The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

by John Coates

  3 swings between euphoria and fear Greenspan, A. We Will Never Have a Perfect Model of Risk. Financial Times 17 March 2008.

  CHAPTER 1: THE BIOLOGY OF A MARKET BUBBLE

  1 morbid fear of unemployment Caroline Bird (1966) The Invisible Scar. New York: D. McKay Co.

  2 ‘Masters of the Universe’ Tom Wolfe (1987) The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The other expression that aptly caught the attitude of star bankers was ‘big swinging dick’, coined by Michael Lewis (1990) Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. New York: Penguin.

  3 disorder of the possession of power … with minimal constraint on the leader Owen, D., Davidson, J. (2009) Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years. Brain 132, 1407–1410. Owen develops this theme in a fascinating book, David Owen (2008) In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years. London: Methuen.

  4 Yale economist Robert Shiller Robert Shiller (2005) Irrational Exuberance 2nd ed. Princeton University Press.

  5 catastrophic economic and political consequences Randolph M. Nesse (2000) Is the market on Prozac? The Third Culture.

  6 renowned professor at Rockefeller For a review of the earliest work done on steroid receptors in the brain, see B.S. McEwen, P.G. Davis, B. Parsons and D.W. Pfaff (1979) The Brain as a Target for Steroid Hormone Action. Annual Review of Neuroscience 2, 65–112.

  7 New York Times Magazine in April 2000 Andrew Sullivan, The He Hormone. New York Times Magazine 2 April 2000.

  8 ghost in the machine, watching and giving orders The phrase ‘ghost in the machine’ was in fact coined by the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle when discussing Cartesian dualism in his book The Concept of Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1949).

  9 behavioural economics See for example Richard Thaler (1994) Winner’s Curse. Princeton University Press. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky (1982) Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hersh Shefrin (1999) Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

  10 we think with our body Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

  11 economics and the natural sciences beginning to merge A process the Harvard biologist Edward Wilson has termed ‘consilience’. Wilson (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. London: Little, Brown. Wilson has been criticised for pushing what some have called a Darwinian fundamentalism, a belief that all behavioural explanation will one day be reduced to biological substrates. For a criticism of Wilson see Fodor, Jerry (1998) ‘Look!’, London Review of Books Vol. 20, No. 21. I do not have a clear view on this debate, but would reiterate my earlier comment that the physiological systems that affect risk-taking act more like lobby groups, pressuring us into certain behaviour, yet do not guarantee we will comply. We retain choice to overrule their pressures.

  12 no mind–body split In the Phaedo, 65, Plato had claimed that thought is best conducted in the absence of bodily influences. In De Anima, 1.ii, Aristotle on the other hand argued: ‘the soul seems unable to have anything done to it, or to do anything, without the body; this is so, for instance, with regard to feeling anger, confidence, or desire, and with sensation in general. What seems most likely to be peculiar to the soul is thought; but, if even this is a kind of imagination, or at least does not occur without imagination, then not even it can occur independently of the body.’ The Philosophy of Aristotle, ed. Renford Bambrough, trans. A Wardman & J. Creed. Mentor Books, 1963.

  CHAPTER 2: THINKING WITH YOUR BODY

  1 Evolutionary biologists … heat exhaustion This theory is described by, among others, Fred H. Previc (1999) Dopamine and the Origins of Human Intelligence. Brain and Cognition 41, 299–350.

  2 tunic-like body Wolpert qualifies his story by pointing out that the adult tunicate retains the rudiments of an autonomic nervous system. See Mackie, G., Burighel, P. (2005) The nervous system in adult tunicates: current research directions. Canadian Journal of Zoology 83, 151–183. Meinertzhagen, I., Okamura, Y. (2001) The larval ascidian nervous system: the chordate brain from its small beginnings. Trends in Neurosciences 24, 401–410.

  3 you do not need a brain See for example Wolpert, D., Ghahramani, Z., Flanagan, J. (2001) Perspectives and problems in motor learning. Trends in Cognitive Science 5, 487–494; and Wolpert, D. (2007) Probabilistic models in human sensorimotor control. Human Movement Science 26, 511–524.

  4 a mind on the hoof Andy Clark (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. See as well Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee (2007) The Body Has a Mind of its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Anything Better. New York: Random House. For a review of issues in embodied cognition see, Wilson, M. (2002) Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9, 625–636.

  5 no one has yet figured out how we do it Stephen Pinker (1999) How the Mind Works. New York: Norton. pp. 4–11.

  6 dexterity of an eight-year-old child The robot Asimo built by Honda is, however, getting close. For a review of relevant issues in neuroscience and robotics see, Chiel, H., Beer, R. (1997) The brain has a body: adaptive behaviour emerges from interactions of nervous system, body and environment. Trends in Neurosciences 20, 553–557.

  7 We may have a larger prefrontal cortex relative to brain size than any animal The true measure of our superior brain relative to animals is one called the encephalisation quotient.

  8 throwing a spear, or riding a horse See for example Rickye, S., Heffner, R., Masterton, B. (1983) The Role of the Corticospinal Tract in the Evolution of Human Digital Dexterity. Brain Behavior Evolution 23, 165–183.

  9 modern humans may actually have had a smaller neo-cortex than the troll-like Neanderthals See for example Anne H. Weaver (2005) Reciprocal evolution of the cerebellum and neocortex in fossil humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, 3576–3580. In interview she has said: ‘My work provides support for the hypothesis that the human brain continued to evolve after 30,000 years ago. It also suggests that an element of that evolution involved a reduction in the relative size of the neocortex and an absolute and relative increase in cerebellar volume. Surprisingly, it looks like the neocortex of recent humans is actually smaller in proportion to the rest of the brain than it was in either Neandertals or early modern humans.’

  10 larger cerebellum … more brainpower On the contribution of the cerebellum to cognitive function, see for example Leiner, H., Leiner, A., Dow, R. (1993) Cognitive and language functions of the human cerebellum. Trends in Neurosciences 16, 444–447.

  11 idling reptile Hulbert, A., Else, P. (1981) Comparison of the ‘mammal machine’ and the ‘reptile machine’: energy use and thyroid activity. American Journal of Physiology 241, R350–356.

  12 proxy for survivability Allman, J., McLaughlin, T., Hakeem, A. (1993) Brain Structures and Life-Span in Primate Species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 90, 3559–3563.

  13 emotional reaction Critchley, H.D., Mathias, C.J., Dolan, R.J. (2002) Fear-conditioning in humans: the influence of awareness and arousal on functional neuroanatomy. Neuron 33, 653–663. Dolan, R. (2002) Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior. Science 298, 1191–1194.

  14 interoception, the perception of our inner world Craig, A.D. (2002) How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 655–666.

  15 the sense of how we feel Bechara, A., Naqvi, N. (2004) Listening to your heart: interoceptive awareness as a gateway to feeling. Nature Neuroscience 7, 102–103.

  16 awareness of the overall state of our body may be found uniquely in humans A.D. Craig (2009) How do you feel – now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, 59–70.

  17 help us regulate our body For this argument
see as well Watt, D. (2004) Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain. Journal of Consciousness Studies 11, 77–82.

  CHAPTER 3: THE SPEED OF THOUGHT

  1 sound of the shot to reach them This issue is discussed in Mero, A., Komi, P.V. and Gregor, R.J. (1992) Biomechanics of Sprint Running: A Review. Sports Medicine 13, 376–392. See as well Reaction Times and Sprint False Starts, http://www.condellpark.com/kd/reactiontime.htm

  2 Screams from the crowd at the blur of the gloves Norman Mailer (1975) The Fight. New York: Vintage. p.174.

  3 Ali’s left jab at little more than 40 milliseconds Schmidt, R., Lee, T. (2005) Motor Control and Learning: A Behavioral Emphasis. Human Kinetics Publishers. p.149. The speed of a karate punch has been measured at 11.5 metres per second. See T.J. Walilko, D.C. Viano, C.A. Bir (2005) Biomechanics of the head for Olympic boxer punches to the face. British Journal of Sports Medicine 39, 710–719.

  4 his success rate approaches that of many predators in the wild I came across this interesting statistic on the website Biological Baseball (http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/biobaseball.html).

  5 catches its prey on average one time out of three See for example Mech, D., Peterson, R. ‘Wolf-Prey Relations’, in Mech, M., Boitani, L. (eds) (2003) Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. Chicago: Chicago University Press. It should be pointed out, however, that wolves and lions are not that skilled at lone hunting, and perhaps this is why they generally hunt in packs. The stats for a cheetah and a cougar, on the other hand, show that these predators are successful more than 50 per cent of the time.

  6 before it consciously registers in the brain Schlag, J., Schlag-Rey, M. (2002) Through the eye, slowly; Delays and localization errors in the visual system. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 191–200. Berry, M., Brivanlou, I., Jordan, T., Meister, M. (1999) Anticipation of moving stimuli by the retina. Nature 6725, 334–338.

  7 while it jumps from scene to scene Watson, T., Krekelberg, B. (2009) The Relationship between Saccadic Suppression and Perceptual Stability. Current Biology 19, 1040–1043.

  8 communicated by nerves to our muscles Sigman, M., Dehaene, S. (2005) Parsing a Cognitive Task: A Characterization of the Mind’s Bottleneck. PLoS Biology 3(2): e37.

  9 flash-lag effect The flash-lag effect can be watched in action on the web. Put these keywords into your search engine: ‘Flash-Lag Effect. From Michael’s “Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions”.’ See as well MacKay, D. (1958) Perceptual stability of a stroboscopically lit visual field containing self-luminous objects. Nature 181, 507–508. Nijhawan, R.(1994) Motion extrapolation in catching. Nature 370, 256–257.

  10 left behind by the fast-forwarded blue circle A similar phenomenon outside the lab has been reported by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb: on a stormy night, when driving on a country road, you may see the tail lights of the car in front of you, but not the car itself, which may be shrouded in darkness. Should a flash of lightning illuminate the car, you would then be treated to the optical illusion of the tail lights being located halfway up the car, because they have been advanced by your brain, but the car, previously obscured, has not. This and many other effects mentioned in this chapter are described in a wonderful and fun book by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb (2005) Mind Hacks: Tips and Tools for Using Your Brain. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

  11 responding to an auditory clue Arrighi, R., Alais, D., and Burr, D. (2006) Perceptual synchrony of audiovisual streams for natural and artificial motion sequences. Journal of Vision 6, 260–268. King, A. (2005) Multisensory integration: Strategies for synchronization. Current Biology 15, R339–R341.

  12 A ball hit for speed See the article by Jonathan Roberts (2005) The Basic Physics and Mathematics of Table Tennis. Posted on http://www.gregsttpages.com/gttp/

  13 horizon of simultaneity Poppel, E. (1988) Mindworks: Time and Conscious Experience. Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

  14 It is … this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing how Erich Maria Remarque (1928) All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A.W. Wheen. New York: Fawcett Columbine. p.56.

  15 roughly the capacity of an ethernet connection Kristin Koch et al. (2006) How Much the Eye Tells the Brain. Current Biology 16, 1428–1434.

  16 no more than about 40 bits per second actually reaches consciousness In R. Schmidt, G. Thews (eds) Human Physiology 2nd ed. trans. M. Biederman-Thorson (Berlin: Springer, 1989). Zimmermann’s work and the limited bandwidth of consciousness are discussed extensively in Tor Norretranders (1998) The User Illusion. New York: Viking.

  17 blindsight operates without us ever being aware of it Experiments today confirming blindsight involve inviting blind patients to reach for an object in front of them. The patients invariably reply that they cannot see a thing, but they are encouraged to try anyway. They successfully reach for the object more times than would be predicted if their efforts were mere chance. There are versions of this experiment that people with normal vision can take part in; and doing so is a bizarre experience. You are asked to indicate on a screen where you think a moving or blinking object, designed so it registers just below consciousness, is located. Even though you cannot see anything, you are invited to guess, which you do more or less randomly; and then find out that you have guessed correctly more times than you would by chance alone. And you have no idea how you did it. A similar phenomenon to blindsight has been found for hearing, a phenomenon known as ‘deaf hearing’, in which an animal with damage to the auditory cortex nonetheless orients to sound. On superior colliculus, see Anderson. E., Rees, G. (2001) Neural correlates of spacial orienting in the human superior colliculus; Journal of Neurophysiology 106, 2273–2284.

  18 we often know whether we like or dislike … well before we even know what or who it is Joe LeDoux (1996) The Emotional Brain. The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Touchstone.

  19 our startle is initiated by a symmetrical expansion of a shadow in our visual field Caviness, J.A., Schiff, W., Gibson, J.J. (1962) Persistent fear responses in rhesus monkeys to the optical stimulus of ‘looming’. Science 136, 982–983. Rind, F., Simmons, P. (1999) Seeing what is coming: building collision-sensitive neurones. Trends in Neurosciences 22, 215–220.

  20 The startle … in about 100 milliseconds Ekman, P., Friesen, W., Simons, R. (1985) Is the startle reaction an emotion? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, 1416–1426.

  21 activated in as little as 120 milliseconds Schmidt, R., Lee, T. (2005) Motor Control and Learning: A Behavioral Emphasis. Human Kinetics Publishers.

  22 computer game Tetris Haier, R., Siegel, B., MacLachlan, A., Soderling, E., Lottenberg, S., Buchsbaum, M. (1992) Regional Glucose Metabolic Changes After Learning a Complex Visuospatial/Motor Task: a PET Study. Brain Research 570, 134–143.

  23 my body moves … I trust it and the unconscious mind that moves it Ken Dryden (2003) The Game. New York: Wiley. p.208.

  24 complete volitional control of behavior Loewenstein, G. (1996) Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 65, 272–292.

  25 experiments that has tormented many a scientist and philosopher Libet, B., Wright, E.W., Feinstein, B., Pearl, D. (1979) Subjective referral of the timing for a conscious sensory experience: A functional role for the somatosensory specific projection system in man. Brain 102, 193–224. Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W. and Pearl, D.K. (1983) Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106, 623–642. Libet, B. (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8, 529–566.

  26 Scientists and philosophers have proposed many interpretations of these findings There is a good discussion of the philosophical issues raised by Libet’s experiments in Daniel C. Dennett (2004) Freedom Evolves. London: Penguin. See as well Fahle, M.W., Stemmler, T., Spang, K.M. (2011
) How Much of the ‘Unconscious’ is Just Pre-Threshold? Frontiers of Human Neuroscience 5, 120.

  27 what we have is free won’t Ramachandran, V. New Scientist 5 September 1988.

  28 a meticulously engineered control mechanism Philosophers discussing neuroscience and philosophy include: Patricia Churchland (1989) Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. Boston: MIT Press. Daniel Dennett (1998) Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds. Boston: MIT Press.

  29 one of the most significant changes ever to take place in the markets For a vision of a future economy – not just the financial markets – dominated by autonomous computerised economic agents, see Kephart, J. (2002) Software agents and the route to the information economy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 Suppl 3, 7207–7213.

  CHAPTER 4: GUT FEELINGS

  1 fast and slow thinking Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

  2 locomotion and assessment Kruglanski, A. et al. (2000) To ‘Do the Right Thing’ or to ‘Just Do It’: Locomotion and Assessment as Distinct Self-Regulatory Imperatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, 793–815.

  3 automatic and controlled thought Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., Prelec, D. (2005) Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics. Journal of Economic Literature 43, 9–64. The authors further divide automatic and controlled brain processes into cognitive and emotive ones, giving them a four-way division of brain processes.

  4 cross that would appear at differing spots and then disappear Lewicki, P., Hill, T., Bizot, E. (1988) Acquisition of procedural knowledge about a pattern of stimuli that cannot be articulated. Cognitive Psychology 20, 24–37.

  5 disputed the supposed reliability of intuition and gut feelings See for example David Myers (2002) Intuition: Its Powers and Perils. Yale University Press. Stuart Sutherland (2007) Irrationality. London: Pinter & Martin.