Human Connectome Project.

You should check out this NY Times article on the Human Connectome project.

Their goal is to run slice after minuscule slice under a powerful electron microscope, develop detailed pictures of the brain’s complex wiring and then stitch the images back together. In short, they want to build a full map of the mind.

The field, at a very nascent stage, is called connectomics, and the neuroscientists pursuing it compare their work to early efforts in genetics. What they are doing, these scientists say, is akin to trying to crack the human genome — only this time around, they want to find how memories, personality traits and skills are stored.

They are searching the neurobiological basis of all forms of stored information. That is a very difficult task, and will take many decades. Even when you have mapped all the connections, which seems to be the primary goal of the project, the interpretation of the findings is a big issue. How do you translate a bunch of connections back into information? That is the big obstacle. We know that your name is stored inside of your brain, and in a few decades we might know all of your connections. But connecting name with a set of connections is nearly impossible. And let's not forget: they analyse a dead brain, and not time slices of the same brain.

Nevertheless, it is very clear that memories are physically stored in the brain, that we have thousands and thousands of them, that the memories undergo changes, and that they spread from brain to brain.

Phenotype of memes

There are many definitions of memes, and it's all very confusing. Some define all thought processes as memes. Others define as memes those behaviours that are copied.

We define memes as communicable-via-language memories. This definition has the advantage that the meme is a physical entity, i.e. the memory stored in the brain. What are thoughts processes or copied behaviours? These are for us the phenotype of memes. Like with genes, where (part of) the body is the phenotype of specific genes. Memories in interaction with the rest of the body also create phenotypes. Thoughts are the products of long-term memory plus outside influences, biofeedback, and the interaction of previous thoughts. Also, behaviours that are copied are determined by memories: Without memory, no recurring behaviour.

We exclude non-communicable memory like motor code or sensory memory. They might spread to other spreads but not in a direct way, and we view them more like proto-memes.

Bigger brains for social animals

Here is an article that suggests that a link between the sociality of mammals and the size of their brains relative to body size.

Is this what happened to humans? Is it like Blackmore suggests that memes provide the environment to select for a bigger brain, and this bigger brain led to competition between memes, and these provided the environment to select for a bigger brain.

Copycat research suggest human universal

Check out this research by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli.

Children learn a great deal by imitating adults. A new study of Australian preschoolers and Kalahari Bushman children finds that a particular kind of imitation -- overimitation, in which a child copies everything an adult shows them, not just the steps that lead to some outcome -- appears to be a universal human activity, rather than something the children of middle-class parents pick up. The work helps shed light on how humans develop and transmit culture.

This research highlights the copycat abilities of humans. We as a species seems to be coded for copying behaviours. Might this be the crucial differences between us and other primates that acts as the starting basis for a memetic evolution? Maybe we have by evolutionary accident acquired a strong ability to copy behaviour blindly. The copying leads to a spread of learned behaviours stored within a brain to other brains. Useful behaviour are maintained, and other discarded. Some individuals might glue two behaviours into a new behaviour which is imitated again. Over ten thousands of years, imitation is genetically selected for, and so is gluing behaviour together. This might explain the emergence of language. And so on...

Technology drive human understanding

My writing goes too slow. I am still on the historical review on frameworks to describe humans. I can really just see the three intuitive ones: body-mind, biopsychosocial, and biobehaviouralcognitivesocial. They have been around for millenniums. The difference from the Ancient world to today is that we understand the details much better.
I also looked at why our last centuries have brought such progress. I was never aware of this, but new observational tools like telescope and microscope might all the difference. In the 17th century, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek pioneered the microscope as a scientific instrument and revolutionized the understanding on humans. Suddenly, he could look at the fine details of humans: see cells, blood cells, bacteria, sperms, and so on. I have a new hero that nobody has told me about! The Ancient people like the Greek and Roman medicine was unable to push ahead because they could not observed the micro world, and they could not observed the dead and living humans, but X-ray and other scanning technology now can.

A brief introduction to our framework

Here is an introduction to the framework for human behaviour and experience that we want to present in our book The Meme In Psychology:

A Brief Introduction to Four-System Framework (Weidig and Michaux, March 2010)

The human disciplines of psychology, medicine, biology and psychiatry describe and explain specific phenomena and propose treatments for disorders. But a common framework within which to study the totality and multi-dimensional aspects of human events and processes including behaviours, experiences, and other changes is missing. The two most prominent perspectives, the mind-body and the biopsychosocial framework, are intuitive but not concrete enough to be useful. We attribute their failure to deliver a good operationalizable framework to two inherent weaknesses: the incompatibility and overlap of concepts used. A good framework should divide the human world in non-overlapping areas of the same type. For example, the user-computer framework divides the world into the user and the computer: non-overlapping (either user or computer), and of the same type (both users and computers are physical objects).

Both body-mind and biopsychosocial framework fail this test. First, the mind is dependent on the body: How could there be a mind without a body? The body on the other hand is always in a physical state which is changing over time creating the basis for the mind. The mind also suggests a non-physical component, different in type and of a space filled with the dynamics of
mental events and processes. To conclude, the mind and the body are over-lapping and of different types. The biopsychosocial framework has similar conceptual issues. The biological system is the body which can be in a certain physical state and as well exhibits a dynamics of bodily changes. The psychological seems to overlap with the biological and cannot exist without. It's about behavioural and cognitive processes and not physical states but is made out of them. And the social is dependent on the social environment but at the same time you need the psychology to act as a social being. Again, the three components are not independent systems, but are overlapping and of different types.

A good framework must consist of independent systems of the same type. Therefore, we derive our framework honouring two principles. First, we strictly distinguish physical states at a given moment in time from processes of change of physical states like a behaviour occurring over a period of time. Second, we systematically divide up the world in meaningful ways in order to avoid overlap of systems. Physically represented systems can be easily split up, but not processes: how do you divide up different emotional states?

We start with the widely accepted world view of classical physics. Our world consists of billions of atoms interacting with each other. At a given moment in time, our world is in a certain physical state: each atom has a physical state. If we let the clock run, the world undergoes changes of physical states. Humans group changes from their environment into single processes: for example the macroscopic process is ‘an apple falling’ or the falling behaviour of an apple, but microscopically looks like billions of atoms making up a unit, the apple, changing their position relative to the atoms making up the ground.

In a first step, we identify the organism (the human being in our case) as our focus of study, and therefore we divide up the physical world into what makes up that organism and the surrounding environment. Of course, you can always contest the details and practicalities. Is the air in the lungs a part of the body or is it only the air that has passed into the blood stream? What about the bacteria in your stomach or your skin? The viruses in your blood stream? For all practical purposes, the questions are not relevant in the same way that you can never ever define London exactly, but the fuzzy definition is good enough for everyone to use the concept in daily life. Thus, we have identified two non-overlapping systems: the organism and the environment. Both systems are interacting with each other and with themselves. A change within the organism might induce a change in the environment or not. For example, the thought to grab a glass will make the arm move thereby changing the immediate environment like the glass on the table. Or, a dream might re-consolidate memory without an immediate impact on the environment. And a change in the environment might have no direct impact on the organism like a sarcastic smile behind your back but a punch in your face will. At a given moment the two systems are in a certain physical state and processes of changes will alter these states.

In a second step, we focus on the key system active in the interaction of the organism with its environment: the information physically stored within the organism. And, we separate out this key system from the organism. The information stored is part of the body in the same sense that the information used by your computer is physically stored in its hardware. The memory part of the hardware is at the same time ordinary hardware and information. The special programmable property of the memory hardware is special and has an effect beyond ordinary hardware because its structure encodes the information stored within and used somewhere else. We argue that the hardware-information analogy holds for the human brain where neural networks, e.g. part of the body, act as hardware holding information via changes in synapse connection, in a first order approximation. Imagine a friend approaches on the other side of the street. Your environment changes in the sense that your friend gets into your visual field. Your body processes the visual stimuli, identifies a face, recognises your friend’s face based on stored information in facial memory, finds the appropriate response based on stored information on how to act in a specific social situation, and fires off the learned motor sequence to wave your right hand. Without information stored, you would not have reacted in a similar way. Without information stored, an organism is incapable of adapting to its environment. The physically stored information of your friend's face and your social response has been formed by your body during previous interactions with the environment, an environment where your friend had been present and the social greeting by hand expressed. To summarise, a human consists of three interacting systems: the environment, the body, and the information sorted within your body. All three systems are in a certain physical state at a given moment in time, e.g. the memory of your friend’s face.

In a third step, we divide up the information stored within the body. There are many different ways on how to classify information stored. The research field of memory is very complex and on-going. Our classification rests on the desire to carve out the importance of culture, ideation, transmitting abstract concepts and social interaction with other humans through language. The information absorbed from or given to our culture is very much different from information our body has stored by learning processes also found in animals and basically confined to its own body. Cultural information is easily transmittable beyond the body and a product of our cognitive processes. We identify cultural information with the semantic declarative memory system, because everything that can be put in language is easily communicable to other brains. All other types of information, be it sensory memory like facial memory and your childhood playground, motor memory like juggling, or associations by classical conditioning, cannot be communicated directly and are confined to the human brain within which it is stored. For example, the concept of juggling is communicable by language easily understood without having to learn to juggle. But the motor code of juggling cannot be transmitted by language and must be learned by the body through experience. The motor code can only be transferred to another brain if it is overtly expressed in juggling behaviour or formulated into language allowing another human to re-create by imitating rules or by inspiration. So we have two types of information. We think of information physically stored as discrete units of information. We equate cultural information with the concept of a meme as the unit of cultural evolution as proposed by Dawkins. By consequence, we view the cultural content in our brain as a list of memes coming from the outside or generated by the brain through ideation and physically stored as semantic memory in the brain. Please note that we only assume that memes are a good first order approximation to describing cultural content, and do not require the theory of memes as replicators determining or shaping cultural evolution or the evolution of the human brain. We also label the other type information for convenience using the shortcut A.M.Es standing for Associations, Motor code, and Episodes. To summarise, we have four different systems interacting: the environment, the body, the memes, and the ames. Note that the split into memes and ames fits remarkably well with behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy. Behavioural therapy changes ames by direct learning and cognitive therapy changes memes by own thought processes and inspiration from the social environment like the therapist.

After the derivation of the four system framework, let us highlight a few important points:

First, the framework is universally applicable to all human phenomena, because we have derived the framework in a systematic way to avoid overlap and sticking to in principle physically identifiable states. So every phenomena described by any human discipline in their own terminology must also be describable as changes in the framework and explainable by an interaction or self-interaction of the four systems.

Second, we exclusively focus on the physical states of these four systems. At each moment in time, we can point with the finger to the systems. The memes and ames are physically represented in the brain, the exact way on how is an open debate but whether they are is not.

Third, the four systems are undergoing changes all the time within themselves and in interaction with the other systems. Those changes can be microscopic like a local degradation of nerve cells or macroscopic collective changes like the moving of an arm. Humans categorise the world and label a set of correlated changes as categories like overt behaviours, experiences, or physical changes. It is important to note that all these changes are just changes in the physical state.

Fourth, the human system consists of these four systems and our behaviour is determined by these four systems. If you had changed a relevant state of one of the four systems, you would have seen a different behaviour. Think of changing or erasing the information of your friend’s face or destroying the face recognition area of the body, and you change your behaviour.

Fifth, our framework is not a scientific theory with clear falsifiable statements like: Is facial memory stored in the amygdale? Are thought processes happening in the cerebellum? We propose a perspective on how to view humans, and divide up the human world in reasonable ways that are consistent with current scientific understanding. The test of the framework is its usefulness and not an experimental test. We are not creating new scientific theory but rather trying to simplify the debate, in the same way that the heliocentric worldview is not a new scientific theory like the theory of gravity but the frame of reference that allows the simplest description of planetary orbits: ellipses.

Sixth, the framework is not exclusive to humans. However, other life forms might have fewer systems. For example, a stone is just a physical system: a physical object. A cell has two systems, a body in an environment, but does not store information within itself based on the interaction with its environment. An animal has three systems, and a higher developed animal like apes might have four, but the fourth is underdeveloped because stored information cannot be communicable easily via language and its ideation is more rudimentary.

Seventh, we derived a four-system framework, but our derivation method could result in different frameworks depending on the use. For example, the ames could be further separated out into the different types of memories stored within different brain systems. Or the body could be further divided into nervous system including the brain and the associated body.

Eighth, each human being has the same structure, but the states of the four systems might be very different. Thereby, the framework represents the universal nature of humans while at the same time recognizing the very individual nature. For example, every human has ten thousands of memes stored and everyone has a unique list. Humans from the same culture will of course share more memes.

The ultimate test of a framework is its usability. We see many benefits and a vast number of applications, because the framework is universally applicable and therefore provides a common framework for all human disciplines to debate human phenomena. We highlight three examples.

First, our framework can provide a common language. Let us consider a specific case in psychotherapy. Cognitive therapy emphasises changing NATs or negative automatic thoughts. A teenager who stutters might think “I will never get a girlfriend due to my stuttering” when approaching girls, thereby increasing his handicap above a purely functional one. What is the correspondence in our perspective? Thoughts and thinking are bodily processes, changes of body states. Thought processes get input from the information system, the memes stored within the body. The following memes are responsible: “I am stuttering” and “People with handicaps don’t have girlfriend”. These memes, or cognitive beliefs, are at the core of the NATs. A solution might involve changing the meme to “People with handicaps have girlfriends (but might be a bit harder)” or add a new meme “My friend also stutters and has a girlfriend.” Cognitive therapy effectively changes the meme content of the brain and only by consequence the thoughts. You don’t change people’s thoughts, but people’s stored beliefs. Psychoanalysis can also be re-formulated within the framework. Psychoanalysis also works on stored beliefs, or memes, but focuses on those that influence our behaviours and experiences without our full awareness. One technique, the analysis of transference, helps identify unresolved conflicts or unfulfilled desires. The client might express a meme “I cannot accept authority” by coming late to a therapy session, while suppressing the meme at the work place by another one “If I am not on time, I will be fired”. Only the protective setting of therapy gives him the opportunity or force to rebel, or put in our words: the meme has the freedom to be expressed. The therapeutic process is effectively an exploration of the memes stored within us, and many driving memes have been stored since our early childhood. The emphasis seems to be more on exploring and understanding the source of crucial memes rather than changing them in a targeted way as in cognitive therapy. Other forms of therapy might also indirectly influence psychotherapy within the framework. Meditation and physical activity have a detectable impact on your body including brain processes. A better physical state of your body might allow you to better cope with distress and anxiety during cognitive therapy and psychoanalysis, and progress faster.

Second, the framework allows a census of an individual’s state with respect to a relevant area of interest. Which elements of the environment and the body, and which memes and ames are relevant? Understanding disorders might be the focus: Which states are contributing to disordered behaviours? A violent offender might have violent peers and a broken family structure as environment, muscle power and reduced frontal cortex control as body, “I win all fights” and “I am the boss” as memes, and ames like an association of a verbal attack to a threat, fighting motor skills and episodes of past victories. Another violent offender might have different elements in the four systems that determine his violent behaviour. And some elements might be shared by most. Here is another example: the impact of life events like the death of a partner. How does such an event affect the grieving partner? For example, the environment now has a grave to be cared for, the body might have a low level of serotonin, “I will not marry again as this is betrayal” as a meme, and an association to a picture of the deceased as an ame. Different people would have different elements contributing towards typical behaviour of grieving people. The exercise can be made for any human activity or event. You can write down what the ideal sportsmen, politician, school child or employee should be like. Which memes? Which ames? Which environment? Which body is best? Then, you can use the framework for personal development, and write down elements, that you want to change. The framework is operationisable to the individual’s nature and provides a structure within which to structure ones observations and thoughts.

Third, the framework is able to construct disorder-related models. Model building in human disciplines has focused on specific disorders like depression, and diagrams of the different influences have been produced for each disorder. Our framework provides a consistent way to construct them. The procedure is straightforward: collect the states from affected humans and find out which states are common in affected humans but not in controls. Let us re-visit the violent offender example. For example, 50 of them might have a broken family and 50 others not. So 50% have a broken family element in their environment system. 90 of them might have a meme “I have to impose my will at all costs” and 10 don’t. So 90% have this meme. So practitioners could build up the typical states for people of a specific disorder, and propose solutions for each element.

Why The Holy Meme?

I am currently working on a book project called The Meme in Psychology where we apply the meme concept to psychology and specifically to the biopsychosocial model. So starting this blog comes naturally. I have always been interested in memes as a new replicator ever since Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has floated the idea, and Blackmore's The Meme Machine has inspired me with a new way of looking at us.

The Holy Meme is about pushing the meme concept towards a science, not just of culture and cultural evolution, but also into psychology and for use in society. If memes are what they claim to be, a good description of cultural evolution, they must also play a significant role in psychology. And real-life application must result, too.

What can I contribute? First of all, I am an all-around-scientist with a PhD in computational theoretical particle physics (computer, modeling and quantitative skills), professional experience in finance, economics and accounting (dealing with complex systems), and literate in neuroscience and genetics with lots of background reading of the Dawkins and Spinkers, Open university courses in biological psychology, and many good debates with neuroscientists. Second, I already have a blog called TheStutteringBrain where I debate issues surrounding stuttering, mostly brain imaging, pharmacology, genetics, and treatment. My specialty is in detecting bad and flawed research, much to the chagrin of some pompous university professors and clinicians.

And, there is no blog on memes! And to be honest, the whole project seems to be slowing down. Not much happened after the conference organized by Robert Aunger, apart from a few not that good books. The Journal of Memetics died a silent death. Also, Sue Blackmore has defected from memes to plunge into her consciousness (with an admittedly brilliant introductory book on consciousness), a Zen book and a new replicator, the teme. And Richard Dawkins never really took up his custodial duty to his brain child.

I am open to suggestions and allow guest blogging.