Keeping Your Brain Healthy: Brain-FX

Thank You, Brain, the Book

Just ran across this book blurb, for those of you interested in learning memory tricks and tips:

THANK YOU, BRAIN, FOR ALL YOU REMEMBER: What You Forgot Was My Fault, by Dr. W. R. (Bill) Klemm, (BenectonPress, ISBN: 0-9755225-0-7.$24.95, trade paperback, 312 pages, April).

The author, a neuroscientist for 40 years, translates memory research findings into practical tips for improving everyday memory. The book is intended for students who want better grades, workers who need to improve their job knowledge, and senior citizens who are losing memory capability. W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D., "Memory Medic", Professor of Neuroscience, Texas A&M University.

Your Brain & Shopping

News Flash: Science is now discovering what consumers have known all along: Shopping makes you feel good.

Don't you just love it when science makes these big discoveries, like, "sex makes you feel good." I mean, for us women, we've known about shopping highs and shopping for stress relief for a long time. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

I guess what they mean is that they are now mapping out in the brain what happens when you go shopping. They've discovered that the dopamine receptors get activated.

Here's what the Wall Street Journal Health Editor Tara Parker-Popes reports:

Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health. The brains of people with Parkinson's disease, for instance, contain almost no dopamine. Dopamine also plays a role in drug use and other addictive behaviors.

Dopamine is associated with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, and it's released when we experience something new, exciting or challenging. And for many people, shopping is all those things.

But MRI studies of brain activity suggest that surges in dopamine levels are linked much more with anticipation of an experience rather than the actual experience -- which may explain why people get so much pleasure out of window-shopping or hunting for bargains.

I guess that is like anticipating sex, or a victory on the playing field, or many other things. The anticipation can be as much or maybe more exciting than the actual event. It's all about our expectations. The mind is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Now what would really be interesting is to map the brains of men and women while shopping, to see if there are any differences.

All I want for Christmas is a little dopamine...

Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

What a great title for a book, and a great subject: the brain, emotions and artificial intelligence. But at a $60 price tag, I'll hold out for Santa...or maybe my husband if he actually reads this blog.

I first heard about this book from Zack Lynch over at the Corante Brain Waves Blog. Here's an excerpt from his post:

My book review of Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot is published this month in the Lancet Neurology. While copyrights hold me back from publishing the review here, I will say that the 499 page book is an important contribution to the field of emotional neurotechnology. It contains a stimulating collection of chapters from some of the most prominent neuroscientists and artificial intelligence experts around.

One of my favorite chapters was written by Ann E Kelley and focused on understanding how the brain processes emotions, how emotions evolved and the neurobiological substrates of emotions. I write, "Within the space of a few dozen pages, Kelley traverses evolutionary time and looks at the neurochemical networks encoding emotion and motivation. The role of dopamine in reward and plasticity, serotonin in aggression and depression and opioid peptides in pain and pleasure are discussed as critical neuromodulators that have given rise to an extraordinary amount of behavioral flexibility."

"So what about the robots? Researchers in artificial intelligence are interested in leveraging emotions to build systems that can perform unanticipated tasks in unpredictable environments. Despite the progress being made in these systems, most AI researchers concede that improved outcomes (of their models) will need better models of how human beings respond (in their emotional state) to new situations."

At the end of the day, I highly recommend the book for searchers and graduate students across neuroscience and computer science. - Zack Lynch

I'm drooling just reading the Amazon description:

Who Needs Emotions?: The Brain Meets the Robot (Series in Affective Science) (Hardcover)
by Jean-Marc Fellous (Editor), Michael A. Arbib (Editor)

The idea that some day robots may have emotions has captured the imagination of many and has been dramatized by robots and androids in such famous movies as 2001 Space Odyssey's HAL or Star Trek's Data. By contrast, the editors of this book have assembled a panel of experts in neuroscience and artificial intelligence who have dared to tackle the issue of whether robots can have emotions from a purely scientific point of view.