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Author Page for Ben Ehrlich

BENJAMIN EHRLICH (Contributing Editor) is a writer living in New York City. In 2009 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, where he was also a three-year member of the varsity basketball team. Ben is currently at work translating the non-scientific writings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Nobel Prize-winning “father of modern neuroscience.” During the day he is known as “Dr. Recess,” as he holds a PhD in the Recess Arts from Recess University. His interdisplinary dissertation included a theoretical analysis of the Law in kickball team-picking, advanced wiffle ball physics, and Eastern methods of boo-boo healing. It is as yet unpublished.

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Good Stories, Well-Told

[ 0 ] June 4, 2010

Contributor Ben Ehrlich Reports on Thursday evening’s The Moth: Grey Matter event at the 2010 World Science Festival in New York City.

Moth

The Moth: Grey Matter

Sometime after the appearance of language in the species Homo sapiens the first story was told.  It happened in a tree (in my imagination).  This hypothetical moment would be of the utmost evolutionary importance to some theorists.  Storytelling, like the other ancient and universal arts, could be an adaptive trait.  (Read 2009 Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories).  Or—say Steven Pinker and others—it is a spandrel, an elegant-meaning (if not – sounding) Renaissance term for the triangular space created by the intersection of two arches at a right angle.  (Read 1979 S.J. Gould & R.C. Lewontin, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme”).  Now, while I do find this debate to be irresistibly interesting it is simply no substitute for stories themselves.  A good story, well-told, remains infinitely more meaningful than the sum of its deconstructed parts.  It is all about the sharing of experience.  This is the reason I found myself in the packed auditorium at Webster Hall on Thursday night fanning myself with two programs while my knees jutted dangerously into the frontmost aisle.  The Moth, a storytelling organization that features competitions in different cities, was hosting a special “mainstage” event for the World Science Festival called “Grey Matter:  Stories from the Left and Right.” It was a hot ticket;  the line had stretched all the way down 11th street.

The line-up was certainly impressive.  Host Mike Birbiglia opened the night with an uproarious story about bladder cancer, a staple from his well-rehearsed stand-up routine.  I had heard the story live twice before, and laughed anyway.  Good storytelling is always immediate,  as there should be attention for nothing else but the words of the teller. Technically, the first performer was Richard Garriott, who—as Mr. Birbiglia quipped—epitomized nerdiness by making a fortune programming video games in order to fund his own trip into space.  Unfortunately, Mr. Garriott’s ten-minutes expired before he could relate much about his twelve-day orbit to the audience. Next Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist currently at New York University, delivered a wonderful and well-crafted narrative about Memorial Day in Israel and her father, a Holocaust survivor.  Her research with Dr. Elizabeth Phelps and Dr. Joseph LeDoux has focused on painful emotional memories—and the possiblity of disarming them.

Writer Mark Katz told the funniest story of the night, although it had nothing to do with science. Mr. Katz was asked by the Clinton White House to punch up a gala speech for then vice-president Al Gore. He scored a huge hit with a joke that he did not—in fact—write.  The infamous joke:  “Al Gore is so boring that his Secret Service code name is Al Gore.”  (Pause for laughter, it’s quite good).  The highlight, however, was learning about the passionate hugging style of our one-time (November 7, 2000 at 8:00pm) president. During another delightful delivery, Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek recounted the controversy he caused by scaring a Long Island banana farmer about potentially apocalyptic “strangelets,” hypothetical particles that may or may not be able to devour the world.  This put the Brookhaven particle accelerator in jeopardy and, more importantly, disturbed what should have been an idyllic vacation for Wilczek.  It was a thrill to hear the physicist speak publically;  he was so clearly brilliant, and as “strange” as those “lets” he spoke of.  After hearing Dr. Wilczek speak, I wonder if one must have a memorably idiosyncratic laugh in order to win a Nobel prize.  (See also:  Kandel, Eric).

The penultimate tale was told with honesty and feeling by the geneticist Kristin Baldwin. She explored the theme of similarity and difference through her relationship with her younger sister, whom she described as her complete opposite.  It was a great performance—and courageous—as I do not believe she is an experienced performer.  I think that the whole audience appreciated her hilarious recollections of conversations with potential suitors about her livelihood: “Oh, I clone mice and make their brains glow.”  Dr. Baldwin, of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, has also collaborated on an art project that uses genetically engineered E. coli bacteria as paint.

The last storyteller was Leonard Mlodinow, the physicist who also wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Macgyver, whose moving account of his own father, a Holocaust survivor, succeeded in affecting perspective.  He talked meaningfully about heroism, as well as actions and consequences.  At times he was forced to pause and step back, as though at a mental crossing, to let a train of painful memories pass.  These were booming and breathtaking silences. For me, this was the height of a great performance.  It all ended in applause, of course, because that is the best way to appreciate a good story.  As long as we praise art, it should not matter how or why it came to exist.  I—for one—would not want to live without it.

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Wired for Worship

[ 1 ] April 16, 2010

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger + Neuroscientist John Kubie at Brainwave 2010

gods-brainDebate about religion is almost as old as religion itself.  What is religion?  Does it have a purpose?  From the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the Four Horsemen of the Counter-Apocalypse, it seems as though everyone has an opinion.  The Rutgers University anthropologist Lionel Tiger, along with the UCLA neuropsychiatrist Michael McGuire, has attempted to make a scientific argument about religion in the new book God’s Brain.  Dr. Tiger appeared at the penultimate event of The Rubin Museum of Art’s Brainwave series, where he was joined onstage by SUNY-Downstate neuroscientist John Kubie.  The two men considered the question of whether human beings are “wired for worship.”

The most important part of the conversation was in fact not conversational at all.  Dr. Kubie, whose lab focuses on the function of the hippocampus on spatial perception, gave a five minute lecture on the serotonergic system, responsible for the distribution of the chemical reward. Best known as the focus of a class of anti-depressants—SSRIs—serotonin was initially discovered to be a substance that induces powerful muscle contractions.  Only 1% of the body’s serotonin stores are located in the brain.  80% is found in the gut, and has been proven necessary for male mating behavior in the sea slug C. elegans (The Lesson in Love:  Go With Your Gut?).

It has become popular to link serotonin to an ever broadening spectrum of behavior.  After all, neurons in the Raphé nuclei in the brain stem (an evolutionarily ancient structure), where serotonin is released, project throughout the brain.  But it is a vastly complex network; it seems a long way from ten carbon, twelve hydrogen, two nitrogen, and one oxygen to a rabbi, a priest, and an imam walking into a bar.

Of course, though his stated aim is to embrace the phenomenon of religion, Dr. Tiger understands this.  The problem of “Why Religion?” is by nature philosophical and thus incessantly complicated by language and theory.  Science can never satisfactorily (by its own critical standards) explain religion, its discourse will merely replace another equally incomplete one.  There is no net epistemological gain, though that is not necessarily the point.  People struggle with religion, and a shared search for its meaning makes perfect sense. In the basement of the Rubin Museum, did not something religious take place?  There was serotonin, there was community (there was wine, there was classical music).  What I mean to say is this:  No one can adequately define Religion.  Is it the institutions?  Is it the impulse?  What are we studying?  What are we embracing?

There are no answers.  If you liked Dr. Tiger’s other books, I would recommend God’s Brain. That is, if you enjoy the exercise of pop-theory.  (You could, of course, try Dr. Kubie’s neurobiology class.  To each his own).

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A Celebration of Smell

[ 0 ] March 15, 2010

noseThe March 13 Brainwave event at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City—suggestively titled “What Does Ecstasy Smell Like?”—brought on stage the Columbia University neurobiologist Stuart Firestein and the elite perfumier Christophe Laudamiel, each an expert on our wonderful sense of smell.  Although asnomia is nothing to sneeze at, blindness and deafness have inclined clinical medicine towards the eye and the ear. But the fact remains that they are just one-third of six holes-in-the-head from which our brain, in its dark, wet box, receives information about the outside world.

Dr. Firestein of Columbia University, where he offers a course titled “SCNC 3920: Ignorance,” leads a research laboratory that uses the vertebrate olfactory neuron, which has been shown to regenerate, as a model to explore important questions.  As it turns out, flavor is sensed through the nose, despite the fact that we insist that we feel its sensation on the tongue.  This confusion may be the result of the proximity of the two corresponding cortical regions—the olfactory sensory cortex and the taste sensory cortex.

Mr. Laudamiel, who has been called “the enfant terrible of contemporary perfumery,” demonstrated a keen knowledge of neuroscience and chemistry.  The Frenchman once explained a process involving neurons that ended in “Voila.”  He made a scent called “Human Existence” for the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.  Mr. Laudamiel also collaborated on a “scent opera” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2009.  I learned a lot about perfumery from hearing Mr. Laudamiel speak.  Watch out for the new scent from The Beautiful Brain: Homo sapiens.

There are a few scientific reasons why smell, controlled by the olfactory system, is unique.  There are 350 olfactory receptors in the back of the nasal cavity.   These receptors actually interact with matter from the outside world.  (“A rose by any other name would smell like molecules.”)  From these neurons, information travels through only two steps—synaptic sites—before arriving at the deepest parts of the brain, including the amygdala and the entorhinal cortex.

Interestingly, the popular myth of the “pheremonal sense,” known as the vomeronasal system, does not seem to be active in adult human beings.  Located near the sinus, the vomeronasal organ contains a few hundred pseudogenes, defunct relatives of genes that cannot make proteins and therefore cannot be expressed in the cell.

So, we know that Ecstasy does not smell like pheromones.

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What Time Is It? Charlie Kaufman and Brian Greene in Dialogue

[ 4 ] March 9, 2010

Charlie Kaufman (left) and Brian Greene discuss the nature of time at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City as part of Brainwave 2010. (Photo: Michael Palma for the Rubin Museum)

Charlie Kaufman (left) and Brian Greene discuss the nature of time at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City as part of Brainwave 2010. (Photo: Michael Palma for the Rubin Museum)

INT.  PACKED AUDITORIUM—THE RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART (New York City)

CHARLIE KAUFMAN, middle-aged screenwriter, and BRIAN GREENE, middle-aged physicist, walk onto the stage.  They shake hands.  The audience applauds.  The two men are seated.  They will discourse about the nature of time.

TIM McHENRY (PROGRAM DIRECTOR EXTRAORDINAIRE)

When did time first appear in your thoughts?

For both men, it naturally follows from the idea of death.  Indeed, KAUFMAN and GREENE are like-minded, both deep and brilliant.  Most of the words (numerous like galaxies) are spoken by GREENE, to the rapt and eager attention of the audience.  After all, he is describing, with lucid explanations, fathomable analogies, and expressive hands, what seems to be a holy grail of human understanding: fundamental, objective truth about the universe.  “I am in awe of your knowledge,” admits KAUFMAN humbly.

KAUFMAN, at once funny and serious, asks intelligent and informed questions, demonstrating an impressive understanding of difficult concepts.  “You said it better,” GREENE grants once.  The display on-stage at the Rubin is one of gifted intellects, whose coming together is for the genuine benefit of the audience.  The following, from the March 6 Brainwave event, would be the key moments in the film:

QUESTION ONE:  WHAT IS TIME?

Mr. Greene defined time as: “the mechanism by which you can notice change.”  He suggested that it may be a derivative idea, an emergent property, not elemental to the first equations of physics.  The equations certainly do not distinguish between past and future.  In fact, all moments of time are in existence.  We can imagine an expanse of space before our eyes, but not time.  This is merely a limit of our representative imagination.  It is just as “real,” even “material,” as this computer, or the Pacific Ocean.

Why do we experience a sequence—a passage, a flow—of time?  Mr. Greene offers an evolutionary explanation.  Establishment of a now (including an imprinted past in the form of memory) distinct from a future leads to predicting and anticipating, planning and striving, brain-initiated functions that encourage acquisition of energy until the replication of DNA, and thus survival in nature.  Mr. Greene insists that there is no mathematical distinction between present and future.  There is no unique NOW.  (“And is that, is that what they’re thinking these days?” said Mr. Kaufman, mind blown, to a laugh).

Words ultimately fail here– although Mr. Kaufman’s, writer that he is, were often perfectly selected.  “Now is a function of a brain.  If there is no brain, I think there is no now.  It just is, whatever that means.”  (“Do you guys . . . smoke a lot of pot?” the novelist and Kaufman-collaborator Susan Orlean humorously asked during the question period).  Let it be known, too, that quantum physics complicates this picture.

QUESTION TWO:  HOW CAN WE KNOW?

Mr. Kaufman more than once pointed out the limitations of our brain, of its scientific method, its theories, its equations, and even math itself.  Mr. Greene pointed out that some believe that math exists independent of the human brain.  Some even believe that the world is a mathematical structure, and our reality is draped over it.  Mr. Greene’s own opinion has changed over the course of his career.

“This room is not this room, it’s our interpretation of the light waves,” reminds Mr. Kaufman.  This line of thought (“It’s all I’ve got,” revealed Mr. Kaufman, trying his hardest to do the duty of skepticism) amounts to the only valid caveat— subjectivity— to the accepted discoveries of physics.  But Mr. Kaufman said he believed that human beings can make objective progress in their understanding.  Mr. Greene shared his doubt that we can ever know everything.

QUESTION THREE:  WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?

The principles of quantum physics suggest that “nothing” is coaxed into what’s called a “quantum fluctuation,” producing positive energy that then evolved into the universe.  The “negative energy” perhaps evolved into “something else.”  This is simply a vague idea.  Question three remains the ultimate philosophical question.  Will any human being ever know the answer to this question?  (“Brian!?” Mr. Kaufman said, exasperated, to Mr. Greene).  Note: there may be multiple universes, each its own ineffable, immeasurable “something.”

QUESTION FOUR:  THE AWKWARD QUESTION

Namely: is there really such a thing as “free will?”  Nothing in the laws of physics points to free will, said Mr. Greene.  Therefore, like time, it is “a useful illusion.”

In the final line of the film, BRIAN GREENE says: “We are a bag of particles governed by the laws of physics.  And that’s it.”

Upcoming Brainwave events:

  • Saturday, March 13, 4:00 pm: What Does Ecstasy Smell Like?
    Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel + neurobiologist Stuart Firestein
    The famed creator of Elton John Black Candle and Ralph Lauren Polo Blue talks to the Columbia University neuroscientist about how our sense of smell is processed by the brain.
  • Sunday, March 21, 6:00 pm: Is There Life Out There?
    Rock musician Claire Evans + astrophysicist Fred C. Adams
    One half of the indie band Yacht addresses a fundamental question about the universe with the author of The Five Ages of the Universe.
  • Wednesday, March 24, 7:00 pm: What Makes Us Wise?
    Science journalist Stephen S. Hall + neuroscientist Andre Fenton
    The author of Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience deliberates what it is in our brains that makes us “wise” with a neuroscientist and a philosopher.
  • See the full list of events for more, and stay tuned to this site for ongoing coverage of the series.
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Debating the Neuroscience of Feng Shui

[ 4 ] March 1, 2010

Dr. John Zeisel and Steven Post onstage at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Dr. John Zeisel and Steven Post onstage at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Feng Shui Expert Steven Post + Neurosociologist Dr. John Zeisel at Brainwave 2010.

The winds are mild
The sun is warm
The water is clear
The trees are lush.
- Guo Pu, The Burial Book

It is no secret that our environment affects us.  But how should we design our surroundings?   The February 24 Brainwave event at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City featured two men who were dedicated to answering this question.  Steven Post, a feng shui expert, represented a tradition (Black Sect) that is open to change.  The neurosociologist Dr. John Zeisel presented work in a field called “neuroarchitecture.”  They engaged in a light and lively discussion, challenging each other and encouraging audience participation.

In Chinese, “feng shui” means “wind-water.”  The ancient tradition seeks to inspire that ineffable power of place.  Although it is called “the original natural science” in China, the truth is that feng shui is based on intuition and spiritual belief.  For example, in his explanation, Mr. Post referred to the “intention of a site” and “invisible beings.” He offered professional anecdotes that illustrated these concepts.  But this is not proof; people who hire feng shui consultants are more likely to experience its effects because they subconsciously want to fulfill their own expectations.  Any valuable experiment would have to be blind.  If people don’t know their surroundings have been arranged in a special way, will they still find more peace-of-mind?  To his credit, Mr. Post many times honored the “rigor and testability” of science and expressed a desire to apply scientific method to feng shui in order to validate or invalidate its ideas.  This willingness to learn and change is a rare intellectual trait.

Dr. Zeisel had a similarly progressive attitude.  Although he has collected clinical data—from his work with Alzheimer’s patients—he never dismissed the unproven claims of feng shui.  Instead of coveting a mystical harmony, Dr. Zeisel simply seeks to design an environment in which the brain can best function and develop.  A particularly interesting discovery has to do with the chiasmatic nuclei, which control our circadian clock.  Damage to these nuclei cause disturbances in temporal routine, such as waking up in the middle of the night or “sundowning” (at the end of the day, patients feel anxious and want to go out).  Studies have shown that if Alzheimer’s patients spend time outside every day, this particular function is normalized.  But although Dr. Zeisel did present empirical evidence, I felt that his inferences exceeded his data.  Dr. Zeisel failed to prove why putting a cafeteria in the front of an office building (rather than the back) would influence behavior.  Or change brain chemistry.  There are intuitive explanations that make sense, but they are ultimately no more reliable than those of feng shui.

Human intelligence affords extraordinary privileges with respect to the environment.  It is important to understand the interactive relationship between brain and world so that we can maximize our own potential.  More studies are needed to discover the neurological effects of place.  But events like Brainwave, bringing together different perspectives and ideas, are tremendously positive for the discourse.  They are the brainstorms of progress.

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GALLERY: Images from Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul

[ 1 ] February 8, 2010

In the nineteenth-century, pioneering investigators of the central nervous system had to compensate for primitive technology with extraordinary artistic talent.  These men produced drawings of their experimental slides in order to preserve the revelations therein.  Strange, complex, and utterly gorgeous, these figures are the inspiration for Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul (2010) by Javier DeFelipe, reviewed here.  The book, published by Oxford University Press, contains two-hundred and eighty-two one-of-a-kind images, including the ones seen below:

Click to Englarge

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