neurosciences & society, learning methods, mental hacks for well-being and performance
An “internal note” spread in May opened the possibility to the companies of the digital technology to collect school data. Minister of Education plans to revise the policy on the subject.
Plainly it means that Google, Facebook, and other companies of the digital technology would have been able to collect pupils’ lists with their names, their classes, even their marks within the framework of on-line made works. These data can yield money.
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WHATWhat about a little music to sleep well? A little song to get intestinal fortitude? Or singing a text to remember it? Does this stuff work? Yes it does!
The music influences on several brain behaviors and it plays therefore an important role in learning, human relations, perception of the world and memorization.
Light has always been associated with truth (what we can see in such expressions as ” to shed light on “, or ” the Age of the Enlightenment ” which appoints the first large-scale human attempt to get rational knowledge of the world).
And, for the same reasons, the sight is associated with knowledge: we immediately understand the origin of the image that we see, and if an obstacle prevents us from seeing something, at least we can notice the obstacle, so we know that something can be hide behind.
At the opposite, the hearing has a little bit of a magic character: the sound spreads itself in the space, despite of physical barriers across its ways. If masking an image is an easy job, it is more difficult to deaden a sound. And, the other way, it is often difficult to determine the origin of a sound we sense. Moreover, if we can close our eyes, we cannot close our ears. Therefore, the sense of hearing erases the barrier between the individual and the world which surrounds him. Sounds affect him directly and modify his person, his deep psychological structure. Sounds put us in touch with the Unknown. Therefore, music plays a very important role in the functioning of the brain and in the human development.
The musical memorization uses different zones of the brain than the linguistic one. It mainly uses two types of different memories: the semantic one, which enables one to identify an air or to whistle it, and the episodic one, which enables one to put it back in the context in which he has already heard it before, to recall the events and the feelings which he has associate with this music or sound.1
Furthermore, we know that the sense of hearing is developed very early, and is already operational in the mother’s wombs: the baby hears working the physiological system of his host. We thus see that the hearing system is more primitive than the visual one and is associated with a primitive phase of development where the subject isn’t yet separated from his environment and doesn’t differentiate himself from the world. And as the memory always put sounds back in context, by listening to past sounds we also recall the context in which we heard them and the feelings that we associated to them. Thus, we can say that we can “fix” feelings or memories to a music! 1
What? Plenty of things, of course, with such a tool!
For example, we can use it to memorize better a text by putting it into music.
The semantic memory makes us know the air, thus the musical note which is going to come, and the episodic memory reminds us the word which has to come with the next note. By the way it is for that reason that there are so many popular songs: music is a very powerful cultural vector.
We can also help our baby to fall asleep by singing a lullaby to him: very soon, he will associate it with the presence of his mother: her smell, her contact, her voice, the breast feeding … And in the future the simple singing will recall him this comfortable atmosphere. The lullaby also has the power to calm the parent who sings it by sending him back in his own childhood! By the way, it is certainly for that reason that certain lullabies crossed ages, from generation to generation … And it is so powerful that a program of music therapy using lullabies was developed in Canada to reassure children presenting an attachment disorder. 1
Then there are plenty of social applications: more to read in our next article!
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Notes
1■ Article musique et cerveau, may 2017 (FR)
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We can make remember somebody of something he never lived.
We saw in another article that we can physically implant a false memory in brains of mice1. But it is also possible to suggest good enough a false memory so the subject believes that he lived what he is told and is even able to remember details that were not even told to him.
You know, with a little of persuasion, you certainly managed already to make believe your colleague Michael that John won’t get back to work anymore because he had decided to manage a dairy with an old acquaintance, 500 miles away of the office. And when John came back to the office one week later at the end of his holidays, he did not understand why Michael asked him what went wrong with the dairy … And all the colleagues had a good laugh.
Well, in the same order of idea, researchers have managed to persuade subjects that they had lived certain things that they not lived in fact!
During an experiment, Stephen Lindsay and his team managed to persuade 50 % of their guinea pigs that they had made a flight in hot-air balloon in their youth, what was false, by presenting them forged photographs2.
So that the transplant has a chance to be a success, three factors must be respected: the false memory must be plausible, the subject has to build itself a mental representation of it and the memory should not seem to be produced by a trance at the time of its construction, but by the recollection of a reliable information3.
Other factors are facilitators, for example the emotional implication of the subject in the false memory. If the false memory doesn’t make taking place particular emotion, it has only few chances to be retained by the subject. On the other hand, if it calls on to feelings to the subject, it has more chances to be accepted by this one, and that’s particularly true if the feelings called by the memory are negative: then the false memory will be rather precise.
In 2008, Stephen Porter and his team made an experiment illustrating this phenomenon4: they incite a group of subjects to remember passed public events, some of them being false ones. The conclusion of the study is that the false positive or negative events are more easily accepted than those having no “emotional particular color”, and that those having a negative connotation generate more precise false memories to the subjects than those having a positive connotation. Stephen Porter’s theory to explain this phenomenon is an evolutionary one: according to him, it is crucial for the survival to remember negative events, no matter what the individual lived them actually or that they are reported to him by a reliable source. Therefore, the brain is more inclined to produce false precise memories for events of this nature5.
The conclusion of all this is that it is necessary to be wary of your own bad memories: they are actually the least reliable ones, because they are the ones that we are the most inclined to forge, if circumstances are gathered! And it is necessary to be aware that, as our memories influence our reading of the present, we need to wonder about the reasons which urge us to perceive as “viscerally negatives” certain events of our everyday life and, in a more general way, the current events reported in newspapers… Hopefully this article leaves you a long-lasting memory, see you!
Look further / Useful link(s)
Notes
1■ Article « False memories in your brain »
3■ Website https://www.scienceshumaines.com/faux-souvenirs-le-poids-de-l-emotion_fr_27500.html
4■ Porter, S., Taylor, K., & ten Brinke, « Memory for media : Investigation of false memories for negatively and positively charged public events », Memory, vol.16, n°6, 2008
Controversial topic: on one side some people complain to feel harmful effects on their body, on the other one labs say that the waves doesn’t cause any damage. It just happened that I recently read two articles which show a small evolution in that debate, and I thought that this information deserved to be shared.
A double-page from magazine “Science et Vie” of July, 2017 mention a researcher of the University of Picardy which announces: “our works led on rats show that they perceive the waves emitted by relay masts. It could cause psychosomatic disorders”. I like at the end of the article the sentence “this study is very interesting, comments an expert in this domain, who wishes to remain anonymous“. We can see that there is no problem with freedom of speech here! Other studies are planned, in particular in Amiens (North of France).
Shortly before, I read an article from magazine “01net” of June 21st, 2017 talking about certain smartphones: “these smartphones, as well as about forty others marketed between 2012 and 2016, can radiate way too much when they are placed on the thorax. So much that they could be forbidden to sale if they weren’t already on the market”. Indeed the National Agency of the Frequencies changed the standard: since April, 2016, the measures must be made 5 millimeters away from the body (this new test protocol can modify the ancient results up to 50 % !).
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Elon Musk is warning that artificial intelligence is a “fundamental existential risk for human civilization,” and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is looking into how states can respond.
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, made the remarks over the weekend at the National Governors Association meeting in Rhode Island.
He has long warned of the threats he believes artificial intelligence will pose, from automation to apocalypse. Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and others have also sounded warnings over AI.
Full article HERE.
Hi everybody,
Today, the article’s introduction has airs of official announcement. Actually, this article is not as the others, and that’s for a very good reason: the NeuroHack-Learning team is currently setting up a mooc to offer pupils of middle school and high school a powerful complement to what they can learn from the school system (and specially HOW). Well, yes, school has the information, but doesn’t seem to know well how to pass on it… At the age of neurosciences development, we think it’s a pity that no action is undertaken to learn to our teenagers… how to learn (nor to the parents to help their child without annoying him/her).
In brief, this mooc must be set up for September (FR) or December (ENG) and… that takes us quite a lot of time! As a result, this article (and probably some others in a near future) will have for specific theme the way we finalize this online formation, so you can see how we work. Well, beaten about the bush enough: let’s go!
First of all, first issue: to help our teenagers to learn effectively and to become autonomous, here is a beautiful project, but … what is our target public after all? Who worries about the school performance of teenagers, who have the means and potentially the desire to act?
Teenagers [#applause], of course, are the very first concerned by this mooc. They are obviously the first ones that can act to obtain best scholar results. The action power, they have, but the motivation to do so? Actually, it could be that some teenagers don’t frankly want to invest time and energy to progress in school, essentially because they do not perceive what’s important in there and lost already their motivation having worked (perhaps hard, who knows) for thin results only.
Who else, then? Their parents! If teenagers do not feel pressure having bad or just fair only scholar results, their parents often feel it a little more …
So, this mooc: is it designed for the parents and talking about supervision, or for their children and talking about performance? Well, as we didn’t want to choose, we decided to do both ^^!
Thus, there will be modules about the work’s efficiency, with all sorts of hacks, but also modules about how to plan and check the work, it’s context, other ones about motivation…
Wow, I forgot a thing: of course, there will be also modules about ” what is really a teenager “, from a sociological, psychological and neurological point of view, which will bring clues to parents to understand who is facing them at this moment of their life. It will be the necessary stage after which we can give to them concrete tools to facilitate the dialogue with their children, what is again a prerequisite to talk with them about real subjects (or big troubles if their teenager is dropping out at school or having high-risk behavior).
Well, now, you probably understood it already, that we didn’t want to choose either between:
■ a very theoretical, super-interesting course but with no possible application in the field, and
■ a very “how to do” oriented course, which certainly could help a bit, but won’t propose elaborated solutions to answer the real issues rather than their symptoms.
Thus, we made all the modules in a way that there is always a bit of theory to understand well, and a lot of practice to make it happen in the field.
Well, end of the teaser. We’ll let you know about what’s next during the months to come!
This event shows convincingly the actual influence of algorithms on people’s real life. And that’s just the beginning…
This article points on the consequences of that French scholar system:
Read the entire article from Challenges magazine (French)
OUR INFOGRAPHY ON PINTEREST HERE!
You are bogged down in the priorities and the delays? You don’t manage anymore to move forward in your life? This article is made for you! Discover what has to change in your behavior to improve yourself and enjoy your life again!
1) Prepare yourself to carry out the painful tasks
Yes, the beginning of an action stands before that the action begins. The hardest is to obtain the adequate state of mind to do things. When we say that it is the first step which costs the most, that’s what it means. The trick is to launch the intellectual conditioning before launching the task. For example, if your problem is to go to sport in the evening after the work, an attitude which is going to help you to go to sport is to take your sports bag with you in the morning by leaving for the work, and to go to the room directly after this one. So, not only you avoid the temptation to stay at home when you go take your bag in the evening, but moreover your temptation to go back home after the work is counterbalanced by the fact you took your sports bag with you in the morning: this action wouldn’t have any point if finally you would not go to sports now that this is after work, would it?
2) Reserve specific spaces for the specific tasks
It is important to separate places dedicated to the various activities. In particular, the moments of relaxation and the working moments have to take place in different spaces (different places, different rooms, different desks). This is also a matter to condition yourself to do something.
When you arrive in your workspace, you know that you are here to work. But if your workspace is also your space of leisure, the temptation to slide from one to another will be bigger …
3) Do a schedule
This is the logical result of the two first points: the schedule allows you to get the good state of mind before the task really begins, and then helps you not to do something else at the appropriate moment of the day, as it will ask an effort to your brain to change the course of your day. It is important to write your schedule: ” the words fly away, but the papers stay! ” they said.
4) Begin with the unpleasant things and finish by those which are pleasant
Because now you’re going to define your schedule, begin by planning to do the unpleasant things at first. This advice stands for several reasons: at first, if you begin with the pleasant things, your pleasure will be ruined by your knowing that the unpleasant things are coming (as said previously, your brain is conditioned to do things in the planned order, and thus the tasks to come are already loaded in your mind). Then, you will have no difficulty in throwing away the unpleasant tasks when the time has come to enjoy your life. On the other hand, the temptation not to respect anymore the planned program is bigger when you plan to do them in the reversed (wrong?) order …
5) Build up yourself a routine
Don’t underestimate the power of the habit. If your daily schedules are seemingly the same from day to day, very fast, you will go into a positive cycle. This statement stands for several reasons. At first, you will gain in self-confidence: if you succeed to do what you had to do the day before, why should you fail this time? Then, the necessary intellectual mechanisms to undertake the task is always the same, and if doing this task turns to be regular, your brain “will configure” mechanically and automatically to make the tasks planned at the planned moment.
6) To remember why you do things
A precious motivation is to remember why we do things, which are their utility. An interesting story that tells why is the following one. In the Middle Ages, a traveler meets a gloomy man standing in the roadside, a hammer and a chisel in hand. He asks him for what is he doing, and the man answers: “I break pebbles.”. A little farther, he meets another man, concentrated on his task, with the same tools in hand as the first one. He asks him for what is he doing, and the man answers: “I work to feed my family.” Finally, he meets a third man, equipped as the first ones, but in ecstasy. And when the traveler asks him for what is he doing, he answers: “I build a cathedral!”
7) Think to the others
Said like that, it can seem ridiculously right-thinking. But in fact, it is just realistic: except in exceptional circumstances, your life has nothing exceptional and the difficulties that you meet are the same that those the other people meet in your circle of acquaintances. It should help you to put in perspective your own difficulty assuming certain unattractive tasks. Furthermore, observe the others: let yourself be inspired by the behavior of those who manage apparently to overcome the difficulties which are blocking for you at the present.
I hope this list can be useful to you. See you!
THE international best-seller that inspired others:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, from David Allen
Transcript of the video translated in English :
Today we gonna learn one of the most effective methods of numbers memorization. This method is used by all the champions of memory and also by mentalists, in order to remember any sequence of numbers: PIN codes, years, anniversaries, digital codes to enter buildings, phone numbers etc. …
Well, this memorization method is very effective because the idea of the tip is to make doing to our brain two things he likes to do: viewing an image and telling a story.
So, we are going to transform numerals into images and to invent a story using these images. Using this method, I need less than one minute to memorize a sequence of numbers, and after that I perfectly remember it for a very long time. Don’t worry: the first time you will do it, you will need a little more time, as you’ll have to set up the universal system which you will then always use.
You can create any system you want, but here I will show you mine. You can modify it if you want to use images that fit you better than mine.
Here are the ten images I use to remember the ten numerals (from 0 to 9):
0 = egg
1 = Eiffel tower
2 = swan
3 = pair of buttocks
4 = sail
5 = serpent
6 = sprouted pea
7 = set square
8 = glasses
9 = umbrella
I need to memorize the number 4138. Even if I repeat it 5 times, I will soon forget it as I have other informations to memorize during the day!
But after transforming it into images, we have: a sail, the Eiffel tower, a pair of buttocks and glasses. Now, we have to make a story out of these images:
At first, we have no connection between a sail and the Eiffel tower, but the Eiffel tower stands into Paris, which is a great touristic place. And the sail could be a windsurf, which is also associated in my mind with holidays, then tourism! So let’s say that my story is about a surfer who’s going to Paris during his holidays. Let’s go now with buttocks and glasses. Well, glasses are not meant for buttocks… No problem: we will make it our idea! If we sit down on our glasses, we break it. I got it! The surfer broke his glasses by sitting on it, and then had to avoid his holidays in Paris.
So that’s my story: a SURFER avoided his holidays in PARIS, because he SAT DOWN on his GLASSES.
A SURFER (sail) avoided his holidays in PARIS (Eiffel tower), because he SAT DOWN (buttocks) on his GLASSES. 41-38!
Let’s repeat this story another time, while we try to imagine the images:
A SURFER avoided his holidays in PARIS, because he SAT DOWN on his GLASSES.
If you do it again one hour later, and tonight again before going to sleep, you will remember the story and then the number sequence foy days.
Try it and you’ll remember for a long time this SURFER who avoided his holidays in PARIS because he SAT DOWN on his GLASSES!
Did you know that scientists managed to implant forged memories in brains using electrodes? Unbelievable, isn’t it? But very true in fact…
I said that’s very true, and in fact it is! It’s just that hopefully, scientists only managed to do this to mice brains for the time being. But that’s not really comforting to know that this backdoor on the mind is now open, so that we can manipulate complex life forms memories. We’ll talk about that in two minutes of time.
The experiment consists in associating two different memories in mice brains to create a new one. To make it happen, the Professor Susumu Tonegawa research team, from MIT, placed mice in cages and analyzed the zones of their brain that were bustling as they discovered their new environment.
The next day, they took the mice and placed them in another environment, they reactivate their neurons that were bustling the day before when they discovered their cage, and they administered to them a slight electric shock, not dangerous for their lives but not very pleasant for them too.
Another day later, the researchers replaced the mice in their original cages and they could observe that as the mice were recognizing the place, they showed a frightened attitude because of their memory of the electric shock they experienced the day before and that their brains wrongly associated with this cage. Actually, in the real world, the mice never get electrified in this cage.
All that is fine (if we can say this…), but you have to tell me here that this experiment has to deal somewhere with a practical issue. Actually, how do the researchers to reactivate the memory zone of the mice brains used when they discovered their cage on the first day of the experiment? Well, they dealt with a technic called opto-genetics: the mice used were genetically modified ones, so that their neurons were made light sensitive. Then the researchers could reactivate the mice neurons by exposing them to a light source.
This might look as a little achievement only: the mice were not natural ones, researchers needed to use sophisticated material to lighten specific neurons into the mice bodies… Indeed, genetic manipulation is already kind of forging memories when you think of it…
But you know, this experiment was made in 2013, and it just opened the breach. Many others took place until now, and not only others, but more effective ones!
In 2015, researchers from CNRS2 managed to implant forged memories into mice brains, using electrodes… No more genetic manipulation and no more invasive technologies to achieve the same result! Their article has been published in the review “Nature Neuroscience”, n°18 p.493-495, 20153.
The protocol of the experiment was the following one: while the mice were sleeping, the researchers activated their cerebral zones in charge of the reward system as other neurons in charge of geolocalization stuff.
Doing so, the researchers simulated the presence in a located place and an amount of pleasure in the mice brains. The next day, the researchers could observe that the manipulated mice get specifically on the place where they had synthetized pleasure memories.
The NeuroHack team likes to show you the two faces of the discoveries: the good one… and the ugly one.
Good first.
By applying such a technology on man (what we are unable to do for the time being), we could improve our understanding of the memory device and hope to:
1 – heal mental disorders linked with neurodegenerative diseases
2 – improve the reliability of testimonies in legal cases
3 – managed better the post-traumatic emotional shocks
And then the ugly.
According to sci-fi works talking about this subject, (Inception, Total Recall, Blade Runner…) this technology could have other consequences. And bad news is that in history, when something becomes possible to man, it finally appears in the reality.
Be aware that modifying someone’s memories means modifying his intimate, very true nature and personality. It means playing with his joys, his sorrows, his fears. Doing so, it becomes possible to make him hate or love someone else…
Long story short, unpleasant philosophical question would somehow enter your mind, such as: Can I trust my childhood memories? Am I sure that I really love the people I love? Or hate those I don’t? Am I sure of what I have done the day before? Or one minute ago? Am I living my real life? And if not: what does my real life look like???
But let’s begin with a simpler question: are you really sure to have read this article?
Notes
3■ http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v18/n4/full/nn.3970.html