somatic niche construction
DESCRIPTION
Dramatic changes are unfolding in the shape of inhabited space, characterized by growing density, mobility, and noise. These changes have implications for how we hold and move our bodies, how we gauge intentionality in others, and how we enact shared intentions and emotions—in short, for how we are socialized and acculturated as kinesthetic and somatosensory beings. In this talk I discuss some of the problems of method posed for social cognitive neuroscience by emerging forms of inhabitance, and I outline a program of research to examine the challenges to human cognitive well-being created by rapid environmental change. We are, at every moment, engaged in a process of ‘somatic niche construction’, shaping our environment to support particular habits of movement and embodied cognition and at the same time adapting our habits to environmental circumstance. Niche construction is political: we don't all share the same capacities to reshape our living space to accommodate or modulate a distinctive somatic signal, nor do we share the same value schemata—what looks like mania to you may feel like flourishing to me. My hope is to elaborate a research method that integrates anthropology's sensitivity to political context and rapid cultural evolution with neuroscience's sensitivity to physiology.TRANSCRIPT
Somatic Niche Construction Josh Berson
MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences · 17.9.2013
Vigilance is becoming a focal object of self-care
Wehr et al. (1982) Arch Gen Psychiatry 39: 560
An impedance mismatch between anthropology and cognitive science
Our understanding of the world as distinct from the sel! is grounded in environmental recalcitrance in the face of our e#orts at motor control.
Susan Hurley Making Sense of Animals (2005)
Beyond Executive Function Somatic Behavioral Modernity Motor resonance, kinesthetic empathy, enaction of shared projects and moods (Friths, Froese and Fuchs, v.a.)
Musicality, spontaneous rhythmic entrainment (Phillips-Silver and Keller)
Sensitivity to fine-grain reaching/grasping kinematics (Becchio)
Beyond Executive Function Somatic Behavioral Modernity Chronesthesis: Syntactic compositionality of episodic memory, esp. wrt movement of conspecifics (Tulving, Schacter …)
Re!lexive somesthesis, phenomenal selfhood: (r)TPJ (Lopez, Blanke, Metzinger) + AIC (Craig)
Niche construction
Kendal et al. (2011) Phil Trans R Soc B 366: 787
O’Brien and Laland (2012) Current Anthropology 53: 447
Harrison S (2004) Social Anthropology 12: 138–9
ABC News (Australia), 18 June 2013 www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-14/the-indigenous-fire-project-generating-carbon/4756114
ABC News (Australia), 18 June 2013 www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-14/the-indigenous-fire-project-generating-carbon/4756114
Iriki and Taoka (2012) Phil Trans R Soc B 367: 12
Gowlett et al. (2012) Current Anthropology 53: 695
Gowlett et al. (2012) Current Anthropology 53: 696
Gowlett et al. (2012) Current Anthropology 53: 703
Big changes in built space
Ellis E (2011) Phil Trans R Soc A 369: 1015
Ellis E (2011) Phil Trans R Soc A 369: 1022
Sattherthwaite D (2007) The Transition to a Predominantly Urban World. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.
Urban Agglomeration Per capita superlinear scaling of productivity?
Bettencourt et al. (2010) PLoS ONE 5: e13541
The In-transit Condition
Airports: Hermetic systems from which there is no escape—except to another airport.
Rem Koolhaas The Generic City (1994)
Ko et al. (2011) Environment International 37: 333
Sel! as data*
*With love to Rebecca Lemov and Natasha Schüll
Lumosity Dataset Coverage (user IP at last login)
Sternberg et al. (2013) Front Hum Neurosci 7: Article 292
Sternberg et al. (2013) Front Hum Neurosci 7: Article 292
Dodds et al. (2011) PLoS ONE 6: e26752
Time Series o! Average Happiness !or Twitter varying notch radius about mean per-tweet happiness
Mitchell et al. (2013) PLoS ONE 8: e64417
Happiness o! All Tweets Lower 48 US states during 2011
Mitchell et al. (2013) PLoS ONE 8: e64417
Cognitive science can’t deal with this alone
Bilimoria et al. (2012) Trends in Cog Sci 16: 530
Zhou and Merzenich (2012) Nature Comms 3: Article 843
ARTICLE NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1849
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | 3:843 | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1849 | www.nature.com/naturecommunications
© 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
rats, to evaluate the post-stimulus suppression (Fig. 4e). Asynchro-nous responses were weaker at low temporal rates in NE rats, indi-cating stronger and/or longer post-stimulus suppression compared with control rats (all P < 0.00001, t-test).
To characterize the temporal !delity of cortical responses, we cal-culated vector strengths, which quantify the degree of phase locking of neural responses to repetitive stimuli. As shown in Fig. 4f, aver-age vector strengths as a function of temporal rates shi"ed le"ward and peaked at lower rates in NE compared with control rats (peak at 7 p.p.s. in NE rats versus 10 p.p.s. in control rats). In addition, vec-tor strengths of neurons in NE rats were smaller at high repetition rates (that is, 10–20 p.p.s.) but greater at low rates (that is, 2–7 p.p.s.; all P < 0.0005, t-test).
We further examined the reliability of cortical responses to repetitive stimuli by calculating the misclassi!cation rate (MR) for every possible combination of pulse trains used to construct the RRTFs (Fig. 4g). #at measurement, obtained using the Van Ros-sum spike train distance metric26, quanti!es the similarity between spike trains recorded, using di$erent pulse trains, or the di$erence between spike trains recorded, using identical pulse trains. Larger MR values indicate more confusable and unreliable spike trains representing temporal structure in acoustic inputs. We found that the average MRs for combinations of dissimilar high pulse rates (10–20 p.p.s.) were signi!cantly larger in NE versus control rats (Fig. 4g and h). #e average numbers of ‘misrepresentations’
of identical stimuli were greater in NE rats, markedly at lower pulse rates (that is, 2 p.p.s. versus 2 p.p.s., or 4 p.p.s. versus 4 p.p.s.; Fig. 4h).
To assess horizontal cortical network connectivity, we calcu-lated correlation coe%cients for neuron pairs separated by variable distances by simultaneously recording their spike discharges dur-ing spontaneous activity periods. Correlation coe%cients quantify the degree of cortical horizontal connectivity, with higher values representing stronger horizontal connections. We considered all spikes that occurred in two recording channels, within 10 ms of one another, to be synchronized events. #e average correlation coef-!cient between & 10 and 10 ms lags was 31% larger for NE than for control rats (P < 0.00001, t-test). #e degree of synchronization for simultaneously recorded spontaneous discharges, expressed as a percentage of synchronized events, signi!cantly decreased as a function of inter-electrode distances in both rat groups (Fig. 4i; both P < 0.0001, ANOVA). However, values were higher at electrode separations less than 1.3 mm in NE than in control rats (P < 0.008 at electrode separations of 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 mm; t-test).
In accordance with behavioural data, cortical changes in tempo-ral processing, induced by noises, endured for at least 6 weeks a"er the end of noise exposure (Supplementary Fig. S2).
Passive sound exposure-driven plasticity in A1. To determine whether or not structured noise exposure restores passive sound
NEa b
ec
f g h i
d
NE*
** ***
*
* **
*
*
**
* * ** *
+
++
+ +
NENE
NE
<3 3–7 7–16 >16
Rep
etiti
on r
ate
(p.p
.s.)
Vect
or s
tren
ght
Repetition rate (p.p.s.)
Repetition rate (p.p.s.) Repetition rate (p.p.s.)
Rep
etiti
on r
ate
(p.p
.s.)
Rep
etiti
on r
ate
(p.p
.s.)
Repetition rate(p.p.s.) Distance (mm)
Repetition rate (p.p.s.)
Norm
alizedresponse
Nor
mal
ized
resp
onse
Syn
chro
nize
dev
ent (
%)
Cum
ulat
ive
freq
uenc
y
2017.5
1512.5
10742
2
5 10 15 20
4
4
10
10
15
15
20 4 10 15 20 4 10 15 20
4
1015
20p<0.005
p<0.05
p>0.05
20
5 10 15 20
8080
MR (%)
40400
00.4 0.8 1.2
0.9
0.6
0.3
D
A
0.5 mm
0.9
0.6
0.3
0.0
20
200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,400200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200
4 8 12 16 20
1.4
1.2
0.8
0.4
0.0
12
8
4
0
5
630
–3–6–9
Asy
nchr
onou
sre
spon
ses
(spk
per
s)
10 15 20
5 10 15 20
0.7
0.0
1.4
0.7
0.04 8 12 16 20 (p.p.s.) (p.p.s.)
ControlControl
Control
Control
Control
Time (ms)
CF (kHz)
f h1/2 (p.p.s.)
f h1/2 (p.p.s.)
f h1/
2 (p
.p.s
.)
Figure 4 | Cortical temporal responses. (a) Dot-raster plot examples of cortical responses to pulse trains of different repetition rates recorded from NE and control rats. Red lines indicate pulse durations. Inset shows the RRTF for each raster plot example. Unfilled circle and dashed line show fh1/2 and 50% of the maximal normalized response for each RRTF, respectively. (b) Average RRTFs for all recordings obtained from NE (recording sites = 316) and control (recording sites = 368) rats. Error bars represent s.e.m. *P < 0.05, + P < 0.0005, t-test. (c) Representative auditory cortical fh1/2 maps for NE and control rats. The colour of each polygon indicates the fh1/2 recorded at that site. D, dorsal; A, anterior. (d) Cumulative frequency histograms (left) showing a significant leftward shift of the fh1/2 distribution for NE rats compared with control rats (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, P < 0.0001), and average fh1/2s (right) for all recording sites in both rat groups, for each of four CF ranges. Bin size = 1.2 octaves. *P < 0.0005, t-test. (e) Average asynchronous response rates measured at different pulse repetition rates for NE and control rats. *P < 0.00001, t-test. (f) Average vector strengths measured at different pulse repetition rates for NE and control rats. *P < 0.0005, t-test. (g) Average MR obtained using the Van Rossum spike train distance metric for all combination of repetition rates, for NE and control rats. (h) Results of t-test for comparisons of MR between NE and control rats. (i) Percentage of synchronized spontaneous discharge as a function of distance between two cortical recording sites. *P < 0.008, t-test.
Structured Noise at 65dB Markedly Impairs Acoustic Processing (3mo rat)
Hegerl et al. (2009) Pharmacopsychiatry 42: 169 Mania = niche construction: Depending on the current vigilance regulation, di"erent environments are actively created by an individual. Heiler et al. (2011) Med Hypoth 77: 694 Circadian dysfunction an underlying factor in Severe Mood Dysregulation / Disruptive Mood Dysregulation: we hypothesize light therapy to be an essential preventive treatment. Harvey A (2012) Annu Rev Clin Psychol 7: 301 The accumulated evidence has re!uted the idea that sleep is merely an epiphenomenon in mood disorders.
A modest agenda
Jennifer Darmour for Electricfoxy www.electricfoxy.com/move/
www.artefactgroup.com/#/content/are-you-ready-for-the- wearable-tech-move-ment-2
An Anthropological Approach to Body Coordination Dynamics Sensitive to political nature of somatic presence. Actors vary both in capacities to shape environment and in value schemata for bodily presence
Field-based, thick phenomenological contextualization. De!er dimensionality reduction to the last possible moment
Participatory: Consultants from key points in the space of somatic politics as collaborators (d.h., u.a., as coauthors)
An Anthropological Approach to Body Coordination Dynamics Evolutionary, sensu lato: Sensitive to formation and dissolution of registers of somatic presence. These registers are jointly constituted by patterns of built space and patterns of holding, moving, and displaying the body
Experimental: Body sensor networks + environmental actuators to hold up a slow-motion mirror to e#erence-rea#erence contingency
