Biographics art "I know me": image generation aiming at EEG control by biofeedback

"I know me" is an interactive artwork that produces images based on EEG measurements from human participants. Although artists have previously made some interactive image works, we considered using human physiological information as input because it reflects human feelings better. In this research we were interested in information about human's mental states, such as anger or sadness. Brain activity was observed with EEG, subjected to Fourier analysis and converted into an animation based on a Lissajous curve.We generated images corresponding to alpha or beta waves activity in real time and showed them to the observer. The observer understood his own mental condition from looking at the images, and could potentially control his own mental state with this interactive device.     

Donizetti and the music of mental derangement: Anna Bolena, Lucia di Lammermoor, and the composer's neurobiological illness.

The composer Gaetano Donizetti, who died in a state of mental derangement due to neurosyphilis, created some of opera's greatest scenes of psychosis. His letters reveal the clinical progression of his neurobiological illness, which was confirmed by autopsy. One can hypothesize that the composer's brain disease, which led to his psychosis and death, may have had an influence on his ability to create the powerful and unforgettable scenes of psychosis in his operas. In Anna Bolena, he captured in musical and dramatic terms Anne Boleyn's historically corroborated mental disorder during her imprisonment in the Tower of London. Sixteen years after having composed Anna Bolena, Donizetti himself would be locked up, against his will, in a mental institution. In Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti portrayed a girl given to hallucinations who, in her unforgettable "mad" scene, comes on stage, a pathetic embodiment of a human being in the throes of psychosis. Thirteen years after Lucia's première, Donizetti would die, psychotic and paralyzed, of untreated neurosyphilis. Studying Donizetti's neurosyphilis and the portrayals of psychosis in his operas can help one to appreciate the pain of human beings trapped in the prison of a brain subjected to the devastation of mental derangement.     

Philosophy Behind Science: The European discoveries in prenatal ethnology and archeology of the mind

"On ne conna?t que les choses que l"on apprivoise, tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé," Fedor-Freybergh once quoted in an editorial Saint-Exupéry. I remember Gupta quoting an old Indian physician on responsibility of the parents: "The somatic and mental characteristics of the child are predetermined. Valor, health, constitution, and intellect develop in the intrauterine child due to the physiological and spiritual harmony of his parents." The responsibility is not finished by medical observations or help to make the child become intelligent. I try to bring together some of the many ideas on prenatal life which grew during decenniums in Europe to blossom in sudden or quiet revelations and which are due to functions of the new being and the threefold or manyfold way behind him and his parents.     

Mutationism and the dual causation of evolutionary change

The rediscovery of Mendel's laws a century ago launched the science that William Bateson called "genetics," and led to a new view of evolution combining selection, particulate inheritance, and the newly characterized phenomenon of "mutation." This "mutationist" view clashed with the earlier view of Darwin, and the later "Modern Synthesis," by allowing discontinuity, and by recognizing mutation (or more properly, mutation-and-altered-development) as a source of creativity, direction, and initiative. By the mid-20th century, the opposing Modern Synthesis view was a prevailing orthodoxy: under its influence, "evolution" was redefined as "shifting gene frequencies," that is, the sorting out of pre-existing variation without new mutations; and the notion that mutation-and-altered-development can exert a predictable influence on the course of evolutionary change was seen as heretical. Nevertheless, mutationist ideas re-surfaced: the notion of mutational determinants of directionality emerged in molecular evolution by 1962, followed in the 1980s by an interest among evolutionary developmental biologists in a shaping or creative role of developmental propensities of variation, and more recently, a recognition by theoretical evolutionary geneticists of the importance of discontinuity and of new mutations in adaptive dynamics. The synthetic challenge presented by these innovations is to integrate mutation-and-altered-development into a new understanding of the dual causation of evolutionary change--a broader and more predictive understanding that already can lay claim to important empirical and theoretical results--and to develop a research program appropriately emphasizing the emergence of variation as a cause of propensities of evolutionary change.     

Demographic and Lifestyle Characteristics,but Not Apolipoprotein E Genotype,Are Associated with Intelligence among Young Chinese College Students

Background

Intelligence is an important human feature that strongly affects many life outcomes, including health, life-span, income, educational and occupational attainments. People at all ages differ in their intelligence but the origins of these differences are much debated. A variety of environmental and genetic factors have been reported to be associated with individual intelligence, yet their nature and contribution to intelligence differences have been controversial.

Objective

To investigate the contribution of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype, which is associated with the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, as well as demographic and lifestyle characteristics, to the variation in intelligence.

Methods

A total of 607 Chinese college students aged 18 to 25 years old were included in this prospective observational study. The Chinese revision of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (the fourth edition, short version) was used to determine the intelligence level of participants. Demographic and lifestyle characteristics data were obtained from self-administered questionnaires.

Results

No significant association was found between APOE polymorphic alleles and different intelligence quotient (IQ) measures. Interestingly, a portion of demographic and lifestyle characteristics, including age, smoking and sleep quality were significantly associated with different IQ measures.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that demographic features and lifestyle characteristics, but not APOE genotype, are associated with intelligence measures among young Chinese college students. Thus, although APOE ε4 allele is a strong genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, it does not seem to impact intelligence at young ages.     

Human genetic diversity,a critical resource for man's future

The human gene pool displays exuberant genetic variation; this is normal for a sexual species. Even small isolated populations contain a large percentage of the total variability, emphasizing the basic genetic unity of our species. As modern man spread across the world from its African source, the genetic basis for man's unique mental acuity was retained everywhere. Nevertheless, some geographical genetic variation such as skin color, stature and physiognomy was established. These changes were biologically relatively insignificant. Most of the genetic load in the genome has been carried throughout the history of the species. There is little hope of purging all of these harmful genes; we must accept them and continue to treat their syndromes medically. All populations carry extensive genetic variation due to genes that encode variations in quantitative traits. Of greatest importance among these is ubiquitous polygenic variability in brain function and intelligence. Mental acuity is what sets us apart from the rest of the biological world. Throughout our history, genetic recombination among the many genes involved in brain function has occurred. This has provided a genetic basis for the action of natural selection that favors intelligence in meeting the demands of the environment. As environments change in the future, this type of genetic variability will continue to be a crucial resource.This article is based on a contribution at the Session on Genetic Load chaired by Dr. Henretta Trent Band and presented at a meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in July 1991. The author is indebted to Professor Antonio Brito daCunha of the University of São Paulo, Brazil for his encouragement and comments.     

Humor and sexual selection

Recently Geoffrey Miller has suggested that humor evolved through sexual selection as a signal of "creativity," which in turn implies youthfulness, intelligence, and adaptive unpredictability. Drawing upon available empirical studies, I argue that the evidence for a link between humor and creativity is weak and ambiguous. I also find only tenuous support for Miller’s assumption that the attractiveness of the "sense of humor" is to be found in the wittiness of its possessor, since those who use the phrase often seem to associate it with the affects of relatively mirthless "bonding" laughter. Humor, I conclude, may have evolved as an instrument for achieving broad social adhesiveness and for facilitating the individual’s maneuverability within the group, but that it evolved through sexual selection has yet to be convincingly demonstrated. Robert Storey teaches drama and modern fiction at Temple University. In addition to his recent work on literary representation and humor, he has published two books on the French Pierrot figure and articles on such writers as James Joyce, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and David Mamet.     

Two Decades of Homage to Santa Rosalia: Toward a General Theory of Diversity

In 1959, in his seminal paper "Homage to Santa Rosalia," G.E. Hutchinson asked, Why are there so many kinds of organisms?This paper focused attention on problems of species diversityand community organization that have occupied many theoreticaland empirical ecologists for the last two decades. In the presentpaper I evaluate the attempt to answer Hutchinson's questionby considering three topics. First, I reexamine the main themeswhich Hutchinson developed in "The Homage" and call attentionto the central importance of energetic relationships in hisview of ecological communities. Second, I examine the developmentof theoretical community ecology over the last two decades inan attempt to determine why some avenues of investigation, suchas competition theory, have proven disappointing, whereas others,such as the theory of island biogeography, have enjoyed at leastmodest success. Finally, I suggest that future attempts to understandpatterns of species diversity might focus on developing twokinds of theoretical constructs: capacity rules, which describehow characteristics of the physical environment determine itscapacity to support life, and allocation rules, which describehow limited energetic resources are subdivided among species.     

Towards a general theory of neural computation based on prediction by single neurons

Although there has been tremendous progress in understanding the mechanics of the nervous system, there has not been a general theory of its computational function. Here I present a theory that relates the established biophysical properties of single generic neurons to principles of Bayesian probability theory, reinforcement learning and efficient coding. I suggest that this theory addresses the general computational problem facing the nervous system. Each neuron is proposed to mirror the function of the whole system in learning to predict aspects of the world related to future reward. According to the model, a typical neuron receives current information about the state of the world from a subset of its excitatory synaptic inputs, and prior information from its other inputs. Prior information would be contributed by synaptic inputs representing distinct regions of space, and by different types of non-synaptic, voltage-regulated channels representing distinct periods of the past. The neuron's membrane voltage is proposed to signal the difference between current and prior information ("prediction error" or "surprise"). A neuron would apply a Hebbian plasticity rule to select those excitatory inputs that are the most closely correlated with reward but are the least predictable, since unpredictable inputs provide the neuron with the most "new" information about future reward. To minimize the error in its predictions and to respond only when excitation is "new and surprising," the neuron selects amongst its prior information sources through an anti-Hebbian rule. The unique inputs of a mature neuron would therefore result from learning about spatial and temporal patterns in its local environment, and by extension, the external world. Thus the theory describes how the structure of the mature nervous system could reflect the structure of the external world, and how the complexity and intelligence of the system might develop from a population of undifferentiated neurons, each implementing similar learning algorithms.     

The Schreber case revisited: schizophrenia as a disorder of self-regulation and of interactional regulation

The Schreber case has been used by generations of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists to exemplify many features of the psychoanalytic conception of psychosis. It has generally been considered the origin of a great debate in psychoanalysis as to whether schizophrenia is a disorder of nature or of nurture. I seek in this contribution to proffer a newer theory of psychopathology, one which is based upon the conception of primary and secondary disorders of attachment (bonding) and which presents itself clinically as disorders of self-regulation and of interactional regulation. I attempt to explicate this theory in the Schreber case by demonstrating that his symptoms revealed: (a) failures of normal mental state regulations, (b) the emergence of symptoms which then secondarily and pathologically restore regulation in a pathological manner, and finally (c) his/her very symptoms seem to regulate a state in the family system and/or in the system of the culture at large.     

Isoenzymes of sphingomyelinase and the genetic defect in Niemann-Pick disease, type C

Isoenzymes of sphingomyelinase have been resolved by isoelectric focusing. The two major species (I and II) in human liver have distinct isoelectric points, pH optima and Km values. Liver from Niemann-Pick disease Type C contained isoenzyme I (pI 4.6) while isoenzyme II (pI 5.2) was absent. The absence of isoenzyme II likely constitutes the genetic defect in this disease.     

Beyond "the State" and Failed Schemes

In this article, I propose five ways to move beyond the analytical scheme of James Scott's Seeing Like a State (1998). I question the spatial optic that posits an "up there," all-seeing state operating as a preformed repository of power, spread progressively outward to "nonstate" spaces beyond its reach. I highlight the role of parties beyond "the state" that attempt to govern—social reformers, scientists, and the so-called nongovernmental agencies, among others. I look beyond authoritarian high modernism to the more general problematic of "improvement" emerging from a governmental rationality focused on the welfare of populations. I explore the recourse to mētis (contextualized, local knowledge and practice) situated beyond the purview of planning. Finally, I reframe the question posed by Scott—why have certain schemes designed to improve the human condition failed?—to examine the question posed so provocatively by James Ferguson: What do these schemes do? What are their messy, contradictory, conjunctural effects?     

The Ethics of Genetic Research of Intelligence

Should research on the possible genetic components of human intelligence be carried out? I first try to provide some general guidelines as to whether any particular piece of research should be undertaken and then consider the specific example of the ethics of genetic research on intelligence. The history of the debate on intelligence does not make one very optimistic that the fruits of such research would be used wisely. However, there are indications that people’s understanding of the nature of inheritance may be improving and it could be that such research might have significant benefits. It is worth remembering than the condition phenylketonuria, a genetic disease in any useful sense of the term, and one that leads to mental retardation (i.e. very low intelligence), is now wholly preventable, and indeed very largely prevented, through environmental intervention.     

Waddington's widget: Hsp90 and the inheritance of acquired characters

Conrad Waddington published an influential model for evolution in his 1942 paper, Canalization of Development and Inheritance of Acquired Characters. In this classic, albeit controversial, paper, he proposed that an unknown mechanism exists that conceals phenotypic variation until the organism is stressed. Recent studies have proposed that the highly conserved chaperone Hsp90 could function as a "capacitor," or an "adaptively inducible canalizer," that masks silent phenotypic variation of either genetic or epigenetic origin. This review will discuss evidence for, and arguments against, the role of Hsp90 as a capacitor for morphological evolution, and as a key component of what we call "Waddington's widget."     

Darwin and the linguists: the coevolution of mind and language, Part 1. Problematic friends

In his book The descent of man (1871), Charles Darwin paid tribute to a trio of writers (Hensleigh Wedgwood, F. W. Farrar, and August Schleicher) who offered naturalistic explanations of the origin of language. Darwin's concurrence with these figures was limited, however, because each of them denied some aspect of his thesis that the evolution of language had been coeval with and essential to the emergence of humanity's characteristic mental traits. Darwin first sketched out this thesis in his theoretical notebooks of the 1830s and then clarified his position in Descent, where he argued that mind-language coevolution had occurred prior to the rise of distinct racial groups. He thus opposed the view of August Schleicher and Ernst Haeckel, who (along with Alfred Russel Wallace) taught that speech had originated subsequent to the geographical and racial dispersion of humanity's ancestors. As Darwin argued in Descent, this quasi-polygenetic version of coevolution was unable to explain primeval man's initial dominance over rival ape-like populations. Drawing inspiration from British anthropologists, Darwin made the early development of language, hence mental monogenesis, central to his account of human evolution.     

Damaged-bone adaptation under steady homogeneous stress

In this work an extension of the adaptive-elasticity theory is proposed in order to include the contribution of bone microdamage as a stimulus. Some aspects of damaged-bone tissue adaptation, brought about by a change of the daily loading history, are investigated. In particular, under the assumption of a small strain approximation and isothermal conditions, the solution of the remodeling rate equation for steady homogeneous stress is discussed and the damage effect upon the remodeling time constant is shown. The result is both theoretical and numerical, based on a recent theory of internal damaged-bone remodeling (Ramtani, S., and Zidi, M., 1999, "Damaged-Bone Remodeling Theory: Thermodynamical Approach, " Mechanics Research Communications, Vol. 26, pp. 701-708. Ramtani, S., and Zidi, M., 2001, "A Theoretical Model of the Effect of Continum Damage on a Bone Adaption Model," Journal of Biomechanics, Vol. 34, pp. 471-479) and motivated by the works of Cowin, S. C., and Hegedus, D. M., 1976, "Bone Remodeling I: Theory and Adaptive Elasticity," Journal of Elasticity, Vol. 6, pp. 471-479 and Hegedus, D. H., and Cowin, S. C., 1976, "Bone Remodeling II: Small Strain Adaptive Elasticity," Journal of Elasticity, Vol. 6, pp. 337-352.     

Intelligence is universal in life.

Behaviorists assume that living things memorize random atoms of information (engrams), "reinforced" by success, just as in the neo-Darwinian mutation-selection process. On the contrary we have to recognize the existence of organized and systematic responses in the learning process (Krechevsky). The animals seek desperately to "understand the meaning" of the world around them, by widening its context. Intelligence is not an exclusive prerogative of human mind. The minds of insects operate in the same way as that of man. Even a cell has a sort of intelligence (Cuenot). Consciousness is a state of awareness associated with enhanced mental activity. It occurs also in other "higher" animals (Thorpe). However human themselves are non conscious of their basic underlying motivations. Unconscious or ineffable knowledge plays a great role in shaping our world-view and in determining our influence on the Gaian hierarchy.     

人眼波前像差表示、测量及矫正研究

目的:波前像差引导的准分子激光角膜消融是屈光手术的新方法,研究人眼波前像差的测量原理、方法、表示、人眼波前像差准分子激光矫正的原理,以此理论用于准分子激光人眼像差矫正系统。方法:采用理论研究、计算机模拟、实验室实验等手段。分析人眼像差的概念和产生的原因,用数学的Zern ike多项式来表示像差,理论上定量分析Zern ike多项式表示的波前像差与角膜切削深度的关系,研究准分子激光切削角膜的机理,研究准分子激光进行矫正人眼像差的原理框图。结果:通过计算机模拟和实验室实验,用准分子激光矫正低阶和高阶像差是可行的。结论:用波前像差来引导屈光手术,使人眼的视力能够达到20/10上,并能避免当前PRK、LASIK屈光手术前后像差增大而引起的对视觉质量的影响。