Twins appear to share thoughts through thalamic bridge

Two extraordinarily unusual five-year old twins share more than conjoined skulls.  They appear to share some of their thoughts.  Susan Dominus of the New York Time covers this emotionally and scientifically rich story well from many angles.

Their brain images reveal what looks like an attenuated line stretching between the two organs, a piece of anatomy their neurosurgeon, Douglas Cochrane of British Columbia Children’s Hospital, has called a thalamic bridge, because he believes it links the thalamus of one girl to the thalamus of her sister. The thalamus is a kind of switchboard, a two-lobed organ that filters most sensory input and has long been thought to be essential in the neural loops that create consciousness. Because the thalamus functions as a relay station, the girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.

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Philip Zimbardo’s revenge: Turning knowledge of evil into actions of heroism

I've previously commented on Phillips Zimbardo's thoroughly engaging work, including his lecture on "The Secret Powers of Time."  He is well respected for his research on a wide variety of social psychology issues. Forty years ago, Zimbardo unwittingly served as the mastermind of the infamous "Stanford prison experiment."  He selected healthy young men with no history of any psychological problems, drug abuse or violence and he put them into a situation where they would fill the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison (in a school building) that soon turned ugly as Zimbardo stood by and observed. The prisoner abuse eventually become intolerable. During the course of the experiment, the "guards" became physically and emotionally abusive toward the "prisoners." Zimbardo took a lot of criticism for running this experiment, even though he shut it down six days after beginning what was scheduled to be a two-week long experiment. Zimbardo still today notes that his own "passive role" enabled the abuse. The Stanford experiment clearly demonstrated that a toxic situation can cause "good" people to act grotesquely. Based on his previous work, including the Stanford experiment, Zimbardo was called to serve as an expert witness in a case the US government brought against an Abu Ghraib guard who was accused of being a "bad apple." Zimbardo disagreed with that characterization, opining that Abu Ghraib was a terrible situation that was likely to corrupt many good people. As indicated in an article by Greg Miller titled "Using the Psychology of Evil to Do Good" in the April 29, 2011 edition of Science (available online only to subscribers), the guard being prosecuted:

. . . soon found himself supervising about a dozen military police and dozens more Iraqi police responsible for guarding more than 1000 Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The prisoner population had recently tripled, creating a chaotic environment in which standard procedures and oversight broke down. The language barrier made prisoner same anonymous, Zimbardo says, and many prisoners were forced to go naked, further dehumanizing them and creating a sexually charged atmosphere. Guards worked daily 12 hour shifts for weeks on end. Fear of a revolt-or an attack from outside-mixed with boredom and exhaustion to create a volatile brew.
In short, Abu Ghraib constituted an episode of déjà vu for Zimbardo. It was no surprise to him that guards with no history of troublemaking or bad character would engage in grotesque acts.

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Defensive Justice: Inside the mind of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito

On Monday, May 16, 2011, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel A. Alito spoke at a function sponsored by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis. I attended because I was curious about his thought process; what was going on in his mind? I had no idea what Justice Alito was going to discuss until he began to speak. I recorded his speech on a small recorder and I took some notes. Alito is part of a Supreme Court majority that has repeatedly written opinions that have wrested power from average citizens at the expense of powerful corporations. Yet Justice Alito began his talk by proudly reciting an inscription on the walls of the United States Supreme Court: "Equal Access to the Law." That’s a strange line to recite by a judge who has voted to bar ordinary citizens from having meaningful access to courthouses (see AT&T v Concepcion) and barred them from having meaning access to democracy itself by unleashing an ocean of money into the electoral process (see Citizens United and see here). [caption id="attachment_18157" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image: Creative Commons"][/caption] Alito titled his talk "The Top 10 Things You Might Not Know about the United States Supreme Court." Because Alito is often touted as an “intellectual,” I assumed that the talk might be intellectually challenging, but it was a self-absorbed and disingenuous talk delivered in a humorless tone. Alito’s talk was also highly defensive, as described below.  His talk was especially disappointing in light of Alito’s claim that he has given this same talk to other audiences on many other occasions. That would presumably would have given him the opportunity to hone some inspirational messages into his talk, but I felt no inspiration.  Feel free to disagree with me after listening to Alito’s entire speech here. Without further ado, here are Samuel Alito’s "top ten things” along with my reactions to these “things.” Topic one: "Most cases are not about the Constitution." I never assumed otherwise, and I suspect that most audience members (all most all of them practicing attorneys) never assumed otherwise. It was curious is that Alito mentioned Brown versus Board of Education as one of the great cases coming out of the United States Supreme Court. Brown was a case in which the court was looking out for the little guy, something the current court has not shown much interest in doing. Therefore, one might wonder how the majority on this court would have reacted in such a case had this majority been sitting on the bench back in 1954. If this sounds harsh, give me one reason to think otherwise. Brown pitted the Court against legislators; it was inconvenient decision for those in power. It was a decision driven by a desire for “social justice,” an alien concept for the current court. Topic two: "Most cases are governed by precedent." [More . . . ]

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Will China’s moonshots rejuvenate America’s respect for science?

China has already sent two unmanned lunar probes to the moon, and China has bold plans to send several astronauts to the moon by 2017. While those Chinese astronauts are on the moon, they plan to mine helium 3, an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion.  We can assume that when Chinese astronauts step onto the moon, video cameras will be bringing beautiful images back to the world, which will then applaud China’s great technological achievement, to America’s begrudging dismay. Thus, China is about to a space exploring nation in a dramatic and visible way. This is exactly what American needs. Why? China’s highly visible lunar program comes at a time when American is dramatically cutting its space ambitions (including the Shuttle program). America is being subjected to systematic campaigns disparaging science, much of it driven by religious leaders, corporate disinformation and government attempts to manipulate data.  At the same time, anti-science religion is thriving in many American classrooms. The United States is essentially a warmongering nation; we lurch from war to war. Americans apparently need an enemy to make sense of things. For us to get our heads back into science and math, we apparently need a math and science “enemy,” someone to intellectually challenge our standing as a technologically "advanced" nation. [More . . . ]

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Lack of sleep can make you unethical

According to this report by Jena McGregor of the Washington Post,

lack of sleep led not just to poor performance on tasks that require “innovative thinking, risk analysis, and strategic planning”—though studies have shown all those to be true—but also to increased deviant and unethical behavior in both groups. Examples included rudeness, inappropriate responses and attempts to take more money than they’d earned.

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