Distorted memories make rational people act crazy

The way we remember the past determines how we understand the present and how we will act in the future. Consider this example: How do you remember 9/11? Many people remember 9/11 something like this: A group of people who are representative of ALL Muslims, who were part of a worldwide conspiratorial network of Muslims, hated that Americans have freedoms, so they began an endless violent onslaught against America in order to completely destroy America. For people who remember 9/11 like this, all of the following are “logical”: A) immensely wasteful Manichean American war-mongering worldwide, B) giving law enforcement the green light to deprive citizens of fundamental liberties, C) intense groupishness, leading to unabashed bigotry aimed at Muslims and other non-Christians and D) Doing everything possible (even at the expense of ignoring America’s decaying infrastructure) to attempt to protect Americans from violent Muslims, who could be lurking around every corner. [More . . . ]

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Superior autobiographical memory

A friend of mine who I have known since high school has often quoted actual dates on which events occurred a long time ago. Much of the time, I haven't had a way to disprove him, but on several occasions I was able to confirm that he had stunning recall. After watching the following video from a 60 Minutes show, I emailed Mike, urging him to take a look. The people featured in this 60 Minutes two-part video easily remember non-emotional ordinary events from throughout their lives down to the actual dates on which those events occurred.  If you're like me, you'll be somewhat suspicious of the idea that people can remember long-ago events of their lives so well. If so, watch the video--it will leave you shaking your head unless you have this ability yourself. This extreme memory is a stunning phenomena.  Check out the researcher's statement at about the 10-minute mark of the video that these folks are correct 99% of the time that they offer these detailed responses.    Until watching this show, however, I had assumed that the ability to forget would be essential to good mental health.  Based on the appearance of the superior memory subjects, that doesn't appear to be true (though most of the subjects are not involved in long-term romantic relationships).   These subjects have amazing recall without having any struggle with "cluttered" minds. I definitely don't have "superior autobiographical memory."  I don't need all of superior autobiographical capability, but I wish I had somewhat better recollection. James McGaugh, Ph.D.- University of California at Irvine, has studied these ultra-memory folks and will be discussing his findings at a Psychology Colloquium on Monday, December 5, 4:00 PM, Wilson 214 at Washington University.   McGaugh's team has found (video, Part II at the 2 minute mark) that people with superior autobiographical memory had larger (almost twice as large as expected) temporal lobes and caudate nuclei (the latter of which has been associated with OCD).   See Video II at the 3-minute mark for more on the OCD angle. Here's more on this fascinating topic.

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More on the complexity of happiness: New TED lecture by Daniel Kahneman

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel laureate who has spent his long life making dozens of startling discoveries regarding judgment and decision-making. More recently, he has done considerable work in hedonic psychology. He recently appeared at TED to discuss the "The riddle of experience vs. memory." [caption id="attachment_11875" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Nruboc at Dreamstime.com (with permission)"]Image by Nruboc at Dreamstime.com (with permission)[/caption] There is no person better qualified than Kahneman to describe how the human psyche is rife with "cognitive traps." In this TED talk Kahneman explains that these traps "make it difficult to think about happiness." One foundational problem is that humans tend to resist admitting complexity; happiness is a monolithic term for most of us. Kahneman states, however, that "happiness is no longer a useful word, in that it applies to many things. We need to completely give up the simple word "happiness" in order to effectively communicate. One of the biggest problems is that there is a huge confusion between experience and memory when it comes to determining happiness. The distinction is with A) happiness IN your life versus B) happiness ABOUT your life (or WITH your life). The problem with trying to determine one's own happiness is exacerbated by the "focusing illusion." The effect of this illusion is that "we can't think about any circumstance that affects well-being without distorting its importance." Kahneman gave an example of a friend who claimed that a scratching sound at the very end of a music recording ruins the entire experience. This is utter nonsense, since the scratching sound occurred only at the end of the recording. It didn't ruin the entire experience. Rather, it ruined "the memory of the experience." Human beings consist of two selves: the experiencing self (who lives in the moment) and the remembering self (who keeps score and maintains the story of our lives, selecting and maintaining our memories. For the remembering self, a critical part of any story is how it ends. If it ends badly, the memory of the entire experience is contaminated (In this video, Kahneman describes earlier studies regarding colonoscopies which dramatically illustrated this point). Time is a funny thing for human beings. For our experiencing self, a two-week vacation is twice as good as a one-week vacation. For the remembering self, a two-week vacation might not be any better than a one-week vacation--"time has very little impact on the story" for the remembering self. [More . . . ]

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Color-coded history

Consider this description of a significant and tragic event in American history:

[Occurring in May and July 1917, this event] was an outbreak of labor and racially motivated violence against blacks that caused an estimated 100 deaths and extensive property damage in [an American industrial city]. It was the worst incident of labor-related violence in 20th century American history, and one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. It gained national attention. The local Chamber of Commerce called for the resignation of the Police Chief. At the end of the month, ten thousand people marched in silent protest in New York City over the riots, which contributed to the radicalization of many.

[paraphrased from Wikipedia]

Do you know anything about the event described above? The above passage describes the East St. Louis race riot that occurred on Monday, July 2, 1917. I learned about this riot for the first time tonight when I had the opportunity to hear a talk by Harper Barnes, a St. Louis journalist who has recently written a book called Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement. [caption id="attachment_5419" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Harper Barnes - Photo by Erich Vieth"]Harper Barnes - Photo by Erich Vieth[/caption] In 1914, the first world war was heating up and so were the heavy industries. East St. Louis, Illinois, located right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, was the home of large aluminum and steel plants. To backtrack, through the 1910s, one-half million blacks who had resided in the rural South moved up to northern cities. Employers made use of these blacks as strikebreakers. The blacks certainly wouldn't have felt much loyalty toward the unions, because the white unions banned black workers.

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Can someone really know what it’s like to have a stroke? A skeptic considers Jill Bolte Taylor’s “Stroke of Insight.”

There’s a TED video making the rounds to some high acclaim these days. The video features Jill Bolte Taylor giving a video presentation entitled “My stroke of insight.”

Here it is in a nutshell. Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke in 1996. She has recovered quite well from a serious challenge, as you can see from the embedded video. Her topic is one that fascinated me, and I watched her video with undivided attention. If you decide to watch this video, you might also be especially interested in her description of the struggles that she faced at the moments during which she was actually having her stroke. She describes experiencing the successive losses of her abilities to interpret visual and auditory input. Written words began to look like meaningless scribbles. Things became even more surreal when she “realized” that she couldn’t understand simple conversations.

It pains me to write what I am about to write , because I really want to believe that Bolte Taylor is accurately portraying real-life events. What she is describing is fascinating and her narrative is gripping. I am relieved to know that she has made a fantastic recovery and I admire her for stepping into the public eye in an attempt to provide a unique personal perspective regarding strokes. I have serious doubts about her narrative, however. I am concerned that Bolte Taylor is confabulating. I have several reasons for suggesting this.

The first thing I noticed was Bolte Taylor’s absolute lack …

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Continue ReadingCan someone really know what it’s like to have a stroke? A skeptic considers Jill Bolte Taylor’s “Stroke of Insight.”