Grounded cognition gives your mind a hand

Before you read this, pour yourself a cup of hot tea.

Now, sit up straight. Smile. Hold that warm cup in your hand. Research is showing that these kinds of actions can positively influence what you think about a piece of writing.

"All the states of your body affect how you think. So does the environment," says Lawrence Barsalou, an Emory psychologist and a leading researcher of grounded cognition -- the idea that thought is shaped by bodily states. And vice-versa.

For instance, you may feel anxious about an upcoming presentation. Just thinking about forgetting your speech can produce the same physical stress reactions that occur when you actually are standing in front of a group of people and draw a blank.

"We're just barely beginning to understand the mechanisms, at a detailed and specific level, that operate to produce these experiences," Barsalou says.

We are entering a new era in psychology research, says Barsalou, who is especially interested in how meditation might be used to alleviate stress reactions.

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Putting teeth into Barker hypothesis

Teeth from a site near Cuzco, Peru, show grooves of enamel damage. Source: Valerie Andrushko.

By Carol Clark

Ancient human teeth are telling secrets that may relate to modern-day health: Some stressful events that occurred early in development are linked to shorter life spans.

"Prehistoric remains are providing strong, physical evidence that people who acquired tooth enamel defects while in the womb or early childhood tended to die earlier, even if they survived to adulthood," says Emory anthropologist George Armelagos.

Armelagos led a systematic review of defects in teeth enamel and early mortality recently published in Evolutionary Anthropology. The paper is the first summary of prehistoric evidence for the Barker hypothesis – the idea that many adult diseases originate during fetal development and early childhood.

"Teeth are like a snapshot into the past," Armelagos says. "Since the chronology of enamel development is well known, it's possible to determine the age at which a physiological disruption occurred. The evidence is there, and it's indisputable." 

The Barker hypothesis is named after epidemiologist David Barker, who during the 1980s began studying links between early infant health and later adult health. The theory, also known as the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Hypothesis (DOHaD), has expanded into wide acceptance.

As one of the founders of the field of bioarcheology, Armelagos studies skeletal remains to understand how diet and disease affected populations. Tooth enamel can give a particularly telling portrait of physiological events, since the enamel is secreted in a regular, ring-like fashion, starting from the second trimester of fetal development. Disruptions in the formation of the enamel, which can be caused by disease, poor diet or psychological stress, show up as grooves on the tooth surface.

Armelagos and other bioarcheologists have noted the connection between dental enamel and early mortality for years. For the Evolutionary Biology paper, Armelagos led a review of the evidence from eight published studies, applying the lens of the Barker hypothesis to remains dating back as far as 1 million years.

One study of a group of Australopithecines from the South African Pleistocence showed a nearly 12-year decrease in mean life expectancy associated with early enamel defects. In another striking example, remains from Dickson Mounds, Illinois, showed that individuals with teeth marked by early life stress lived 15.4 years less than those without the defects.

"During prehistory, the stresses of infectious disease, poor nutrition and psychological trauma were likely extreme. The teeth show the impact," Armelagos says.

Until now, teeth have not been analyzed using the Barker hypothesis, which has mainly been supported by a correlation between birth weight in modern-day, high-income populations and ailments like diabetes and heart disease.

"The prehistoric data suggests that this type of dental evidence could be applied in modern populations, to give new insights into the scope of the Barker hypothesis," Armelagos says. "Bioarcheology is yielding lessons that are still relevant today in the many parts of the world in which infectious diseases and under-nutrition are major killers."

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Dining with machines that feel

By Carol Clark

The Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry's annual Faculty Response Forum recently brought together dozens of high-powered intellects for food, wine and deep discourse. The menu of ideas included topics like “Queer Practices of the Self,” “Art and the Neurosciences” and “Torture, Knowledge and the State.”

At the table devoted to “Machines that Feel,” Michael Moon flourished a copy of “Tomorrow’s Eve.” The 1886 science fiction novel was the first text to use the word “android,” explained Moon, a professor in the Institute of Liberal Arts.

“The word ‘computer’ first referred to humans,” pointed out Elizabeth Wilson, a psychologist and professor of women’s studies.

“I think it goes back to the 1600s,” said Benjamin Kahan, a Fox Center fellow researching the history of celibacy. He pulled out his iPhone and within seconds had an exact date. “From 1613, a person who carried out calculations and computations. This is Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt.”

By the way, could you pass that shaker?

During World War II, Wilson continued, “computers” came to mean the people creating ballistic firing tables for big guns. “They were all very well-trained mathematically and they were mainly women, because the men were out firing the guns,” she said.

Moon mentioned a co-worker who dreamed that the cursor escaped from her computer. It ran amok in the office, cursing out all her colleagues. “We had to explain to her that it was her subconscious,” he said.

Talk turned to a strange psychosis that has recurred in both fact and fiction throughout the technological age: People who think that they are machines. In one story a 10-year-old boy needed to plug himself in to function. His belief was so compelling the staff in the hospital kept stepping over the imaginary cords.

“The boundary is getting blurred,” said Tim Bryson, South Asian studies librarian, referring to implants used to control artificial limbs. “What do you lose when you start replacing neurons with microchips?”

Will emotion ever become embedded into machines?

“It’s in them already,” Wilson said, picking up her iPhone. “The joy of the person who designed this is in here. Affect is the primary motivator of human behavior, and it’s everywhere.”

“I’m intrigued by the iPad,” said James Mulholland, a Fox Center fellow researching 18^th-century poetry and the effect of early “virtual voices,” such as megaphones.

“The iPad is very, very tempting,” agreed Wilson, regarding the latest Apple product.

“In the future, my machine and I are going to be seamless,” said someone in an oddly dispassionate tone. It wasn’t clear whom the voice came from.

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Working through the bugs of evolution

The science blog io9.com recently paid a visit to two of the leading labs that use parasites and bugs to research evolutionary ecology. Both of the labs are in Emory's biology department, headed by Nicole Gerardo and Jaap de Roode. Check out the photo tours of their research, featured on io9.com.

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Why are you looking at me like that?

Nobody knows more about staring than people who are disfigured. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson takes the perspective of people who differ from the norm in her groundbreaking research. The Emory professor works at the intersection of psychology, biology and sociology to understand how we perceive and treat one another. Watch this video and you will see what she means:


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