Mini-sotans

A few days ago, a loyal reader and frequent contributor of topics to Skeptophilia sent me an article about a cryptid I'd never heard of before.  They're called the "Bagwajiwinini," or the "Little People of Minnesota."  This discovery was of particular concern to the reader who sent it, because he lives in Minnesota, so he was understandably interested in having me look into it.

According to the article, the Bagwajiwinini are "2'-3' in height, with a greenish complexion...most likely from the heavy ingestion of plants containing chlorophyll."  Because this is obviously what happens to animals that eat plants, as witnessed by all of the green cows, deer, bunnies, and vegetarians you see walking around.  The article then goes on to tell us that "They live in a darkened world of thick Bracken Fern canopies that can grow up to 3 ft. high.  This enables the Bagwajiwinini to freely roam among forest and it's [sic] edges without detection.  There have been many stories associated with the Bagwajiwinini, including the possibility of human abduction."

Which brings up the inevitable question of how three-foot-tall green dudes can abduct a full-sized human.  I mean, something of the like worked in Gulliver's Travels, but as I recall, Gulliver had assisted in his own capture by falling asleep at an inopportune moment.  So it's hard to see how skulky little fern-canopy-dwellers could successfully overcome an ordinary-sized human.

Of course, there's also the possibility that they mesmerize their victims with music, in the fashion of the Pied Piper.  Ron Shaw, investigator for Cryptid Four Corners International, tells us about "an Ojibwa woman who stated that on one occasion, her son saw a Bagwajiwinini playing a flute.  Another witness, an Ojibwa man, stated that he and his son were hunting, and at point were separated.  The father tracked his son to a root system of a tree where only his legs were sticking out.  He pulled his son free...and told his father that the Bagwajiwinini captured him and were taking him underground."

So that's sinister enough.  I can see why C4CI is investigating, although I do have to wonder why they chose this time of year.  Anywhere in the north is a bit sketchy in midwinter, but northern Minnesota in January... well, let's just say that there are body parts that I'd really prefer not to freeze off.  But I admire their dedication, particularly when you consider the case of Kory Kelly, a 39-year-old hunter who went missing in October, and was later found dead of hypothermia.  This is tragic enough, but the folks from C4CI think that Kelly vanished because he was...

... abducted by Bagwajiwinini.

You can understand why the reader from Minnesota was concerned when he found the article.  Worse still is the photograph of a Bagwajiwinini that someone took:

See it?  Neither did I, until the C4CI people helpfully zoomed in on it:

Can't miss it when I tell you what's there, can you?

Predictably, my guess is that what we're looking at is a combination of a Native legend, wishful thinking, and pareidolia.  As usual.  I'm thinking you're perfectly safe if you live in Minnesota from anything besides frostbite, and that Kory Kelly's tragic death was from hypothermia, not Little People Abduction.  Still, I've been wrong before.  If running around in sub-zero temperatures looking for creatures that probably aren't there floats your boat, then knock yourself out.  Just remember to wear your thermal underwear.

Brains, mysticism, and melting faces

"Well, I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes."

You hear that a lot, in claims of the paranormal.   I was just sitting there, in my room, and the ghost floated in through the wall.   I was outside at night, and I saw the UFO zoom across the sky.  I was at the lake, and I saw ripples in the water, and a dinosaur's head poked out and looked at me.

In a court of law, "eyewitness testimony" is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence, and yet time and again experimental science has shown that your sensory apparatus and your memory are flawed and unreliable.   It doesn't take much to confuse your perception -- witness how persuasive many optical illusions are -- and if you couple that with how easily things get muddled in your memory, it's no wonder that when eyewitness claims of the paranormal are presented to scientists, most scientists say, "Sorry. We need more than that."

A fascinating study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has put another nail in the coffin of our perceptual integrative systems, showing how easy it is to trigger someone to see something that isn't there in a completely convincing way.  Ron Blackwell, an epileptic, was in the hospital having tests done to see if a bit of his brain that was causing his seizures could be safely removed.  As part of the pre-surgical tests at Stanford University Hospital, his doctor, Dr. Josef Parvizi, had placed a strip of electrodes across his fusiform gyrus, a structure in the temporal lobe of the cerebrum.  And when the electrodes were activated, Blackwell saw Dr. Parvizi's face melt.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"You just turned into somebody else," Blackwell said.  "Your face metamorphosed.  Your nose got saggy, went to the left.  You almost looked like somebody I'd seen before, but somebody different."  He added, rather unnecessarily, "That was a trip."

This study has three interesting outcomes, as far as I'm concerned.

First, it shows that the fusiform gyrus has something to do with facial recognition.  I'm personally interested in this, because as I've described before in Skeptophilia, I have a peculiar inability to recall faces.  I don't have the complete prosopagnosia that people like the late great science writer Oliver Sacks had -- where he didn't even recognize his own face in a mirror -- but the fact remains that I can see a person I've met many times before in an unfamiliar place or circumstance, and literally have no idea if I've ever seen them before.  However -- and this is relevant to Parvizi's study -- other human features, such as stance, gait, and voice, I find easily and instantly recognizable.  And indeed, Blackwell's experience of seeing his doctor's face morph left other body parts intact, and even while the electrodes were activated, Blackwell knew that Dr. Parvizi's body and hands were "his."  So it seems that what psychologists have claimed -- that we have a dedicated module devoted solely to facial recognition -- is correct, and this study has apparently pinpointed its location.

Second, this further supports a point I've made many times, which is that if you fool your brain, that's what you perceive.  Suppose Blackwell's experience had occurred a different way; suppose his fusiform gyrus had been stimulated by one of his seizures, away from a hospital, away from anyone who could immediately reassure him that what he was seeing wasn't real, with no one there who could simply turn the electrodes off and make the illusion vanish.  Is it any wonder that some people report absolutely convincing, and bizarre, visions of the paranormal?  If your brain firing pattern goes awry -- for whatever reason -- you will perceive reality abnormally.  And if you are already primed to accept the testimony of your eyes, you very likely will interpret what you saw as some sidestep into the spirit world.  Most importantly, your vehement claims that what you saw was real cannot be accepted into evidence by science. Ockham's Razor demands that we accept the simpler explanation, that requires fewer ad hoc assumptions, which is (sorry) that you simply had an aberrant firing pattern occur in your brain.

Third, this study has significant bearing on the stories of people who claim to have had "spiritual visions" while under the influence of psychoactive drugs.  One in particular, DMT (dimethyltryptamine), present in such ritual concoctions as ayahuasca, is supposed to create a "window into the divine."  A number of writers, particularly Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman (the latter wrote a book called DMT: The Spirit Molecule), claim that DMT is allowing you to see and communicate with real entities that are always there, but which only the drug allows you to experience.  Consider McKenna's account of his first experience with the chemical:

So I did it and...there was a something, like a flower, like a chrysanthemum in orange and yellow that was sort of spinning, spinning, and then it was like I was pushed from behind and I fell through the chrysanthemum into another place that didn't seem like a state of mind, it seemed like another place.  And what was going on in this place aside from the tastefully soffited indirect lighting, and the crawling geometric hallucinations along the domed walls, what was happening was that there were a lot of beings in there, what I call self-transforming machine elves.  Sort of like jewelled basketballs all dribbling their way toward me.  And if they'd had faces they would have been grinning, but they didn't have faces.  And they assured me that they loved me and they told me not to be amazed; not to give way to astonishment.

A generation earlier, Carlos Castañeda recounted similar sorts of experiences after ingesting datura root and psilocybe mushrooms, and like McKenna and Strassman, Castañeda was convinced that what he was seeing was absolutely real, more real in fact than the ordinary world around us.

My response, predictably, is: of course you saw weird stuff, and thought it was real.  What did you expect?  You monkey around with your brain chemistry, and you will obviously foul up your perceptual apparatus and your ability to integrate what's being observed.  It's no more surprising that this happens than it would be if you spilled a cup of coffee on your computer, and it proceeded to behave abnormally.  If you short out your neural circuitry, either electrically (as Parvizi did) or chemically (as McKenna and others did), it should come as no shock that things don't work right.  And those altered perceptions are hardly evidence of the existence of a mystical world.

In any case, Parvizi's accidental discovery is a fascinating one, and will have wide-reaching effects on the study of perceptual neuroscience.  All of which supports what a friend of mine, a retired Cornell University professor of human genetics, once told me: the 21st century will be the century of the brain.  We are, she said, at a point of our understanding of how the brain works that corresponds to where geneticists were in 1915 -- we can see some of the pieces, but have no idea how the whole system fits together.  Soon, she predicts, we will begin to put together the underlying mechanism.  And at that point, we will be starting to develop a complete picture of how our most complex organ actually works.

Templar cookie warning

With all of the controversy right now over the upcoming presidential election, the conflicts over gun rights and federal land ownership, and the fears over climate change and ecological mismanagement, I'm sure what's in the forefront of your mind right now is:

Am I unwittingly swearing allegiance to the Illuminati every time I eat an Oreo cookie?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, that would be your primary concern if you were one Maurice "Moe" Bedard, over at the site Gnostic Warrior.  I looked in vain for any sign that he was joking, but alas, I fear that this guy is 100% serious.  Here's an excerpt from his "About" link on the site:

Let us help you on along your evolving path to enlightenment in order to assist you in connecting with your higher self and who you truly are on the inside.  Our global community is composed of reasonable men, and women of truth who seek to understand the world we live in by seeking the without being trapped by the darkness of lies, conspiracies and the masses who love them.

 Well, that's very nice and all.  But there are a lot of words I could use to describe the cookie claim, and "reasonable" is not one of them.  Here's a bit of it, so you can get the flavor (crunchy and chocolate-y and nice when dipped in milk, of course!):

Almost 500 billion have been sold. In fact, if you were to stretch out all the OREOs ever sold, you could circle the globe with OREO cookies 341 times.  But did any of these billions of people ever notice the hidden Knights Templar symbology etched into a Oreo cookie as they dipped their OREO's in milk; or licked off the white creamy filling from the Cross Pattée emblazoned cookies?

I know I didn't.   He goes on to tell us that the little marks on the cookie's surface are actually crosses and triangles that come right from the symbolism of the Templars.  The problem is, of course, that any geometrically-patterned surface is going to have triangles and crosses and squares and such.  That's what being "geometrically-patterned" means.  If all of this was Illuminati symbology, then kids in math class would be participating in a cult ritual every time they opened a geometry text.

Then he drops the bombshell on us that even the name "Oreo" is full of secrets:

The etymology of the word OREO gives us two words. Or and Eo.  The Hebrew meaning of the word Or is light, and it can also mean dawn, daylight, early morning, lightning, star, sun, sunlight, and sunshine.  The word Eo has a similar meaning from the Greek word ēōs, meaning dawn. 

In the scriptures, we can then find a reference to fallen angels who are called the watchers, whom I believe are connected etymologically to the word OREO. For example, the Greek word for watchers is ἐγρήγοροι egrḗgoroi, pl. of egrḗgoros, literally "wakeful".  This Greek word for "Watchers" originates in Daniel 4 where they are mentioned twice in the singular (v. 13, 23), once in the plural (v. 17), of "watchers, holy ones".  Hence, the Templars symbology of the OREO cookie and name are dedicated to the Morning Star, or Dawn Star of the morning.  Another Greek name for the Morning Star is Heosphoros (Greek Ἑωσφόρος Heōsphoros), which means "Dawn-Bringer."

Well, at least now we're on solid ground for me; I'm a linguistics geek of long standing, and I can say with some authority that you can not simply subdivide a word any way you want, and then cast around until you find some languages with pieces that fit.  If that's the way etymology worked, then I could take Mr. Bedard's first name, "Maurice" and say that we can split it into "Mau" + "Rice."  From there, it's obvious that it derives from the Egyptian word mau meaning "cat"and the Old English word rice meaning, "strong, powerful, mighty."  So it's clear that Mr. Bedard is actually being controlled telepathically by his cat, who is inducing him to write reams of confusing nonsense so as to mislead us puny humans and keep us subjugated, i.e., bringing our Cat Overlords lots of canned tuna.

Actually, if you're curious, the origin of the name Oreo is unknown; the only idea I've seen that holds any water (besides the most likely explanation, which is that it was simply a short and catchy name), is that it comes from taking the "re" from "cream" and sticking it between two "O"s from chocolate, to make a symbolic sandwich.

In any case, I think you can safely enjoy your Oreos.  No worries that you're accidentally ingesting Templar symbology and an abridged version of the name "Lucifer."  So I'm just going to leave this here, because now I have to go off and investigate the claims of a guy who thinks that John F. Kennedy is still alive, and that he's the Great Beast from the Book of Revelation, and is soon to reveal himself and initiate the End Times.  The guy also thinks that Henry Kissinger is the "Second Beast."  This makes you wonder who the "Third Beast" is, doesn't it?  I'm thinking Ann Coulter.

Conducting the Crazy Train

I keep wanting to avoid writing blog posts on the topic of politics, and the politicians keep not letting me.

This time it's Ted Cruz who appears in Skeptophilia based on statements from him and his campaign officials that leave me no possible conclusion other than that the whole lot of them seem like raving lunatics.

This is, by itself, not that worrisome.  Lunatics have been running for public office since time immemorial (I'm lookin' at you, Lyndon LaRouche), and mostly they have been unsuccessful.  Even though there's a flush of early support, eventually people recognize the nutjobs for what they are, and they (the nutjobs) end up getting caught on the unpleasant end of a landslide.

This time, though, it doesn't seem to be happening.  There are lots of nuts still in the running, and Ted Cruz is currently polling at 10%.  Now this may not seem like a lot, but recall that the Loony Vote is now being spread out amongst a bunch of candidates.  If any of them drop out, you can expect Cruz's support to rise.

That's despite the fact that he and his staffers keep saying things that, under other circumstances, would qualify you for a psychiatric evaluation.

[image courtesy of photograph Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

Let's start with the co-chair of Cruz's campaign in Virginia, Cynthia Dunbar.  Dunbar was once a member of the Texas State Board of Education, during which time she said her sworn duty was to fix the "biblically-illiterate society" we live in.  Given the current textbook mess in Texas, it seems like she and her colleagues have achieved their aim pretty well, even though the downside is that they are promoting the teaching of a mythologically-based doctrine as if it were actual accurate history and science.

Unsurprisingly, this strategy heavily depends on making shit up.  About her support of American history texts that make it sound like Moses brought the Constitution along with the Ten Commandments when he descended from Mount Sinai, Dunbar said, "One of my favorite historians — brilliant, brilliant man — says that 94 percent of the quotes of the founding fathers contemporaneous to our nation’s founding were either directly or indirectly from holy scripture. We know what that means when we say ‘directly’ — they’re quoting scripture.  What does it mean when we say ‘indirectly’?  They were quoting men who were quoting scripture."

But this time, Dunbar is aiming higher.  She doesn't just want religion taught in public school, she wants to do away with secular education entirely:

It’s what I call the seed policy.  If you think about it, every major social issue you’re encountering as legislators actually directs back to what it talks about it in Genesis, ‘if I would put enmity between you and the seed of the woman.’  Because what happens, what is abortion?  Abortion is the destruction of the seed.  What is homosexuality?  It is the prevention of the seed.  And what is education? It is potential deception of the seed...  When we have 88 to 90 percent, which is approximately the number of the students that are being educated within our socialized education system, effectively indoctrinating our children with our own tax dollars, guess what?  We lose every other issue.  We lose life, we lose marriage — we lose all of it.  So I think this is the linchpin issue.

Now, lest you think that Dunbar is only a staffer whose ideas don't accurately reflect those of her boss, Cruz himself demonstrated his position as conductor of the Crazy Train this week with his claim that if he doesn't win, hordes of raving atheists will descend upon Arlington Cemetery and start defiling graves:

We're just steps away from the chisels at Arlington coming out to remove crosses and stars of David from tombstones.  It could happen if five liberals dominate the Supreme Court.

Right.  Because we atheists have nothing better to do than to find tombstones of the devout, and cut away every mention of religion.  And dance on the graves while doing it, probably.

What is wryly amusing about all of this is that the kind of thing Cruz is talking about -- a group of ideologues stepping in and demanding that everyone think like they do, or else -- is a sentiment you hear way more from the extremely religious than you do from the non-religious.  Most of us non-religious people like to use our free time to kick back with a beer, not in figuring out new and improved ways of oppressing everyone who disagrees with us.

But of course, "Hey, I've talked with religious people and non-religious people, and most of 'em on both sides are pretty nice," is not a talking point that gets you votes with Cruz's constituency.  Cruz's constituency thrives on fear.  If it turns out that the people they revile actually turn out to have no intention of forcing anyone else to believe anything, the whole thing collapses like a punctured balloon.

And they can't have that.  So they make up stories of deceived "seed" and atheists attacking headstones with chisels.

In my moments of yearning, I wish that once -- just once -- we could have an election where there was calm, rational discussion of the issues, followed by people voting for the candidate whose solutions to our problems seemed the most likely to succeed.  Instead, what we have is a race where all the candidates seem determined to win votes by out-wackoing all of the others.

Okay, back to writing on topics that like Bigfoot and ghosts and psychics.  At least that's a pretend world that makes me happy.

The bottom line

Sometimes I wonder if what drew me into rationalism was the fact that there is a whole side of my personality that is fanatically devoted to thinking irrationally.

In other words, my skepticism has evolved as a kind of internal defense mechanism.  On the one hand, I am capable of putting together evidence logically, making correct inferences, and thinking calmly and dispassionately about a wide variety of subjects.  On the other, I am simultaneously capable of being a wildly illogical neurotic who misinterprets everything, comes to conclusions that are based in fear and anxiety rather than fact, and if allowed, will run around in circles babbling incoherently in complete freak-out mode.

The whole thing comes up because yesterday I had the Medical Procedure For People Over 50 That Must Not Be Named.  I was, actually, five years overdue for the MPFPO50TMNBN, because I was heavily invested in pretending that it didn't exist.  I have spent the last five years completely convinced that screening and early cancer detection are absolutely critical, and also that the safest bet was to avoid the procedure entirely because if I had it, the doctor would tell me that I had three months to live.

But my wife and two friends finally twisted my arm into making an appointment.  The result was that I spent three weeks following scheduling my visit in an increasing state of panic.  I found myself having thoughts like, "Wow.  I wonder if this is the last time I'll hear this song, given that I have a terminal illness?" and "I hope my family will be able to get over their grief and move on quickly."  Knowing that these were ridiculous things to think -- I have absolutely zero incidence of cancer in my family, back to all eight great-grandparents, I'm not and have never been a smoker, I exercise regularly and eat right -- made no difference at all.

Of course, the closer it got, the worse it got.  Two days ago I had to start what is, honestly, the worst phase of the procedure, which is a thing with the innocent name of "prep."  "Prep" involves drinking ten glasses full of a liquid that appears to be chilled weasel snot.  After the second glass, I was reacting a little like Dumbledore did when Harry Potter had to force him to drink all the liquid from the basin so they could get the Horcrux.

But the taste is not the worst part.  The worst part is that the weasel snot causes a set of symptoms that I will not describe more fully out of respect for the more delicate members of my readership.  Suffices to say that I have it on good authority that "prep" was ruled out by Tomás de Torquemada as a means for inducing the prisoners of the Spanish Inquisition to confess to heresy, on the basis of its being too unpleasant and humiliating.

Anyhow, yesterday morning at 7 AM I was finally done with "prep," and my wife drove me to the hospital for the procedure. I sat in the car watching the trees and houses zoom past, feeling more and more like a condemned prisoner being marched toward the gallows.  I knew I was going to be sedated for the procedure, which was something of a relief; but still, the knowledge of what they could potentially find was absolutely terrifying.

At last, I was on the examining table, an IV in my arm, wearing one of those stylish hospital gowns that seem specifically designed to make it impossible for you to cover up your naughty bits when you move, and trembling like I had hypothermia.  My wife kissed me goodbye ("really goodbye," I thought), the doctor/executioner came in, the nurse put some sedative in my IV...

... and I proceeded to sleep soundly through the entire procedure.  I woke up in the recovery room and was immediately told that the whole thing had gone swimmingly, and that I didn't have to come back for a retest for ten years because I had no sign whatsoever of abnormality.

Well, physical abnormality, anyhow.  Even in my groggy post-sedative state, I was lying there thinking, "What an incredible goober I am.  I spent the last three weeks working myself up into a lather over nothing."  Which is absolutely true, but (I can say from hard experience) will not change my behavior one iota next time.  My rational brain learns from experience; my irrational brain has exactly the opposite reaction.  "Uh-huh," it shouts, flecks of spittle forming in the corners of its mouth, "all this means is that it'll be more likely that you'll be dying next time!  Mark my words!"

So I suppose, given my split personality, it's no real wonder that when I discovered rationalism during my teenage years, I embraced it wholeheartedly.  It seemed like a good way to immunize myself against loopy magical thinking.  And it's worked -- at least most of the time.  But like some latent parasitic infection, the magical thinking is still there, and all it needs is the proper incentive to come roaring back and screaming my calm logic into stunned silence.

In any case, I'm glad my irrational brain was wrong, because not only is it irrational, it's also a dreadful pessimist.  Apparently I will live to write Skeptophilia another day.  Unless, of course, there's something else I'm dying of that the test didn't catch.  Always a possibility, that.

A win for the good guys

I find it discouraging, sometimes, how often the hucksters win.  We still have homeopathic "remedies" on pharmacy shelves.  Selling supplements of dubious benefit and largely unknown side effects is still a multi-million dollar business.  Throw in all of the purveyors of woo who every year bilk thousands of people out of their hard-earned cash, and it all adds up to a pretty dismal picture.

But still, every once in a while, the good guys come out on top.

This  happened just this week with the announcement that the creators and marketers of the "Lumosity" brain-training games are being ordered to pay $2 million in reparations to customers who fell for their "unfounded claims that Lumosity games can help users perform better at work and in school, and reduce or delay cognitive impairment associated with age and other serious health conditions."

The selling points were attractive, with the aging population becoming increasingly (and justifiably) spooked by the specter of Alzheimer's and other age-related dementias.  I can understand the fear; I watched my aunt, my mother's older sister, outlive both of her siblings, finally dying at the age of 90 after spending the last ten years of her life essentially unresponsive and needing 24-hour care due to the ravages of Alzheimer's.  It's my worst nightmare, really.  The idea of having my body go on long after my mind is gone is absolutely terrifying.

So the claim that you could stave off dementia by playing some computer games was appealing.  So, too, were there other claims -- that you would improve your performance at work, at school, and on the sports field, feel more alert, perform cognitive tasks more quickly and accurately.  A direct quote from their advertisements said that playing their games three or four times a week would help users to reach "their full potential in every aspect of life."  With that kind of claim, it's understandable why people fell for their sales pitch.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The problem was, it had no basis in fact, and the Federal Trade Commission is requiring Lumos Labs, the company which created and marketed Lumosity, to refund money to their customers because they were participating in "misleading health advertising."

"Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease," said Jessica Rich, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.  "But Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads."

In fact, it wasn't simply a lack of evidence; there is significant evidence against their claims.  A 2014 joint statement from Stanford University and the Max Planck Institute said that "The strong consensus of this group is that the scientific literature does not support claims that the use of software-based 'brain games' alters neural functioning in ways that improve general cognitive performance in everyday life, or prevent cognitive slowing and brain disease."

But flying in the face of scientific evidence wasn't the only problem.  The FTC found that "...the defendants [failed] to disclose that some consumer testimonials featured on the website had been solicited through contests that promised significant prizes, including a free iPad, a lifetime Lumosity subscription, and a round-trip to San Francisco."

So promoting falsehoods for profit + paying people to give you good reviews = a $2 million penalty.  Which is exactly as it should be.

It's high time that the FTC crack down on these spurious claims.  You have to wonder how long it'll take before they can get the supplement-and-remedies cadre to stop hiding behind "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any human illness" as a catch-all disclaimer and general Get Out of Jail Free card.

In any case, I find the whole thing heartening.  I do believe in the principle of caveat emptor, but we sure as hell wouldn't have to invoke it quite so often if the powers-that-be would pull back the reins on the false advertisers.

This is your brain on creativity

As a writer and a musician, I am intensely interested in the neurology of the creative process, and especially how creativity interfaces with emotion.  For me, both writing and music are about evoking emotion; even, to some extent, non-fiction writing, which in a lot of ways is supposed to be dispassionate and emotionless.  After all, why do people choose particular academic fields to pursue?  My own favored area of study -- population genetics -- I delved into for one reason: because the ideas are cool, and messing around with maps of allele frequencies makes me happy.

Okay, I know I'm a little odd.  Not that this will be a great shock to regular readers of this blog.

In any case, emotion is important, and in my opinion a writer of fiction, a musician, or an artist that fails to evoke emotion has, in large part, failed entirely.  The two parts of the generative process -- creativity and emotion -- are inextricably linked.

So I was really excited (although unsurprised) by the findings of a paper in this week's issue of Nature entitled, "Emotional Intent Modulates The Neural Substrates Of Creativity: An fMRI Study of Emotionally Targeted Improvisation in Jazz Musicians."  The paper describes a study by Malinda J. McPherson, Frederick S. Barrett, Monica Lopez-Gonzalez, Patpong Jiradejvong, and Charles J. Limb, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, that found that there is a neurological underpinning for the expression of emotion in creative pursuits.

"The bottom line is that emotion matters," said Charles Limb, MD, senior author of the study.  "It can’t just be a binary situation in which your brain is one way when you’re being creative and another way when you’re not.  Instead, there are greater and lesser degrees of creative states, and different versions.  And emotion plays a crucially important role in these differences."

The researchers took twelve jazz pianists, and showed them photographs of individuals expressing negative, positive, and neutral emotions.  Then, they asked the pianists to improvise a piece that expressed the emotion of the photograph they were shown.

[image courtesy of photographer Zoe Caldwell and the Wikimedia Commons]

The results were fascinating.  The researchers write:

When we examined the functional neuroimaging results, we found that the creative expression of emotions through music may engage emotion-processing areas of the brain in ways that differ from the perception of emotion in music.  We also observed a functional network involved in creative performance, and the extent of activation and deactivation in this network was directly modulated by emotional intent.  Our viewing controls showed that there were few significant differences between neural activity in response to any of the visual cues, therefore the differences between improvisation conditions are the result of the creative expression of emotion through music, rather than a direct response to the visual stimuli.  These results highlight that creativity is context-dependent, and emotional context critically impacts the neural substrates of artistic creativity.

Which is incredibly cool, but (for me) unsurprising, given my sense that creativity and emotion are impossible to tease apart.  My main creative world is in writing -- I am a musician, but not a composer -- and I have found myself so emotionally involved with scenes I'm writing that I can lose myself within them.  The creative enterprise, in a lot of ways, is very primal, seated in a part of the brain not really under conscious control.  This study showed that for people who express through creating music, the process can be equally visceral:

Creativity is not a single unified set of mental processes or abilities. While some types of creativity may require intense concentration and thought, other forms of creativity, such as jazz improvisation, may be predicated on "letting go..."   [T]his study shows that the impulse to create emotionally expressive music may have a basic neural origin: emotion modulates the neural systems involved in creativity, allowing musicians to engage limbic centers of their brain and enter flow states.  The human urge to express emotions through art may derive from these widespread changes in limbic, reward, and prefrontal areas during emotional expression.  Within jazz improvisation, certain emotional states may open musicians to deeper flow states or more robust stimulation of reward centers.

So the whole thing is fascinating.  It's nice to understand a little more about what happens in the brains of creative people; until recently, the whole idea of creativity has seemed to reside outside of the realm of science.  The fact that we're now zeroing in on how creativity, emotion, and the physiology of the brain are intertwined...

... well, it just makes me happy.