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Causes and Treatments of Youth Violence

A man clenches his fist.

Young violence is a complicated topic with a range of different causes and treatments. Researchers from psychology, sociology, and neurobiology have teamed up to better understand this.

Published June 1, 2004

By Catherine Zandonella

Image courtesy of andranik123 via stock.adobe.com.

There’s no simple, societal Rx, for preventing violent behavior in children and adolescents. But the latest research findings in psychology, sociology and neurobiology suggest a three-tiered approach to unlocking solutions.

Youth violence plagues society and endangers children throughout much of the United States and the world. Its manifestations cross socio-economic strata, ranging from urban gang violence to school shootings perpetrated by children in middle-class and even upper-income communities.

Yet, the principal method of dealing with youth violence in the United States – punishment through the courts – appears ineffective. Although U.S. crime rates have dropped since 1993, the decline represents a return to a rate that’s much higher than most other Western countries. “We’ve been engaged in an experiment,” said James Gilligan, a prison psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “and the results are in: It isn’t working.”

A better approach, one that combines the latest findings in psychology, sociology, and neurobiology, is needed. This was the conclusion of experts from each of these fields who gathered to share information at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) conference, Scientific Approaches to Youth Violence Prevention, held at the Rockefeller University on April 24-26. Instead of punishment, these researchers suggested treating violence less like a moral problem and more like a public health issue that responds to intervention.

A useful approach for thinking about violence intervention is the public health framework: a three-tiered approach that first targets society at large, then susceptible individuals, and finally the afflicted persons. For violence, the first stage involves reducing risk factors such as social inequality, followed by intervention programs for at-risk youth, and thirdly, programs and pharmacotherapeutics for violent offenders

The Social Machinery of Oppression

This framework allows one to consider violence not simply as the physical act of aggression by one person on another, but also the everyday acts of bullying and neglect that can lead to violent behaviors. The framework includes structural violence characterized by economic, political, or social discrimination – in short, the social machinery of oppression.

No single intervention can stop youth violence. Instead, conference organizers arranged the talks around distinct prescriptions that, if all the “medicines” were taken, would decrease violence in society. “We really do believe that if all these (remedies) were followed, we would dramatically reduce violence,” said Donald Pfaff, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York and one of the conference organizers.

Primary Prevention: Addressing Social Inequity

Violence can be traced to many causes, but societal inequity is perhaps the broadest root cause, said Richard Wilkinson, an epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham Medical School, England, who is renowned for his work on socioeconomic disparities and health. As societal inequalities increase, more and more people experience a sense of powerlessness and humiliation – and increasing stress – each of which may trigger violence.

Extreme social inequality can lead to acceptance of violent behaviors, including infanticide and genocide, said medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley. Scheper-Hughes found that extremely poor Brazilian mothers invested little nurturing in their children and sometimes had to choose which ones would live. Brazilian society, she found, sometimes condoned the murder of street children because they were seen as “rubbish people.”

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Oversized school populations also are seen as a breeding ground for youth violence. While schools with several thousand students are common in much of the United States, John Devine, a conference organizer and researcher at the Center for Social and Emotional Education in New York, says these large institutions can lead to a “school-to-prison pipeline.”

At the same time, the increased militarization of schools – the presence of metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and police officers patrolling hallways – serves to further the sense of victimization among the students. A better prescription would be smaller, less militarized schools in which teachers and counselors devote more time to communicating with students, offering greater opportunities for positive visions of development.

One reason schools are so important is that early childhood has a major impact on behavior and the developing brain. “Children as young as two years show dominance hierarchies, assuming roles of leaders and followers,” reported W. Thomas Boyce of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Boyce found that about 20% of children are physiologically “highly reactive” to stressful situations, making them more likely to become either victims or perpetrators of violence.

Boys as young as four and five years are primed for aggression, said William Pollack of Harvard Medical School, when society tells them to suppress their emotions — by being told “boys don’t cry.” Pollack is working with boys to develop new “initiation rites” that encourage “healthy vulnerability,” sustained through connection to caring adults, rather than a classic belief in stoicism.

A Supportive Environment for Girls

New York University Professor Carol Gilligan reported on the female equivalent of these rites of passage. Girls are socialized between the ages of nine to 13 to silence their honest “inner voices” and conform to their perceived expectations of boys, girlfriends, parents, and society at large. Instead, said Gilligan, “we need to offer girls a supportive environment to be themselves.”

Sensitivity to the experiences of pubertal girls can help reduce violence against them, reported Holly Foster, a sociologist at Texas A&M University. She found that early onset of puberty was linked to increased verbal and physical abuse from boyfriends.

Instead of targeting all violence, a more cost-effective approach would be to target the most lethal forms of violence. “Why pick up the whole dog just to wag its tail?” asked Franklin Zimring of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Instead, Zimring suggests that since the majority of homicides are committed with guns, stricter gun laws and enforcement would reduce the death toll of youth violence.

The role of the mother or primary caregiver in the development of an individual at risk for violent behavior is becoming clearer from animal studies. In rats, maternal licking and grooming of pups in the first few days of life are critical to the creation of lasting patterns of neural development, conferring nurturing behavior when the pups reach adulthood, found Michael Meaney, a neuropsychologist at McGill University in Montreal.

Providing the bridge from rats to humans, Peter Fonagy of the University College London said that negative mothering is a major determinant of violence in children.

The Role of the Bystander

Unfortunately, many youth violence-prevention programs are unproven – some are even counterproductive, reported Peter Greenwood, former RAND employee who is now a violence prevention consultant. “What’s common in the most successful programs is they don’t focus on the child, rather they focus on the home environment and the mother or primary caregiver,” he said.

While the Bullying Prevention Program has been proven effective, many such programs ignore a crucial component – the role of the bystander, noted Stuart Twemlow of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Bullying is not exclusively a human activity. Chimpanzees form groups and engage in violence against one another to both enhance their social status and thwart bullying, said Harvard University anthropologist Richard Wrangham.

Turning to the question of how genes interact with environment to produce aggressive behaviors, Donald Pfaff, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University, offered an overview of genetic influences on aggression in animals. The effects of genes can depend on when and where in the brain the gene is expressed, the gender and age of the offender, the type of opponent, and the type of aggression.

Twin studies can help distinguish between genetic and environmental determinants of violence, said Essi Viding of the Institute of Psychiatry in London. Viding found that in antisocial 7-year-olds, callous and unemotional traits were about 80% genetic. If these youths can be identified early, perhaps with a genetic test on cells from a cheek swab, one could target programs for them. “Genes are not a blueprint that determines outcome,” said Viding, “but rather they act together with other risk or protective factors to increase or reduce the risk of disorder.”

The Role of Alcohol Use

One well-known risk factor is alcohol use. Alcohol is involved in more than half of all violent assaults. Drinking alcohol relaxes most people, but “a small subpopulation goes berserk,” said Klaus Miczek, professor of psychology and pharmacology at Tufts University in Massachusetts and one of the conference organizers. He believes it may be eventually possible to identify genetic markers in individuals that are prone to aggressive alcohol-related behavior.

Far from deterring violent behavior, punishment is by far the most powerful stimulus of violent behavior, said James Gilligan, a prison psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the conference organizers. “Today’s prisons treat humans like animals,” said Gilligan, “and then we are surprised when prisoners act like animals.”

Instead, Gilligan advocates the creation of “anti-prisons” – locked, safe, residential settings where prisoners undergo therapeutic and skill-building programs. A successful pilot program in San Francisco reduced the re-arrest rate by 83% among males who attended the program for four months. Support programs for violent individuals make sense because they increase rewards for nonviolent behavior, said Howard Rachlin, a behavioral economist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

A variety of drugs can be used to control violent behavior, but all of them were developed to target other afflictions. These include mood stabilizers such as lithium, antidepressants like SSRIs (serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors), Ritalin, beta-blockers such as propranolol, and anti-epileptic drugs. Antiandrogens can control sexual impulses, but they don’t work in all individuals and suffer from low compliance.

Adolescence: The Last Window of Intervention

Finding new drugs is complicated by the fact that violence is classified as symptom rather than a disease, presenting regulatory hurdles, speaker Berend Olivier of Utrecht University in the Netherlands reported. In studies of the numerous neurotransmitters involved, what has been missed, added Klaus Miczek, is careful attention to when these chemicals come into play. For example, serotonin levels drop after aggression initiation. Dopamine levels rise after the behavior terminates, while corticosterone levels dictate termination of violence and recovery.

“We are all looking forward to the era when we can prescribe medications based on the patient’s genotype,” said Jan Volavka, an expert on the neurobiology of violence at the Nathan Kline Institute at New York University. He discussed two promising routes to this goal. A genetic test could determine which individuals have low levels of the enzyme catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT), making them more prone to violence. A second test could look for low levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). If children with low MAOA are subject to maltreatment, they have higher risk of antisocial behavior. However, these children turned out fine if raised in a nurturing environment.

Androgenic hormones clearly predispose to aggressive behaviors in a wide variety of animals and in humans. Alarmingly, anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) — popular amongst teens for muscle building — may have lasting harmful effects in the brain, said Marilyn McGinnis of the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Both positive and negative experiences during adolescence can have a lasting effect because the brain is so plastic, said Ronald Dahl, an adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the conference’s keynote speaker. For youths already disposed to violence, said Dahl, adolescence could be a “last window” of intervention.

Also read: Mind, Brain, and Society: The Biology of Violence

Talking Teaching: A Case for Standardized Testing

A student uses a pencil to fill in a bubble on an exam.

While the United States’ education system is unique in many ways, embracing the proven, standardized testing practices of countries like South Korea can lead to better outcomes for American students.

Published June 1, 2004

By Rosemarie Foster

Image courtesy of Achira22 via stock.adobe.com.

In France it’s the Baccalauréat. In Germany it’s the Abitur. In those countries, these are the standardized exams that every student must pass to graduate high school and attend college. But in the United States there’s no such requirement – at least not on a national level. Only two states have standardized “exit exams” that students must pass before moving on to the next grade or graduating: the Regents Examinations in New York and the North Carolina Testing Program. Despite a public school system that is generally quite good, statistics show that U.S. students lag behind their European and Asian counterparts by as many as four grade levels in such fields as math and science.

“Students in those countries know a lot, lot more. So we’ve got a problem,” asserted John H. Bishop, PhD, associate professor of human resource studies at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations of Cornell University. He is also executive director of the Educational Excellence Alliance, a consortium of 325 high schools that is studying ways to improve school climate and student engagement.

At a meeting of the Education Section at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) in April, Bishop argued that accountability strategies, such as external exit examinations aimed at raising student achievement levels in math and science, do indeed work.

Why Can’t Johnny Do Algebra?

Bishop proposed several reasons for the poor showing of U.S. students in math, science, and reading. The first: lower teaching salaries. “We pay our teachers terribly compared to other countries,” said Bishop, who noted that this is particularly true for high school teachers. A typical high school teacher in Korea makes more than twice as much per hour ($82) as his American colleague ($37). There may, therefore, be less incentive for qualified individuals to teach when they can get better paying jobs elsewhere. Bishop suggested that by raising standards and expectations for teachers and paying them more, we’ll get better teachers, and students will have a greater opportunity to excel.

Reason number two: In the U.S., credentials earned yield immediate rewards from employers, but “employers don’t reward learning as much as is the case abroad,” contended Bishop. Students who learn more than others with the same credentials do not get better jobs that reflect their greater capability and effort when they graduate. It takes a decade for the labor market to discover that they are more productive, and to reward them for their effort. As a result, students are encouraged to do the minimum necessary to get the credentials, and no more.

A third and widespread influence on student performance in the U.S. is pressure by peers against studying. Research has shown that students are more likely to be harassed by their classmates if they are gifted, participate in class, are often seen studying, and spend several hours a day doing homework.

“Getting in with the peer group requires a lot of time. If you’re doing five hours of homework a night, you’re not spending enough time hanging out,” explained Bishop.

Leveling the Playing Field

Why are the studious so unpopular in the U.S.? Athletes are valued more because their success is viewed as an asset to the school. But scholarly students, Bishop maintained, aren’t seen as contributing to the overall good of the school. Indeed, their success only forces others to keep up. Those who harass them, therefore, are trying to bring them down to a lower level, in hopes of dropping the standard.

In Europe and Asia, external exit exams force everyone to do well, explained Bishop. The stakes are higher: Without passing them, students can’t excel and attend university. In an environment where rank is based on achievement on such external exams, students are not competing with each other. Rather, as a group they are all motivated to achieve at a high standard. Data show that the exams work: Countries that require students to pass national external examinations to graduate have higher science and mathematical literacy than nations without these tests.

In the U.S., class rank and grade point average are given more weight. Since these rankings position a student relative to the rest of the class, it behooves the “bullies” to harass hard-working students as a means of advancing their own standing.

Bishop advocates a combination of the GPA and external exams. “The purpose of an external exam is to create good teaching and to engage the students,” he said. Having to give grades encourages the teachers to mentor and motivate their students to do well in class. Adding external exams helps everyone aspire to a common standard that can level the playing field.

Evidence that Testing Works

Data comparing scholastic achievement between U.S. states support Bishops contention that standardized testing results in better student performance. End-of-course examinations taken by eighth-grade students in New York and North Carolina are linked to better reading, math, and science literacy, compared to students who didn’t take these exams.

Studies also show that end-of-course exams can increase the likelihood of students going on to college and getting better paying jobs. These tests were especially motivating for C students, who were more likely to go to college if they graduated from a school in a state that required them to pass end-of-course exams. The test had less of an effect on the A students because they probably would have gone to college anyway.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Source: OECD, Education at a Glance 2003

The answer to the question of how to improve our educational system isn’t an easy one. While requiring a student to pass end-of-course exams can certainly help, Bishop contended that other elements of the educational environment need to change, too.

One problem is “out-of-field” teaching. Many of America’s teachers do not have college degrees in the very topics they are teaching. “We have teachers who lack a basic understanding of what they’re trying to teach, and they often screw it up,” asserted Bishop. “You have to know your subject so deeply that you can figure out how to make it interesting.” New York State, which fares well in national rankings of student competence, has one of the lowest rates of out-of-field teaching in the country.

Teachers also need better instruction in how to teach. And they need to be more receptive to what works: Many teachers don’t want to use established teaching techniques because they’re considered “scripted.”

Bishop also supports more basic research in the field of education. “We need to spend the kind of money on research in education that we spend on research seeking a cure for cancer,” he emphasized, acknowledging that the high cost of conducting such studies is often a deterrent.

The news is not all bad: Math and science literacy among American students has increased one to two grade levels in the last several years, but could be even better. “I’m actually amazed at how well our kids do considering the difficulties we start them out with,” said Bishop. “But the good news is that we’ve made marvelous gains.”

Also read: Embracing Globalization in Science Education

For the Public Good: Policy and Science

A night shot of the U.S. Capital Building in Washington D.C.

While many conjure images of beakers and Bunsen burners when thinking about science, it’s also important to consider the policy implications.

Published June 1, 2004

By Eric Staeva-Vieira

Image courtesy of Worawat via stock.adobe.com.

Hypotheses are derived; experiments planned; results recorded. But what do the Washington elite think? The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) recently spoke with a newly minted Ph.D., Ginny Cox (Weill-Cornell ‘04), about her aspirations to examine the crossroads of science and politics as an AAAS science policy fellow.

Can you tell us about your story?

I came to graduate school after attending Wake Forest University, where I majored in Biology. At Cornell Medical College I joined Dr. Mary Baylies’ lab, where I used Drosophila Genetics to study the mechanisms that cells use to communicate with one another. While I enjoyed working in basic science research, I also noticed problems outside the lab: specifically, a growing intellectual divide between policymakers and scientists. I felt the need to become actively involved in the policymaking process and to work to educate policymakers and the public about basic science and its impact on society.

How did you become interested in politics?

Involvement in politics seemed like a natural extension of my interest in policy. One particular event I participated in was a Capitol Hill Day sponsored by the Joint Steering Committee for Science Policy (JSC). During this day, groups of scientists met with Congressional Members and their staffs to increase awareness of biomedical research and the continuing need to support funding for this research. It was an exciting experience to talk to lawmakers about my work while learning more about the lawmaking process that underlies federal biomedical research funding.

In your opinion, what are the major issues for U.S. science policy?

Since globalization has become a driving force in the world economy, U.S. science policy also must extend beyond its borders. Improving vaccines and treatments for diseases that impact developing countries should be a central concern because improving health among the global poor has direct consequences for political stability in those countries. Closer to home, we need better policies concerning human embryonic stem cell usage and non-reproductive cloning. Laws passed in New Jersey and California have opened the door to state-by-state funding for human embryonic stem cell research, but more states need to pass such legislation.

Also, now that we are in the genomic era, scientists and policymakers need to unite to improve public education with regard to genetic testing. Much of the fear associated with genetic testing could be removed by putting better protective measures in place to safeguard an individual’s genetic information and to inform people of both the benefits and limitations of genetic testing.

It was once remarked: “Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference — science and the nation will suffer.” What are your thoughts on this statement?

Dr. Ginny Cox

Science and the nation will suffer more if scientists abstain from the public policy debate. Accompanying an increase in the complexity of technology has been an increase in the complexity of arguments about how to best regulate it. Those individuals who best understand the technology — scientists — have a responsibility to educate the public and lawmakers as to the basic principles of this technology. By distilling these complicated scientific issues to a more understandable level, we can arm policymakers with the facts, allowing them to make the best decisions possible.

How can scientists best serve the public?

By staying informed about socially contentious issues in their fields, and by reaching out to everyday people to answer their questions about scientific issues. Last year I met a pair of businessmen while I was staying at the Chicago Sheraton during the annual Drosophila Research Conference. They wanted to know why thousands of people were meeting to discuss fruit flies.

I explained to them that many of the first insights about the genetic basis for embryonic patterning had come from flies, and that new discoveries in such diverse fields as stem cell biology and neuroscience continue to be made using flies. By taking the time to explain our research to people, we can make science more accessible on an individual basis and dispel those mad scientist myths.

Also read: What Makes Science of Interest to the Public?

Quirks and Quacks: Bernard Shaw and Medical Ethics

A 19th century scientists scribbles notes in his notebook.

Reflecting on ethical considerations posed by the famous Irish-born satirist nearly a century after his play critiqued aspects of the medical profession.

Published April 19, 2004

By Jennifer Tang

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve invented a “miracle cure” for tuberculosis. Unfortunately, you have limited supplies of the drug and have room for only one more patient. You must choose between saving the life of a penniless doctor dedicated to helping the poor or a talented but dissipated artist whose neglected wife attracts your eye. Who would you save?

That’s the “dilemma” facing the protagonist of The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw’s 1906 satire on the medical community and the conflict between the arts and sciences. To examine the play’s treatment of medical ethics and its relevance to today’s physicians, The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) co-sponsored a panel discussion and play at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on March 30, 2004. The event, The Doctor’s Dilemma: Quirks and Quacks, was co-sponsored by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Bernard Shaw Society, and the City University’s Science and the Arts Program.

After actors from the Juilliard School of Drama read three scenes from Shaw’s play, a panel discussion was held with Mark Horn, MD, MPH, director of medical alliances at Pfizer’s Alliance Development; Howard Kissel, senior theatre critic for the New York Daily News, and John T. Truman, MD, MPH, Professor and Deputy Chairman of the department of pediatrics, Columbia University/Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. Rhonda Nathan served as moderator.

A Lifelong Skeptic

Kissel opened the discussion by stating that Shaw’s portrayal of doctors was too harsh. “Shaw was cantankerous and his plays were often designed to provoke controversy,” he said. The first scene, in which a group of doctors congratulate a colleague on his knighthood, rapidly turns into a debate over which medical procedure is superior. While the lead character believes that germs must be coated with a chemical in order for the body’s immune system to fight them, a surgeon believes that nearly all diseases are caused by blood poisoning, and yet a third says diseases can be avoided by cutting out everyone’s nuciform sac.

Shaw’s implication is that doctors promote their procedures to gratify their ego or their wallet rather than the needs of the patient. “Shaw counted doctors among his friends, but also remained a lifelong skeptic toward the medical profession,” Kissel said.

While Horn agreed that Shaw had “a contemptuous attitude toward doctors,” he thought the play was a parody that remains timely and contains some uncomfortable truths about medicine. For example, the play’s premise—how a doctor decides whom to treat when there is a limited supply of medicine—echoes the “health care rationing” of medical services offered by today’s HMOs.

The Poor Doctor versus the Brilliant Artist/Scoundrel

Truman noted that Shaw presented the conflict in terms of class and profession—the “poor doctor” versus the “brilliant artist/scoundrel.” But Shaw’s play harks back to an era when health care decision-making was influenced by the idea of ‘social utility.’

“In those days, if you wanted to get a kidney transplant, there was a ‘scorecard’ determining whether or not you would get it. You were rated according to what you had to offer to society, and that determined whether or not you got a kidney transplant,” he said. Such reasoning (based on Social Darwinism) is obsolete today, he felt, although the wealthy continue to have more options to receive better treatment than the poor.

In addition, the play’s satire on “medical fads” (the doctors each promoting their new procedures like salesmen), still holds up well today, according to Horn. He pointed out how “current styles of intervention” are a fact of health care and how medicine is constantly changing. For example, there has been a radical reassessment of coronary disease in recent years, and such once-heralded procedures as hormonal replacement therapy have been scrutinized.

Truman observed that the doctors in the play represent different schools of thought. “In the field of ethics, these doctors favor their own procedures because they may have an ‘unconscious bias’ toward their own specialty,” he said. He told an amusing anecdote about Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly visited several doctors during his treatment for prostate cancer. When he went to a radiation therapist, the doctor suggested radiation therapy; when he went to a surgeon, the doctor suggested surgery. “That does not mean doctors are bad; they do believe they have the correct solution,” he said.

What Does it Mean to be a Human Being?

Kissel cautioned, however, that we should remember when the play was written. “In the last 50 years, medicine has been miraculous,” he said. Shaw’s play was written at a time when many medical procedures were still unsafe, and it was not uncommon for people to die from them. Hence, the debate over vaccines in the play did not involve big companies like Pfizer, but vaccines that had been manufactured by farmers.

The panelists also questioned whether Shaw’s delineation of the line separating the arts and sciences remains true today. Are there irreconcilable differences between these two branches of human thought? Will they remain forever at odds?

Horn commented that artists and scientists are different in terms of temperament and this difference creates a barrier in communication. When human beings speak another language, he said, they might resort to “contempt, which would serve as a camouflage to hide feelings of fear over what they don’t understand,” he said.

“Nowadays, the arts have gone off in so many weird directions that the gap between art and science is much less than it was in Shaw’s time,” Kissel added. To him, the issue appeared to be more about humanity. “I think the more important question posed by the play is, what does it mean to be a human being?”

Also read: Avoiding Bias and Conflict of Interest in Science

Tapping into Ancient Urges for Food and Love?

A young woman plays a ukulele.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

Published March 1, 2004

By Linda Hotchkiss Mehta

Image courtesy of offsuperphoto via stock.adobe.com.

Can music be reduced to mere brain anatomy and electrochemical interactions within the neural templates through which we experience it? Or will what we learn from science simply reinforce a reality the poets have intuited all along?

A group of scientists came together in Venice in October 2002 to take a look at what is known about music through the neurosciences. This area of study is providing insights into higher cognitive function through the mechanisms of musical perception and processing in the human brain. These scientists, many of whom are musicians themselves, approach their work well aware of the incredibly complex process that results in artistic expression and perception.

One broad question that has been explored is a perennial one about intelligence and musical ability – is musical aptitude an integral part of a person’s general cognitive potential or does it exist on its own, a separable and different type of intelligence?

Obviously, general intelligence alone is insufficient – plenty of demonstrably intelligent people never develop into excellent musicians, even when provided with an early music education. But must one be intelligent to be an accomplished musician? Evidence suggests that high general mental aptitude is necessary if special aptitudes (dare we say talent?) are to be fully developed.

In other words, the answer is yes: General intelligence and musical aptitude probably are linked. Furthermore, children who participate in musical activities show a higher degree of “mental speed” (a measure of mental aptitude) than their peers. So these findings have wide implications: Questions about how musical training can enhance general mental aptitude and what neuroscience can tell us about the effectiveness of various pedagogical techniques for musical training are of vital interest.

A Developmental Approach

Only a developmental approach could illuminate these questions, and The Neurosciences and Music, a volume in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences resulting from the meeting in Venice, focuses on neural development in both musicians and non-musicians, seeking to clarify questions about the development of higher cognitive function, in general, through the lens of the development of musical abilities, specifically.

Contributing scientists explore the mechanisms of human perception of the components of music (pitch, timbre, rhythm and harmony), the development of musical abilities, and the fate of musical abilities within the contexts of cognitive disorders in children and of dementia in the aged.

Scientists studying visual imagery have developed techniques for identifying and quantifying the perception of a visual experience, including mental image-making during the act of reading. Because the image a subject observes while reading is black marks on a page, bearing no resemblance to the image conjured up in the brain by the written words, the scientist/observer cannot “see” the mental image of the subject, and this process can only be observed through the traces of brain-imaging techniques.

Using the same brain-imaging tools, scientists can watch what happens neurologically while a person processes music. In one experiment, subjects listened to music while electroencephalography was used to trace brain responses. Musical phrases with syntactically inappropriate endings elicit early right anterior negativity. Shakespeare understood this intuitively: “How sour sweet music is,/When time is broke, and no proportion kept!/So is it in the music of men’s lives.”

Musicians vs Nonmusicians

A group of skilled musicians showed no significant differences from nonmusicians when presented with tasks designed to assess perception of melody, structuring of harmony, and more complex musical presentations. The subjects were asked to judge the similarity of musical selections and the degree of completeness of a piece of music and to identify the musical emotion expressed. Non-musicians demonstrated an ability to use the same principles as musical experts as they listened to music, which suggests that the capacity to enjoy music is universal and not dependent on training.

Even young children with no musical training demonstrate innate musical knowledge when tested with “inappropriate” chord progressions (not dominant-tonic, which is experienced as a normal, or authentic, cadence) through electric brain potential responses. The brain structure in which this response occurs is also involved in processing the syntax of language, which suggests that this aspect of musical ability is something that the human brain is already structured to do.

Cultural Differences

We are also led to wonder about cultural differences in music perception. Interestingly, when the rhythmic differences between French and English were compared to French and English classical musical themes, rhythmic patterns similar to those of the spoken language were found in the music of each culture. When language perception is tested independently, listening to one’s native language elicits a different neurological response than does listening to an unfamiliar language.

But music perception is dramatically different. In spite of the apparent link between a culture’s language and its musical rhythms, studies that compared the responses of subjects to music of their native culture with their responses to unfamiliar music found that differences depended more on the subjects’ musical expertise than on their familiarity with the music. This is good news for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, because it suggests that appreciation of another culture’s music should not be out of reach for most people.

More Grey Matter

The neuroanatomical differences that do exist between musicians and non-musicians may instead reflect the complex motor and auditory skills required for performance on an instrument and learning musical repertoire, as well as the processing feedback necessary to monitor a performance. Musicians have more grey-matter volume in several brain areas compared with non-musicians and even compared with amateur musicians, probably because intensity of practice affects these differences.

Another means of elucidating the neural events underlying imagery and perception is to study the function of persons with brain injuries in precise locations. It turns out that both perception (of music as it is played) and the capacity to form a mental image (in the absence of audible music) are damaged when the associated brain structure is damaged, which demonstrates that both processes depend on the same neural territory.

Wordsworth alludes to this human capacity in his poetry: “The music in my heart I bore,/Long after it was heard no more.” Without this capacity to imagine musical tone and timbre accurately and vividly enough to use them in new arrangements, after all, Beethoven would have lost the ability to compose when he lost his ability to hear.

As scientifically defined by Ian Cross of Cambridge, “music embodies, entrains, and transposably intentionalizes time in sound and action.” Most of us, however, think first of the emotional response music engenders. Poets have described music as the language of angels and the food of love, a medium with “charms to soothe a savage breast.” Many people experience “chills” or “shivers” when certain musical phrases are played and describe this experience as euphoric. These responses can be elicited fairly reliably even in a laboratory, where the associated psychophysiological responses can be measured.

The Pleasure of Music

It appears as though the pleasure we derive from music occurs because our neocortex can reach ancient neural systems involved with basic biological stimuli linked to survival. Perhaps the capacity to make and enjoy music is the happy accident of skills acquired and refined for more basic needs: nourishment and reproduction. The poets anticipated the scientists by centuries, in linking music with the ancient urges of love and food.

The poets also speak of music’s power to help us reduce stress: “Music alone with sudden charms can bind/The wand’ring senses, and calm the troubled mind,” wrote William Congreve. As scientists discover more about the links between the immune system and stress, the stress-reducing mechanisms of music might be a fruitful area for research.

The contemporary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen observed that “sonic vibrations do not only penetrate ears and skin. They penetrate the entire body, reaching the soul, the psychic center of perception.”

Stockhausen believed that the ratio between the unknown and the known has remained pretty much the same over time: The discoveries of science may explain much, but new questions are perpetually raised. Thus wonder will never die, and the poets may have the last word. What better words than these from Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Let knowledge grow from more to more,/ But more of reverence in us dwell;/That mind and soul, according well,/May make one music as before.”

Also read: Music on the Mind: A Neurologist’s Take

An Entertaining Approach to Science Education

A shot of a microphone in the foreground with stage lights in the background.

Who said that science can’t be fun? These scientists let lose for the night to both entertain and educate their audience.

Published June 1, 2003

By Dennis Gaffney

Image courtesy of Chalabala via stock.adobe.com.

It’s about an hour before Helen Davies is scheduled to sing in the basement grotto at the Cornelia Street Café in New York’s Greenwich Village. The crowd hasn’t yet filtered into the long and narrow bohemian space, with its low ceilings, candle lighting, and tables the size of pizza pies.

By day, Davies is a professor of microbiology. Performing, though, as her stomach reminds her, is not the same as teaching. “I guess you’d say I have butterflies,” admits the professor, who is 77 years old. “That’s a gastro-entomological term.”

Davies is part of the February edition of the monthly “Entertaining Science” series, which aspires to mix a little science, the spoken word and some music in a café setting. Tonight, Davies does all three when she steps onto a stage not much larger than a hospital gurney and sings “Leprosy,” written to the tune of the Beatles hit “Yesterday:”

Leprosy…
Bits and pieces falling off of me.
But it isn’t the toxicity
It’s just neglect of injury.
Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be
Can’t feel anything peripherally…

Davies, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, usually uses such songs – “I have about 40, but I’m happiest with 12,” she says – to provide mnemonic devices to medical students who must memorize mountains of minutiae about infectious diseases.

Song as a Mnemonic Device for Medical Students

From left: Nobelist Roald Hoffman, Professor Helen Davies, and filmmaker Daniel Conrad.

A good example is “Gonococci,” a homage to bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Davies wrote the lyrics to the tune “She’ll be Comin Round the Mountain When She Comes.” This evening, Davies asks just the men in the audience to sing the second stanza from the song sheets she has distributed:

Let’s not clap for gonococcus named for Neisser
Which infects when to your life you add some spice sir.
Prostatitis, urethritis,
And Epididymitis
You can get it many times, not once or twice sir.

The audience breaks into laughter as often as it breaks into song. It’s just the kind of performance that Roald Hoffmann, the playful master of ceremonies for “Entertaining Science,” loves to schedule. “We’re not trying to teach science as much as we’re trying to have fun with science,” explains Hoffmann, who is a poet and a popularizer of science – as well as a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. “For me, the arts are a complementary way to understand this beautiful and terrible world around us.” Robin Hirsch, one of the café’s owners, has compared the combinations of art and science that Hoffmann has scheduled to “atomic particles colliding together.”

Benoit Mandelbrot, largely responsible for fractal geometry, told stories about fractals at the evening titled “The Smooth and the Wildly Rough,” held last September. “I discussed the eternal fight between the rough and the smooth,” says Mandelbrot, who is in attendance this evening. “There’s no good story without conflict.”

Poetry, Music, Film, and More

Food, wine, and…all that jazz.

Sharing the stage with him that September night was poet Emily Grosholz, who read poems sparked by high-level mathematics. Experimental musician Elliott Sharp played fractal-inspired music on his electric guitar. A program last December included a Columbia University chemist who described his research on the biochemistry of vision. A colleague then joined him on stage and the two each dazzled the crowd with magic tricks – hence the evening’s title, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t.”

“The evening must have two elements,” Hoffmann says. “It has to have a theme and then two or three performers who are loosely connected.” The connection this February evening is familial. The warm-up act to Davies is Daniel Conrad, a one-time molecular immunologist who has become an experimental filmmaker. He also happens to be Davies’ son.

The filmmaker began the evening by discussing how films are structured like organisms – pretty academic stuff. Then he showed two of his films, which featured the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a classical music soundtrack, the buildings of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, views of Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands, and super-imposed dancers who moved more like organisms than humans.

A Free Meal

Clearly, the films are more art than science. All the performers, regardless of their fame, are paid with only a free meal, which they eat upstairs in Cornelia Street Cafe’s restaurant after the show. While waiting for dinner, Mandelbrot explains why he regularly attends the series. “All my work is between fields, so the people I feel most at ease with don’t have a devotion to just one field,” he says. He’s referring to the dozen people at the dinner table, who, lubricated by a few complimentary bottles of wine, converse about the pianist Glenn Gould, Lyme disease, grandmothering, Tourette’s syndrome, and choreographer George Balanchine.

“People have told me we could fill Carnegie Hall with this series,” says Hirsch. “But there wouldn’t be the same sense of play. There would be too much at stake. Besides, Helen would have to worry about singing perfectly in tune.”

Also read: Neural Harmony: When Arts Meets Neuroscience

Healthy Approaches to Dealing with Stress

A woman jogs on a running path while exercising outside on a sunny day.

Neuroscientists say that a “healthy lifestyle” is perhaps the most effective prescriptions for dealing with chronic stress.

Published June 1, 2003

By Jeffrey Penn

Image courtesy of Farknot Architect via stock.adobe.com.

Feeling stressed out? Anxious? Frustrated and angry? Looking for a way out?

Some significant advances in the neurosciences are revealing that stress is actually a complex relationship of internal and external factors, and that some relatively simple lifestyle changes can contribute to a sense of well being and improve health.

“A healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce stress,” according to Bruce S. McEwen, head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller University in New York and co-author of the recently published The End of Stress As We Know It (Joseph Henry Press).

The notion that stress is the result of external pressures is incomplete, said McEwen, who summarized his book during a March 18 lecture at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy). Research now reveals how the body’s defense mechanisms are involved in keeping stress at bay, as well as how the body’s defense system breaks down from time to time.

When the body is working properly, a process known as “allostasis” helps individuals adapt to and survive the real or imagined threats that confront them in the course of everyday life. McEwen explained that the allostasis process is maintained by a complex network – including hormones, the autonomic nervous system, neurotransmitters in the brain, and chemicals in the immune system – in the body.

“When this network is working efficiently, its activity helps to mobilize energy reserves, promote efficient cardiovascular function, enhance memory of important events and enhance the immune defense towards pathogens,” McEwen said. Normally, the body is able to self-regulate the proper responses to external pressures, but occasionally it reaches a limit known as “allostatic overload.”

Bruce S. McEwen

External Stress Factors

Many external pressures can contribute to allostatic overload, according to McEwen, such as conflicts at work or home, fears about war and terrorism, overworking, lack of sleep, economic difficulties, lack of exercise, excessive drinking and bad eating habits. Genetic risk factors, such as a predisposition for cardiovascular disease or diabetes, can also contribute to allostatic overload.

“If the imbalances in the body’s regulatory network persist over long periods of time, the result can lead to disease,” McEwen said. “Hardening of the arteries, arthritis, diabetes, obesity, depressive illness and certain types of memory loss are among the disorders that are accelerated by allostatic overload,” he added. He cited research indicating that long-term stress also affects the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions of the brain that regulate fear, emotions and memory.

According to McEwen, “genes, early development, and life experiences all contribute to determining how the brain responds to environmental stresses.” Research has revealed that external factors in society also can influence health and disease commonly related to stress.

“In industrialized societies, allostatic overload occurs with increasing frequency at lower levels of education and income,” McEwen noted. He pointed out that mortality rates and levels of diseases associated with allostatic load are much higher among people in lower socioeconomic status. “A combination of lifestyle, perceptions of inequality and stressful life experiences appear to play a role,” he said.

Best Antidote: Healthy Lifestyle

What can be done to reduce allostatic load and the stress associated with it? Changes in lifestyle are the best remedy, according to McEwen. “Maintaining social ties with friends and family is one of the most important factors in reducing stress,” he said. “In addition, restorative sleep, and regular, moderate exercise are all important,” he added. “Regular, moderate exercise not only increases muscle utilization of energy, but also enhances formation of new nerve cells in areas of the brain that support memory.”

McEwen said that, in addition to individual responses to counteract allostatic overload and reduce stress, the private sector and policy makers also can contribute to well-being. “Government policies that recognize the impact of inequality, promote comprehensive health care and reduce smoking, and provide housing and community services are also very important,” he said.

Stress reduction is not only critical for individuals, he added, but for the health and welfare of the wider society as well. “By 2020, depression will be the second-leading cause of disease in this country,” he concluded.

Also read: Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

Studying Mental Health: Categories or Dimensions?

A medical professional holds the hand of a patient to comfort them.

Experts say that elements of both psychiatry and psychology should be considered when studying mental health.

Published June 1, 2003

By Vida Foubiste

Image courtesy of wutzkoh via stock.adobe.com.

One of the dichotomies between basic and clinical research into childhood mental illness has been the nomenclature of classification. Psychiatrists have historically used “categories” to classify neurological disorders; psychologists have turned to “dimensions.”

Thus, the Roots of Mental Illness in Children and Adolescents conference organizers set out to find a keynote speaker who could bridge this sometimes “cavernous gap,” said Doreen S. Koretz, chief of the Developmental Psychopathology and Prevention Research Branch, Division of Mental Disorders, Behavioral Research and AIDS, at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda. The conference was supported by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy).

They turned to Sir Michael Rutter, MD, F.R.S., professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, in London, and a leading expert in child psychiatric research.

By his own admission, Sir Michael took a rather “British approach” and, one by one, challenged “meta-theoretical claims” behind the two approaches. “The battle, as it has sometimes been, between dimensional and categorical approaches is rather futile,” he admitted. Ultimately, both are necessary.

Among the claims he challenged to reach that conclusion were:

Sir Michael Rutter, MD, F.R.S.

Dimensional analyses have greater statistical power. But, says Sir Michael, odds ratios can sometimes be preferable. A recent study using Canadian data, for example, found no difference between maternal care and group day care on physical aggression in children ages two and three — except when the children came from families at high psychosocial risk. “Where there was high family risk, the rates of aggression were substantially higher among those receiving family home care,” he said.

Another assumes that the most important environmental influences are outside the family and only extreme environments have any effects of functional importance. “Both are demonstrably false,” said Sir Michael. A French study has shown that children removed from their parents because of abuse or neglect and then adopted between the ages of four and six-and-a-half have a rise in IQ at adolescence, the degree of which is systematically related to the socio-educational level of the adoptive homes. “These are differences within the relatively narrow range of adoptive homes,” he explained.

A further wrong assumption is that causal inferences can be partitioned into those that are genetically or environmentally mediated, with their summation amounting to 100 percent of effects. One example of the shortcoming of this claim is the role that people themselves play in selecting and shaping their environment. A longitudinal study of girls at age 10 with anti-social behavior found that, in the absence of marital support, there is a high degree of persistence 18 years later. “But, given marital support, there is a huge improvement in social functioning,” said Sir Michael.

“There’s an American saying, which says something like, ‘It ain’t ignorance that does the harm, it’s knowing too many things that ain’t true,’” Sir Michael said. “I’m a great believer in that.”

Also read: Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

A Scientific Explanation to the Demise of Dinosaurs

Partially dug up bones of a dinosaur.

You may know that a meteoric collision likely led to the demise of dinosaurs, but did you know earth’s had at least five mass extinctions during its history?

Published March 1, 2003

By Jeffrey Penn

Image courtesy of Panupong via stock.adobe.com.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the history of life on earth has been significantly affected by the collision of comets, meteorites and asteroids, resulting in global catastrophe and mass extinctions.

“Prehistoric mass extinctions of life were much more affected by extraterrestrial events than had ever been thought,” Michael Rampino, PhD, of New York University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told a Nov. 4, 2002, gathering at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy). “Earth’s history has been marked by periodic mass extinctions of life.”

Although scientists who first theorized that explosive collisions had significantly altered life on earth were not always taken seriously, Rampino said the theory is now not only accepted, but is considered among the most exciting fields in the sciences. “Astronomers and paleontologists formerly didn’t have cause to engage in conversations,” he said. “Now they have come to understand that their worlds are intimately connected.”

Five Mass Extinctions

More than 99 percent of species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct, according to Rampino. Paleontologists have identified five major mass extinctions and 20 minor mass extinctions on the planet earth. “The largest mass extinction was approximately 250 million years ago,” he said, “when 95 percent of marine species were wiped out.”

A mass extinction about 65 million years ago has long been widely recognized by scientists, since it represents the time when dinosaurs became extinct. “Dinosaurs were successful for a period of nearly 135 million years and suddenly became extinct about 65 million years ago,” Rampino said. “As many as 50 theories have been offered to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs, but none of those theories was supported by physical evidence.”

In the past 20 years, however, physical evidence gathered from sites as far apart as Italy and Colorado revealed that a thin layer of clay separated the geological record into two distinct eras. Analysis of the clay revealed “elevated levels of the kind of metals that are rare in terrestrial settings, but abundant in asteroids and meteorites,” Rampino said. “A similar review of geological samples from more than 150 sites around the world revealed that there is a global layer of this clay.”

In addition, scientists discovered a “shock layer” of quartz crystals in the clay, indicating high-pressure shocks. “Meteorite craters are the only places on earth that show these quartz crystals,” Rampino said. Scientists also discovered tiny spheres of glass in the clay. They are thought to have formed by intense heat from the impact and then dispersed into the atmosphere, where they cooled into their spherical shapes and dropped back to the ground.

Where is the Crater?

Despite the mounting evidence that a meteoric collision had eliminated the dinosaurs, scientists initially could not identify any crater on the earth that would explain the mass extinctions. In 1990, however, the giant Chicxulub Crater – nearly 200 kilometers in diameter – was discovered buried in the shallow sea just off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Additional exploration in Mexico indicated a thick bed of course sand, likely washed to shore by a giant wave (tsunami), in the precise layer of the geological record thought to indicate the mass extinction 65 million years ago.

What happened when the meteor collided with the earth? According to Rampino, scientists have estimated the object was nearly 10 kilometers long, causing the crater nearly 200 kilometers in diameter.

Environmental Catastrophe

“Dust and shock material were thrown out of the impact site into the atmosphere, causing heat and fires all over the world,” Rampino said. “The impact would have a tremendous, catastrophic effect on the environment. A high level of dust and ash would have clouded the sky, leading to a cooling and darkening that may have prevented photosynthesis.”

The geologist said such an event could have resulted in an “impact winter” lasting six months or longer. “Such an abrupt impact would lead to nothing less than a world-ending destruction of life,” Rampino said. “Food chains in the ocean and on land were broken, and plants and animals died out.”

Whatever life survived the calamity would continue to evolve, but the earth would see major changes in the dominant forms of life that remained. “The impact would provide opportunities for survivors to expand into empty niches, so that they dominate the earth during the next geological period,” Rampino added.

Prior Mass Extinctions?

Now that scientific consensus has accepted an impact collision as the most likely explanation for the extinction of dinosaurs, geologists are trying to determine if such collisions can be linked to other major and minor mass extinctions identified in the geological record.

Scientists have identified approximately 150 large impact craters on the earth. A statistical analysis reveals that about every 100,000 years a 1-kilometer object collides with earth, creating a crater of about 20 kilometers in diameter. “Only about once every 100 million years is there an impact of the magnitude that is capable of causing the dust storms and global fires believed to have eliminated the dinosaurs,” Rampino said.

Final proof of a connection between the largest mass extinction on earth – about 200-250 million years ago – and an impact collision has yet to be found. Evidence of such a crater may have eroded, he said, or remain hidden, perhaps below deep ocean water.

Future Extinctions?

If past evidence is also prologue, an impact collision that might cause mass extinctions on earth is likely in the next 40 million years or so, Rampino pointed out. “Earth exists in a zone of many earth-crossing asteroids and comets,” he noted.

While such projections appear far removed from the present, Rampino left his audience with a sobering fact. Concerning the potentially dangerous approach of comets, asteroids and meteorites, he pointed out, “there are no stop signs in outer space.”

Also read: Prehistoric Sloth-Like Creatures May Have Roamed the US

Exploring Movement in Time and Space

An artsy, black and white photo of a woman doing a dance.

Many of the dances choreographed by this MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner brings in elements of science, such as the physics of kinetic sound.

Published March 1, 2003

By Garry D. Reigenborn

Image courtesy of Pixel-Shot via stock.adobe.com.

Elizabeth Streb is a genius. She has been certified as such by the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award she received in 1997. If “genius” implies exceptional intellectual or creative power, however, Streb didn’t require any certification to qualify for such an appellation.

A choreographer with an intense curiosity and willingness – no, need – to experiment and test the boundaries of movement, Streb’s passion has resulted in a body of work that takes “dance” into a new dimension. As The New York Times said in a recent article, “Streb’s rough and tumble dances are about velocity, physical stamina and an unwillingness to bow to gravity without a fight.”

For the past 20 years her work has been centered on challenging the laws of gravity, informed by a scientific inquiry into the physics of kinetic energy.

“I’d love to defy the laws of Newton, but I’m told that’s not possible,” she says. “But my battle cry is to at least try, and to keep asking questions about movement without being satisfied with first answers.”

Streb is currently the Dean’s Special Scholar at New York University, where she’s studying physics, mathematics, and philosophy and working toward a M.A. in Time and Space. She graduated from the State University of New York at Brockport in 1972 with a degree in modern dance – and quickly transformed much of what she learned.

“I soon discovered that traditional dance was deeply married to music, borrowing its compositional forms rather than playing by its own rules,” she says. “If dance is an art of movement, then it’s not okay just to be on your feet, on a horizontal surface transferring weight. That’s like ignoring space.”

Pop Action

Among her early teachers was the great American choreographer Merce Cunningham, from whom she learned the importance of timing, removing dance from music but retaining those rhythmic forces needed to get a dancer from here to there. She developed her own language to describe her work, “Pop Action.” In a sense, that’s what happens during performances, as the dancers’ bodies expand and contract.

“The muscles ‘pop,’ and this muscular action combines with aspects of time, space and precision to create multi-directional theatrical images,” she explains.

With the company she founded in 1985, STREB/Ringside, she devises what one writer called “essays on the human body’s interaction with Newton’s Laws.” In “Cannonball Drop,” for example, several cannonballs splash into tubs of water and then, in a reference to Galileo’s famous experiment, Streb casually walks onto the stage and drops a feather, watching it drift lazily downward.

In “Breakthru,” which Streb says is about the effect of action on substance, dancers wearing protective goggles dive headfirst through a panel of glass without hurting themselves. In “Fly,” described as her attempt to “destroy the tyranny of the floor,” a performer buckled into a 16-foot-long steel lever loaded with counterweights that can spin and soar through the air.

For one of her works, Streb collaborated with math and science professors at the University of California-Berkeley to develop a new piece of machinery, which she dubbed the “Catastrophic Realizer.” It looks like a seesaw that moves in circles as well as up and down, with one end that can touch the ground and another that can’t. Instead of seats at the ends of the beam, the machine features oval platforms attached by hinges, creating yet another element of instability.

Working Toward an Answer

Like Newton, who developed theories based on mathematics that made it possible for predictions to be confirmed by real-world experiments, Streb concocts possible scenarios for her actions and then devises ‘experiments’ that allow her to ratify the results. She acknowledges that her work is not a literal translation of her scientific studies, but that it reflects her efforts at reaching the core of a particular action problem.

“Studying math, physics and philosophy shows me the way, method-wise, to approach finding answers to my questions about movement,” she said. “It’s made me come back to my work and look at things like the fundamental theorems of calculus, or the application of the chain rule, and analyze the types of questions I’m asking about movement in a deeper way.”

She added that, in science “you work and work toward an answer, and then that moment comes when you master and understand it. I try to mimic that experience in the studio in order to solve the problem I’m encountering.”

An Obsession with Learning

Streb’s obsession with learning and searching for answers is reflected in her commitment to working with young people. She has long held classes for children and community residents and will extend that educational component in her new studio building, an old mustard factory in a working-class area of Brooklyn. She started teaching children from two local YMCA’s this year and has had discussions with the principals of 10 public and private schools in the area about classes for their students.

“Children are the ‘truth-sayers’ of movement,” she says. “They’re purely physical and unrestrained. That so often gets stripped away from them. I believe we shouldn’t censor movement but encourage it. Believe me, my dancers and I learn as much about energy and bravery and honesty of movement from the children as they learn from us.”

A local community leader supports Streb’s educational efforts because “physical activity helps kids mentally, physically and spiritually, and through dance they can express themselves, learn teamwork and increase their self-esteem.”

Einstein once said that Newton “combined the experimenter, the theorist, the mechanic and, not least, the artist, in exposition.” Much the same can be said for Elizabeth Streb.

Also read:The Intersection of Sports and STEM

About the Author

Garry Reigenborn is a choreographer and assistant professor of Dance at Bard College, New York. He has been affiliated with the Lucinda Childs Dance Company as a dancer and rehearsal director since 1982.

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