Scientific American Mind

44 Pages·2022·8.674 MB·English

MAY /JUNE 2022 | MIND.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM
PLUS
Could
lab-grown
brain cells
become
sentient?
Our gender-
blending
personalities
Calm in The science
of aha!
moments
Uncertain
Times
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WITH COVERAGE FROM
FROM
THE
EDITOR
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Help shape the future
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Let us know what you
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Carrying On in Difficult Times
I wish I could write that a global pandemic was our only problem at the moment. While the U.S. approaches the sad
milestone of one million citizens dead from COVID-19, a devastating land war in Europe is displacing millions, and a
rapidly warming planet has caused another Antarctic glacier collapse. Bad news seems to dominate headlines and
Twitter feeds. As reporter Francine Russo writes in this issue, the uncertainty of our times has hit some individuals
particularly hard (see “The Personality Trait ‘Intolerance of Uncertainty’ Causes Anguish during COVID”).
Even as COVID cases ease in many U.S. states, some people are at risk of withdrawing further into isolation
rather than rejoining social events and interactions, as medical experts Carol W. Berman and Xi Chen explain (see
“COVID Threatens to Bring a Wave of Hikikomori to America”). But small pleasurable routines can work wonders in
an unpredictable world; a mere two hours a week in nature has been shown to improve psychological well-being.
As we continue to grapple with whatever news comes our way, we are already doing precisely what is required: we
must continue.
Andrea Gawrylewski
Senior Editor, Collections
[email protected]
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New ways to cope with /
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WHAT’S
May–June 2022
Volume 33 • Number 3
INSIDE
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orni 29. COVID Threatens to Bring a Wave
Calif of Hikikomori to America
es y of We should work to protect others from falling
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NEWS FEATURES classmates will think they are “stupid”
4. Artificial Neuron Snaps 13. The Personality Trait “Intolerance of 33. Most of Us Combine Personality Traits
a Venus Flytrap Shut Uncertainty” Causes Anguish during COVID from Different Genders
Researchers say that such biointegrated High levels of it have put people at risk New research underscores that almost everyone’s
systems could be the future of prosthetics of emotional problems personality blends “more often seen in men”
6. Aha! Moments Pop Up from Below 17. Can Lab-Grown Brains Become Conscious? and “more often seen in women” characteristics
the Level of Conscious Awareness A handful of experiments are raising questions 36. The Devastating Loss of Grandparents
People in a study handily solved puzzles while about whether clumps of cells and disembodied among One Million COVID Dead
juggling an unrelated mental task by relying brains could be sentient and how scientists Grandparents are a majority of the pandemic’s
on spontaneous insight, not analytic thinking would know if they were death toll
8. Humans Find AI-Generated Faces 23. The Pandemic Generation 39. Cowboy Culture Doesn’t Have a Monopoly
More Trustworthy Than the Real Thing Child-development researchers are investigating on Innovation
Viewers struggle to distinguish images of whether the pandemic is shaping early brain Despite stereotypes that suggest self-reliant
sophisticated machine-generated faces from development and behavior values lead to the most innovations, group-
actual humans centered societies have just as much creativity
10. Lego Robot with an Organic “Brain” ILLUSIONS
Learns to Navigate a Maze 42. The Phantom Queen
The neuromorphic computing device solved the Her majesty’s invisibility cloak
puzzle by working like an animal brain would is a matter of perspective
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Artificial Neuron
Snaps a Venus
Flytrap Shut
Researchers say that such
biointegrated systems could be
the future of prosthetics
When a Venus flytrap snaps its
fleshy lobes around an unsuspect-
ing insect, it’s game over for the
prey. The plant’s unusual habit of
snacking on animals has captured
the imagination of people ranging
from Charles Darwin to playwright
Howard Ashman and composer
Alan Menken (the latter two created
the 1982 musical Little Shop of
Horrors, which stars a human-eating
plant). Now, in an experiment that
might seem straight out of a pulp
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science-fiction novel, scientists have a
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harnessed the flytrap’s power for ett
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a method to trigger its trap using p
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soft, semiorganic artificial neurons. nervous system. In the flytrap, the gotten through. Plus, there are fewer in a real nerve cell) within the
“The overarching goal of our phloem—the tissue that transports ethical considerations when it comes screen-printed electrodes.
research is to try to develop devices nutrients through a plant—contains to using plants, as opposed to Although he sees his team’s results
that can mimic the functioning of ion channels through which charged animals, in the lab. as encouraging, Fabiano acknowl-
building blocks in our body,” says particles can flow. This triggers the To make their flytrap close, Fabiano edges that the system is not yet
study co-author Simone Fabiano, an plant’s lobes to close, similar to the and his colleagues constructed a ready to interface with human cells.
organic nanoelectronics researcher way electrical charge flows along an neuronlike electronic device. They “We still have a couple of orders of
at Linköping University in Sweden. animal’s nerves to send commands began by screen printing carbon and magnitude before we get to the
The Venus flytrap provides an to its muscles. But there are some silver chloride electrodes onto a energy efficiency of our biological
efficient testing ground for an key differences between the two polyester base. “It’s what you use for neurons,” he says. Once the artificial
interface between living creatures systems. “In Venus flytraps, calcium printing labels on T-shirts,” Fabiano neuron becomes more efficient, he
and electronics that, Fabiano and his mitigates the [electrical] response, explains. “It’s a very, very simple way thinks this technology could poten-
team hope, may one day lead to fully whereas in animals, it’s usually of making electronics.” Next they tially be used to establish a link
integrated biosensors for monitoring sodium,” says Swetha Murthy, a attached the electrodes to the lobes between a person’s signaling nerves
human health—or a better interface biochemist at Oregon Health & and midrib (or crease) of the plant’s and an artificial limb, allowing for
for people to control advanced Science University, who also works trap and ran a current through the seamless prosthetic control.
prostheses with their nerves. The with Venus flytraps but was not system—first at a high frequency and Volkov is not convinced the new
results were published in Nature involved in the new study. Additional- then at a lower one. They found the research represents a true break-
Communications in February. ly, the plant’s membranes are hyper- high frequency triggered a quick through. Many researchers have
This is not the first time scientists polarized, compared with animal response, but the low frequency was designed systems to interface with
have controlled a Venus flytrap. neurons. This means scientists have not enough to close the trap. plants, he says. “Some people have
Alexander Volkov of Oakwood to use extra current to induce a This setup was somewhat similar to closed Venus flytraps by smart-
University has been researching reaction in the Venus flytrap. They do Volkov’s original work and previous phone,” Volkov adds. Given the
plant electrophysiology—and specifi- so by incorporating charged chloride research involving artificial neurons difference in plant and animal
cally Venus flytraps—for decades. In ions into their electronic device. but differed in a couple of crucial physiology, he is uncertain the system
2007 he and his lab hooked up silver Despite these differences, a Venus ways. For one thing, it did not use could translate to real neurons
wires to a flytrap’s snapping mecha- flytrap’s ion channel serves as a good silicon, a rigid and relatively expensive controlling an external device.
nism and ran an electric current model for testing nerve activity, component of most other artificial Murthy is more optimistic. “I think
through the system, causing the thanks to the channel’s size. “It’s easy neurons. And unlike earlier Venus this study provides strong potential to
lobes to clamp shut. to measure in experiments,” Volkov flytrap studies, it mimicked the develop and integrate implantable
Such experiments work because says. And the trap’s big, clam- structure of an actual neuron by devices as biosensors,” she says. “It’s
the motion is controlled by an shell-like closing motion is an including a tiny gap across which a proof-of-principle experiment.”
apparatus similar to an animal’s obvious sign that the signal has ions can jump (known as a synapse —Joanna Thompson
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Aha! Moments
Pop Up from Below
the Level of
Conscious Awareness
People in a study handily solved
puzzles while juggling an unrelated
mental task by relying on spontane-
ous insight, not analytic thinking
Most of us have had the experience
of struggling mightily to solve a
problem only to find, while taking
a walk or doing the dishes, that the
answer comes to us seemingly from
nowhere. Psychologists call these
sudden aha! moments “insight.” They
occur not only when we are faced
with a problem but also when we additional evidence that insight Bruxelles and KU Leuven in Bel- the test were conducted in English,
suddenly “get” a joke or crossword engages unconscious mechanisms gium, who led the study. people might be given the words
puzzle clue or are jolted by a personal that differ from analytic, step-by-step For that investigation, which was “artist,” “hatch” and “route,” with
realization. Scientists have identified reasoning. Even when people are first published online in December the answer being “escape” because
distinctive brain activity patterns that managing multiple demands on their 2021 in the journal Cognition, the “escape artist,” “escape hatch”
signal moments of insight, but there brainpower, the research suggests psychologists created 70 word and “escape route” are all recogniz-
is still some debate about whether their intuitive thought processes may puzzles that undergraduate students able phrases.)
insight is simply the final, most still be readily accessible. could solve using either insight or The 105 undergraduates, most of
satisfying step in a deliberative “You can be overloaded by all this analytic reasoning. Each puzzle whom were women, had up to 25 s
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thought process or a wholly separate type of stuff, cell phones or whatev- consisted of three Dutch words seconds to solve each problem. After m
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form of thinking. er, and your insights remain shield- displayed on a computer screen. typing an answer, they indicated ett
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An ingenious new study by a team ed,” says Hans Stuyck, a doctoral The task was to find a fourth word whether they had reached it “with e
b
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of Belgian psychologists provides student at Université Libre de that pairs with each. (For example, if aha!”—which they were told meant a
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becoming “aware of the solution diminishing returns, solving, on people attempt the puzzle “pine/ faint idea does not seem to require
suddenly and clearly,” like a lightbulb average, 16 puzzles when they had crab/sauce,” multiple word associa- mental exertion, Stuyck says.
illuminating a dark room—or calculat- no numbers to remember but only tions get activated but only the Beeman agrees but cautions
ed it step by step “without aha!”— 12 puzzles when they had to remem- strongest are accessible to the against directly extrapolating from the
as if their brain were a room slowly ber two digits and eight puzzles when conscious mind. If the correct answer new study to the real world. The
being lit with a dimmer switch. they had to remember four. happens to be a weaker association, number-recall task may have been
Participants were divided into three Yet when people relied on insight, people may feel stuck, he says, yet simple enough to serve as a useful
groups. The first received only the not only was their success rate higher, below the surface, unbeknownst to diversion, helping puzzlers reach their
puzzles. In the second group, two it was unaffected by the number- them, their mind may be ushering it eureka moment. He doubts the
random digits flashed sequentially recall task. These participants accu- into awareness. (The answer, by the results would hold if people’s brain-
on the screen before the words rately completed between 17 and 19 way, is “apple.”) power was more severely taxed. “I
appeared, and people had to try to puzzles, on average, in all three “Trying to find a creative solution to certainly don’t want to recommend
recall those numbers after finishing groups. “Whether they don’t have the a problem is like trying to see a dim that people who want to be more
the puzzle. The third group was memory task or they have a low-de- star at night,” says Mark Beeman, a creative at work get saddled with
identical to the second except that mand memory task or a high-demand cognitive neuroscientist at Northwest- more work,” he says.
people had to try to remember four memory task, the number of puzzles ern University and a leading expert on Stuyck’s team is about to embark
digits instead of two. they solve with insight remains insight, who did not contribute to the on another puzzle-based insight
The purpose of making people constant,” Stuyck says. “That’s the new study. “You have to kind of look experiment. This time the researchers
remember random numbers was to most interesting result.” at it out of the corner of your mind.” will create “virtual lesions” by tempo-
burden their mind with an unrelated A significant amount of brain activity Insights typically occur after rarily deactivating part of the prefron-
task, which was expected to interfere is unconscious—that is why we can someone ponders a problem for a tal cortex, the brain area that we
with conscious problem-solving. seemingly drive to work automatically while and then puts it aside, Beeman engage to consciously manipulate
“These cognitive resources, this pool and why we are not always aware of says. Once the foundation has been information. (They will use a harmless,
that we can tap into to do anything the biases that affect our decisions. laid through conscious mental effort, noninvasive method called transcrani-
consciously, is limited,” Stuyck says. But cognitive psychologists disagree a stroll, nap or distracting task seems al magnetic stimulation, which
The question was whether insightful about whether actual reasoning can to enable a creative breakthrough, stimulates brain cells using magnetic
thinking would be similarly affected. occur below the level of awareness. one that is typically accompanied by fields.) This transient impairment is
Indeed, when participants used “There is so much debate within the feelings of satisfaction and certainty. expected to diminish people’s
analytic thinking—by, for example, literature,” he says. The reason that holding two or success when they use an analytic
generating a phrase such as “con Stuyck believes that during mo- four numbers in one’s head slows approach to puzzling, but the question
artist,” checking whether “con” was ments of insight, there is a give-and- reasoning but does not affect is whether it will affect their ability to
a match with “hatch” or “route” and take between conscious and uncon- insight-based problem-solving is solve problems through insight.
then moving on—they experienced scious processes. For example, when because turning the spotlight on a —Emily Laber-Warren
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Humans Find AI-
Generated Faces
More Trustworthy
Than the Real Thing
Viewers struggle to distinguish
images of sophisticated machine-
generated faces from actual humans
When TikTok videos emerged in
2021 that seemed to show “Tom
Cruise” making a coin disappear and
enjoying a lollipop, the account name
was the only obvious clue that this
wasn’t the real deal. The creator of
the “deeptomcruise” account on the
social media platform was using
“deepfake” technology to show a
machine-generated version of the
famous actor performing magic tricks
and having a solo dance-off.
One tell for a deepfake used to be
the “uncanny valley” effect, an
unsettling feeling triggered by the
hollow look in a synthetic person’s s
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eyes. But increasingly convincing m
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images are pulling viewers out of the ett
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valley and into the world of deception vi
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promulgated by deepfakes. /A
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Baik Kyeong-hoon, director of the “AI Yoon” team, makes a video clip using AI Yoon, a digital avatar of South Korean presidential candidate n-J
The startling realism has implica- o
Yoon Suk-yeol of the opposition party called the People Power Party. The images on the screen demonstrate how far artificially generated videos, e
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tions for malevolent uses of the known as deepfakes, have come in the past few years. ng
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technology: its potential weaponiza- in Lugano, who was not involved in women, in contrast with the more study co-author Sophie Nightingale.
tion in disinformation campaigns for the paper. The tools used to gener- common use of white men’s faces The uncanny valley idea is not
political or other gain, the creation ate the study’s still images are in earlier research. completely retired. Study participants
of false porn for blackmail, and any already generally accessible. And After compiling 400 real faces did overwhelmingly identify some of
number of intricate manipulations for although creating equally sophisticat- matched to 400 synthetic versions, the fakes as fake. “We’re not saying
novel forms of abuse and fraud. ed video is more challenging, tools the researchers asked 315 people that every single image generated is
Developing countermeasures to for it will probably soon be within to distinguish real from fake among indistinguishable from a real face, but
identify deepfakes has turned into an general reach, Didyk contends. a selection of 128 of the images. a significant number of them are,”
“arms race” between security sleuths The synthetic faces for this study Another group of 219 participants Nightingale says.
on one side and cybercriminals and were developed in back-and-forth got some training and feedback The finding adds to concerns about
cyberwarfare operatives on the other. interactions between two neural about how to spot fakes as they tried the accessibility of technology that
A new study published in the networks, examples of a type known to distinguish the faces. Finally, a makes it possible for just about
Proceedings of the National Acade- as generative adversarial networks. third group of 223 participants each anyone to create deceptive still
my of Sciences USA provides a One of the networks, called a gener- rated a selection of 128 of the images. “Anyone can create synthetic
measure of how far the technology ator, produced an evolving series images for trustworthiness on a scale content without specialized knowl-
has pro gressed. The results suggest of synthetic faces like a student of one (very untrustworthy) to seven edge of Photoshop or CGI,” Nightin-
that real humans can easily fall for working progressively through rough (very trustworthy). gale says. Another concern is that
machine-generated faces—and even drafts. The other network, known The first group did not do better such findings will create the impres-
interpret them as more trustworthy as a discriminator, trained on real than a coin toss at telling real faces sion that deepfakes will become
than the genuine article. “We found images and then graded the gener- from fake ones, with an average completely undetectable, says Wael
that not only are synthetic faces ated output by comparing it with accuracy of 48.2 percent. The Abd-Almageed, founding director of
highly realistic, they are deemed data on actual faces. second group failed to show dramat- the Visual Intelligence and Multime-
more trustworthy than real faces,” The generator began the exercise ic improvement, receiving only about dia Analytics Laboratory at the
says study co-author Hany Farid, with random pixels. With feedback 59 percent, even with feedback University of Southern California,
a professor at the University of Cali- from the discriminator, it gradually about those participants’ choices. who was not involved in the study. He
fornia, Berkeley. The result produced increasingly realistic The group rating trustworthiness worries scientists might give up on
raises concerns that “these faces humanl ike faces. Ultimately the gave the synthetic faces a slightly trying to develop countermeasures to
could be highly effective when used discriminator was unable to distin- higher average rating of 4.82, deepfakes, although he views
for nefarious purposes.” guish a real face from a fake one. compared with 4.48 for real people. keeping their detection on pace with
“We have indeed entered the world The networks trained on an The researchers were not expect- their increasing realism as “simply yet
of dangerous deepfakes,” says Piotr array of real images representing ing these results. “We initially thought another forensics problem.”
Didyk, an associate professor at Black, East Asian, South Asian that the synthetic faces would be less “The conversation that’s not
the University of Italian Switzerland and white faces of both men and trustworthy than the real faces,” says happening enough in this research
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community is how to start proactively
to improve these detection tools,” Lego Robot with
says Sam Gregory, director of
an Organic “Brain”
programs strategy and innovation at
Learns to Navigate
WITNESS, a human rights organiza-
tion that in part focuses on ways to a Maze
distinguish deepfakes. Making tools
The neuromorphic computing
for detection is important because
device solved the puzzle by working
people tend to overestimate their
like an animal brain would
ability to spot fakes, he says, and
“the public always has to understand
when they’re being used maliciously.” In 1997 Carver Mead lectured on an
Gregory, who was not involved in unusual topic for a computer scien-
the study, points out that its authors tist: the nervous systems of animals,
directly address these issues. They such as the humble fly. Mead, a
highlight three possible solutions, researcher at the California Institute
including creating durable water- of Technology, described his earlier
marks for these generated images, idea for an electronic problem-solving
“like embedding fingerprints so you system inspired by nerve cells, a
can see that it came from a genera- technique he had dubbed “neuromor-
tive process,” he says. phic” computing. A quarter of a
The authors of the study end with century later re searchers have
a stark conclusion after emphasizing designed a carbon-based neuromor-
that deceptive uses of deepfakes phic computing device—e ssentially
will continue to pose a threat. “We, an organic robot brain—that can learn
therefore, encourage those develop- to navigate a maze. saying in neuroscience goes, “Neu- Paschalis Gkoupidenis of the Max
ing these technologies to consider A neuromorphic chip memorizes rons that fire together wire together.” Planck Institute for Polymer Re-
whether the associated risks are information similarly to the way an When a neuromorphic chip learns, it search in Mainz, Germany, and his
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greater than their benefits,” they animal does. When a brain learns rewires its electric circuits to save the neuromorphic research team are a
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write. “If so, then we discourage the something new, a group of its new behavior like a brain does to pioneers in crafting this technology ett
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development of technology simply neurons rearrange their connections save a memory. from organic materials. To build their ell
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because it is possible.” so they can communicate more The idea of brainlike computation chip, the researchers used long a
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—Emily Willingham quickly and easily. As a common has been around for a while. But chains of carbon-based molecules a
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