or surpasses – our own. Just last week, critics were calling Myon’s lead performance in the Berlin Opera House’s My Square Lady somewhat ‘mechanical’, on account of, well…that it’s a robot (pictured in action above). And lately, here in the UK, new sci-fi drama Humans made its debut on Channel 4 after causing some confusion with a clever launch campaign that involved adverts, London shop fronts and E-bay listings for ‘synthetic humans’. The show, set in a parallel present-day where humanoid household robots are as commonplace as tablets and smart-phones, seems intriguing so far and raises some interesting questions which got me thinking and inspired this post.

Our fear of the rise of the robots is hardly new, it’s been documented by films for decades. Since 1991 we’ve even been putting ourselves on trial against robots in the annual Loebner Prize Turing test, to see if we can still tell the difference. But besides this existential fear, what is it about some robots that makes them just a bit creepy?

Creepy or cute? The above are all real robots. The third is Kaspar2, used to teach social interaction to autistic children.

We’ve all experienced it before, that feeling when you look at a robot, or even a doll or CGI film character and there’s just something not quite right. Generally, the more human something looks, the more comfortable we are looking it. But, at a certain point of not-quite human resemblance, our positive feeling towards the robot or character suddenly drops off and we feel eerily unsettled. Welcome to the Uncanny Valley. This is the name for the point where a human-like face gives us the creeps, first described by Masashiro Moroi in a 1970 journal paper. It looks a bit like this:

It’s actually still debated as to whether this phenomenon really exists, since there hasn’t been much scientific investigation of it. But if it is real, it is likely linked with the neuroscience of the way we perceive faces.

We know that, for us humans, face perception is an incredibly important ability. This is partly from the study of people with prosopagnosia – also known as ‘face blindness’. A fold in the surface of the right brain called the fusiform gyrus, is thought to be primarily responsible for recognising faces, and damage to this leads to the strange condition where vision is normal – the person can see the face – but they can’t recognise it as a face. To get an idea of what this might be like, imagine if faces were like abstract paintings. You can see the painting in front of you perfectly clearly, but no matter how you tilt your head or squint, you just don’t ‘get’ what it’s meant to be. The fact that many prosopagnosiacs have no trouble recognising other object suggests that our brains have developed networks of neurons – areas like the fusiform gyrus – that are exclusively for face perception, and brains don’t waste energy and resources crafting specific networks if they’re not important

In fact, without our ability to pick out faces, we might not have survived long enough to even start scratching our heads about robots. And we’re very good at it, in fact perhaps a bit too good: we’ll see faces in anything. Potatoes. Outer space. But, importantly, face perception is not just identifying a face. Two dots and line on a sheet of paper is a ‘face’, but we instantly know it’s not a real one. So when we recognise a face, what we’re also looking for is the indication that it’s actually more than just a pretty face (perhaps fortunately, for some of us).

We have the expectation that a convincing enough human-like face means: ‘hey, this is a being with a mind: the ability to think, feel, decide and perform higher functions just like I can’, basically that the lights are on and, yes, somebody is at home. This is unsurprising, since we display what we’re thinking and feeling for all to see in a roughly decodable form on our intricate canvas of eye and facial muscles. And so this expectation, in the context of survival, makes sense: a creepy doll might look murderously angry, but we know that it’s not actually angry – it doesn’t have a brain – and so we don’t need to waste time and energy anticipating what it could do next.*

Expectation is a huge part of human survival and our day-to-day lives. Every morning I wake up and make myself a bowl of cereal with wild abandon, because I don’t expect my housemates to have poisoned all my food overnight. Stressing out about extremely unlikely scenarios is a waste of time and energy. So it’s unsurprising that, generally, we don’t like it when our expectations are violated. And, according to one theory, this is why faces in the uncanny valley creep us out: they violate our expectation that a human-like face indicates a being with a mind.

A 2010 study attempted to investigate 2 specific aspects that might be involved in this effect: agency (that is, whether something can move around, make things happen and do things independently) and experience (whether something is capable of things like emotion and sensation). Participants had to scroll through a spectrum of faces, which were increasingly morphed the face of a mannequin, and identify various cut-off points e.g. for pleasant vs. unpleasant and living vs. not living. The researchers concluded that when we are confronted with a machine, which we know is not capable of complex experiences such as emotion and sensation, we will be unsettled if it has an appearance that contradicts this. So essentially, things start to get creepy when it looks like the lights are on, but we know nobody is home. It seems that eyes may be an important factor in this, as we know that when we look at faces it’s the eyes we look at more than any other feature. But in short, the conclusion would appear to be that ‘we are happy to have robots that do things, but not feel things.’

So, while we don’t yet know enough about how a brain works to be able to engineer one in a robot that approaches anything as close as our complexity, we can at least go some way to making them look less creepy.
The robots have not risen against us yet, but in the meantime artificial intelligence is giving us plenty of important questions to think about, not least: ‘how far down the uncanny valley am I?’

*Unless, of course, you should ever find yourself in a horror film, in which case: anticipate, and then run the heck away. Don’t be That Person who decides to ‘investigate’. Never ends well.