Psychology: The scarred self
ess than a month after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Trauma, the latest show at Science Gallery Dublin, feels unnervingly relevant. Exploring, among other things, the surprising role of trauma in emotional resilience, this collection of objects and ideas ranges from haunting photos from Northern Ireland's Troubles to a room-sized instrument crafted by a composer with tinnitus (see J. Hoffman Nature 505, 159; 2014) and photograms of plant specimens from Chernobyl. Trauma, from the Greek word meaning 'wound' , is profoundly personal: the sufferer is sealed off within the mental or physical experience. Katharine Dowson's Memory of a Brain Malformation, a delicate laser etching of a brain tumour in glass, emphasizes this isolation. Dowson — who often works with scientists and physicians — portrays the growth as a discrete entity inside a nest of sinuous veins. (The actual tumour was successfully removed from her cousin's brain by laser treatment.) The work evokes both the emotional trauma of diagnosis and the energy of a positive outcome. External trauma to the head can be just as damaging, and the neurological problems arising from it in sport are the focus of intense research. The installation Impact examines the design of helmets for sports such as American football and Irish hurling , sparked by such studies. Mechanical engineer Ciaran Simms at Trinity College Dublin, for instance, examines the body's response to high-force impacts in rugby; Stefan Duma at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg uses real-time sensors in the field and lab to rate commercial helmet design. A darker realm of trauma is explored on the gallery's ground floor in The Interrogation of Detainee 063, an infographic detailing 50 harrowing days in the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani at the United States' Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba. The exhibit underlines the extreme suffering triggered by torture. Colour-coding shows the duration of interrogation, loud music and inhumane and degrading treatments, such as being forced to wear a muffling hood or humiliating signs, or to write letters of apology to victims of the terror attacks of 11 September 2001. Upstairs, Stressed Body, Stressed Brain investigates one physiological response that is central to the notorious torture technique waterboarding. This response, the diving reflex, is triggered when the face is immersed in cold water. The exhibit invites viewers to lie down and have a damp cloth placed on their cheeks to gauge how this upsets memory …
Q&A: Tinnitus tunesmith
Sound artist Daniel Fishkin tries to convey the experience of tinnitus. As the latest incarnation of his installation series Composing the Tinnitus Suites opens in Brooklyn, New York, he talks about building a mechanical model of the inner ear.
Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding
Humans devote 30–40% of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. What drives this propensity for disclosure? Here, we test recent theories that individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. Five studies provided support for this hypothesis. Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. Moreover, individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self. Two additional studies demonstrated that these effects stemmed from the independent value that individuals placed on self-referential thought and on simply sharing information with others. Together, these findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure.