the future will eat itself

The Eureka sand dunes are these gorgeous mounds of sand in Death Valley, California. They have the strange property of making low frequency cello like sounds as you create landslides of sand by sliding down them. Me and some other science minded friends went to visit them recently and we returned with the following information.

dune_boom1

dune_boom2
Ben made these audio recordings of the singing dunes.

I put the mp3 into matlab(this is dune boom 1), and came up with this figure showing the sound broken down into a 88Hz fundamental frequency and some harmonics.

Here is the duneboom matlab

There are various theories about the singing sand mechanism. It has been proposed that the sound frequency is controlled by the shear rate. Others have suggested that the frequency of vibration is related to the thickness of the dry surface layer of sand. The sound waves bounce back and forth between the surface of the dune and the surface of the moist layer creating a resonance that increases the sound’s volume. The noise may be generated by friction between the grains or by the compression of air between them.

The particular note produced by the dune, is controlled by the rate of collision in the shear band separating the avalanche from the static part of the dune. Here is a paper describing some current theories of the dune boom that Anselm sent out.

Not only are the dunes one of those awe inspiring natural occurrences, they are also a lot of fun. Sliding down head first as fast as you can, you can feel the sound vibration throughout your body.

The Mastercleanse is a famous diet that no nutritionist recommends, but many people do anyway. The diet includes only fresh squeezed lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper(the lemonade) and nothing else except non-caffeinated herbal tea. I did it for 7 days with two additions to guard my health, a multivitamin every day, and after day 5 I had a single 35g serving of whey protein to provide essential amino acids.

I felt hungry on and off, only for the first 2 days. I felt tired on and off for the first 4 days. After that, oddly, something changed about my metabolism and I felt perfectly energetic, light and healthy despite having no food intake. I went to a conference, rode my bicycle around and basically did everything as intensively as normal. Hunger and energy levels are independent. Who knew! Fascinating.

The other interesting part, came out the other end. Doing this for only 7 days my stools were not black or orange liquid as some people who do it longer reported, but just a slightly brownish liquid. Oh well.

I would recommend this diet to anyone wanting to make a dietary cleanse, explore their physiological and psychological relationship with food. I measured my weight during and after the cleanse, with an Omron scale which also gives fat and lean mass read outs of questionable accuracy. You can see how my weight, lean mass and fat mass varied for the 7 days I dieted, as well as 3 days after completing the fast. The vertical black line indicates when I finished the lemonade fast and started slowly transitioning back to solid foods.

 

 

Apparently I was losing water mass/lean mass only, which is interesting and also off putting if I were to follow this diet for longer than 7 days as I am trying to increase my muscle mass.

I stopped at 7 days as I felt like i had understood a sufficient amount about hunger, energy and metabolic rate to warrant the re-instigation of my social life. I had avoided all social contact for 7 days, as most social activities revolve around food. I also discovered that a lot of my friends had done this already, but had not mentioned it until I brought it up.

There are some interesting studies about the benefits of intermittent fasting, increasing longevity, as well as the ability to grow new brain cells. Here are the links:

http://antiaging-europe.com/lists/34/diseases.html

http://www.deltaself.com/2011/03/intermittent-fasting-preserves-lean-mass/

This was just straight fasting, not intermittent fasting, so perhaps intermittent fasting is a better way to go. The idea with fasting, is that when your body is under the increased physiological stress of having no food for a while, it puts more energy into repairing existing cells, instead of creating new ones, decreasing risks of cancer, which is the association with greater longevity.

At first, fasting may sound unhealthy, but when you think about it, every major religion I know of recommends occasional fasts. Perhaps more research is required to figure this one out.

Either way, it is definitely not a sustainable solution to physical optimization, so at the end of the diet, I thought perhaps I’ll try the paleo diet the other people who write on the deltaself blog seem to be following. It suggests we eat like our ancestors which does make sense, and sounds quite healthy. More on that later, after I’ve tried it for a while.

 

I went to a talk at UCSF about music and the brain presented by the polymath, physicist and jazz pianist – Vijay Iyer (http://www.vijay-iyer.com). Vijay’s research is in cognitive science dealing with music and the brain and the role of the body in music perception and performance. Not only did he give a fascinating piano performance,  musically describing physical experiences he’d had, but he brought up some important questions on music and cognition.

Music resonates with us, and can make us feel and experience sympathetic emotions based on a physically communicated waveform. Humans are also obsessed with music! Why? Why is the pressure wave so good? It’s as if music resonates with our emotional center(amgydala), generating emotions through this communicated waveform, totally separate from spoken language. How can so much be communicated, without a single word being spoken?

When unpleasant melodies are played, the posterior cingulate cortex activates, which indicates a sense of conflict or emotional pain.(Tramo MJ. (2001). “Biology and music. Music of the hemispheres”. Science 291). This evidence, along with observations, has led many musical theorists, philosophers and neuroscientists to link emotion with tonality. There is more than that though, there is also rhythm, which generates sympathetic waveforms in our brain, reminiscent of an excited or subdued heart beat.

Binaural beats are another strange musical phenomenon effecting the brain, resulting in low-frequency pulsations in the amplitude and sound localization of a perceived sound when two tones at slightly different frequencies are presented separately, one to each of a subject’s ears. A beating tone will be perceived, as if the two tones mixed naturally, out of the brain. Binaural beats reportedly influence the brain in more subtle ways through the entrainment of brainwaves and have been claimed to reduce anxiety and provide other health benefits such as control over pain. Neural synchrony is induced in many poorly understood conscious states, from meditation, to sleep, in varying patterns.

brain waves

sound waves

Music, is a direct and scientifically unexplored way to access your brain. It’s naturally evolved in human history because it works, but the mechanism by which it effects us is still a mystery.

I did this hack with the Mattel Mindflex: http://frontiernerds.com/brain-hack

I installed the visualizer software and could totally see the spectral bands of my brain taken from the single electrode which was pretty, but meaningless.

It’s measuring:

• Delta (1-3Hz): sleep
• Theta (4-7Hz): relaxed, meditative
• Low Alpha (8-9Hz): eyes closed, relaxed
• High Alpha (10-12Hz)
• Low Beta (13-17Hz): alert, focused
• High Beta (18-30Hz)
• Low Gamma (31-40Hz): multi-sensory processing
• High Gamma (41-50Hz)

I have no way to verify the pre-processing done by the headset as it obfuscates the waveform. As a test of both me and the headset, I sat and surfed the net for two separate 1 hour sessions, and meditated for another separate 2 hour sessions with the mindflex on my head. Hence I have meditation vs normal comparison. This is what I found.

Attention, Meditation and High Gamma are significantly(p<0.05) different. High Gamma, is supposed to exist in much greater quantities in long term meditators. I am by no means a long-term meditator, but I just finished the 10-day Vipassana Meditation course described in the post below, and I wanted to determine whether I could detect and quantify any difference between my normal and meditative state. It seems I can! If I can find a way to actually monitor changes in brain state more reliably, I’ll post more information as I trial other types of meditation. Here is a paper about self-induced high amplitude gamma synchrony in meditators: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16369.full

Also, there has been another study on meditation changing brain structure in as little as 8 weeks of doing a small amount of meditation every day:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121144007.htm

Without more information on the preprocessing, this headset couldn’t be used in our lab. However, the Neurosky headset has been independently verified at another lab, against the BioPac EEG headset and found to be mostly similar in results. Seems it’s measuring EEG! Here is a link to the paper which verifies the headset: neurosky_overview_12.07

Pity the mindflex doesn’t give you the raw waveform. Apparently the mindwave from Neurosky will be out soon, at it will give you the raw waveform. Cool! You could also wear the mindflex single electrode back the front, to get posterior alpha, which could also be interesting!

I undertook a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains of Australia through a well known organization called Dhamma.org – they have centers all over the world. I talk a bit about the course, so be forewarned if you are planning on doing this too.

I was curious try this as I’d been reading papers on the benefits of meditation, and the changes it makes to cognitive function, especially in relation to your attention networks. The lab I work at is also starting a meditation study, and I had wanted to try this course for years but hadn’t quite made the time. When external sensory inputs are taken away, isolated from communication and my iphone, we are left with just our top down executive functioning, or thoughts, with no distractions apart from those the mind creates itself. It’s the patterns our brain makes, when sensory input is taken away that seems at the heart of consciousness. What is left then?

Experience:

Accommodation at the Vipassana retreat

The grounds were beautiful, food tasty, vegetarian and fresh, accommodation simple and clean. Despite this, this course was definitely not a walk in the park(so to speak). I found it hard, but extraordinarily rewarding to have completed. Understanding the path that meditation leads to, would be very hard to do through a purely intellectual explanation, and experience is very important. The course provided meditators with an environment as close to total isolation as possible. This included no form of communication with any of the other meditators, gender segregation, and adherence to the 5 rules of Sila-

1. kill nothing

2. steal nothing

3. no sexual activity

4. no lies

5. no intoxicants

In this minimal atmosphere, it’s far easier to become more aware of your own mental patterns.

The first 4 days consisted of nothing but observing your breath 10 hours a day, in total silence. I noticed just how many thoughts I was having, one thought, distracted by the next, almost impossible to maintain my focus on breathing. Over the next few days, with constant re-focusing, my thoughts slowed down somewhat, and it was easier to observe them, and re-focus on breath. I was able to focus my attention on breathing and the area around my nose with far more sensitivity, almost training myself to have an attentional spotlight, which came in handy for the second half of the course.

At first I found being away from people wonderful, the silence a relief from the non stop demands of the modern multi-tasking world, until the strange and often disturbing nature of the thoughts that kept entering my head, became hard to bear. Thoughts would aggressively enter my head, as if to rebel against the breathing technique and the neverending quietness. My thoughts became louder or at least seemed to, I had nightmares, other people in my dorm appeared to as well. Apparently this process is called -purification. I hadn’t actually expected this less pleasant side of meditation, so it was an interesting addition.

Day 5 – the Vipassana technique.

Move your focus around your body, and remain equanimous (do not crave or avert yourself from any sensation). This is supposedly the path to ‘mental mastery’ and liberation from sankaras(reactions). The idea is that you move your attentional focus sequentially around your body. If you do this correctly you actually don’t notice how uncomfortable your sitting position is, until you move your focus to that area. This is fascinating, it’s as if the only things that can effect you are in your attentional focus. Another example of this is when you stub your toe, and someone pinches you on the arm, when your attention shifts, your toe doesn’t hurt as much. It would take much training to get yourself to do this well, but I could see what they were trying to prove to you.

While doing this, and trying to re-focus on the Vipassana technique, my mind skipped through a series of states, and I went through periods of pleasant peacefulness, and extreme anger(3 days in a row). As you meditate for such long periods, deep dormant thoughts come to the surface, and if you remain equanimous to them, they slowly fade away and the reaction cycles are broken – or so goes the theory. It is a method to retrain your brain, to deal with life more consciously than just a reaction machine, but first the old habits must be realized and broken.

I have some philosophical issues with the technique, although I believe it works for its stated goal of relieving suffering. One problem I have, I also asked the teacher – If we have no cravings and aversions, care not for past or future, how can we remain motivated, or strive for a goal? Her answer was that having no cravings or aversions is not the same as passivity, it is a toolkit to move forward with the most effective thinking in place. After hearing Sam Harris talk on the moral landscape and how science can determine moral values, I noticed that the conclusions I’d have without cravings and aversions, would be very similar, to those described in the moral landscape. I’d remain motivated for goals that made sense, which would almost suggest a deterministic solution for the future if everyone meditated regularly. This may actually be a good thing, if we just want to accelerate progress. The other question, is if we always live in the now, how can we plan and strategize? Where is the role of working memory, or any memory, in meditation? Anyway, open for discussion on that one.

Even though I was always trying to refocus to the present, my mind would continuously drift to past and future. Altogether, having this time was extremely valuable to inadvertently review ‘MY WORLD’. On the last day of the course, we could talk to each other, and I chatted to another lady who had been doing this semi-regularly for years, who explained the course as her yearly mind clean. Another lady had been travelling around South America experimenting with other styles of mental purification.

I’d totally recommend this course to others, and would consider doing it again, however, I thought it was hard! Benefits included improved ability to focus, and my addiction to social media was broken(albeit briefly)!

Be happy!

Brainwashed me.

Here is a list of unique technologies that attempt to read/write to neurons. If you have other suggestions that have been missed, please add them in the comments.

EEG: Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by firing of neurons in the brain. People look at frequency spectra, and Event Related Potentials (ERP’s). So far, EEG headsets are expensive, but cheaper versions are slowly entering the market. Neurosky, NIA OCZ, Emotiv, and Neurofocus, in order of appearance on the market. Neurofocus is not yet released. EEG is good for time-locked and time based events as it is responsive to very high resolution. However, it is only sensing the surface potential of your cortices, as dispersed through your skull and skin.

TMS: Transcranial magnetic stimulation is the disruption of neurons through electromagnetic induction. Repetitive TMS can cause long term changes. Penetrates a maximum of 3cm, at the location on the scalp. Again, we are limited to cortical layers and precision is much better than ECT, but still nowhere near neuron specific. This field goes back about 7 years.

ECT: Electroconvulsive therapy. Large scale seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients. It’s used to treat depression and bipolar disorder. Immediately after treatment, patients experience confusion and memory loss, but this goes away in a few hours, most often. There seems to be continued debate whether or not ECT causes long term brain damage. It has been used since 1934.

fMRI: functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging allows you to see the hemodynamic response throughout your entire brain. Bloodflow in the brain is closely related to neural activity. The downside is the temporal resolution, cost and size of the scanning device. MRI imaging technologies such as DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) allow a reasonable approximation of neural networks in the brain, more visible with higher Tesla scanners like the 6 Tesla scanner at UCSF Mission Bay. Still, low temporal resolution. MRI has become one of the most common brain imaging methods over the last 20 years.

NIRS: Near Infra-red spectroscopy measures hemodynamic response over cortical gray matter. No 3D information here, and minimum 3cm distance between electrodes. Non-invasive. If you want slow spatial and time resolution data across your cortical matter, this is great. Anything requiring high spatial/temporal resolution, this is not the ideal solution. http://www.biopac.com/fnir-functional-near-infrared-optical-brain-imaging

Optogenetics: A virus is injected into the brain, modifying the activity of neurons when exposed to light. The hallmark of optogenetics is introduction of light-activated channels and enzymes that allow manipulation of neural activity with millisecond precision while maintaining cell-type resolution through the use of specific targeting mechanisms. As a result, trains of action potentials at specific frequencies can be induced in specific cell types within the brains of behaving animals. The potential in this area is huge, although apparently the strength of the synaptic transmission cannot yet be controlled through optogenetically enabled pathways, just exact timing of neural firing. Sabes, Boyden and Deisseroth seem to be some of the more vocal people in this upcoming field.

MEG: Magnetoencephalography is a technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using arrays of SQUIDs(superconducting quantum interference devices). Applications of MEG include localizing regions affected by pathology before surgical removal, determining the function of various parts of the brain, and neurofeedback. It’s a brain mapping technique that needs a huge amount of shielding and equipment to work. It is, in fact, a real brain ‘theremin’. Pity we can’t make a smaller more robust one. This technique has been explored since 1968.

tDCS: transcranial direct current stimulation is a new area that sounds appallingly obvious, but hasn’t been investigated yet. Apparently you can enhance existing networks, if it is applied to the correct areas of your scalp, and effects have been shown to last for 6 months after a single tDCS session.  http://brainstimulant.blogspot.com/2008/06/tdcs.html
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2810%2901234-0

Lobotomy: Surgery. You can certainly remove parts of the brain which have provided some interesting information about functional activity and memory(see the patient HM), but this seems like a blunt way to effect thought, and is obviously highly invasive and life altering.

Transcranial Pulsed Ultrasound: Is another very new field, suggesting neural firing can be achieved non-invasively from outside the skull with bursts of pulsed ultrasound. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/devices/bursts-of-lowintensity-ultrasound-make-neurons-fire

Conclusion: The most important brain interface, however, still remains to be our senses -  light, sound, touch, smell, taste. How we process these bottom up inputs, is relatively flexible. It seems that brain interfaces, although interesting, will all just end in the remapping of our sensory inputs to the communication nodes we artificially create. Perhaps it would be better to focus attention on neuroplasticity and augmenting the range of our current senses.

Added Conclusion: Addiction research is interesting and may make these interfaces worthwhile! Control the dopaminergic systems and pleasure centers in the brain, and you turn a human into a controllable robot?

Sensory Deprivation Tanks have been around for a long time but seem to reside predominantly in the realm of alternative medicine. I was reminded of them, by a post on the Phage mailing list and became curious to try them. My friend Steve and I went to visit floatmatrix.com and spent an hour, with no sound, and no light, floating in Epsom salts. Left alone, with only yourself, you start paying more attention to your physical state, breath and heart beat, and whether or not your arms are comfortable or not. It’s refreshing, centering, and I felt relaxed and more sensitive to outside stimuli, for hours afterwards.

Try it!

I wonder what a baby would be like, if they grew up in this environment? (hypothetically of course). It would certainly be interesting to see what was created in and of itself.

I’m starting a blog. I’ll talk about things I find interesting here, that I think are worth telling others.