Category: science in action

Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 3)

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Yesterday I did two of the 10 or so possible things that might have caused me to sleep really well recently: (a) looked at my face in a mirror earlier than usual with voices behind the mirror (Factor A) and (b) stood on one foot until exhaustion (twice) (Factor B). And last night I slept better than usual — not quite as great as the first time but still really well. This seems to narrow down the possibilities to:

  • Factor A only
  • Factor B only
  • Factor A and Factor B

I have doubts about Factor A. After I figured out that seeing faces in the morning improved my mood, I tried for months to find the right “dose” (right time, right length) to improve my sleep. I didn’t find it. Whereas Factor B is merely a new version of something that has improved my sleep countless times, so much that I’ve noticed its effects when not looking for them. The effect might have been less clear last night than the first time because I only stood on one foot to exhaustion twice. The first time — I wasn’t paying attention, of course — I think I did it three or four times.

So today I did it six times. It was curiously exhausting. After I felt recovered (about an hour later), the rest of the day I felt really good, cheerful and energetic — better than after yoga. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I do something that makes me sleep better, shouldn’t it make me more tired?

Directory.

Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 2)

Seth Roberts13 Comments

A few days ago (Tuesday night) I slept unusually well, presumably because Tuesday day had been unusual in some way. I made a list of nine possible reasons.

Today I realized I’d forgotten something: 10. Stood on one foot more than usual. To pass the time while looking at my face in the mirror I had stood on one foot while stretching the other leg, pulling my foot up behind me. I was curious how long I could do this so I did a few trials with each leg where I did it until it became too painful. I lasted about 2 minutes on one leg and 2.5 minutes on the other.

This might seem trivial — and I forgot about it. But standing on one foot continuously for a relatively long time surely stressed my leg muscles much more than usual. Previous research convinced me that standing many hours improves sleep. Maybe this “extreme standing” produces the same hormonal effects in a few minutes as normal standing does in ten hours. That would be wonderful!

Directory.

Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well?

Seth Roberts9 Comments

Last night I slept extremely well. I slept about eight hours and woke up feeling really good. In the past I’ve slept this well only after being on my feet nine or ten hours. Yesterday I was on my feet maybe four hours. I usually sleep well but this was a distinct improvement.

What caused it? Yesterday had many unusual features (like most days), but I did deliberately vary one thing:

1. I looked at faces (actually, my face in a mirror) earlier than usual. Usually I start around 7:40 am; yesterday I started about 7:10 am. (Background: I discovered that seeing faces in the morning improves my mood the next day. For example, seeing faces Monday morning improves my mood on Tuesday. And makes my mood worse Monday night. Details here.) I’ve done this before — watched the faces earlier than usual — and hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Yesterday may have been different, however, because three days ago I changed something. I always listen to something (audiobook, a Google Talk, This American Life episode, etc.) while I look at my face in the mirror. Three days ago I moved the sound source directly behind the mirror.

This is my best guess why my sleep was better than usual. But yesterday was unusual in several other ways as well:

2. I went outside (in the shade) 30 minutes earlier than usual.

3. Usually wear contact lenses while sleeping but didn’t.

4. Usually wear a tooth guard while sleeping but didn’t.

5. Salmon for dinner, which isn’t unusual, but I had more than usual.

6. No aerobic exercise.

7. Did a lot of chores I’d put off. (Peace of mind?)

8. On the preceding days, the sound source was behind the mirror. In other words, it was the cumulative effect that produced better sleep.

9. The end of a cold.

Now I’ll do all sorts of things to test these possibilities.

There’s a saying No one believes a theory but the theorist; everyone believes an experiment but the experimenter. This illustrates why. The experimenter can see all sorts of confoundings and special circumstances that others cannot.

Directory.

Science in Action: Omega-3 (more motor-learning data)

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Background. I took 4 T of flaxseed oil during the day (instead of just before bedtime) and measured its effect with a cursor test. The test was how accurately I move the cursor from one point to another with a single movement. The result was a sharp improvement — some of which lasted, some of which didn’t. (Just to be perfectly clear: what’s varied is not my daily amount of flaxseed oil. It’s the time of day I take it. I’m varying the time between a short-lived peak in omega-3 concentration, which happens shortly after ingestion, and doing the cursor test. Usually they are far apart. The interesting data are what happens when I move them close together.)

New data. I tried the same thing again. Here are the results.
2nd test of FSO on cursor accuracy

The green line shows when I took 4 tablespoons of flaxseed oil. I took the oil at 8:30 am. The first test after that, at 9:30 am, showed the improvement. (In previous measurements of the short-term effects, it has taken closer to 2 hours to see the maximum effect.)

Here is a longer view, which emphasizes the constancy of the pre-test baseline.

wider view of results

For comparison, here are the earlier results.

earlier results with this test

Conclusions. When I take 4 T of flaxseed oil, it creates for a few hours a higher-than-usual concentration of flaxseed oil in my blood. I’m pretty sure the active ingredient is omega-3. This has two effects:

  • Better performance due to temporary effects. It’s hard to give these effects a good name. Better coordination, perhaps.
  • Better performance due to long-lasting effects. This is why performance was constant at a lower (better) level after the test than before. The higher-than-usual concentration caused a change (more “learning” than usual) that outlasted it. The concentration of flaxseed oil dropped back to average levels but the learning persisted.

    • Science in Action: Omega-3 (motor-learning surprise, continued)

    Seth Roberts6 Comments

    The results I described in the previous post surprised me because (a) my performance suddenly got better after being stable for many tests and (b) after the improvement, further practice appeared to make my performance worse. I’d never before seen either result in a motor learning situation. If you can think of an explanation of the result that practice makes performance worse, and animal learning isn’t your research area, please let me know.

    Learning researchers used to think of associative learning as a kind of stamping-in process. The more you experience A and B together, the stronger the association between them. Simple as that. In the 1960s, however, several results called this idea into question. Situations that should have caused learning did not. The feature that united the various results was that in each case, learning didn’t happen when the animal already expected the second event. If A and B occur together, and you already expect B, there is no learning. Theories that explained these findings — the Rescorla-Wagner model is the best known, but the Pearce-Hall model is the one that appears to be correct — took the discrepancy between expected and observed — an event’s “surprise factor” — rather than simply the event itself, to be what causes learning. We are constantly trying to predict the future; only when we fail do we learn.

    In my motor-learning task, imagine that the brain “expects” a certain accuracy. When actual accuracy is less, performance improves. Performance stops improving when actual accuracy equals expected accuracy. The effect of more omega-3 in the blood, and therefore the brain, was to increase expected accuracy. (One of the main things the brain does is learn. If we do something that improves brain performance in other ways, it is plausible that it will also improve learning ability.) Thus the sudden improvement. The decrement in accuracy with further practice came about because, when the omega-3 concentration went down, actual accuracy was better than expected accuracy. Accuracy was “over-predicted,” a learning theorist might say. So the observed change in performance was in the opposite-from-usual direction. Accuracy got worse, not better.

    Related happiness research. “Christensen’s study was called “Why Danes Are Smug,” and essentially his answer was it’s because they’re so glum and get happy when things turn out not quite as badly as they expected.”

    Science in Action: Omega-3 (motor-learning surprise)

    Seth Roberts8 Comments

    The more I played racquetball, the more accurate my shots became — the more control I had. It was a kind of learning: learning to place the ball. I was fascinated by how little we knew about how that learning took place. I studied associative learning in my own research. The motor learning during racquetball resembled associative learning in the sense that my actions (hitting the ball with the racket) were shaped by what happened next (accuracy of placement). Yet I knew nothing non-obvious about motor learning.

    This background of ignorance is why I find my latest flaxseed oil results so interesting. As I’ve posted, I’ve started using a new test in which I use the touchpad to “toss” the cursor from one spot to another (that is, move the cursor with a single finger movement), and measure how close it “lands” to the target. The function relating cursor position to finger position on the touchpad isn’t simple.

    Of course I wanted to see how flaxseed oil affected performance on this task. I doubted that it would. This task is untimed. No time pressure. It is like shooting free throws. Most of the previous tasks I’ve used that have shown a flaxseed-oil effect have been tasks where you respond as fast as possible. My balance test was go at your own pace, but it involved a huge amount of computation. Balancing my body on one foot for several seconds seemed to involve a lot more computation than moving a finger about an inch.

    Usually I take 4 tablespoons of flaxseed oil just before bedtime. One recent day I took it much earlier and did the toss test at 30-minute intervals before and for several hours afterward.

    Here are the results plotted as a function of test session number.

    toss results vs condition

    Here are the same results plotted versus the time of the test:

    toss accuracy vs. time of test

    Here is a close-up of the crucial data:

    toss accuracy vs. time of session (close-up)

    About two hours after I drank the flaxseed oil, my accuracy got worse. Then it slowly got much better. The amazing thing about the improvement is that it reached a maximum long after you would think that the effects of the flaxseed oil had worn off. My overall level of omega-3 is high because I take 4 T flaxseed oil per day. The effect of shifting when I drink the 4 T is just to change the timing of a short-lived peak. Usually that peak happens when I’m asleep and my omega-3 levels are reasonably constant while I’m doing the test. In this case the peak happened while I was doing the test.

    I’ll discuss what this might mean in a later post.

    Science in Action: Flavor-Calorie Learning (another simple example)

    Seth Roberts4 Comments

    At the heart of the Shangri-La Diet is the idea that we learn to associate flavors (smells) with calories. This learning was first shown in rat experiments. There’s some human evidence, but not much. If I could discover more about what controls this learning, I might be able to improve the diet. For example, maybe I could say more about what the flavor-free window should be.

    My earlier self-experimentation on this subject – I used tea for flavor and sugar for calories — was helpful. To my surprise, I found that really small changes in flavor made a noticeable difference. If I switched from one canister of Peet’s Gunpowder Tea to a new canister, the ratings went down, although everything else stayed the same. From this came the notion of ditto food: Foods with exactly the same flavor each time are especially fattening. I hadn’t realized what a difference it would make if you kept the flavor exactly the same each time.

    It’s been hard to learn more. After Christmas dinner, my mom gave me the leftover brandy (A. R. Murrow). I used it for a very simple experiment in which I learned to like it. I’ve never drunk brandy in any quantity and I started off not liking it. Every day for a few weeks, I drank one tablespoon. I drank it in a few sips over a few minutes. I didn’t eat anything else for at least 30 minutes. I rated how good it tasted on a 0-100 scale where 10 = very bad, 20= quite bad, 25 = bad, 30 = somewhat bad, 40 = slightly bad, 50 = neutral, 60 = slightly good, 70 = somewhat good, 75 = good, 80 = quite good, 90 = very good. The overall rating was the maximum of the ratings of the several sips. (The first sip usually tasted the best.)

    Here are the results.

    learning to like brandy

    I’ve observed similar results five or six times. They are more support for the most basic conclusions: 1. The effect is very clear. One tablespoon of brandy has only 30 calories. 2. A really simple experiment is easy.

    That’s a promising start but then it gets hard, or at least non-obvious. As a way to study flavor-calorie learning, this little example has several flaws: 1. Slow learning. 2. Expensive materials. 3. Little control of flavor. The best I can do is choose which liquor to buy. Soon I will run out of ones I haven’t used. 4. No way to separate flavor and calories in time. 5. No way to change the calorie source.

    An earlier demonstration used a soft drink. It’s really Science in Inaction: I’ve made zero progress in a year.

    Science in Action: Methodology surprise and improvement

    Seth Roberts6 Comments

    I’ve been using a letter-counting test to keep hour-by-hour track of how well my brain is working. The test consists of 200 trials that ask how many of four displayed letters (e.g., YCAW) are from the set {ABCD}. for YCAW, the answer is 2. Faster answers = better brain function.

    For the first several hundred tests, I kept the location of the four letters constant: the center of the window. As soon as I answered, the next display appeared in the same position as the last one. The display never repeated immediately; for example UXRA was never followed by UXRA. But UXRA could be followed by UXAR. This was too easy because it looked like the A and R had switched places. This was a big difference from the usual appearance and it signalled that the answer had not changed. Overlap between one display and the next was probably important but was hard to measure.

    To make the test more uniform across trials, I had the display move up and down, which eliminated overlap between one display and the next. Successive displays appeared above center, below center, above center, below center, etc.

    To my great surprise, this made the task a lot easier. Here are accuracy scores before and after the change:

    accuracy before and after the change

    Before the change, mean accuracy was 94.9% (standard error 0.2); after the change, 97.4 (standard error 0.3). The error rate was cut in half, in other words. I had no idea this would happen.

    Reaction times were slightly more after the change. A treatment that changes reaction time and accuracy in conceptually opposite directions — makes the task harder in terms of reaction times (= longer reaction times) but easier in terms of accuracy (= great accuracy) — is very unusual. I don’t know of any other examples.

    The displays have always been big black letters on a white background — very easy to read. But this change made them seem more visible somehow. At some high level of my visual system, it was if the contrast had been improved. It’s a funny feeling because I thought I was seeing them perfectly clearly with the old procedure.

    Because accuracy is better it is now closer to constant, which is what you want in a reaction-time experiment. You want as much variation in reaction time as possible and as little variation in accuracy as possible.

    Science in Action: A Puzzle

    Seth Roberts7 Comments

    To learn how omega-3 affects brain function, I’ve been doing a letter-counting test several times per day. I’ve posted some results. Several times after exercise (treadmill and street walking) my reaction times were faster than expected — meaning my brain was working better than expected.

    Does exercise improve brain function? In a chapter on self-experimentation that he and I wrote, Allen Neuringer described several experiments in which other measures of brain function improved after exercise. I wanted to learn more about this for two reasons: 1. Reduce “noise”. If I know how much exercise is needed to get the effect, I can be careful to stay below level that while doing omega-3 experiments. 2. Practical value. You might call it nature’s caffeine.

    So I did a little experiment. I walked on a flat treadmill for 30 minutes and did the letter-counting test several times. Here are the results:

    exercise effect?

    The line shows the middle of the exercise; the exercise ended a few minutes before the first post-exercise test. To my surprise, the first post-exercise test showed no effect. I was wrong, I thought. But to my further and greater surprise later tests showed an effect in the predicted direction.

    Between the first post-exercise test and the second, I took a shower. I will need to see if showers have an effect. If not, then apparently exercise has a delayed effect. No one has ever proposed this, I’m pretty sure.

    Most of my self-experimentation has studied elements of ancient life. Omega-3, for example — I believe our ancestors ate lots of seafood (the Aquatic Ape Theory). They surely walked a lot.