What to do this week?

chunyang @ Flickr

Exams are suddenly no longer just around the corner. Nerves are creeping in; you lot are (anxiolytically?) checking the blog more often per day than you were this time last week. As people feel time pinching up, the questions have taken on a common theme: how to use it most effectively in the coming days.

My answer to these questions is this:

1) Pace yourself - There is a temptation to up the pace now the hours are getting tighter, to pack more in to each one and to work more of them. This is fine but don't lose sight of the reason for all this work - the exams. If you are not fresh (fed and rested) for them all that hard work is pointless.

2) Learn by plans - If you were told to commit to memory all the characters in The Godfather films, how they relate to one another and their individual journeys through the plot, which would be better technique: learning them off a list or watching the films? I think the films, which is why I am a fan of learning references by planning essays; the arguments become the important bits and the refs are easily picked up collaterally. So, instead of just writing out references again and again blend them into arguments. The nice thing about this is that if references are absorbed in context, when it comes to wringing them out all the related references drip out too. In cognitive speak, one reference can act as a cue to activate the others, and before you know it you have a paragraph in the exam.

3) Get social - Get out of the cubicle and chat. This is good because it forces you to test your knowledge without the crutches of your notes, thus sweeping away the self-deception that is so rife with individual study. For some reason, it is also a whole lot easier to learn those references by chatting them over.

Chunks. Not spread.

toronto_lex @ Flickr

If last year is anything to go by, right now is an anxious time. You are far enough into your revision and close enough to exams to doubt whether you have enough covered and in proper detail. This puts space between where you are and where you want to be causing stress (and maybe even some out-of-body library experiences.)

The first thing to say is that you can't know everything in a course. For those of you fretting over this, stop. Trying to know everything means you'll end up floundering because unless you started back in January you will spread your butter too thinly. It's best for everyone - both people who have left it too late and the diligent - to have several nice big chunks of butter. Concentrate on areas you've cherry picked to come up and craft arguments you can deploy in exams.

For those who have left it too late, your best bet is to be ruthless in this cherry picking. You need to redress your poor planning with riskier strategies. Hone down on, maybe, four areas that have the best chance of coming up. This happened to me in second year on the Individual Differences course after I spent far too much time doing Klaus impersonations and pretending the course didn't exist.

For third years, concerned about that general question, know that you can answer a general question with information from your specific topics; you just need to be solid on the course themes (blueprints). You do not need to have a understanding of every single topic to answer general questions.

For those of you who have had more foresight, you will likely have your cherries picked. Don't be distracted by trying to go beyond that. If you made a decision a while a go to do, say 6 topics for a module, stick with it. Take the topics you have covered and learn them until you wake up mumbling references.

It is better to be solid in lots areas than OK in all of them. Now is the time for fashioning arguments and learning them and their supporting evidence. It is not a time to embark on new stuff.

Food for Thought

Fotographic by the great Carl Warner; everything in the photo is made of food. Click image to enlarge

The brain is the 4x4 of the body, guzzling fuel in epic proportions. Every neuron needs energy every time it changes state, and you have 100 billion of them. When you are revising you are flexing your mental muscle considerably more than your usual student day. So, are there any ways you can get the best out of your brain for energy and memory? Here’s a nice little article which asks that question. It's from New Scientist in 2005:

***

“First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces people's performance at school and at work.

But it isn't simply a matter of getting some calories down. According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. Beans are also a good source of fibre, and other research has shown a link between a high-fibre diet and improved cognition. If you can't stomach beans before midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. The yeast extract is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been demonstrated in many studies.

A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Researchers at Boston University found that when healthy young adults were given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer's disease, and some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related memory loss.

A salad packed full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene and vitamins C and E, should also help keep an ageing brain in tip-top condition by helping to mop up damaging free radicals. Dwight Tapp and colleagues from the University of California at Irvine found that a diet high in antioxidants improved the cognitive skills of 39 ageing beagles - proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to face the stresses of the afternoon. That's because yogurt contains the amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, among others. Studies by the US military indicate that tyrosine becomes depleted when we are under stress and that supplementing your intake can improve alertness and memory.

Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, which contain trans-fatty acids. These not only pile on the pounds, but are implicated in a slew of serious mental disorders, from dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to autism. Hard evidence for this is still thin on the ground, but last year researchers at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, California, reported that rats and mice raised on the rodent equivalent of junk food struggled to find their way around a maze, and took longer to remember solutions to problems they had already solved.

It seems that some of the damage may be mediated through triglyceride, a cholesterol-like substance found at high levels in rodents fed on trans-fats. When the researchers gave these rats a drug to bring triglyceride levels down again, the animals' performance on the memory tasks improved.

Brains are around 60 per cent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what should you eat to keep it well oiled? Evidence is mounting in favour of omega-3 fatty acids, in particular docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. In other words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food. Not only will it feed and lubricate a developing brain, DHA also seems to help stave off dementia. Studies published last year reveal that older mice from a strain genetically altered to develop Alzheimer's had 70 per cent less of the amyloid plaques associated with the disease when fed on a high-DHA diet.

Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with strawberries and blueberries. Rats fed on these fruits have shown improved coordination, concentration and short-term memory. And even if they don't work such wonders in people, they still taste fantastic. So what have you got to lose?”

***

Ok, it's me again. The take home message is that putting the best fuel into your biological 4x4 is absolutely necessary for good performance and better memory. Don't scrimp on good food; you need to eat well during your revision and exams - marks depend on it. If you still want more information visit here for some pearls from the FSA.

iPod on. iPod off.

(thomashawk @ Flickr)

I often wondered whether those little buds in my ears delivering a soothing wave of music were helping or hindering my revision. So I did a bit of detective work.

The results? Broadly speaking, music is a bit of a cognitive criminal, stealing precious resources away. Music with lyrics is the worst, as it soaks up important language processing.

But listening to it before work can improve your mood and your cognitive prowess. So music that makes you smile is good before work; after that silence is golden.

So it's iPod on before work, iPod off when you start.

If you are anything like me and get distracted by tiny things like a dripping tap down the road, I suggest getting some earplugs. I have stuck a permanent link on the side bar (under 'Previous Goodies') to the site where I bought a load for my revision.

For people who wondered how I came to this conclusion or just want to burn some more time before getting back into the revision canoe, read on...

In 1993, Rauscher, Shaw and Ky reported the finding that listening to a Mozart piano sonata (K. 448) enhanced spatial test performance in adults for a period of 15 minutes after presentation.

This was dubbed the "Mozart effect" (Knox, 1993) and was inaccurately transmuted into public understanding as 'listening to Mozart makes your cleverer'.

Laughably, this distortion of the evidence led to a cottage industry being set up for parents who wanted their kids to be smarter as well as the misbegotten policy in the state of Georgia to send new babies Mozart CDs.

Unfortunately the evidence only points towards better mental rotation abilities (meta-analysis by Hetland, 2000) and this may only be due to the music putting you in a better mood for cognitive tasks (Schellenberg & Hallam, 2005; or here). Mozart isn't really important either (Smith, Osborne, Mann, Jones, & White, 2004).

Banbury, Macken, Tremblay, and Jones (2001) and Beaman (2005, review) have shown that there is a cost to 'auditory distraction' although some people aren't affected by it (Neath et al., 2003).

Added to that, Oswald et al. (2000) among others (Neely & LeCompte, 1999; Jones et al., 1990; Martin et al.,1988) have shown that meaningful speech not directly related to the task at hand is distracting.

Salamé and Baddeley (1989) report that music with speech is more cognitively disruptive to short term recall than speechless music (which still had a negative effect, just a smaller one). As information needs to go through short term memory in order to get into long term memory this can't be a good thing.

How to chat up consciousness

patrisha @ Flickr

Ok, last time I said how there were those who liked to talk about chatting up consciousness and those who actually did it. Here we are going to cover the former and specifically talk about what the problem is and how to approach it. This is a difficult area to get your head around. Let's try and make it a bit clearer.

First, make notes about what the problem is.

I find this is best stated by Chalmers (1995). You need to read this paper. Here you go. Briefly, he indicates that consciousness has two problems: the easy one and the hard one. The easy one is equivalent to the daily findings of cognitive science: how memory, attention, vision and so on work. Chalmers says these problems have computational solutions. In his words, the hard problem of consciousness is “the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field."

Second, make notes about approaches to solution of this problem.

I'd split them up like this:

Fuck it. We'll never know

Also known as mysticism this view explains the problem by denying that science will ever be able to explain consciousness. This was a position popular in the scientific community until about 30 years ago. At the centre of the issue is that while consciousness is the most piquant subjective experience, science is objective - and never the mismatch shall be resolved.Searle (1998), however, argues that this problem arises from a confusion about two different kinds of objectivity. The first kind of objectivity is something that is epistemically objective (or know as fact), like “The building has two front doors”. Epistemically subjective information would be something like, “The doors of the building are unattractive”. The second flavour of objectivity is ontological (that something exists). Thus returning to the building one will find the two front doors existing. However, ontological subjectivity would be feeling pain from closing one’s finger in a door. What Searle argues is that science concerns itself with epistemic objectivity and not epistemic subjectivity. However, he also claims that it can concern itself with ontologically subjective events.

There is also a related view that consciousness is something that is systemically insoluble by humans minds (maybe the dolphins or mice know?). You can find this in the writings of McGinn (1989, 2000)

It's not a problem

There are those who explain the problem of consciousness by denying it's actually a problem. Dennett (1993) is one of these. He suggests that “[p]ostulating special inner qualities that are not only private and intrinsically valuable, but also unconfirmable and uninvestigatable is just obscurantism." (p.450). To this Searle (1998) replies, "I would not have thought that this thesis - that consciousness could be treated separately from consciousness was widely held until I discovered it in several recent books on consciousness (Crick 1994, Edelman 1989). The basic idea is that the problem of qualia can be carved off from consciousness and treated separately; or better still, simply brushed aside. There are not two separate problems, the problem of consciousness and then a subsidiary problem the problem of qualia. The problem of consciousness is identical with the problem of qualia, because conscious states are qualitative states right down to the ground. Take away qualia and there is nothing there." (p.1938). I love academic cat fights.

Another approach under this category is to suggest that integrated holistic conscious experience is an illusion. Proponents of this view suggest that the brain has many parallel processes occurring and we make an error in assuming these processes are connected. Dennett (1991) is the principle advocate of this position. One problem I have with this is that consciousness does have an objective ontological reality to us - it's there now, it's the feel of your arse on the seat - and that needs to be explained (maybe a broader explanation than that of just arses though.) Bechtel (1995) also agrees that we must question the notion of a unified consciousness and he offers a way out suggesting that qualia may not be an objective fact but rather an illusion mediated by language. This idea of grand interpreter is also in Gazzaniga's work.

Physical accounts of consciousness

Then there are the physical account of consciousness. They assume that our current understanding of the world is good enough to understand consciousness (eventually).

Digital functionalism - a biggie. Worth knowing lots about this. At its most basic it says that consciousness is maths. Once we understand the brain's maths we understand consciousness. There are lots of objections including:
- Inverted spectra/qualia (Block and Fodor, 1972)
- Multiple realizability (Block, 1980)
- Intentionality (Searle, 1980)
Then there are the rejoinders. Read the article I wrote on Functionalism for more.

(Note, I call this digital functionalism. This means 1s and 0s. Neurons on or off. I would consider quantum explanations still functionalist because they are still computational, just the mechanics of the computation are of a different flavour. This might be a handy technicality for an essay on functionalism. That is, you can knock down digital functionalism and replace it with quantum functionalism.)

Eliminative Materialism - This position is essentially a reductionist one advocating that science can deconstruct higher order properties into lower order properties of the physical world. Once we understand every neural interaction, we understand consciousness. This is just functionalism given a neural reality.

Non-eliminative Materialism - Like eliminative materialism this position suggests that consciousness can be explained by the physical world. However, unlike eliminative materialism it is impossible to understand higher order properties simply by reference to the lower order properties. Rather at certain levels of complexity there are emergent properties of a system. As Searle (e.g. 1998, 2000) asks, ‘Is a single water molecule wet?’ Again, this is functionalism and a more sensible functionalism in my view. You can't explain the Internet by talking about a single line of code in the Google system. See Churchland and Churchland (1997) for more.

Exotic physics - There are those that think (digital) functionalism is an adequate way of explaining consciousness, like Nagel (1993). He suggests that “…it is inevitable that the pursuit of [an account of consciousness] will lead to an alteration of our conception of the physical world.” (p.3). He thus goes onto to claim that, “[i]n the long run, therefore, physiological psychology should expect cosmological results." (p.3). Penrose (1994) and Hameroff (1998) are the key proponents of this type of fundamental revision. More recent examples include explorations of deep quantum chemistry by Ventegoot et al (2006). A good review can be found in Faber, Portugal and Rosa (2006). Note: you don't need to understand quantum physics to talk about this.

Non-physical accounts of consciousness

Chalmers (1995) comments on such exotic mathematical theories of consciousness: "At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process why tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory."

As a result Chalmers offers up panprotopsychism because the explanatory gap between the easy and hard problems of consciousness will never be bridged by a) functionalism, b) a radical revision of our understanding of matter or c) by assuming that to understand consciousness is beyond the capabilities of the human mind or science. Panprotopsychism argues that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. He suggests "that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental....a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness".

Chalmers argues that the Universe’s basic feature is information and this can be either physical or phenomenal. This view is therefore a dualist one, although one compatible with the scientific world view. Information is something, according to Chalmers, that is over and above the properties of physics. Chalmers indicates that this position might indicate how the experiential arises from the physical. Furthermore, this experience is graded according to the level of complexity of the system. "Where there is simple information processing, there is simple experience, where there is complex information processing there is complex experience. A mouse has a simpler information processing structure than a human, and has correspondingly simpler experience; perhaps a thermostat, a maximally simple information processing structure, might have maximally simple experience?" This theory is important because it is alone in creating the explanatory bridge between matter and experience.

Nonetheless the critics have attacked; for example, Searle (1997): "What is it about the functional state that does the job of 'giving rise' to consciousness? It is he says, information. Not information in the ordinary common-sense meaning of the word in which I have information about how to get San Jose, but in an extended 'information theory' sense, in which any physical 'difference that makes a difference' in the world is information. According to Chalmers conception of information, rain hitting the ground contains 'information', because it makes changes in the ground. But if consciousness arises from information in this sense then: consciousness is everywhere. The thermostat is conscious, the stomach is conscious, there are lots of conscious systems in my brain of which I am unconscious, the Milky Way is conscious, there are various conscious systems in any stone..and so on...This absurd view...is a direct consequence of attempting to explain consciousness in terms of 'information' in this denuded technical sense of the word....It is to Chalmers credit that he sees the consequences of his views; it is not to his credit that he fails to see that they are absurd.” (pp. 155-156).

Overall, if you get the philosophy of consciousness sorted you'll have a sure question to answer come the exam. To date, there has always been a question about it. Note that frequently the question "Can science explain consciousness" or some variation of it appears. Just because the word science is in there doesn't mean you have to talk about science. You can easily take that question on at the philosophical level (i.e. you could answer 'No, science can because science is based on functionalism and functionalism doesn't work' or whatever.)

Next time we'll move on to more specific theories of consciousness and what sort of things you should be doing in your revision with them.

Revising Consciousness

losviajesdelgatomagenta @ Flickr

I've had a question about how to revise consciousness, which gives me an excuse to talk about it, something I have been itching to do for a bit. Consciousness is a feisty course and you could devote a career to it and still have more to read (although Semir Zeki, I have heard, claims he has read every single paper ever written about vision. Must have been nothing good on TV that weekend.) Because the course is unlike any other in this respect, I'll talk about the specific approach I took to revising it.

The first thing to make clear is that there is no answer at the end of the revision road with Consciousness. You won't reach a point, like you might in other courses, where it suddenly clicks and you understand it. Even the guys whose living depends on studying it freely admit they know next to nothing about it. Along with a Theory of Everything it is probably the biggest question in science. The nice thing about this is that there is professor-student parity. As long as you don't depart from logic and explain stuff, any new account is a good one. In other words, Consciousness is a course in which to flaunt your creative and critical prowess.

The second thing is to toss out the window the need for a definition of consciousness. One thing definitions carry is theoretical baggage. Definitions come after solution to the problem and in the grand scheme of things the problem of consciousness hasn't really got dent in it. This may feel a bit uncomfortable as you have always been trained to define your terms. Let it go! If you do need to cling to something just call consciousness 'all first person experience'.

Next I would ask what the course is getting at, the course blueprint. I think this captures it:

The philosogeeks and the neurofunkers

The study of consciousness is a bit like a party. You have the people sitting around the edges talking about how to chat the girls up and then you've got the people on the dance floor doing just that. These are the philosogeeks and the neurofunkers.

The philosogeeks are really interested in how you approach the problem of consciousness. They worry about how we can explain first person subjective experience using third person objectivity. Some think it's not possible: consciousness is something that science wont crack. Others contend that a fundamental revision of our understanding of the physical world is needed to understand consciousness and make it amenable to science. Others still say that everything is fine and dandy: science has the muscle to get a hold on consciousness.

The neurofunkers, on the other hand, just get on with it. They just assume that pulling girls is possible. Where they differ is in their exact ideas about consciousness. For example, some argue that consciousness is localized to specific brain areas whereas others advocate that consciousness is distributed across the brain. Many of these different positions are supported by evidence from healthy subjects' behavioural data, brain damage; attention and arousal studies; sleep and wakefulness – in short, neuropsychological data.

Thus, the course is dualistic: half explores theories of consciousness whereas the other half examines neuropsychological data and how they can support or undermine those theories. Now, at least, you can organise you thinking around these two things. It is possible to concentrate more heavily on either of these areas, depending on what you prefer but knowing both gives you more power in exams.

In the next posts what I'll do is talk a bit about philosophy first and then move onto neuropsychology.

Thinking spaces

I'm getting quite interested in how architecture affects the mind; what kind of things make us work well and make us creative. The briefest of looks into the literature shows that there's not much on it (2nd years take note: 3rd year project - oh dear, I sound like a lecturer). Anyway, now you are all back in Bristol I thought it might be nice to talk about some places to work.

First off, the Arts and Social Sciences library. I find the inside of this building as depressing the outside (anyone else think the windows look like they have been crying?) There is no fresh air, the lighting is artificial, some idiot will invariably answer their phone with total disregard for anyone else and, to top it all, you feel like you are a maze rat:

I don't think the ASS is a great place to spend your time (don't take me out of context on that one). It is handy when other places are closed or there is simply no space elsewhere. It does have some redeeming features though. Dotted about the building are microfiche rooms. Apart from being pleasantly odd to pronounce, these double up as great 'discussion suites'.

On the first floor there is also a deaf studies room, which is normally empty and can be used for this too. The fact that there are no windows in them puts a limit on the amount of time you can be in there. More than half an hour and you'll come out lighted roasted.

Other places that make you feel like you have just completed an international flight include the main computer room next to the ASS and the Level 4 Psychology computer lab. Generally, these places suck the energy out of you - it's something do to with negative ion depletion, I think - are poorly ventilated and badly lit.

Lots of you will opt to work in these places but just in case you find them as unremittingly bleak as I did, here are some more life-affirming places in which to gaze into the middle distance and wonder if there are other words besides 'darta' that Simon Farrell likes to add his own special zing to:

• The biology library; fresh air, natural light, Internet available
  
• The physics library; big discussion area, natural light, Internet and windows
  
• The geology library (off to the right of the law library in the Wills Memorial Building); windows, Internet, old dark wood (there's something about it that makes you feel like you should be working)
• (The law library is ok but lawyers are vehemently possessive about it and I swear some of them have actual crossbows under their desks ready to take down those not of their ilk)
  
• The Epi bar during the day is good for discussions as no one is there. Actually, no one is there in the evenings either.
  
• The various quiet spots dotted about the Union: 3rd floor looking out to Clifton is good, Avon Gorge and Anson Rooms are empty most of the time (except around exams), Internet near Epi bar, there's also another computer room behind the girls' loos on that floor
• And if everyone in your flat/house is at the library or they are working too, why not stay at home?

I haven't sampled these locations but you might want to give them a go:

• Education Library
• Social Medicine Library
• Geographical Science Library
  

And when the weather is nice:

• Ashton Court
• The Downs
  
• The area behind the physics building
  
• The Cabot Tower Hill
• Berkeley Square

How to note: the nitty gritty

toke @ Flickr

We have established a few things for note-taking. First, know what a course is about. This is vital for restricting your revision to the relevant stuff and being able anticipate questions that might be coming. Second, it's best to start off your research with a review paper or several introductions to recent papers. I am working on a post which has all the review references I ever read in one place. Sit tight for that one, it's gonna be useful, especially for people who have had a rather too leisurely Easter break.

Before that, some more on note-taking.

Use your own words. Copying swathes out of paper is tempting because of the illusion of progress it creates. There are several problems with this. First, revision is reduction, so you are immediately failing in this respect.

Second you may understand the material now as the implicit logic is still kicking about in your minds from reading the paper, but when you revisit the notes in a month's time you'll kick your past self when the logical steps are not there and you simply have to go back to the original paper, obviating the initial work.

The other thing about using your own words is that you are exploiting the generation effect, the fact that when you produce information (as opposed to just reading and copying it) you remember it better (e.g. De Winstanley & Bjork, 2004). Converting key ideas into metaphor is a step further because of the deeper level of processing required, which better ossifies the ideas in memory.

Next, shorthand or prose? Prose. We all think we have a special shorthand that saves us massive amounts of time but which we later struggle to decipher. There's a lovely bit in Extras when Darren is jotting down the name of Andy's proposed show in his special shorthand:

Darren Lamb: What's it called?
Andy Millman: "When the Whistle Blows".
Darren Lamb: [writing] "When the W Blows".
Andy Millman: Don't just write "W" you'll forget what the W stands for.
Darren Lamb: "When the Wind Blows".
Andy Millman: "Whistle"!
Darren Lamb: Got it. [writing]
Darren Lamb: "W" equals "Wind".
Andy Millman: "Whistle"!
Darren Lamb: [writing] "When the Whistle Blows".

"Don't just write "W" you'll forget what the W stands for" is good advice for revision too. In your notes you should write in prose. Or at least prose in lists. Short hand is bad for laying down logic, it's bad to come back to, as Darren illustrates, and what's better, practising writing just before exams or sharpening your nib for months in the lead up to them?

So 1) use your own words and 2) use them in prose.

Nootropics

yanivg @ Flickr

Revising for psychology is a bit like trying to drink from a firehose: there's so much to get in and only a limited amount of time and mental willpower with which to gulp it all down. To keep your mouth open for longer and let you swallow faster it's no wonder so many people take to nootropics, the lovely technical term for drugs what make your noggin work better.

The majority of you will use nootropics during revision and exams. 'Not me, I'm clean', you're thinking. Well, yes you, if you gulp your nootropic down from a nice paper cup or can. Coffee, tea, Red Bull, Relentless (who have a great new site) - some people must drink their own body weight in this stuff if the bins in the library are to be believed (and I think they should be. I mean what kind of crazy scamp would go around just filling bins with empty cups and cans? Mind you, those library porters look pretty unhinged...)

Anyway. Adenosine. That's where we start. Adenosine looks a bit like a man holding balloons. Maybe. The important thing is that it has a dulling effect on the nervous system and it builds up in the brain over the day. The beauty of caffeine is that it's got it in for adenosine, to that point that it blocks its production (in neuroparlance it's an adenosine antagonist; Fisone, Borgkvist and Usiello, [2004]). This is what keeps you sharp.

Instead of glugging from a jug of coffee at the start of the day, a better strategy is to have small, frequent doses (Wyatt et al, 2004). One big hit and the adenosine will get back up again; with repeated, small smacks to the face it will stay down. So, in effect, it keeps sleep just around the corner; however, it doesn't knock it off the map. Use caffeine to ward off drowsiness but don't let it substitute any of your normal sleep (Wyatt et al, 2004)

So that's staying alert done. Does this drug have any other effects? Well it speeds up various mental process, including things like faster digit vigilance reaction time and improved visual information processing accuracy (Haskell et al, 2008).

Lesk and Womble (2004) also found that if you are focused on one thing caffeine may pump up short-term memory (by increasing short-term plasticity within the phonological retrieval system). This has also got support from Koppelstaetter et al (2008). (Although the long-term memory situation isn't so hot for caffeine; Han et al., [2007].)

So caffeine does have ergogenic - work improving - qualities and you are probably better off having it to keep you zippy during your revision and let you drink more from that firehose. Just space it out and don't let encroach on your sleep.

I would add a caveat though: if you are an anxious person you may want to give it a miss. This is because the antagonizing of adenosine is anxiogenic - anxiety causing - which you wont need if you are already in this state (e.g. Childs et al, 2008).

Chewing gum: bad?

pinkspleen @ Flickr

"I have heard chewing gum is good for your memory. Do you know if this is true?"

Thanks for this great question; I like a little challenge.

This study says yes: Wilkinson et al (2002) but the effect is selective

This study says yes: Baker et al (2004) but if at the time of recall you weren't chewing memory was worse (context effects)

This study says no: Tucha et al (2004) and alertness was adversely affected

This study says no: Johnson and Miles (2007)

This study says no: Miles and Johnson (2007)

So its seems like one of those beautiful messes the psychology literature likes to get itself in, but I would make a judgement: the only evidence for is either selective or compromised by the finding of negative effects. Plus the 2007 papers fail to replicate the earlier effects. So, to answer your question: no, it doesn't improve memory. In fact, it may make it worse and just puncture your alertness.

More strange and wonderful questions welcome.

The online hub

bfionline @ Flickr

You will have spent a long time on your essays, familiarising yourself with an area to exam-level detail. Fortunately, you only have to do an essay per course for coursework. Unfortunately, for exams you need to know lots more. One shortcut to familiarising yourself with all this other material is to read each others essays.

Last year many of the Level 3 psychologists compiled their essays on an online hub. Essays were uploaded along with the mark they got, any important comments made by the marker and without any identifying information.

The beauty of this is that you can quickly use the legwork done by others to get to a good level of understanding. In addition, you should be able to improve your own communication skills by noting in others what is effortless to read and what is horrible.

It's a great little resource and last year's was very successful but its power rests on you lot uploading your essays. To do this, first, remove your name from the doc, add your mark in a nice fat font size at the top (plus any marker comments you deem necessary), make sure the document is saved with the essay question in the file name and then head here to MediaMax and enter these details :

username: brain_milk
password: i/l/i/k/e/s/h/a/r/i/n/g
[remove all the "/" - this is to avoid bots]

After this navigate your way to right folder, or create your own if I have left one out, and upload.

Do make an effort to upload guys and gals, we all found it was a great thing to have last year...

Thinking in pictures

I spoke about using metaphor a few posts back. This is basically thinking in pictures. Now, you can go beyond just using tropes and breathe visual life into these metaphors with actual pictures and videos salted and peppered throughout your revision.

Just like I try to put a pic at the top of each article that links to the article's content in an interesting and memorable way, so you could illustrate your revision notes with a few choice pics/Photoshop mash-ups/film stills that are odd enough to be highly memorable while still being relevant. (For memory geeks out there, this phenomenon where oddity improves memory is called the 'bizarreness effect'. Read more about in this Google book).

I strongly advise trying it out because you are going have to pack a lot in over the coming months. Even if you conservatively estimate that for each course there are 50 references to remember that's approximately 500 to somehow get into your head. This is the same sort of number that expert memorizers deal with when they remember multiple packs of cards or whatever their memory fetish is. There's a neuroimaging study that shows tricks like these are not due to difference in brains but difference in strategies.

The majority use a visual memory trick called the loci method, which dates back to the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. You may have heard of it. Simonides was at a banquet when the roof collapsed. Many of the people were crushed beyond recognition and he was able to recall who was there by imagining the positions of people seated at their tables. I suggest having a brief read of this short review from TICS for the scientific account.

Whatever's going on beneath the brain's bonnet, one thing I am confident of is that this method works. As the author of the paper says, "Mnemonic methods are effective in generating associations between otherwise ‘meaningless’ or unrelated information, such as dates and names" (which precisely characterises a reference). There are stats somewhere that I can't find right now but which show big memories gains from using this method over the slog-it-out-write-'em-down-ten-times approach.

I did this for both references and essay arguments. Take the paper I mentioned a sec ago, for which the references is Ericsson (2003). Translate this into something memorable as you revise. How about it's 20:03 and Eric has forgotten (the paper is about memory) to pick his son up from school? Draw a little sketch of a panicked parent, the forlorn child and the clock on the wall.

For extended arguments you have built, you can do the same. I can still remember lots of the little stories I made up to mirror the arguments. Not only is this helpful to your learning but it injects some fun into the learning process (which probably makes your learning more effective).

One thing I like doing and which gives you a nice entry point to the loci method is to find a photo or make a sketch and then add details of the experiment in pithy form to the pic. I have uploaded a few for you all on my Flickr account, in the Mind Bites set (click here for the slideshow). If you fancy doing something like this yourself, you can use free Photoshop alternatives like the newly launched Photoshop Express, good old GIMP or easy-as-pie Flauntr.

You might scoff at this method as adding extra work to your already busy desk. Well, yes, but that information is more suited to the natural channels through which memories flow. So, it's a weird case of adding more information to do less work.

Other things might work for you, but this worked for me. Think in pictures and you'll think more clearly, remember better and enjoy the work more.

Here are a few I made earlier...

Split brain - the axe is attacking the posterior corpus callosum, which is the major information highway between the hemispheres.

Prosopagnosia, obviously. Less obviously, The F & G in the eyes stand for Fusiform Gyrus which is thought to be the associated dysfunctional area

A symbol worn on the arm with connotations of hatred and being on the political 'right'. Useful for remembering misoplegia, which is hatred of a limb (e.g., an arm) due to right hemisphere damage.

Good one for neuropsychiatry: everything comes down to the brain (if its attended to) even distant cultural things, like The Simpsons.

The male cast of Friends for male sexual strategies. Joey, the high-genetic quality/high-masculinity/low-investing male who is massively polygamous ("How you doin' ?") vs Chandler the lower genetic quality/low masculinity/high investment male who is relatively monogamous. Ross appears to operate both strategies, which is a useful way of capturing context-dependent sexual strategies.

Another good one for the male polygamous strategy would be this Lynx ad which taps into this desire for many partners and portrays it in absurdly epic proportions.

This one is for optimal female sexual strategy. Here females are particularly attracted to high developmentally stable (masculine) males (cues to high genetic quality) around ovulation (hence the egg) meaning they can get all best resource investment off Mr Lovey and the best genetic investment off Mr Hottie.

Looking time/violation of expectancy paradigms can be remembered by the surprised baby.

Two clips for alien hand syndrome. The first from Red Dwarf

and the second from the combined genius of Sellers and Kubrick in Dr Strangelove

Topically, John Prescott, has today admitted to suffering from bulimia nervosa (purging type). His case is useful for neuropsychiatry because it shows this is not just a disorder that affects Western females, as the popular impression goes. Secondly, it smashes another popular myth: that eating disorders are merely the product of the media portraying skinny girls. I can't really see Prescott leafing through Vogue. That is not to say psychological factors are irrelevant; he says one of the causes of the disorder was stress - a known risk factor. There are lots of neurobiological correlates that are emerging (see Kaye, 2008, for a good review) but one Prescott might be useful for remembering is that the disorder has been associated with a 'crap' right temporal lobe (e.g. Levine et al., 2003). This is because Prescott is left-wing and considers the right 'crap'.

And finally, it's not a photo but it's barking up the same tree:

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

- Tony Montana in Scarface.

The idea nested here is one the evolutionary psychology literature on risk-taking, aggression and homicide knocks about, namely, that access to females is the end goal, in the strict Darwinian sense. Power and wealth are means by which to get there and if you don't have these things it's worth taking risks for them.

Anyway, you get the idea. Go and be creative with your revision: it will sink in better...

How to Work - Three

Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue by filmmaker Cao Guimaraes and artist Rivane Neuenschwander. Following the Carnival, the colourful confetti become the ants' treasure and we can watch them as they go about their collective labour (a little help was needed to get them excited by soaking the paper in either pork-fat or honey). There is also some nice tinkling added to the soundtrack. Currently at the Tate Modern.

If an alien arrived on earth one of the first things it would note about our species was how much time we spent with each other. 'Humans are social creatures' it might jot down. Perhaps if our alien had been observing the majority of students doing their revision it would have added to that, "...except when revising."

But it shouldn't have to be this way.

Of course, you get the degree from your own work, you sit the exams by yourself and you need to do the thinking for yourself. I am not trampling on this idea. What's silly is when there is much to be gained, academically and emotionally, from including within your revision a perfectly legitimate social element.

What does this mean? It means chatting. It means spending lots of your revision hours chewing over the academic cud with other people. You'll be surprised at how digestible material is afterwards.

However, to do this, a lot of you will need to shake off the intense privacy with which you guard your ideas. Generally speaking, there is more to be gained from discussion than there is to be lost. And besides, you can keep the really original and creative cards close to your chest. But, I'd bet you'll find yourself with way more of those type of cards if you discuss material frequently and fervently with course mates.

I didn't do this in second year very much. Revision was lonely and painful. I did it in third year with the co-authors of the 'revision bible' and other lots of people on the course and revision suddenly got a whole lot better, and, dare I say it, at times enjoyable. Yeah, enjoyable.

I estimate that I reduced my 'sit-down revision time' by 30% by ironing out the creases in understanding over a beer, meal or walk on the Downs. What can take you 20 minutes in the library, takes you 20 seconds in a group to understand. Also, things seems to stick to memory more easily when they are spoken compared to when they are read. So, there are academic reasons for doing this.

Rather nicely, this idea has very recently been supported in the literature. In February, a paper published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that social interaction (as little as 10 minutes) improved intellectual performance.

In related stuff, more social contact is correlated with well-being (Sinha & Verma, 1990; Triandis et al., 1986); its absence is marked by depression (Gladstone, Parker, Malhi, & Wilhelm, 2007). Doing stuff together is better for the psyche.

In groups of friends, discussing things will probably occur organically. This post isn't really for that group. However, there will be lots of you who are doing this alone. This is for you then: You'll understand and remember more - and be happier, which counts for a lot - when you exploit your brain's natural affinity with social intercourse. Go and chat a psychologist up...

How to note: the review

(ttstam @ Flickr)

A review: the closest thing to a magic potion when revising

If you have done stage 1, you’ll know what a course is about before you dive into it.

I would say next on the agenda is to organise the course up into its different bits, leaving out anything you have decided to jettison. Now you have your work cut out.

Choose an area and head to PubMed (or alternative), type in the area you have settled on, add “+ review” on the end (e.g. “eating disorders + review”) and press 'Search'. Sort the results so as to have the most recent first.

With a bit of luck, what you'll have now is a review paper*. A review paper is an exciting thing; the more recent, the more exciting. It’s exciting because it means less work: someone much more familiar with the material has done all the legwork for you.

So, to carry on with the eating disorders (neuropsychiatry) example here's what I'd do:

One, I'd remind myself of the course blueprint, it’s all in the brain, but the brain isn’t everything. Two, as I read through the review paper, I'd have my senses sharpened to spot 'neural footprints'...it appears there is a lot of evidence showing right hemisphere damage. That’s something to note. But I'm also on the look out for more holistic explanations than this though. What is causing these right hemisphere lesions? There’s a load of stuff on methodology, and its at a grim level of detail. I’ll skim over that. Stuff on DSM-IV and how it’s being a bit behind, blah blah blah; interesting but irrelevant. Ah! A big juicy section on external causes…media effects…introduction of TV in a remote village causes increased incidence of eating disorders, that’s a good one!...both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy seem to have efficacy...and so on.

Hopefully, you get the idea. Find a review, call to mind the course blueprint and allow it be a light. Note what it illuminates and ignore the dark bits.

*If there are no reviews available, find a few recent experimental papers; their introductions should act as mini-reviews. Compare and contrast though because that way you tease out the picture and cancel out the researchers’ selection bias.