Empirically Aesthetic? MPI Researchers Weigh In

It's fascinating to read about big concepts like philosophy and beauty, but what is it like to study them in your daily job? Malika Renz sat down with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics to find out.

Pauline Larrouy-Maestri

Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, you have a very diverse background – can you tell us how you got into neuroaesthetics?
Yes, I studied music, psychology and pedagogy and worked as a musician and a speech therapist. My PhD was in cognitive psychology, on the singing voice which is of course linked to aesthetics. But aesthetics wasn't my main focus then – it's more of a means of looking at how people interact with their environment, at auditory perception and processing. I've been working on this as a post-doc here at the MPI for 3 years now.

How do you start with something as vague and mysterious as beauty and end up learning about perception and processing mechanisms?
Suppose you start with the question: what makes something beautiful? Is it the same as being somehow correct? Or interesting? Recently, we've been working on pitch accuracy, so let's take that as an example. Beautiful singing voices or melodies are often associated with being "correct". Everyone can hear if a performance is in or out of tune – musicians, non-musicians, male, female, young and old – people usually agree on this. So what is it that makes all of us feel that one tone is correct and the other is not? It's hard to put a label on this, it just sounds right or wrong. Somehow, people must become sensitive to the criteria for a correct melody without ever being aware of it! And we know this holds true not only for music but also for other domains – we learn rules and we apply them to make an aesthetic judgment without even noticing.

But if we don't even notice it – how are we learning those rules?
The brain is made for taking in stimuli and building rules, and thus knowledge from it. It's similar to how children learn a language, a totally implicit process. To understand language you have to parse the auditory signal – you need to cut it into sensible units and concatenate them in a meaningful way. The same parsing and integrating of course happens in music appreciation as well and it is this process which I am interested in. Aesthetics is my vehicle to study how we learn auditory processing, what the minimal units and the rules of meaningful integration are.

How can you research music appreciation in the lab?
Me, I am doing psychophysics: I manipulate stimuli, I invite people to the lab and ask them to listen to these stimuli. We change single features of tones and ask something like “Which of these sounds is more in tune?”. The resulting data can tell us what differences are perceived and what magnitude of change is needed. That alone reveals a lot about the structure of sounds, its components and their relative importance. This was how we found out that the smallest meaningful units are not single notes –  it's the beginning and the end of a a note that matters. Once you find these units and confirm their discerning value, you can play with them: find out how the changes influence the perceived agreeableness or pitch accuracy. And whether people even agree on the direction of effect of a specific parameter.

Pardon my impoliteness, but apart from being fascinating, what use is there in all this?
Aesthetic appreciation of course is very fundamental. Many things are related to what you see and hear, all around you. Interaction with people is about tastes, preferences, about your appreciation of the environment. We all function with that all the time. But we don't understand the processes behind it very well: we know that the pleasure circuitry is based on automatic processes. For perceiving something as beautiful, however, indirect pathways, such as mediation by thought, are needed. Simply knowing how perception works has a clinical application. If someone has a speech impairment or a difficulty to understand language, is it because they cannot parse? Cannot concatenate? Didn't learn the appropriate rules? As soon as we have a working model we can tick which box is malfunctioning and focus training or treatment there.

To save the best for last: what was your personal research highlight?
I showed that we are all musicians. Let me explain. For decades, we had in the scientific literature a separation between musicians and non-musicians. It is categorical, but the idea has been around for a while – and it's nonsense! Take an opera performance. Who goes to the opera? No one does! Only a very small part of the general population, mostly educated people with a musical background or interest. And musicians agree to a very great extent on their judgment of what makes a beautiful opera voice. But here is what I found: people who have no idea what an opera voice is or should be apply the same criteria and come to the same conclusions. So, without ever going to the opera, without any explicit input, we build a representation that creates a link – between you and me, between people who are privileged enough to enjoy operas and those who aren't. Our learning mechanisms are fundamentally the same and they take whatever they can get from the environment.


 The interview was conducted by Malika Renz, MSc Student MedNeuro

From Sleep Researcher to Consultant to Entrepreneur

Meet Els van der Helm the ‘Sleep Geek’; Neuroscientist and founder of Shleep - the sleep company

You hold a Master and a PhD in Neuroscience. Would you tell us more about your background?

I’ve always been fascinated by sleep. I read a book by Prof. Bill Dement from Stanford when I was in high school which taught me about the magic of sleep and also the taboo around it: that we associate it with being lazy or less ambitious. That really inspired me to study clinical neuropsychology and neuroscience. So during my Master on these topics, I started to do sleep research, first at the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience in Amsterdam and then at Harvard, looking at the effect of sleep in emotional processing. And then I went on to do my PhD at UC Berkeley, looking at the effect of sleep on our brain.

Els van der Helm, sleep expert and founder of Shleep

 How was your transition from the PhD to becoming a McKinsey consultant?

I really enjoyed doing sleep research and learning about it, but at the same time I realized that doing neuroimaging is very technical and not necessarily my passion. I also missed working in a team and having a more direct impact. I really wanted to help people and the slow pace of academia didn’t fit me. So I decided to make a change and go into business and learn more about the rest of the world, beyond academia.

How was your experience as a business consultant for almost 3 years?

The beginning was quite rough in some ways and quite easy in others. Starting with the roughness: there is much more time pressure on what you are doing. I remember having meetings with my manager and instead of saying ‘I’ll see you in a week’, which was kind of the pace in academia, the answer would be ‘OK, let’s see in two hours where you are’. So, suddenly, you’re doing everything under time pressure. And for me it really meant that I still had a lot to learn about time management and organizational skills. I also had to share my documents with the rest of the team and the clients, whereas in academia it was much more individual: I could make a mess, as long as I could understand it. So the biggest changes for me were the change in pace and the level of focus that it required. It was much more intense. Also, I was at the client’s site the whole day and couldn’t for example go work out in the middle of the day if I wanted to, as I was able to do during my PhD. That was quite rough, to be honest. It was a very different way of working that I needed to learn. Different skills were required and these weren’t skills that you just get within 2 or 3 weeks. I would say I really got the hang of it when I was doing the work for about 9 to 12 months. And that’s quite normal, but coming in after a PhD or a post-doc as opposed to after a Master or a Bachelor’s degree, you expect more of yourself. So for me it was a humbling journey, having to develop all of those new skills, basically a 'consultant's toolbox'. This toolbox is not just critical in consulting, but helpful in any type of job. I also enjoyed the fact that you work in a team, you get so much feedback, training and support around you, which I didn’t really experience during my PhD. So my learning curve was a lot steeper than it had been in academia. I felt like I was using my time better. It was always a different project, team, manager, client, and industry. In consulting, every year feels like a ‘dog year’: it’s worth 7 years! (laughs) So it’s a rough transition but I’d say well worth it. You develop yourself very quickly and it’s a unique experience. There were things I loved and things I was less happy about, but overall, a very positive experience.

What motivated you to make the career change of leaving consulting in a big firm to starting your own company?

It was never really my goal to stay in consulting forever. For me, it was all about purpose. I really wanted to focus more on something I’m really passionate about. The funny thing is that when I joined McKinsey I didn’t think I would ever do anything with sleep again, but not working on sleep anymore made me realize how much I missed it, and how passionate I was about the topic. Perhaps in academia I wasn’t working on the topic in the right way: it was very technical and very slow, which I didn’t really enjoy. When I started as a consultant, I also quickly realized that, for me, business problems are really not as interesting as neuroscience and the brain. But I did really love being in the business world and interacting with people who are really smart, care about their own performance and are very ambitious. In McKinsey, we received a lot of training: in time management, stress, leadership... But never ever did the word ‘sleep’ come up. Knowing how critical sleep is for learning, attention, stress reactivity and developing new insights, I felt that was a major topic missing. 

 'IT STARTED AS MY HOBBY AND THEN GREW INTO A COMPANY'

That really inspired me to start giving sleep workshops for my colleagues and McKinsey clients. It was so much fun and there was so much interest. Giving these workshops made me realize how I could work with the topic of sleep in a way that fits me much better: translating science into practical advice (which I wasn’t really doing in academia) and seeing a direct impact on the people I was working with. That was something I cared about much more than being a consultant. It started as my hobby while at McKinsey but I really made that grow and carved out a space for myself, as the internal sleep expert. It was almost like a testing ground for me, or an incubator, where I could test my ideas, get feedback, and grow my network and skill set. So I decided to leave and started my own business, called Shleep, in 2016.

Can you please tell us more about Shleep? What are its products and who are its clients?

Our mission is to help the world sleep better. We help organizations improve their performance by improving the sleep of their leaders and employees. For this, we offer a number of products and services. We design sleep programs for companies, which means that we help them develop approaches to put sleep on the map and really embrace it in their culture, so that all employees know how important sleep is and can prioritize it better. This way, they perform better, are happier and healthier. Some other services we offer are online assessments, in-person workshops, one-on-one coaching, webinars, and we’ve developed a digital sleep coaching app that will be launched soon in the App Store, so it will also be available for individual consumers. Examples of our corporate clients are McKinsey, Deloitte, Spotify, social network companies, pharmaceutical companies, law firms, startups, amongst others. Our startup team is quite international. The office is based in Amsterdam, along with our marketing guru, Tom, and myself. My co-founder, Jöran Albers (the ‘business guy’), is based in Munich, our developer is from Switzerland but lives in the Netherlands, and Elena, a circadian rhythms PhD, is based in Canada.

http://www.shleepbetter.com/

What advice would you give to current Master and PhD students in Neuroscience who would like to leave academia?

Join our company for an internship! (laughs) I’m laughing, but I’m actually serious! What is great about our startup is that we have experience in management consulting (two people in our team) and we really use these skills in the way we run our company and develop our employees, which we are very much focused on. At the same time, you can get the startup experience, where things change very quickly, we re-prioritize all the time, things are up and down, exciting, moving fast. And we’re translating science into practical advice and products on a daily basis.

 'YOU REALLY HAVE TO DO SOMETHING THAT YOU CARE ABOUT'

Other types of advice: you really have to do something that you care about, that you’re happy to wake up for in the morning. Figure out what it is that drives you. It’s not easy. It took me a while to figure out that for me it was sleep. But look back at your life and think about some of the key moments when you were really happy, inspired or content with what you were doing. Pinpoint moments when you really enjoyed or didn’t enjoy doing something, instead of trying to imagine what you would enjoy doing, because a lot of things aren’t really like what they seem to be. And focus on your own strengths. Ask people around you what you’re good at, what they think is special about you, so you can leverage those strengths. And reach out to people in different jobs, ask if you could meet them for a coffee or talk to them for a few minutes on the phone to ask some career questions. It can be incredibly helpful to get some inside information. I wish you all the best figuring it out!

by Mariana Cerdeira, PhD Student AG Harms

This article originally appeared December 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 04, Sleep 

Your Lab Notebook Goes Digital!

Even though labs today have high-profile technical equipment and produce data mainly digitally, most of the documentation is still done on paper. Labfolder provides an electronic, web-based note book that allows you to store, organize, and analyze your scientific data in a digital format, accessible anytime and anywhere. We met with one of the founders, Florian Hauer.

What is the idea behind Labfolder?
Labfolder is a digital platform where scientists can capture, validate, collect, and also connect all the data and data sources in the laboratory. In most laboratories, scientists still use paper-based lab books. Labfolder transforms these labs into the laboratories of the future, where everything is digital and connected. The idea is that science will be better, more transparent, more reproducible, and more successful if the lab goes digital.

When did you start working on Labfolder?
I started working on Labfolder together with my co-founder Simon Bungers in 2011. It all started with writing a grant for the EXIST fellowship from the German government which awarded us 100.000 EUR to start. We started building the first prototype in 2012 and founded the company in autumn 2013.

You came directly from working in a lab and created Labfolder. What is your background?
My background is molecular biology and biophysics. I had done electron microscopy before I started with Labfolder; it is a discipline which is very data-heavy.

STAYING IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH IS AS RISKY AS FOUNDING A STARTUP

How did you get into this field? Why did you decide not to follow research?
It was curiosity. And then followed by possibility. My co-founder and I were curious to see what it would look like to have our own company. When we got the possibility to do it, we grabbed it immediately. We were often asked if this was not very risky, but our statement is that staying in academic research is equally risky. There is actually no difference whether you want to pursue the academic path, go to the industry or build a startup.

Did you have any training which prepared you for your adventure?
We had to learn everything right in the moment: how to do tax declarations, set up contracts, register a company, and so forth. Luckily, we were embedded in a network from the FU Berlin, which came with our funding. They gave us support in many ways. But I can tell you this: If you have done scientific lab work, then doing the bureaucratic efforts of founding a company is really not rocket science. For a scientist, I would say, it is not a big problem to figure out how to do all these things that are necessary to start and run a company.

What were the milestones in the development and growth of Labfolder?

Our first important milestone was the release of the alpha version in 2012. After only 3 months of development, we released the first very basic prototype of Labfolder, which was already good enough to ignite the interest of some users here at the Charité. More milestones were the steps of publishing new features and available languages. Among the milestones are also the partnerships that we made both with other startups like Mendeley and investors, but also our agreement with the Max Planck society, and very recently with the BIH to roll out Labfolder here at the Charité and the MDC.

FOUNDING A COMPANY IS REALLY NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

 

Who is using Labfolder already and how many customers do you have?
Around 14.000 scientists are using Labfolder. Most are from Germany, but also from the rest of Europe, the US, and Asia. Our customers are 60% academic research laboratories, the others are companies. However, the number of customers does not necessarily reflect the number of users, as for example the Max Planck society is one customer with many users. We also have customers that are using Labfolder in analysis labs with routine testing.

Andrea Claes (l) and Florian Hauer (r) from Labfolder, Photo: Claudia Willmes

How is Labfolder going to evolve in the coming years?
Very soon we will release a few features that will allow scientists to manage their data even better. One feature will allow you to control the experimental parameters in a more structured way, and run queries on your experimental data. Another feature will allow you to link all the material you are using by introducing a material database.
In the long run, we are interested in implementing all the features that allow scientists to get a better grip on their data and make more out of it. The promise of digitalization is not only to have everything digital, but to also do something with the data: To make connections that were there but were not visible before. In the age of big data, it is important to make it possible for scientists to easily store and access it.

What do you like the most about your job?
I like that I have to do something new every day. It never gets boring. There are no normal work days!

What are some of the challenges of your job?
Well, the challenges are also that there is something new every day. But I think it is the challenges that make us grow stronger. I would say that it is probably not the easiest of all jobs, but in our team we are all equally hungry for challenges and for the success that comes with mastering them.

Do you sometimes wish you would be doing experiments in a lab?
I actually still do lab work as a guest scientist! It is very important to me to stay connected to the laboratory and science. Of course, I do much less. I usually take 2 weeks holiday per year which I spend in the lab. I have never lost the connection to the lab and I also plan to keep that in the future.

IN TIMES OF BIG DATA IT'S IMPORTANT TO EASILY STORE AND ACCESS DATA

 
To what extent can Labfolder contribute to better “scientific practice” and data availability?
Labfolder makes it easier to follow the guidelines of good scientific practice, as it is just done automatically without you needing to do anything. Today the main problem of science is that the data are just not accessible to others. If you write up your thesis, you finish your lab notebook and put it on the shelf in your lab: And the data are practically gone! With Labfolder, we want to make sure that future generations of scientists and also the general public will be able to follow your experiments and make use of your data. What ends up in the paper is maybe 5% of the data you have generated, and the rest is lost. It is our mission to provide the technical possibility to share the data in an easy way, and not to share only the tip of the iceberg which is the paper, but also the hidden bottom. These data could be used by others to come to new conclusions and to combine different datasets in order to find new things. With the digital platform for scientific data, there are going to be a lot of possibilities to exchange data. Funding agencies such as the DFG want scientists to share their data, including the raw data. There is a trend to open science and we would like to offer a platform where this trend can become reality.

LABFOLDER IS AN IMPROVEMENT OF  DATA SAFETY AND SECURITY

What about data security? Would it be possible to hack the Labfolder data?
This is a very valid question, but there is no system in the world that is 100% safe. Your paper notebook is also not safe. If you look at large industrial companies that fell victim to espionage, the port of entry never has been the system, but a corrupted person. The risk to be attacked by a hacker is especially high if you have your data on your personal computer or unsecured hard drive. Having your data on Labfolder, where the communication is encrypted and data are stored behind a firewall means security is a lot higher. Also, the Labfolder servers regularly undergo scheduled backups. Even if your computer bursts into flames, your data is still safe in Labfolder. Compared to the many other ways of data storage, Labfolder is actually quiet an improvement of safety and security.

What can our readers do if they want to start using Labfolder?
Using Labfolder at the Charité is now possible! You are very much invited to contact us, either me or Andrea Claes. Andrea will help finding the right strategy to transition from paper based lab book to Labfolder to make it seamlessly easy to jump into the digital lab notebook.

Thank you very much for this interview, we are looking forward to the new features of Labfolder!

This interview was edited for length and clarity
 
Interview by Claudia Willmes, PhD Alumna AG Eickholt / AG Schmitz
This interview originally appeared June 2017 in  CNS Volume 10 - Issue 2

You are very much invited to contact Andrea Claes,
Project & Account Manager, and contact partner for the BIH andrea.claes@labfolder.com

Faith and Perspective: an Interview With Three Berlin Neuroscientists

With the upcoming holidays in mind, we are talking about faith and  being a scientist in today's post. Recently, we sat down for a chat with three researchers of the Neuroscience community in Berlin, the topic ranging from juggling neuroscience and faith to common misconceptions about religion. Here’s what they had to say.

Could you please tell us a little about your faith?
I am a Christian, as were my parents. When I was in grade 12, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior and converted to Evangelical Christianity. And I would say during my stay in the university, I came much closer to God. I started seeking him with all my heart; the more I know Him, the more I reflect His character: love and kindness.

I'm basically born into a Hindu family. I have been practicing Hinduism since childhood. During the course of my studies and my PhD in neuroscience, I have started to question both religion and science – specifically whether either of them can fully answer questions on consciousness.

I was born in a Muslim family and had the privilege of having parents that loved to read and had a large collection of books on religion (mainly Islamic) as well as comparative religion-oriented. They encouraged me to read and I spent a great deal of time combing through books at my home. During my childhood, much like other kids, I practiced religion more out of watching what my parents and grandparents did. As a teenager, I became more inquisitive, and started practicing my religion with more reason, intent, and curiosity.

How does your faith help or influence you as a neuroscientist?
My faith shapes every part of my life, and everything I do is based on principles from the Bible. For example, I am faithful – faithful to God, faithful to the people standing next to me in the lab, faithful in everything that I do. I believe that God is watching, hence, I do whatever I do with all my heart. And I consider the opportunities I have got as an immense privilege that I should nurture and care for. Besides, living in harmony with God lets me have internal peace and keep me secure no matter what happens around.

The concept of Hinduism urges one to ask questions about one's inner self/consciousness (also known as Advaita philosophy) which helps me as a neuroscientist to shape and ask questions about workings of the brain leading to conscious behavior.

In our holy book, the Quran, there are hundreds of verses which encourage us to study and ponder. In fact, in the very first verse, where the truth about Allah is revealed to the prophet Muhammad, the first divine command is “Read!”. A quest for knowledge is thus one of the most important pursuits that one can have in life. Many people in different religions are taught that they cannot contest what is written or preached, but I believe that Islam teaches us always to be skeptical and build strong counterarguments, or put things to the test. Using this type of reasoning is extremely important for me as a neuroscientist. Furthermore, Islam teaches us that we should gain our livelihood through righteous means. That means if you happen to be a researcher, do research with a purpose and rationale behind it. We are held accountable after death for how we used our health, knowledge and time during life. Therefore, whatever we do has to be legitimate and meaningful. So, in that sense, faith definitely influences neuroscience in that it gives me a purpose behind the daily struggles of research because I know that even if I fail, I learn a lot more and that all these efforts are not futile.

What do you believe your faith can teach you about neuroscience?
I know that God has placed eternity in our heart and mindset to seek and explore what has been done under heaven. But, there are questions that science is not able to answer; about creation and existence, purpose of life, etc. People might seek and try lots of things, but there is always a void inside our heart that God can only fill. The Bible teaches us that we were uniquely, fearfully, and wonderfully created as part of a perfect system. It is fascinating to see how the universe operates by itself. Hence, being a scientist (as well as a Christian) gives me great appreciation for how intricate biological systems are perfectly made, and work together in harmony. And this makes me wonder how one can perceive it as a random event.

Hindu scriptures like Vedas and Upanishads have dealt with mind and brain in depth. For example, there are concepts of divisions of mind like Buddhi (intellect/logical part of brain), Manas (emotional parts) and Indriyas (senses). Furthermore, these texts have a lot of insights on how senses interact with the mind.

The Quran teaches us that our intelligence is what sets us apart from animals – the ability to think and reason. Islam instills in an individual that he or she is so much more than the sum of all their synapses or microbiome. Of course, with great power comes great responsibility – we shouldn’t take it all for granted. Islam thus teaches us that to lead a meaningful life, we need to use our brains!

Has neuroscience changed the way that you see your faith?
If anything, I think it’s the other way around!

Neuroscience has definitely helped me form more solid ideas of mind and brain combining the aspects of mind mentioned in Vedas.

Yes. Science is all about inquiry, and established knowledge changes fast. This has helped me be more enquiring and skeptical about my own faith. In my everyday life, I try to reason with myself a lot about the how’s and why’s of the lifestyle I follow. Neuroscience reinforces this habit.

Has anyone ever challenged you about your faith as a scientist?
Well, I am having discussions with colleagues all the time, and I think sometimes they might get perplexed with my faith. Scientists are always looking for concrete proof, something tangible to prove things about God and the universe. But faith is something that has to be experienced – it’s something that I personally have experienced, and it is something that no one can take away from me. To help you understand, look at the concept of love. It’s something that I (and most other people) have experienced, yet is completely intangible and needs to be felt to be believed. It can’t be measured!

Actually, I never felt a clash between ideas in Hinduism and neuroscience. Hinduism encourages one to seek answers for questions on 'Paramatma' which is the 'Primordial Self'. In my opinion, that is also the ultimate goal of neuroscience – to understand perception and consciousness.

Oh yes, I am challenged all the time! I have lots of friends from different religions, including some who identify as atheists. Discussing religion and science with them is a favorite topic of mine. Having your beliefs questioned is also refreshing in the sense in that it teaches you that beliefs or ideas that form your core personality may not have any significance for others – and that’s ok. Or the fact that one need not believe in a theistic religion to go out and do good in society or some seriously awesome science. I firmly believe that if the Quran is a divine miracle, its prophecies or claims will be testable and could not be falsified. My knowledge regarding both religion and neuroscience is fairly basic but this very reason motivates me to question both and improve my understanding.

Are there any misconceptions that you feel people have about your faith?
The biggest misconception I have faced is ‘faith and science are considered incompatible’. When I tell people I am a Christian, I have been asked how do you believe and be a scientist at the same time. With science, I try to understand and discover what is already there. My faith gives me the bigger picture, the purpose for life. Being a Christian is not also having certain religious practices and rituals. Faith is all about having a personal relationship with God. To me, having faith and being a religious person are not the same thing! Religion is something based on rules: do this, don’t do that. To me, being a Christian is personally experiencing God and walking the walk of life with Him through the ups and downs.

Well, it’s not specifically neuroscientific, but whenever I say I'm from India, people ask "are you a vegetarian?". I am actually, but not all Hindus are [laughs]. Some confusion also arises about the number of Gods that we have. Even though we have millions of Gods as a way of placing and expressing faith, we all believe in Paramatma, 'Primordial Self'.

There are two misconceptions that I’ve noticed a lot. First, that Islam hinders scientific progress as it’s just a set of rituals from the 7^th century. This is absurd and any hindrances to science per se are products of people’s actions (combine less education and in depth study of religion + science) rather than their faith. This also extends to people’s take on women and STEM. Despite societal constraints on women in some Muslim countries, there have also been some remarkable outcomes. If you look at countries like Iran or Pakistan, they have some of the highest number of women in STEM professions in the Muslim world. A second big misconception is that Islamic teachings are rigid, set in stone and cannot be challenged. Also not true. In fact, the Quran openly challenges people to bring a counter argument against its verses and claims to promote a lifestyle model that can adapt to the change in time.

What do you think is the most important thing for people to understand about your faith?
Faith and science are not incompatible. It just takes an open heart to experience God like love. It is not something you can validate and understand with logic. It is not rocket science either, if we genuinely and humbly seek God with an open heart, we will find Him. He is not hidden or somewhere far away, He is around revealing himself in one or another way throughout our journey. Believing in Christ gives eternal life, internal peace, meaning to life and a positive way to look at everything. A life worth living is a life with meaning and purpose. God loves you!

 People have thought about understanding the brain since many centuries, which is reflected in the religious scriptures like Vedas. Perhaps one could get answers by reading these scriptures!

As I mentioned before, the concept of skepticism and inquiry is very important. As far as scientific research is concerned, Islam encourages people to do that as it may be one way of recognizing the common design involved behind the universe and the man. For modern day issues like organ-donation and blood transfusion for instance, it encourages ‘’ijtihad’’ (thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a legal question). Finally, Islam stresses that acquiring knowledge and then having the wisdom to act on that knowledge is what makes us distinct from our relatives in the animal kingdom. In the Quran, the reader is warned that not acting on acquired wisdom (be it through religious books or years spent in scientific training) will demote the status of its believers. Herein lies the key problem, and the majority of Muslims who passively follow Islam like a religion of rituals and obligations don’t bother to treat it as an all-encompassing lifestyle that could be so much more beyond prayer and supplications. Believing in Quran and its writer (the Almighty) do not automatically entitle anyone to any kind of superiority (religious or educational) over others who don’t. Success in any walk of life is guaranteed to those who work hard for it.

A big thank you to all interviewees!

Content has been edited lightly for clarity and length with participants’ permission.

by Constance Holman, PhD Student AG Schmitz
this article originally appeared 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 3, Spirituality in Science

Research on Researchers: Dr. Michael Teut

Dr. Michael Teut does clinical research about the effects of traditional, alternative or complementary therapies and works as a physician at the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.




MZ: What is your academic background?
MT: I was trained as a physician, mainly in Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, Family Medicine, Hypnotherapy and Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Since 2007, I have been working as researcher and physician at the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

You studied in the Netherlands and in India. What did you experience there?
Both countries have completely different cultures. In 1994, I spent a few months of clinical training in a homeopathic hospital and college in Mumbai. India’s medical system is split into three parts: conventional medicine, ayurveda, and homeopathy. Approximately 250,000 Indian physicians work as homeopaths and are running hospitals and clinics. I personally wanted to study this phenomenon more closely and subjectively had the impression that, in many cases, homeopathy produced good results, but in others, conventional medicine was clearly superior. This experience helped to support my decision to pursue Integrative Medicine, which combines the best therapeutic strategies from different systems to optimize health care for individual patients with individual needs. In the Netherlands, I participated in a four-month surgical internship at the Leiden University Medical Center, which was very good training. Practical bedside teaching was of utmost importance and I participated in many operations and worked frequently in the emergency unit. Teamwork was clearly very important, and was a strength of the Dutch colleagues.

What do you do in your current position?
Together with my colleagues, I was able to set up the Charité Outpatient Department for Integrative Medicine at Berlin Mitte (Charité Hochschulambulanz für Naturheilkunde), which provides outpatient care and conducts clinical trials. I am also teaching medical students in Social Medicine, Prevention, Health Economics and Complementary and Alternative Medicine. At the moment, we are running clinical trials on the effects of mindful walking and cupping in chronic low back pain and „Kneipp“ therapies in elderly patients in nursing homes.

What are your main topics of interest in science?
I am mainly interested in clinical research about the effects of traditional, alternative or complementary therapies. If you enter this field, placebo discussions will automatically arise. In the last years, I became more and more interested in ’self healing‘. In clinical research, the term ’placebo‘ is frequently used. But placebo is a ’black box‘, the meaning depends on the context in which the term is used. In my understanding, one important aspect of ’placebo‘ is self healing and conditions which support self healing. Already the school of Hippocrates in ancient Greece advised life style changes to increase self healing, to improve health, and support healthy aging. Much of the ancient advice remains true today. Although we know about the benefits of lifestyle change, modern medicine is mainly focused on technical solutions. Therefore, I consider trials that investigate the effects of simple and low-tech lifestyle change interventions to be of high importance. Good examples are our trials about the effects of mindful walking exercises on psychological distressed subjects or patients with chronic back pain.

Scientific research should be understood as a tool to help patients and improve medicine.

What do you think is the main advantage of integrative medicine compared to conventional medicine?
Over the last years, I realized that integrating traditional therapies in conventional medicine enables physicians to use a wider range of metaphors and concepts to help patients to create meaning about their complaints and disease. This can help the patient to reframe his situation, reduce distress, and also activate resources for self healing. Physicians integrating traditional therapies usually spend more time with their patients. Time is a crucial resource to medical quality: to understand patients, build up a good patient-physician relationship, also to avoid errors. In addition, many traditional therapies have low side effects and can be tried before, after or in combination with conventional treatments.

How will medicine look like in 20 years from now?
Medical progress is strongly driven by new technologies and industry. Introducing new technologies confronts us with great opportunities but also risks. I hope that we will be able to master this challenge and our patients may benefit from technical advances. In the United States, Integrative Medicine has become a very strong movement. Nearly all academic centers are now running departments for Integrative Medicine. The US government strongly supports scientific research in this field with more than 100 million dollars per year. I personally understand this movement as a counterbalance to the technologically driven medical progress. I hope that creating evidence for traditional therapies may lead to an integration of useful strategies in conventional medicine in the long run.

What impressed or astonished you most during your career?
The tendency of many physicians and journalists to generally classify complementary and alternative medicines as ’placebo‘ and conventional medicine as ’effective‘. Both sides are part of our medicine culture. Placebo responses occur in both systems and play essential roles in both. Conventional medical practice, as practiced in real life, is in many cases not evidence-based. We should generally be more open minded, curious, but also critical towards all therapeutic strategies.

Thank you very much, Dr. Teut, for this intriguing insight into your work and life. 

This interview was conducted by Marietta Zille and originally published 2013 in
CNS Volume 6, Issue 4, Integrative Medicine

Free Will - An Interview with Professor John-Dylan Haynes

Professor John-Dylan Haynes devotes part of his research to free will. He works at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, part of Charité – Universitätsmedzin Berlin. Filip Morys asked him about his view on the free will.

FM: What is your opinion on free will – do we have it or not?
JDH: First of all, you have to define what you understand when you mean free will. There are different things people associate with free will. The most important distinction you can make is between freedom from external constraints versus freedom from internal constraints. So if someone is pointing a gun at your head, you are not free to decide the way you want to react. But if no one is pointing the gun at your head, there might still be no freedom in the sense that you can’t change the course of the events because you are determined by a causal chain of events happening in your brain.
Humans tend to be dualistic; they tend to think that their mind is something separate from their body. The fact that there exists a field of  'psychosomatics' already suggests that they think that the body is something different from the mind. I believe that the mind is something that is realized by the body, specifically by the brain. It takes place in the carrier medium of the brain and it follows the laws of nature. So our mind is a natural process. But most people, including us scientists in our day-to-day lives, follow dualistic thinking patterns. We think that when we make a decision to do something, that this decision somehow happens in a separate space, independent from our brain. We believe that our brain and body only come into play when we want to execute our decisions, to make our choices become reality. According to what we know from modern neuroscience, this view is definitely wrong.

DECISION DOES NOT START IN THE MIND, INSTEAD IT EMERGES FROM PRIOR BRAIN ACTIVITY.

Our own research suggests that a decision does not start in the mind, instead it emerges from prior brain activity. The brain seems to be the starting point of the causal chain leading to the conscious decision. If the decision really starts in the brain at a time when you do not even notice it happening, then to me this suggests that one aspect of freedom does not exist; Our mind is not able to overcome the laws of nature. Many philosophers disagree with this interpretation, but I am not claiming that there are not other ways of defining freedom. As a psychologist, I am more interested in the ways which people actually think about freedom, and not the ways in which we can redefine our concept of freedom to be compatible with natural sciences.

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience

 

FM: I read an interview where you said that we could trace our decisions to the moment of big bang, is that true?
JDH: Oh I did not say that. It is a statement on our website and people cite it, which is very funny. It reads: “Decisions don't come from nowhere but they emerge from prior brain activity. Where else should they come from? In theory it could be possible to trace the causal pathway of a decision all the way back to the big bang. Our research shows that we can trace it back 10 seconds. Compared to the time since the big bang this is not very long.”
This is of course a highly provocative and exaggerated statement, which I put up to provoke counter reactions. I have to admit that I enjoy the Darwinism of ideas, where you put up strong points just to see what kind of arguments people come up with to pull them down. Of course I don’t believe that it’s practically ever going to be possible to work your way backwards in the causal chain of the world back to the big bang. The point serves more as a reminder that there is nothing mysterious about predicting (or better 'postdicting') backwards in time, even if according to physics and thermodynamics working backwards will be more difficult. If there are laws governing processing in our brains then it should be possible – at least to some degree – to unwrap the previous steps in the processing chain. Obviously, you can imagine very specific cases, where, for example, a few hundred synapses converge onto one neuron. Then, the neuron does not know from which cell it originally got input. But in neuroimaging with population-level signals, it appears possible to work your way backwards in time.

FM: I think you definitely succeeded in provoking the counter reactions. Do you think it would be correct to say your research has proven that there is no free will?
JDH: To be precise, I do not think we have proven that there is no such thing as free will. I think our data suggests that one specific intuition we have about the freedom of our will might not be true. But a single experiment will never be able to finally solve such a problem forever. There is still a lot to do to convince the skeptics. Our experiments do not have perfect predictive accuracy, we have not shown causation, we do not know whether people are able to find ways to overrule the neural precursors of their choices, and we have mainly studied very simple choices, not the complex kind of life-changing choices people care about. We are addressing some of these limitations right now.

FM: But don’t you think that it is dangerous pursuing this path? I mean there were already some studies suggesting that when we tell people that they do not have a free will…
JDH: You mean the Schooler and Vohs experiment published in Psychological Science in 2008 [1]? The basic finding was that people behave less ethically if they stop believing in free will. Specifically, they found that people cheated more in math tests after reading a text that claimed there is no free will. This poses a challenge: in humanism, you want to educate people to the good and truth. In this case, bringing people the truth made them behave badly. So you have the choice to decide if the truth is more important or if ethical behavior is more important. I do not know where I position myself there. As a scientist I think I have to say the truth is more important and society should adapt to it.

PEOPLE CANNOT THINK OF THEIR MIND AS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS IN THEIR BRAIN.

I think the whole discussion on free will is just a distraction from a more important point: determinism. No matter how hard the data are, people cannot think of their mind as something that happens in their brain and as something that follows the deterministic laws of nature. I think we have no good way of thinking about ourselves in these non-dualistic terms. It is very difficult to integrate your scientific views into your day-to-day intuitions about the mind.

FM: Thank you, John! 

Reference
[1] Vohs and Schooler, Psychol Sci., 2008

by Filip Morys
this article originally appeared 2014 in CNS Volume 7, Issue 1, Mind and Brain