Story on super-recognizers on Australian radio with link to test

This story with an interview of Australian researcher Dr David White was broadcast last year. I’m not actively trawling for items about super-recognition to post about here, so I only just came across it by chance.

Readers of this blog might be interested in the download linked to from the RN web page for the story, which is a difficult face matching test. I’ll give you a tip and advise to only look at the faces as you go and record your own answers as you go, and check them later.  I got only five out of eight correct.

Mackenzie, Michael The secret powers of the super-recognisers. RN Afternoons. September 2nd 2015.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnafternoons/super-recogniser/6744260

 

Facial recognition technology can be foiled with a photograph?

Marr, Chris Retinal scans and fingerprint checks: high tech or high risk? Science Network. April 22nd 2016.

http://www.sciencewa.net.au/topics/technology-a-innovation/item/4145-retinal-scans-and-fingerprint-checks-high-tech-or-high-risk#k2Container

 

Another fascinating article about the important talents of supers

Robertson, David James (2016) Could super recognisers be the latest weapon in the war on terror? The Conversation. March 25th 2016.

https://theconversation.com/could-super-recognisers-be-the-latest-weapon-in-the-war-on-terror-56772

And don’t forget to check out the comments, one identifying a super-recognizer character in detective story literature.

 

Harts seems to be describing musical synaesthesias

The Indian born singer-songwriter who was invited to hang out and jam with Prince. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Broadcast: 22/04/2016 on Lateline
Reporter: Simon Smithers

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4448965.htm

I was just watching Lateline on ABC television (Australian), and following the passing of the legendary American musician Prince Lateline ran a story about the young Australian musician Harts who has been a guest of Prince and has also been mentored by the famous musician. Both musicians clearly share a major influence from the late synaesthete guitarist Jimi Hendrix. In the Lateline story, which is yet to be posted for viewing at the Lateline website, Harts described associations between colours, textures and music that is clearly synaesthesia. It seems to be a very common thing for synaesthetes to experience coloured music, and synaesthesia itself is a quite common phenomenon so the fact that Harts seems to be a synaesthete is not hard to believe or that big a deal. I do think it is interesting though. Harts, Prince and Hendrix all typify the notion of the musically creative individual, as artists following their own creative paths, playing a style of music that is full of colour and innovation and improvisation. Synaesthesia is thought to be linked to creativity. Could even be true.

I’m not an expert in music but I think the music of all three would all be regarded as psychedelic rock, a genre of music that has fascinated me since I was a child despite no cultural nor family influences pushing me in that direction. The music that I grew up listening to was cheesy nonsense that my folks enjoyed, hideous trad jazz, 1970s musicals, theatre organ music, disco….. And I survived! The closest things to psychedelia that I heard as a child was early electronic music and psychedelic rock of the 60s and 70s played on the radio, including the Beatles later stuff. Right until my 5th decade I hadn’t realised I had been a mad fan of psychedelic rock all my life until I started reading music reviews on Allmusic, and found that a the very disparate collection of musicians and groups who are my musical favourites all produced some music that had been categorized as psychedelic, even a favourite Australian musician Ed Kuepper, who I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Colourful as it might be, the colours aren’t the reason why I enjoy this type of music. I think the appeal is the strange and otherworldly feelings evoked by the music; the mesmerizing repetition, the emotionalism, the surprising twists, the fear and the awe. Maybe you need to have a hyperconnected brain to get all this out of mere sequences of sounds.

I’d bet my hat that the colourful and creative purple Prince was also a synaesthete, one way or another, but unless he spoke about it in the past we will never know.

New developmental prosopagnosia research hot off the web

While I was looking at the website of the Journal of Neuroscience I found this interesting and important free access article:

Michael Lohse, Lucia Garrido, Jon Driver, Raymond J. Dolan, Bradley C. Duchaine, and Nicholas Furl Effective Connectivity from Early Visual Cortex to Posterior Occipitotemporal Face Areas Supports Face Selectivity and Predicts Developmental Prosopagnosia. Journal of Neuroscience. 30 March 2016, 36(13): 3821-3828; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3621-15.2016

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/13/3821.full.pdf+html

What is face selectivity? I’ll have to do a bit of study on that.

For me the findings of this study are not surprising, even though there are apparently new ideas in this paper about face selectivity and developmental prosopagnosia (DP). As a synaesthete who also appears to be a “super-recognizer” of faces from a family in which precociously high levels of literacy skills are found, I firmly believe that the common thread that runs through synaesthesia, literacy skills and face memory is good to exceptional connectivity inside the brain. My ideas are supported by research that has linked synaesthesia with hyper-connectivity, and has linked dyslexia and DP with problems with connectivity.

Interesting research on synapses and the neurobiology of forgetting supports model of dementia that appears to compete with mine

The role of GluA2-containing AMPA receptors in sustaining long-term memories and in natural forgetting has been studied by an international team of researchers. They and other researchers have speculated that this process could be involved in the development of dementia. I think they are wrong. I believe that there is a distinction between normal, adaptive forgetting and the forgetfulness of dementia that results from the destruction of the brain. I have previously in this blog outlined my original ideas about the immune system, complement, synaptic pruning and a type of dementia that goes by the names of PCa or Benson’s syndrome. My money is still on high levels of complement as the prime suspect for dementia of the rear parts of the brain. Regarding Alzheimer’s, I still favour the “Prion Hypothesis” but I also understand that obesity and diabetes 2 can damage the brain. Nevertheless, I still find this recently-published piece of research interesting because it seems to shows that forgetting isn’t just the failure of some process, it is a process in itself. I also find it interesting that real memory researchers don’t write about or make sweeping statements about memory in general, they study and write about specific types of memory.

Paddock, Catharine Brain study yields clues about ‘natural forgetting of long-term memories’ http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/308549.php

Paola Virginia Migues, Lidong Liu, Georgina E. B. Archbold, Einar Ö. Einarsson, Jacinda Wong, Kyra Bonasia, Seung Hyun Ko, Yu Tian Wang, and Oliver Hardt Blocking Synaptic Removal of GluA2-Containing AMPA Receptors Prevents the Natural Forgetting of Long-Term Memories. Journal of Neuroscience.  23 March 2016, 36(12):3481–3494; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3333-15.2016

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/12/3481.short?sid=e7babe8d-7f41-4f13-91ca-ae7f9a68afa0