Messiness Linked to Creativity

Hallelujah ... that's all I can say about this. Hall-e-freakin-lujah:

From Prevention Magazine: "People who inhabit moderately messy spaces are more creative than those who work in very organized ones, says Columbia University management professor Eric Abrahamson, coauthor of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. Amid clutter, many famous thinkers have made serendipitous connections between seemingly unrelated documents that led to great success."

I would post a photo of the way my office looks this very second to illustrate why I find this news so exciting. But I can't find my camera.

The Dangers of Emailing, IMing, Texting, Calling ...

New studies show, yet again, that technology makes us stupid. Or at least less effective. And that the best way to accomplish something successfully -- whether it's driving a car, crossing a street, standing in a train station, or writing a book -- is to turn off the tech. I've blogged about the problems that come with constant emailing several times in the past. Now, today's New York Times reports on the newest studies into how multitasking messes with your brain:

"The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.

"Mr. Marois and three other Vanderbilt researchers reported in an article last December in the journal Neuron that they used magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint the bottleneck in the brain and to measure how much efficiency is lost when trying to handle two tasks at once. Study participants were given two tasks and were asked to respond to sounds and images. The first was to press the correct key on a computer keyboard after hearing one of eight sounds. The other task was to speak the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images."

There was no delay when participants did the tasks one at a time, but when researchers asked them to do tasks two at a time, both tasks were completed slower. This isn't surprising. What's interesting to me is that they actually pinpointed the area in the brain where this bottleneck takes place, and showed that this delay happens regardless of what multitasking you're doing, and which senses it involves. So listening to something (say, music with lyrics, or a television) while reading something causes the same bottleneck effect in the brain as trying to read two things at once. Which is very interesting. The solution, according to the Times:

"These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea."

No big surprise there. But still, very interesting.

Why is it So Damn Hard to Change?

This month's O, Oprah Magazine just hit the stands with my article, "Why is it So Damn Hard to Change," which looks at the neurology behind why it's so friggin hard to break old habits and pick up new ones (just in time for all those New Year's Resolutions). The story explores the workings of the human brain when it comes to exercising and dieting, quitting smoking, drinking, drugs, gambling ... you name it. I had a great time with it.

If you've read the story and came looking for a follow up ... well ... let's just say, it hasn't exactly been rollerblading weather in New York City lately. But I'm about to join a gym ... stay tuned for progress reports on what my dopamine system thinks of that idea.

Seriously Creepy Research: The Neurology of the Feeling That Someone's Watching You

Here's some crazy brain research for you: Most people, at some point or another, have had that creepy feeling that somebody's nearby. That they're being watched. Well, a group of scientists just figured out that they can stimulate that disturbing feeling by applying electric stimulation to a specific area in a patient's brain. But they didn't do it on purpose:

"Doctors unintentionally produced the delusion while evaluating a 22-year-old epileptic woman for possible surgery. Though the woman had no history of psychological problems, she repeatedly perceived a "shadow person" hovering behind her when doctors electrically stimulated an area of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction. "Our data most importantly show that paranoia might be related to disturbed processing of one's own body, [which] in some instances may become misrecognized as the body of somebody else," said Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The hallucinatory condition was temporary and ended when stimulations were stopped.

"During her ordeal, the patient described sensing an unknown person standing just behind her, mimicking her body positions. "He is behind me, almost at my body, but I do not feel it," she told doctors, who report their discovery in this week's issue of the journal Nature. When asked to lean forward and grasp her knees, the patient reported that she felt as if the shadow person were embracing her—a sensation she described as disturbing. When performing assigned activities, such as a language-testing card game, she said that the shadow tried to interfere. "He wants to take the card," she told doctors. "He doesn't want me to read."

The photo above is a computerized drawing -- she shadow behind the woman illustrates where she felt this man (and interesting that it was a man, not a woman). What's perhaps most creepy is, the patient -- who had no history of delusions -- thought this was real. She had no idea she was experiencing some kind of hallucination. The researchers think the electronic stimulation temporarily confused her brain's ability to comprehend its own body. Which could make sense, since the part of the brain they zapped is connected to self-perception, distinguishing self from non-self, and understanding where your body is in space.

Of course, this doesn't actually tell us much in the end, since it only happened to one patient, but it's totally fascinating. Perhaps someday it will lead to a larger study that looks at this phenomena ... Finding volunteers for that one might be tricky though. I sure wouldn't do it. Tooooo creepy.

Is She Vegetative or Conscious?

I've gotten several emails in response to yesterday's post about scientists finding brain activity in a vegetative patient ... everyone wants to know, What does it mean? Is this woman aware? Are people euthanizing conscious beings when they cut off life support for vegetative patients? The answer: No one knows. Over at "Brains," a blog run by my friend Gualtiero Piccinini, there's this interesting post by a philosopher named Pete Mandik who specializes in consciousness. He suggests what sounds like the next logical step toward understanding what these findings mean in terms of the consciousness of vegetative patients: See if anesthetized patients have similar responses. If the brains of anesthetized patients respond in the same way this vegetative woman's brain responded, Mandik says, that brain activity doesn't = consciousness. But if this woman responds in ways anesthetized patients don't, well ... that's a different story.

'Vegetative' Woman's Brain Not So Vegetative

Wow, this is pretty stunning: Researchers have just done brain scans on a woman who's in a vegetative state and found that her brain responds to certain verbal cues like a healthy person's brain would. From the Washington Post:

"According to all the tests, the young woman was deep in a 'vegetative state' -- completely unresponsive and unaware of her surroundings. But then a team of scientists decided to do an unprecedented experiment, employing sophisticated technology to try to peer behind the veil of her brain injury for any signs of conscious awareness.

"Without any hint that she might have a sense of what was happening, the researchers put the woman in a scanner that detects brain activity and told her that in a few minutes they would say the word "tennis," signaling her to imagine she was serving, volleying and chasing down balls. When they did, the neurologists were shocked to see her brain "light up" exactly as an uninjured person's would. It happened again and again. And the doctors got the same result when they repeatedly cued her to picture herself wandering, room to room, through her own home.

'I was absolutely stunned,' said Adrian M. Owen, a British neurologist who led the team reporting the case in today's issue of the journal Science. 'We had no idea whether she would understand our instructions. But this showed that she is aware.'

This is amazing stuff -- no question this is going to take us back to Terry Schiavo (sigh) and launch the whole how-do-you-define-brain-death debate into a whole new realm.

Of Note: Speaking of schizophrenia (and sex and art)

In my last post, I wrote about an interesting story my friend Mike Rosenwald wrote for Esquire, about a scientist who believes that schizophrenia is caused by house cats (you have to read the article to understand that one). Now, a group of scientists has come out with another fascinating explanation for schizophrenia (and it has nothing to do with house cats).

Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle, just published a study showing that people with schizophrenic-like personality traits (and therefore genes predisposing them to schizophrenia) are more likely to do two things: Become artists and have more sexual partners. And this, Nettle believes, is why schizophrenia hasn't vanished as a disease.

Evolutionarilly speaking, it's a bit baffling that scizophrenia hasn't been selected out of the gene pool, since scizophrenics don't tend to reproduce (they may be less able to have children physically, and their challenges relating to others can make it difficult to find mates). But scizophrenic genes don't always cause full-blown schizophrenia: People with a family history of schizophrenia can display varying degrees of scizophrenic-like behaviors (magical or mystical thinking, a decreased or distorted perception of self and others, etc), but not actually be scizophrenic themselves. Nettle believes that when a person's genetic tendency toward schizophrenia leads to creative thinking instead of full-blown schizophrenia, it gives them an evolutionary advantage, because they're more likely to become artists, and artists, he says, are more "sexually successful."

In a survey of 425 British adults, researchers found that serious poets and visual artists generally had more sexual partners than those who were either not artistic or only dabbled in the arts. Further analysis showed that one personality dimension -- a tendency toward "unusual" thoughts and perceptions -- was related to both creativity and sexual success. That tendency is also seen in people with schizophrenia. And the findings, according to the study authors, may help explain why schizophrenia -- a mental disorder that often runs in families -- has not been extinguished from the gene pool ...

It's all very interesting, though not entirely convincing yet: This connection between "unusual mental abilities" and scizophrenic tendencies and art and sex is pretty loose. I buy the claims individually -- that "successful creative types" (which he doesn't define) are "sexually successful," and that people with scizophrenic-like tendencies are likely to become artists (some brilliant artists have suffered from scizophrenia, like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, and many others). But it seems like a big jump to say this might explain the persistance of scizophrenia in the gene pool.

Here's something I find curious: Schizophrenic-like personality traits are the center of much non-scizophrenia-related research these days. I just wrote a story for New York Times Magazine's annual Year in Ideas issue (which hits newsstands on December 11th) about a scientist who's found an explanation for why yawning is contagious. He used these same schizophrenic-like traits to uncover the cause of contagious yawning (stay tuned, I'll post that story when it runs in the magazine in a few days) ...

Of Note: Finally, an Explanation for the Crazy Cat Lady in 5B

My good friend and ever-brilliant writer Michael Rosenwald has a must-read profile in the current issue of Esquire: It's about a scientist who thinks house cats cause schizophrenia. As a scientist, there are moments where this guy sounds like he's onto something, others where he sounds like a complete quack. And this, of course, makes him a fabulously interesting character:

"People frequently mischaracterize Dr. Fuller Torrey's feelings about cats. The other day, an acquaintance gave him a present—a framed five-by-seven photograph of a white kitten sitting on a windowsill, his front paws held up like he was being robbed, a semiautomatic handgun pointed at his head. "Isn't that just wonderful?" Torrey says, looking at the photo in an office full of similar cat jokes. Still, he swears no hostility toward cats. "I like them," he insists. "I actually enjoy being around them." People naturally assume Torrey would enjoy traumatizing cats because he believes that cats make us insane—that they are the leading cause of human schizophrenia. Torrey's theory has led his wife to one of her own: Her husband will one day be assassinated by a cat lover ..." (See the full article for more.)

Now, I must point out a few things. First, the title of the article is "Finally, an Explanation for the Crazy Cat Lady in 5B." I live in apartment 5B. I think this is no coincidence, though Mike swears it is. And second: Don't pack your cat off to the shelter just yet -- as the story points out, this guy's research has a long way to go. And third: My friend Mike is a great writer. If you agree and want more, check out his ASME finalist story "Yesterday They Would Have Died," from Popular Science, and his recent New Yorker story "Drawing Pitchers."

And in case you're wondering about the air silence since my last post: I've been on the road working on a complex science story for the New York Times Magazine, finalizing some details for my book, and giving talks about my book at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for their History of Medicine and Bioethics Program (an absolutely wonderful place and department, though it was inhumanly cold and snowy the whole time I was there).

Of Note: Drug-Induced Gambling

(I wrote and posted this about a week ago, but it never showed up on my blog for some reason, so I'm posting it again now. ) A few years ago I wrote a story for Popular Science about the science of addiction. At that point, several researchers I talked to suspected that having abnormally hight levels of dopamine -- a hormone that transmits signals in the brain -- might be connected to things like compulsive gambling, compulsive eating, and several other "behavioral addictions." They didn't have much scientific evidence to back up their hunch. And they weren't warmly received by a good chunk of the medical community since their idea smacked of medicalizing human behavior, of giving people excuses for pathologial behaviors. It's not my fault I can't stop gambling/eating/ exercising/shopping/looking at online porn ... my dopamine levels are off!

That whole debate pretty much faded from public view, but it might be resurfacing soon: A new potential Parkinson's drug may have just accidentally provided some hard science for the dopamine-and-addiction debate: The movement problems in Parkinson's patients are caused by dopamine deficiencies, so several studies have looked at treating them with a class of drugs called dopamine agonist -- drugs that essentially trick the brain into thinking it has more dopamine than it does. They hoped this would help Parkinson's patients move more normally, and it does. But in some cases, it also made them compulsive gamblers.

Eleven people with Parkinson's disease temporarily became compulsive gamblers After taking a class of drugs designed to control movement problems caused by the illness, a new study reports. "This is the latest in a series of case studies linking such drugs -- called dopamine agonists -- to pathological gambling in Parkinson's Patients. This lends continued support towards the hypothesis that this family of medicines may cause difficulty with behavioral issues in this population of patients," said Dr. M. Leann Dodd, lead author of the study and senior associate consultant in the department of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn.

That's one way to look at it: These drugs could definitely cause difficult "behavior issues" by turning Parkinson's patients into addicts of all kinds. But the side effect is pretty minimal: The drug helps hundreds of thousands of Parkinson's patients; the compulsive gambling thing only happens in 1% of those. The other way to look at it is, Whoa! How could a drug lead to gambling?! In some cases, it also led to an increased appetite for food, alcohol and sex. But at this point, we don't know much about the neurology of how these drugs caused these addictive behaviors, and the sample size of this study was so tiny, it's too soon to say much of anything. I'm sure this will lead to lots of interesting addiction research, and I'll be watching closely to see where it goes. But if anybody I know starts blaming their compulsions on dopamine levels, they get a swift kick. Beause it's just not that simple ...

Of Note: Counting Sheep

Yesterday in Turkey, a single sheep ran off a cliff to its death, and 1,500 other sheep followed it. This is amazing to me. The first 450 sheed actually died, but the rest survived after landing on the pillowy mass of the others who'd jumped before them. The AP reported that the "stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 [sheep lept] off the same cliff."

What I want to know is, where were those shepherds eating breakfast?? I mean, how far does a shepherd stray from his flock for a meal? They could see the sheep, but they couldn't get to them before 1500 jumped? And what about sheep dogs? Where were they? Hanging out with the shepherds hoping for scraps? I mean, even my dog Bonny would know something funny was going on if she saw all those sheep running off a cliff, and she's a half-breed herding dog who's never seen a sheep, let alone herded one. She nips my heels if I start running, and I don't even have to be headed toward a cliff. So what gives? Obviously the blame for the mass-suicide falls on that first sheep, but the whole thing just baffles me a little. I want more details.

What amazed me most was this: "The estimated loss to families in the town of Gevas, located in Van province in eastern Turkey, tops $100,000, a significant amount of money in a country where average GDP per head is around $2,700." That's tragic.

I first heard about this story on my cell phone's news ticker -- it was actually the top breaking news story last night, which makes me wonder about the media outlet my phone service uses to determine what qualifies as breaking news. It's definitely an interesting story, don't get me wrong -- it raises all kinds of questions about pack psychology. But breaking news on a flashing red banner in the middle of my phone? Wow.

On Writing: Country Roads, Take Me Home

So I’ve done it again, I’ve fled New York City for a hundred-year-old West Virginia farmhouse perched on an Appalachian foothill overlooking the Ohio River Valley. (The picture above is currently my favorite shot of the view from my writing desk.) There isn’t a phone line or internet connection in sight, which (aside from the beauty and the silence and the miles of open spaces where my dog can run and chase deer while I sit on the porch swing) is precisely why I’m here. That, and finishing my book. But those two things go hand-in-hand these days, because apparently I have to be miles from an Internet connection to actually spend an entire day writing.

I have no idea how this happened: At one point in my life, I'd get a few emails, I'd respond to a few emails, no big deal. Then a few turned in to lots which turned into hundreds, and now it’s just out of control. A friend of mine wrote an article for Time Out New York last summer about how electronic communication is ruining our ability to concentrate. The fact that he used my out-of-control-email-life as the lead to his story was probably not a good sign. A psychiatrist in London has actually done a clinical trial showing that email does more damage to a person’s concentration and IQ than smoking pot:

“emails … have an addictive, drug-like grip. Respondents' minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an email dropped into their inbox ... the effect ... was the equivalent, over a day, to the loss of a night's sleep.

"This is a very real and widespread phenomenon," said Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist from King's College, London University, who carried out 80 clinical trials … The average IQ loss was measured at 10 points, more than double the four point mean fall found in studies of Cannabis users ... Dr Wilson and his colleagues found a compulsion to reply to each new message, leading to constant changes of direction which inevitably tired and slowed down the brain. In fact, it is a recipe for muddled thinking and poor performance."

I buy that completely: When I got to West Virginia almost two weeks ago, it took several days before I could just sit down and write without that weird nagging feeling like, There’s something else I should be doing right now … emails to read, emails to reply to. Writers don’t just sit and write anymore, do they? Of course they do. They just have to go to the middle of nowhere, miles away from any internet connection to do it.

A few weeks ago, during a conversation with an editor, I was talking about how hard it is to juggle a book, freelance writing, teaching, public appearances, and the many emails that result from it all. She very wisely said, “The key to life is focusing on what’s important, not what’s urgent.” The light bulb that sentence set off in my head was more like a carillon bell. This is the problem with email, and it’s the problem with writing books: An email comes in, someone asks a question, however small, and for some reason we feel we must respond within minutes, or at least days. That’s urgent. But it might not be as important as, say, the book you’ve spent the last eight years of your life trying to write. The book that may not be due in minutes or even days, but that is due in a month. I asked this editor where she came up with that brilliant phrase -- I figured she’d say something about it being a Buddhist meditation or something. But no. “A time management specialist came into the magazine,” she told me. “He sat down in my office and the first thing he said was, don’t check your email.” Then he gave her that line about the urgent and the important.

So why am I telling you this, aside from it being a good quote. I’m telling you this because, secretly, that's why I started this blog. It's my way of staying in touch with friends and family and the outside world while I'm off focusing on one very important thing: My book. It's my way of saying, please forgive me while I write my heart out and only go online a couple times a week. I hope everyone understands. Please, keep emailing me: I love reading them, and I promise I’ll respond. It just might take a little while.