In a previous post I sketched out the importance of frequency normalization in studying the brain, and a possible way to approach the problem. I don’t know if mine is a workable approach- frequency normalization in the brain is a hard problem, due to complex topology and variable state. But comparative frequency analysis within and across brain regions, however we accomplish it, will be really, incredibly important for understanding what’s going on in the brain, and how brains can differ, and maybe even how emotions work. I have a pet theory as to what we’ll find when we’re able to do this sort of frequency analysis in the brain. As with any new theory it’s most likely wrong, but since everybody’s theories on this are similarly disadvantaged (what few big-picture theories are out there), and it’s a topic worth figuring out, I have no qualms about throwing my hat in the ring.

Most importantly, I want to get people thinking about what emotion is, without cop-out references to ‘happiness neurochemicals’ or ‘regions of the brain which control emotion’. When it gets down to it, those are just ways of saying, “we don’t know what emotion is.” For instance, using these poor, correlative explanations of emotion, it would seem we could build a computer that could feel happiness by dumping some dopamine extract on its processor, or make it feel pain by fusing some human nociceptor nerves onto the motherboard. Clearly this is not the case. If we want to deal with emotion at anything except a trivial level, we need to dispense with correlative explanations and move toward an information-theoretic approach, to be able to explain affect in our brains as a special case of more general equations.

So what is emotion? I suggest we look to the mathematics of music theory for a possible answer.

(This is really technical and hypothetical; if you don’t enjoy mathematics and speculative neuroscience and would prefer alternative entertainment, why not check out these captioned pictures of cats instead?)

TMS ‘Sonar’ for mapping brain region activity coupling

Modern neuroscience is increasingly saying that a great deal of a person’s personality, pathology, and cognitive approach is encoded into which of their brain regions are activity-coupled together. (In alternate terms, which regions are more vs. less wired together in a person’s brain.) Right now such coupling is largely invisible and unquantifiable. If we could test for this brain region activity coupling it would be invaluable- perhaps transformative- for psychiatric diagnosis and the study of individual differences. A combination TMS+fMRI alternated pulse device- as it could stimulate a specific brain region/network, and measure how it affected the activity in other regions- may very well be able to test for this and provide an objective basis for psychiatric diagnosis and treatment recommendations.

The following is a somewhat technical writeup of the idea. Not into detailed neuroscience stuff? Click here.

The brain is extraordinarily complex. We are in desperate need of models that decode this complexity and allow us to speak about the brain’s fundamental dynamics simply, comprehensively, and predictively. I believe I have one, and it revolves around resonance.

Exponential advances in gene sequencing technology have produced an embarrassment of riches: we’re now able to almost trivially sequence an organism’s DNA, yet sifting meaning from these genomes is still an incredibly labor-intensive and haphazard task. For instance, consider the following simple questions:

How similar are the genomes of dogs and humans? How does this compare to cats and humans? What about mice and cats? How close, genetically, are mice and corn?

We have all of these genomes sequenced, but we don’t have particularly good and intuitive ways to answer these sorts of questions.

Whenever we can ask simple questions about empirical phenomena that don’t seem to have elegant answers, it’s often a sign there’s a niche for a new conceptual tool. This is a stab at a tool that I believe could deal with these questions more cogently and intelligently than current approaches.

I like America a lot. But lately I’ve been wondering, “what’s going on here?”

The latest poll numbers are in, and I’m clearly not alone. The AP is now reporting that 81% of Americans think we’re on the wrong track. One need not look far for proximate reasons: a strange and fragile economy, huge credit card debts, the behavior of our elected officials, our election of said officials, the sad, hollow state of our public discourse, voter apathy, the general state of our media, and so forth. There are still plenty of things going right in America, but compared to our particularly exemplary history of competence, principles, and vibrant public life, something has clearly changed.