Michael Perkins

In the following TED presentation, Michael Shermer discusses the natural human tendency to see patterns where none exist. He argues that failing to see a pattern that exists is typically more costly than mistakenly seeing a pattern that does not exist. Failing to see a predator, for instance, would have much worse consequences than imagining a predator that does not exist. Consequently, the brain has evolved to err on the side of seeing too many patterns. This tendency leads humans to adopt all sorts of strange beliefs.




See Also:
Seeing Faces
The Whole Problem with the World
Believing Things Which We Know to Be Untrue
Do Not Believe ...
Denialism

A study reported in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology seems to show that patients with psoriasis have a diminished capacity to recognize facial expressions of disgust.

When male psoriasis patients were shown images of disgusted faces, fMRI data showed significantly reduced activity in the insula cortex compared to age-matched male controls. No significant differences in brain response were found when the psoriasis patients viewed neutral or fearful faces.

These results were corroborated by the test subjects' performance on the facial expression recognition task (FERT). Psoriasis patients were less able than controls to identify various intensities of disgusted facial expressions. They were, however, able to identify fearful and sad expressions as well as the control group.

The investigators hypothesize that the psoriasis patients' inability to process disgusted facial expressions protects them from stressful emotional responses.

This appears to be a striking example of what Cordelia Fine calls the "vain brain."

The vain brain presents a "softer, kinder reality" that preserves the individual's positive self-evaluation. While it troubles philosophers, for the rest of us it is vastly more comfortable that we can only know ourselves and the world through the distorting prism of our brains. Freud suggested that the ego "rejects the unbearable idea," and since then experimental psychologists have been peeling back the protective layers encasing our self-esteem to reveal the multitude of strategies our brains use to keep our egos plump and self-satisfied. (Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own,  p. 6, emphasis mine)

The Blue Brain Project, led by Henry Markram, is an attempt to use a supercomputer to simulate the operation of the mammalian brain. The research team is painstakingly examining and cataloging regions of the brain neuron by neuron. This information is then used to build a detailed computer model of a single region of the brain. Markram believes that he will have a complete simulation of the human brain in ten years. In the following TED presentation, Markram provides an overview of the project and some of its ramifications.