Psych-Out

Tarot. Astrology. Mind-reading. Channeling. Make these claims to a magician, and be prepared to dodge his bite. In the magician’s world, psychics are at worst liars, cheats, and swindlers who prey on people’s pain. At best, they are self-deceived charlatans — highly intuitive, perhaps –but gullible to their own trickery. (Watch accompanying videos as much for their entertainment value.)

Illusionist Chriss Angel takes on paranormalist James Callahan. (See James Callahan’s full performance by pressing here.)

The fight is as bitter as that between mongoose and cobra. If you’re a psychic in the company of a magician be prepared for the challenge – “dare to show me your psychic gift and I’ll dare to expose the man behind your curtain.” From Houdini’s challenge to famed spiritualist Mina Crandon, to the Amazing Randi dogging psychic healer Doris Collins. Through misdirection, switching, hypnosis, cold reading, and other forms of trickery, contemporary magicians and illusionists such as Penn & Teller, Chriss Angel, David Blaine, and Derren Brown can make a skeptic out of the most die-hard believer.

Mentalist Derren Brown demonstrates “cold reading” technique (click twice for youtube video)

We are most vulnerable when we are in pain. We will turn anywhere for comfort. Sometimes in spite of ourselves, we will choose to believe the comforting wish, over a crueler truth. The shadow side to our capacity to imagine is that we are prey to illusions and unsubstantiated beliefs. A case can be made, albeit an arguable one, that it’s these very illusions that help us endure through troubled, uncertain times, and sometimes to keep us pushing forward when the odds are clearly against us.

David Blaine turns coffee to money. Better than water to wine?

What we perceive about the world doesn’t have to be accurate, only “good enough.” Good enough so we can feed ourselves, protect ourselves, and mate. Throughout two million years of evolutionary history, survival depended on quick judgments. We sacrificed accuracy for reactions that increased the odds we’d not only save our own skins, but also feel better inside our skins when times were hard, cold, and cruel. It’s better to be wrong and safe, mated, fed, certain, and un-alone, than to strive for accuracy and end up dead.

rotating snake illusion

Sight is powerful to belief, even if what we see isn’t exactly what’s before us. (See some interesting optical illusions.) We don’t always see what’s there, but what we expect to see. Or, we tell ourselves a good story that confirms what we most hope, or most fear.

Moreover, we are not prone to being skeptics about our own beliefs. We are given to snap judgments. We are bad at estimating probabilities. We fail to understand that mysterious coincidences are far more likely than we want to believe. (Did you know that in a room or office of 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance that two of those people will share the same birthday?) We look only to confirm that which we want to believe, not seek the evidence against. One of the hardest things in the world for our minds to do is to look for information that disproves the stories and beliefs from which we draw comfort and strength.

James Randi and psychic Maureen Flynn

The psychic upholds our need for comfort in the thought that there’s a place beyond this world and, indeed, we are not alone. The magician will bring doubt to our beliefs in ghosts, spirits, reading the future in the stars, and then show you the trick — “Anything they can do, I can do and better.” Theirs is a complex, illusory reality filled with trickery, misdirection, and disguises. “Face it,” they seem to say, “you are on your own.”

Penn & Teller’s 7 basic principles of magic

The magician’s challenge is as much toward you and me. Be skeptical of what you see. Look for the man behind the curtain. If you see hoof prints think first of horses, even if you’ve come to believe that unicorns do, in fact, exist. (1)

Astrology? Watch at your own risk. (Click twice for youtube video)
__________________________________________________

1) Cognitive scientists and visual neuroscientists are now utilizing magicians and their tricks to study such phenomena as visual tracking, attention, and awareness. Stephen Macknik, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, and Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience, are working with magicians James Randi (The Amazing Randi), Teller (of Penn & Teller), Apollo Robbins, Mac King and John Thomson (The Great Tomsoni).

When was the last time you felt that zing in your step? Sitting in front of a TV devouring a bag of chips? Or, when challenging your strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, or capacity to build or create. It’s in our wiring to run, to lift, to hike, to climb, and work with our hands. Motion thrills us. We can become drenched in a glow of pleasure and satisfaction when we solve complex problems with our bodies.

From our earliest beginnings, we have scavenged, foraged, hunted, and migrated. We’ve populated every climate and terrain — a feat no other species can claim. For tens of thousands of years we beat unfathomable odds — defeating ice, torential rains, droughts, predators, mountain ranges, and raging waterways. How? By flaking stones, hollowing tree trunks, throwing spears, cutting branches, gathering fruits, mending hides, tying knots, and building fires.

We were groomed by natural selection and the forces of nature not only to survive, but to thrive in lands of scarcity, unpredictability, and danger. 2 million years of it. We’ve populated lands as varied as the savanna’s of Africa, the deserts of Arabia, the rain forests of Indochina, the frozen arctic ice scapes of Siberia and Alaska, the vast open plains of the Americas.

Today, however, we can spend months with our only physical challenge being a couple dozen daily walks to and from our refrigerators, cars, and computer screens. We can migrate from Detroit to Hong Kong in a comfortable 72 degrees, never to sweat, freeze, or feel a single raindrop moisten our skin. No one wants to turn back the time and return to the hardship and strife of our ancestors. Yet, has something been lost to us living in a world so stripped of physical challenge?

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert has theorized that what we’ve gained in convenience we may have lost in activities that boost psychological resilience. Our brain’s reward circuitry exhibits far more activity when we expend effort to obtain a reward, than when there’s no expenditure of effort at all. Both physical and mental effort strengthens our brain’s reward-pleasure circuitry. Although we crave leisure, we are truly happier when engaging complex challenges.

Our brain’s pleasure/reward circuitry is dependent upon a neurotransmitter called dopamine and its corresponding dopamine receptors. When we exert ourselves in anticipation of that sought-after reward, happy dopamine pours into the system. This neuro-activity is what brings about that feeling of self-satisfaction. When we live a life that requires less and less physical effort, our dopaminergic system shrinks. Our reward circuitry fires less often and with less zing, perhaps making us more prone to depression, anxiety, and day-to-day numbness

You want to give your life a boost? Seek out activities that challenge and engage both your mind and body. Rock climb. Canoe. Garden. Take up pottery, tennis, woodworking, or slight-of-hand magic. Buy a motorcycle and let the wind blow across your face. Baby, we were born to run.

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

A lion smells a zebra. A songbird hears a sweet-to-his-ears response in some distant tree. You eye your neighbor’s new car. It’s that moment before the chase when the brain’s pleasure centers become awash in it’s favorite neurotransmitter – dopamine.

Our greatest pleasure seems to come in that moment before chasing that meal, mate, or brand new car. That’s when the burst of our natural pleasure chemical peaks. The reward itself? From the standpoint of dopamine, it’s little more than an afterthought.

Capture is sweet. Anticipation is sweeter, still. It’s a time-honored evolutionary strategy wired deep inside our nervous systems. When our pleasures were scarce, and the dangers were many, it was a strategy that helped us do the things we needed to do to survive. The state of anticipation revs up that much needed internal imperative to seek, to chase, to get up and make it happen – lions, tigers, and bears be damned! It’s what we call motivation.

The psychological term for this moment is the “appetitive stage.” It’s the time when expectation is tweaked and our appetite is whetted. When that burst of dopamine is released, pleasure surges so we actually get up and do the work to obtain what it is we need. The big cat perks its ears, lifts its nose to the wind. He’s gearing up to make his move.

Anticipation starts in our senses. A sight. A sound. A smell. It gets its boost at the cingulate gyrus. This ridge of cerebral cortex receives information from the eyes, ears, and nose. It then sends a message to the basal ganglia, which guides movement, and to the brainstem that stimulates our states of arousal. For we humans, this neuro-electro-chemical chain reaction can also start from a mere thought, fantasy, or idea. If the information is the right kind, we get an urge.

The nucleus accumbens is a closely connected brain area critical to our experience of pleasure and reward. It’s proximity to the brain’s motor system (the striatum) and the limbic system make it a critical intersect between emotion and action. We feel want. We anticipate reward. Pleasure starts to surge. Weight is given to whatever object we’re geared to seek, and thence it tugs and pulls at our attention. This nifty little system determines what’s worth pursuing. It’s a system that keeps us seeking. Keeps us working for that reward. (1)

You want to really light up pleasure’s Christmas tree? Add uncertainty to whether or not you’ll snag that zebra, mate, or brand new car. It’s why intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful of motivators. Will I get it, or will I not? Does he love me, or does he not? If you think you have a good chance, but you’re not sure, anticipation tops out in an exquisite burst of pleasure. Odds are it will be hard to stop yourself from doing something to get that answer, or seek that reward.

Beware that tweak of disappointment after the reward is seized. It may not be because the object desired is less desirable, but the contrasting withdrawal of dopamine between anticipation and capture. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Carly Simon, Anticipation

_____________________________________

(1) There’s increasing evidence that many addicts, especially cocaine addicts, develop a deficit in their pleasure-reward system. Some drugs wreak havoc on the dopamine receptors in the nucleaus accumbens. Often, such addicts experience low levels of motivation and very little of the internal reward buzz that keeps most of us engaged in those smaller, yet necessary, life moments.

How do most people die when lost in the wilds? They die of shame. (1) These are the thoughts spoken by Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) in the movie The Edge. He and Robert Green (Alec Baldwin) are lost in the Alaskan wilderness – on their tracks, a man-eating bear. (For scene from the movie, see video below.)

Charles: Yeah, see, they die of shame. “What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?” And so they sit there and they…die…because they didn’t do the one thing that would save their lives.

Robert: And what is that, Charles?

Charles: Thinking.

Silvan Tomkins writes, “… shame strikes deepest into the heart of man…. shame is felt as inner torment, a sickness of the soul…the humiliated one feels himself naked, defeated, alienated, lacking in dignity and worth.”(2) Shame interferes with our capacity to think. Shame keeps us from acting decisively on our own behalf.

Shame is embedded in what can seem an uncontrollable physiological response, possibly akin to gestures of submission we see throughout the animal world. Lowered gaze. Cowering. Playing dead. Hiding. Making one’s body smaller and less threatening. (3) For human’s, shaming is arguably one of the oldest forms of social control.

Humans evolved in a mosaic of hostile environments. Group living was crucial to our survival. Greater numbers brought safety, but also a need for greater cooperation and social organization. We hunted in groups. We collected food in groups. Social cohesion radically changed humans from scavengers and opportunistic hunters into super-predators that could hunt almost any animal on earth.

Shaming was one way of ensuring cooperation. It could protect scarce resources from cheaters and non-cooperators by making them pay dearly through evoking feeling alone. (4) To be shamed, one has to be able to feel shame. This feeling is rooted deeply in our neurophysiology as well as in our own evolutionary history.

When shamed we are struck by an urge to withdraw toward life’s margins. We go into hiding. Today, we’re less likely to be shunned to the outskirts of a village or tribe. Instead, we hide into ourselves. We don’t speak. We don’t show up. We hide our faces inside masks and disguises.

Often, we are ashamed of shame itself. We deny carrying such a feeling. Shame? Me? Still, denial or not, it chases us into dozens of daily little deaths. We fail to go to the doctor – our symptoms shame us. We fail to go to the gym – our bodies shame us. We fail to raise our hand and ask that question – our lack of knowing that one thing shames us. We avoid that crucial discussion with partner or spouse. We fail to take that next step. We give in; stop trying. Shame stops thought. It diverts action. It absorbs us into an unsettling vortex. When shamed we don’t ask, “what do I need to do now?” or “what does this situation require of me?”, but instead, “where do I hide?”

Shame is an emotion always in hiding from itself.

We all get lost in the wilds of our own lives — however small or large those wilds be. Refuse to slink off because of some little whisper of shame. Face the bear that stalks you. Step up. Step out. Think. Then, go get it.

_________________________

1) Survival expert John Wiseman wrote, “When facing a disaster it is easy to let yourself go, to collapse and be consumed in self-pity,” he writes. “But it is no use giving up or burying your head in the sand and hoping that this is a bad dream that will soon pass.”
2) Nathanson, D. ed. The Many Faces of Shame. New York: The Guildford Press, 1987.
3) When a male lion is defeated by an intruding male lion, he is forced out of the territory. In essence, he must “leave his pride.”
4) Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & C., Inc, 1997. (p. 404)

Your voice is your music. It has tone. Rhythm. Tempo. Pitch. It swings high. It swells deep. You soften it. Shrill it. Lilt it. Bark it. It’s hoarse. Breathy. It’s a lullaby. A Chopin Nocturne. Gangsta rap. It croons. Screeches. Chirps. Grunts. Eavesdrop on lovers newly in love. It’s not what they say, but how their tones caress the ears. Lovers coo like morning doves. If their love dries, their tones no longer soothe but strike in abrupt screeches and barks.

Nalini Ambady (1) found that we can accurately guess if a surgeon has been sued having no other information than hearing the tone in his voice. Marital researcher John Gottman can predict the prospects of a couple’s marriage after hearing but a few seconds of their conversation. If contempt rings in their tones, lawyers may be soon hawking their skies. (2)

Recent research has suggested our sensory-emotional system responds 70% to voice tone, 20% to body language, and 10% to the actual words spoken. (3) You want to be a dazzling flirt? Vary the pitch, rhythm and tone in your voice. You’ll create quivers of pleasure in the listener’s ear.

Speech is patterned sound. Patterned sound is music. Both music and human speech strike deep limbic (emotional-response) structures in our brain. Far more than the actual words spoken, the musical intonations in our voices help us and others identify crucial information about the emotional temperature of you and me. Angry. Distressed. Lusty. Threatening. Yearning.

All mammalian sounds are blends of growls, barks, and whines. These sounds hold crucial emotional signals for survival, mating (4) and just getting along. Think of how you and your pooch get your messages across. Babies sing their contentment or distress long before they can utter a first word. Human speech broke free through our evolved capacity to intricately shape these basic sounds.

Both speech and music show hemispheric dominance. In non-musicians(5), the right brain is dominant for the appreciation of melody and harmony. This hemisphere also plays a role in the musical as well as emotional properties of speech, itself. Damage to the right temporal-lobe language areas can cause a condition called aprosodia. (6) These patients speak in flat, monotone voices and miss the “feeling” content in conversation. Try to imagine speech without its musical intonations.

Musical tones can activate the brain’s pleasure/reward centers by increasing the release of dopamine. The same can be said of a lover’s cooing. Dr. Pietro A Modesti found that people with high blood pressure who listened to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music for one month for 30 minutes a day had significant reductions in their systolic blood pressure.(7) When trying to soothe the distress of someone you love, instinctively your voice will soften and thrum.

Yet, as sweet, cooing sounds stimulate our pleasure/reward centers, harsh discordant sounds awaken signals of distress. Once awakened, fight or flight takes hold. Think of your last argument. At some point, the actual words spoken lost all meaning. Your duet disintegrated into a discordant battle of tone against tone. Next time you want to get a point across, think of your voice as your music. Does it strike like a screech or battle cry? Or, does it sing in soothing, inviting tones?

______________________

1) Ambady, Nalini et al. “Surgeons’ Tone of Voice: a Clue to Malpractice History,” Surgery 132, no. 1 (2002): 5-9.
2) Gladwell, Malcom. Blink. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2005.
3) I have yet to find the actual research that suggests this finding. I have years of anecdotal evidence from my clinical practice that confirms its basic truth.
4) Darwin, in The Descent of Man wrote, “I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. Thus musical tones became firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable or feeling, and are consequently used instinctively…”
5) Dr. Jeanette Norden, professor of Neuroscience at Vanderbilt, suggests that in musicians, the loss of musical ability may occur from damage to “language” areas in the brain (Wernicke’s area 22)
6) From Greek a- without + prosoidia a song set to music, from pros toward + oide song + ia indicating a condition or quality. This condition is sometimes linked to amusia, where such individuals show a loss of the ability to recognize musical tones or rhythms.
7) “Music can reduce blood pressure depending on tempo.” Medscape Today and WebMD.

You gaze into his or her eyes. Your breathing deepens. Your pupils dilate. Your ribcage can’t hold back the drumming of your heart. You lean close. His or her breath warms your lips. You’ve crossed the threshold. There’s no turning back. Reason slides into retreat. What’s left but to surrender. Casanova proclaimed, “I don’t conquer, I submit.”

What’s in a kiss? The thinnest layers of skin. Moreover, the lips, together with the tongue, enjoy more sensory neurons per square centimeter than anywhere else on the body. Those neurons trigger an intoxicating cocktail of densely packed sensation. To the brain, sensation is information – texture, temperature, taste, smell. Who is this man? Who is this woman?

If you were to scan the brains of two lovers gazing into each other’s eyes you’d find a flurry of neuronal firing in the right ventral tegmental area and the right caudate nucleus. These areas are central to the brain’s reward centers — the same centers jacked up by cocaine. Add a kiss? Love is the drug, indeed.

Love is the Drug, Roxy Music

Evolutionary psychologist Gordon G. Gallup has theorized that kissing conveys subconscious information about a prospective mate’s genetic compatibility. (1) This information passes beneath our awareness through the tactile (touch) and olfactory (smell) sensory systems. Now here’s where evolutionary theorists often step onto thin ice, even ones who should know better. And here’s where throughout human history bazillions of the love struck have fallen into heartbreak’s abyss. Genetic compatibility doesn’t insure a great partner any more than does great kissing.

Genes don’t “care” whether that man or woman you’re smooching will be that hall-of- fame mate or not. Genes are out to replicate themselves. The information gathered doesn’t have to be accurate, just good enough to get that job done. Our choices are always a gamble. Chance always lurks about life’s table. Our senses help us sort the odds. If his kiss is soft, wet, and passionate, maybe it shows he’s invested enough to stick around. Maybe. If her mouth melts and she slides her tongue against yours, maybe she’ll be yours. Maybe. We have to base our guesses on something. What’s closer to the scan of our senses than a kiss?

It may be, instead, that the information our brain tracks in those devouring lips helps us weed out the genetic misfits. It’s a more efficient evolutionarily strategy to let us in on what to avoid, than to show us what we are going for. Bad smell, disgusting taste, rough and nervously tight lips. (Evolutionarily, a high probability sign of poor health, weak temperament, and unfavorable genes.) It may be hard to be certain if he or she is that forever mate with great genes, but we certainly will tingle with delight over that good kisser, and shove ourselves off from the bad. For better and worse, for richer and poorer, and sometimes even in spite of all reason, most of us find ourselves playing the odds in favor of that pair of luscious, tasty, simmering lips.

___________________________________

(1) Walter, Chip. “Affairs of the Lips,” Scientific American Mind Vol. 19, No. 1 (2008): 24-29.