ZOMBIES OR CYBORGS:Is Facebook eating your brain?

Micah AllenPhD Student @

VS

OUTLINE OF THE TALK

Neurocognitive Plasticity and Research Methods.

What’s a Cyborg?

Testing the Hypothesis.

NEUROSCIENCE: A DISCLAIMER

POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS Brain Plasticity in the Human Neocortex

MANY KINDS OF PLASTICITY

Structural Local Connectivity Cellular Growth Global Connectivity

Functional Local activation Global Connectivity

MICROSTRUCTURAL PLASTICITY

STRUCTURAL PLASTICITY AT BOTH ENDS

“Depending on whether the population of boutons is homogeneous or not, the amount of bouton turnover (7% per week) has different implications for the stability of the synaptic connection network. If all boutons have the same replacement probability per unit time, synaptic connectivity would become largely remodeled after about 14 weeks.”

Stettler et al. Axons and synaptic boutons are highly dynamic in adult visual cortex. Neuron (2006) vol. 49 (6) pp. 877-87

STRUCTURAL PLASTICITY IN DEVELOPMENT

Gogtay et al. Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2004) vol. 101 (21) pp. 8174-9

BASIC METHODS IN VBM AND FMRI

MEASURING STRUCTURAL PLASTICITY IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

Voxel-Based Morpometry (VBM). Strengths: Easy to implement,

analyze. Weaknesses: No way to

differentiate axons, dendrites, somas, blood vessels etc. Still unverified ‘what’ it is you are measuring.

Method: T1-weighted high-resolution brain images are segmented into ‘gray matter’ (dendrites, somas, axon boutons) and ‘white matter’ (axonal tracts).

Statistical differences between or within groups or time points can be calculated and co-varied with behavioral, cognitive, and demographic measures.

RECIPE FOR VBMAn example VBM experiment:

Brain atrophy in Schizophrenia First, get two groups with and without (at least 20 in

each group). Scan each for roughly 12 minutes Split scans into WM and GM, then collapse each

individual’s participants into an ‘average group brain’ (preprocessing).

Calculate significant group differences in density Voilà!

Bonus points: enter scores on symptom inventory or attention task. See if this explains any of your density variance.

VBM AND ADULT BRAINS How plastic is the adult brain?

VBM has been used to successfully find (+)alterations in the follow situations: London Taxi Drivers vs Bus

Drivers Little girls learning to play

Tetris Tibetan Monks and Beginner

Buddhists Medical School Students CBT recipients in a variety of

pathologies. Dental implantees And many more!

FUNCTIONAL PLASTICITY: BLOBS AHOY!

Similar in concept to VBM

Widely established method, a contrast between a cognitive task and some baseline.

Ideally, a ‘factorial design’. This lets you examine the effects of two primary elements (e.g. familiarity, emotion) of your stimuli (faces) and their interaction.

Negative Emotion

PositiveEmotion

LowFamiliarity

High Familiarity

Baseline: Scrambled Images, etc

FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY Inferences from fMRI data

regarding correlations or causal relationships between activity in different regions

Stress Example: Subjects undergo

stressful face-processing stimuli for 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of rest.

Correlate activity in one voxel (amygdala) to whole brain or regions-of-interest.

Reveals areas of brain that activate whenever seed region activates

SUMMARY MRI can be used to measure changes in

local structure and function, as well as more global patterns.

Interpretation of these data made much easier when used in coordination with behavioral, cognitive, demographic, or other extra-scanning parameters.

Many possibilities, but also limitations. Experiments are difficult to control and findings can be unreliable.

A good brain study should not just attempt to say ‘we found the x area’ but should attempt to give some causal or mechanism-based interpretation of findings.

World-Brain vs World-Brain-World or Brain-World-Brain?

Strong hypothesis make good experiments!

ZOMBIES AND CYBORGSWhat’s a Cyborg?

Micah AllenPhD Student @

MEET THE ZOMBIES “[Social networking sites] are devoid of

cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity”.-The Baroness Greenfield

“Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”-Nicolas Carr, Is the Internet Making us

Stupid?

“The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?”-Jason Lanier, DIGITAL MAOISM: The

Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

BRAAAAIIINNSSS…..

“A study by the Broadcaster Audience Research Board found teenagers now spend seven-and-a-half hours a day in front of a screen.

Educational psychologist Jane Healy believes children should be kept away from computer games until they are seven. Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for reasoning.

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: 'We are seeing children's brain development damaged because they don't engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia.”-Daily Mail

CYBORGS? Tool use as cognition Enabled by high plasticity Words as tools for thought Conditions for a Cyborg

Ease of use Transparency Epistemic Trust Parity: if it were implemented in the

brain, would loss of the ‘tool’ constitute a loss of function?

Bottom line: language, wrist watches, novels, printing presses and the internet have all contributed substantially to what we ‘are’ as a cognitive system. There is no going back- it’s up to us to determine value and direction.

SOCIAL CYBORGS?

EXTENDING THEORY-OF-MIND

EXTENDING THEORY-OF-MIND

SOCIAL EXTENSION

SOCIAL TOOLS

POTENCY AND MODE Density Temporality Control Self-Relevance Aggregation

Self Stimulation with Social Stimuli!

A POTENT NEURAL AND CULTURAL STIMULANT? Massive adoption worldwide (about 350 million on FB alone) 89% increase in Facebook alone this year People who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about

9 percent more productive that those who do not (Coker, 2009). The Self Disclosure Hypothesis

Kraut (2002); Bessiere et al (2007); Valkenburg & peter (2997), Longitudinal studies demonstrate Internet use improves

“social connectedness and well being” when used to maintain existing friendships.

SELF-DISCLOSURE AND COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION More intimate self-disclosures when

online (Tidwell & Walther, 2002; Valkenburg & Peter, in press).

IRL SD Berndt, 2002 – Improves

closeness and quality of friendships

Viewed as vital in high quality friendships (Buhrmester & Pragei, 1995)

Why? One theory – Walther’s “Hyperpersonal Communication Theory” -Reduced visual, auditory, and social context (authority stimuli) leads to less concern for others perceptions, lower inhibitions, greater disclosure.

USING FACEBOOK TO INCREASE CONNECTIVITY Joinson (2008)

Top uses of FB: Social connection, shared identities, virtual people watching

Lampe et al (2007; 2009) Intensity of usage

correlates with social capitol and absence of loneliness

Facebook typically used for ‘social searching’ rather than ‘social browsing’

Facebook as ‘social environment’ (Stafford et al, 2004)

REJECTING THE ZOMBIES SNS and blogging may actually

increase literacy SNS use does not correlate with

decreases in grades Users do not typically use SNTs as a

replacement for social interaction. We’re already cyborgs! The printing

press may have made the soliloquy less popular, but it didn’t reduce our ability to quote or understand Shakespeare!

Many uses of SNS. Probably unique neural correlates for each profile.

What theory cannot answer: what’s actually going on in there!

SUMMARY Facebook is a powerful social stimulant with

many opportunities to reshape social cognition.

Social Networking Sites only one small aspect of our cyborg hybridization.

Potency of SNS usage and ubiquitous nature of distributed social cognition raise empirical questions for culture, consciousness, and cognition

Let’s do some experiments!

EXPERIMENT 1- ALTERATIONS IN TOM Does extensive

Facebook use constitute social narrative or ToM ‘exercise’?

Measure with two tasks: Trait-Adjective

Judgment Task Perspective

Taking/Narrative Mentalizing Task

TRAIT-ADJECTIVE TASK

TAJT: ARE FB FRIENDS REPRESENTED LIKE REAL WORLD FRIENDS? Compare offline and online friends, determine if

there is neural equity. Two groups, low and high intensity.

Issues: Task may not be sensitive enough to discover differences best friends and strangers.

Possible Solution: Use a standard TAJT to determine alterations in self-related processing (i.e. more or less self-related activity) in conjunction with more precise ‘other’ task.

Familiarity -FB +FB-IRL Bill Clinton Penpal+IRL Supervisor Girlfriend

OTHER TASKS – TOM WORD PROBLEMS

MANY PARADIGMS, WHAT’S THE QUESTION?

Short list of possible paradigms: Mind is in the eyes Intentional stories Spontaneous mentalizing Short comics depicting intentional

happenings TAJTs Moral reasoning ‘Like me’

Does SNS use: Alter in/group out/group phenomenon Alter self/other representation Increases ToM sensitivity Generalize to ToM for strangers, or

alter non-specific social cognitive abilities

Influence totally distinct tasks- mirror neuron system and motor simulation

Enhance perspective taking or empathy

Any of these- general vs specific?

KEEPING IT CLEAN VBM with Demographic and Cognitive Probes

Infinite possibilities: STROOP, Wisconsin Card Sort, etc

CURRENT WORK Analyzing data from 60

subject fMRI scan 2 social cognitive tasks

and two analytic reasoning tasks

Extensive Default Mode Network data

Internet Usage and Social Capitol Questionnaires.

Clarifying ‘extended social cognition’

Identifying future studies

THANK YOU!Thanks to:

Andreas Roepstorff, Antoine Lutz, Peter Vestergaard

Interacting Minds and the Danish Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience

Yishay Mor and the LKL

Contact:

Micah@cfin.dk

Twitter: @neuroconscienceURL: neuroconscience.comSlides available at: