Motivation influences how time flies when you’re having fun.

Numerous studies have shown that a positive state, relative to a negative state, makes time appear to pass more quickly and causes assessments of elapsed time to be shorter. Gable and Pool examine how the degree of motivation - as distinguished from positive or negative valence (as in approach versus withdrawal) - influences subjective time:

Time flies when you’re having fun, but what is it about pleasant experiences that makes time seem to go by faster? In the experiments reported here, we tested the proposal that approach motivation causes perceptual shortening of time during pleasant experiences. A first experiment showed that, relative to a neutral state or a positive state with low approach motivation, a positive state with high approach motivation shortened perceptions of time. Also, individual differences in approach motivation predicted shorter perceptions of time. In a second experiment we manipulated approach motivation independently of the affective state and showed that increasing approach motivation caused time to be perceived as passing more quickly. Finally we showed that positive approach motivation, as opposed to arousal, shortens perception of time by comparing a highly arousing positive state with a highly arousing negative state. Shortening of time perception in appetitive states may prolong approach-motivated behavior and increase the likelihood of acquiring appetitive objects or goals.

Neural signature of affiliative emotions.

Moll et al. do an interesting study to experimentally disentangle affiliative experience from general emotional valence, by demonstrating that brain areas distinctive to expression of affiliative (bonding) emotions engage an ensemble of basal forebrain structures that is conserved in mammals, and can be distinguished from areas reflecting the positive or negative emotional valence that accompanies the subjective affiliative experience. Here is their abstract, following by one of the illustrations from the paper:

Comparative studies have established that a number of structures within the rostromedial basal forebrain are critical for affiliative behaviors and social attachment. Lesion and neuroimaging studies concur with the importance of these regions for attachment and the experience of affiliation in humans as well. Yet it remains obscure whether the neural bases of affiliative experiences can be differentiated from the emotional valence with which they are inextricably associated at the experiential level. Here we show, using functional MRI, that kinship-related social scenarios evocative of affiliative emotion induce septal–preoptic–anterior hypothalamic activity that cannot be explained by positive or negative emotional valence alone. Our findings suggest that a phylogenetically conserved ensemble of basal forebrain structures, especially the septohypothalamic area, may play a key role in enabling human affiliative emotion. Our finding of a neural signature of human affiliative experience bears direct implications for the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning impaired affiliative experiences and behaviors in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Figure Legend - Activation of the septal/preoptic-anterior hypothalamic and medial FPC, predicted a priori, as well as in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus region (data not shown) and precuneus (Prec), observed in the affiliative versus nonaffiliative contrast.

Figure Legend - Brain regions associated with positive versus negative conditions (red-yellow) and negative versus positive contrasts (blue-green). Activation of the ventral striatum (VStr) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (medOFC; BA11/32) was observed in the positive versus negative contrast. For the negative versus positive contrast, activation of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC; BA 8/9) and lateral frontal cortex, including the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus (latFC), as well as the adjoining anterior insula (antIns) was observed (BA 45/47/48).

Do implicit attitudes predict actual voting behavior?

How can psychologists and pollsters predict the voting behavior of undecided voters? Is there is any hope for us Obama supporters who worry about the effectiveness of the clever framing of the conservative marketing aimed at undecided voters that pushes emotional buttons with complete disregard for rationality or facts? Friese et al. show that explicit attitudes predict voting behavior better than implicit attitudes for both decided and undecided voters, while implicit attitudes predict voting behavior better for decided than undecided voters. While this is not to say that explicit attitudes can't also be based on irrationality, it does argue against the power of implicit attitudes of which the voter is unaware. Here is their abstract:

The prediction of voting behavior of undecided voters poses a challenge to psychologists and pollsters. Recently, researchers argued that implicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for undecided voters whereas explicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for decided voters. We tested this assumption in two studies in two countries with distinct political systems in the context of real political elections. Results revealed that (a) explicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better than implicit attitudes for both decided and undecided voters, and (b) implicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better for decided than undecided voters. We propose that greater elaboration of attitudes produces stronger convergence between implicit and explicit attitudes resulting in better predictive validity of both, and less incremental validity of implicit over explicit attitudes for the prediction of voting behavior. However, greater incremental predictive validity of implicit over explicit attitudes may be associated with less elaboration.

Psychological distance enhances conformity to group norms.

In yet another of one of those studies that give what would appear to be a generally applicable result, but is based on experiments carried out on two rather selective population represented by undergraduate psychology students at a U.S. college (UC-Davis, and NYU), Ledgerwood and Callahan demonstrate that psychological distance can enhance conformity to group norms, contra the usual association of the distanced or abstracted thinker (think Spock or Obama) with reasoned opinions that resist group pressure.

In the first study noted in their abstract below. they manipulated the temporal distance of a policy by varying whether it would be implemented in the near or distant future. They then provided participants with information about the majority opinion before asking them to report their own attitudes toward the policy. (The study's 67 participants (72% female) completed a study described as an online student opinion survey. All participants read an article excerpt (ostensibly from an online campus newsletter), which stated that the Davis City Council was considering whether to approve a proposal that would require all bicycles - the primary mode of student transportation in Davis - to use rear bicycle lights for nighttime travel.) Participants tended to conform to group opinion when the policy would be implemented in the relatively distant future, expressing more favorable attitudes when the group favored the policy than when the group opposed it.

The second study, a bit more complicated, asked students who had been primed in a diversionary task that required thinking in either concrete or abstract terms, to vote on a previously defined affirmation action issue. They did this by privately placing a number of 'yes' or 'no' tokens proportional to how strongly they felt in boxes that already contained tokens placed by the group of previous voters (actually the experimenters). Participants conformed to the group norm after they had been led to think abstractly, voting more strongly in favor of affirmative action when the group seemed to support it rather than oppose it.

Here is the abstract:

Intuition suggests that a distanced or abstract thinker should be immune to social influence, and on its surface, the current literature could seem to support this view. The present research builds on recent theorizing to suggest a different possibility. Drawing on the notion that psychological distance regulates the extent to which evaluations incorporate context-specific or context-independent information, we suggest that psychological distance should actually increase susceptibility to sources of social influence that tend to be consistently encountered across contexts, such as group norms. Consistent with this hypothesis, two studies showed that psychological distance and abstraction increased conformity to group opinion and that this effect persisted in a novel voting-booth paradigm in which participants believed their voting behavior was both anonymous and consequential. We discuss implications of these findings for understanding the social side of abstraction as well as the conditions under which different types of social influence are likely to be most influential.

Zero effect of caloric restriction on lifespan

I would be very surprised if there were any blog readers who are unaware of this material, released two weeks ago with saturation coverage by the popular press, but because human aging has been a continuous topic in this blog I thought I should pass on reference to the results of an exhaustive study by Mattison et al. that has failed to confirm an effect of dietary caloric restriction on longevity in rhesus monkeys, even though some beneficial health effects are noted. This takes the edge off my motivation to do occasional fits of dieting with the assurance that this might influence how long this 70-year old body continues to hang around.

Calorie restriction (CR), a reduction of 10–40% in intake of a nutritious diet, is often reported as the most robust non-genetic mechanism to extend lifespan and healthspan. CR is frequently used as a tool to understand mechanisms behind ageing and age-associated diseases. In addition to and independently of increasing lifespan, CR has been reported to delay or prevent the occurrence of many chronic diseases in a variety of animals. Beneficial effects of CR on outcomes such as immune function, motor coordination and resistance to sarcopenia in rhesus monkeys have recently been reported. We report here that a CR regimen implemented in young and older age rhesus monkeys at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) has not improved survival outcomes. Our findings contrast with an ongoing study at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC), which reported improved survival associated with 30% CR initiated in adult rhesus monkeys (7–14 years) and a preliminary report with a small number of CR monkeys. Over the years, both NIA and WNPRC have extensively documented beneficial health effects of CR in these two apparently parallel studies. The implications of the WNPRC findings were important as they extended CR findings beyond the laboratory rodent and to a long-lived primate. Our study suggests a separation between health effects, morbidity and mortality, and similar to what has been shown in rodents, study design, husbandry and diet composition may strongly affect the life-prolonging effect of CR in a long-lived nonhuman primate.

Cognitive load disrupts implicit theory of mind processing.

I'm passing this on because I was totally unaware of the implicit theory of mind (TOM) system that is explained in these clips from the article by Schneider et al.. They test whether this implicit TOM system is independent of domain-general, capacity-limited, cognitive resources (e.g., working memory.) First the abstract:

Eye movements in Sally-Anne false-belief tasks appear to reflect the ability to implicitly monitor the mental states of other individuals (theory of mind, or ToM). It has recently been proposed that an early-developing, efficient, and automatically operating ToM system subserves this ability. Surprisingly absent from the literature, however, is an empirical test of the influence of domain-general executive processing resources on this implicit ToM system. In the study reported here, a dual-task method was employed to investigate the impact of executive load on eye movements in an implicit Sally-Anne false-belief task. Under no-load conditions, adult participants displayed eye movement behavior consistent with implicit belief processing, whereas evidence for belief processing was absent for participants under cognitive load. These findings indicate that the cognitive system responsible for implicitly tracking beliefs draws at least minimally on executive processing resources. Thus, even the most low-level processing of beliefs appears to reflect a capacity-limited operation.

And here, slightly edited, is some essential background material from their introduction:

A key paradigm for assessing ToM abilities is the Sally-Anne false-belief task: In still images, movies, or “live” performance (with puppets, actors, or both), “Sally” sees an object (e.g., a ball) being placed in a container. Sally then leaves the room. Next, “Anne” hides the object in a different container. When Sally returns to the room, participants are required to identify the location where they think Sally will first look for the object. To succeed at the task, participants must select (e.g., point to) the location that is consistent with Sally’s belief, as opposed to the actual, known location of the object.

Passing this explicit Sally-Anne task is thought to reflect a developmental milestone, which is typically achieved by the age of 4 years. Such findings suggest that children understand other people’s beliefs by this age. However, recent research using a variety of implicit ToM tasks suggests that children as young as 7 months may be able to register other individuals’ beliefs. For example, monitoring of eye movement behavior in free-viewing false-belief scenarios has demonstrated that 2-year-olds preferentially look toward the location at which the actor believes the ball to be.

Do humans fail to understand other individuals’ internal mental states until the age of 4, or is this fundamental ability already present during the 1st year of life? To accommodate these seemingly incongruent findings, Apperly and Butterfill proposed that throughout the life span, ToM is subserved by two distinct systems. According to this framework, an earlier-developing system, which operates implicitly and is independent of the development of language and executive function (e.g., working memory), is responsible for efficient monitoring of belief-like states. A later-developing system, which is dependent on domain-general cognitive functions (e.g., executive function), allows conscious (explicit) ToM inferences. Evidence supporting this framework includes a dissociation found in adults with Asperger’s syndrome, who can pass explicit false-belief tasks but do not display eye movement patterns consistent with implicit ToM in a Sally-Anne free-viewing paradigm.

Why the sex gap in affective disorders?

Here is an abstract from Hu et al., which I pass on to you even though it is rather technical, that shows that an increase in negative affective behavior in stressed female versus male mice that correlates with a decrease (vs increase in males) in their hippocampal NO (nitric oxide) levels. If the hippocampal NO levels are equalized in male and females, their affective behaviors become similar.

Mechanisms underlying the female preponderance in affective disorders are poorly understood. Here we show that hippocampal nitric oxide (NO) plays a role in the sex difference of depression-like behaviors in rodents. Female mice had substantially lower NO production in the hippocampus and were significantly more likely to display negative affective behaviors than their male littermates. Eliminating the difference in the basal hippocampal NO level between male and female mice mended the sex gap of affective behaviors. Estradiol exerted a positive control on hippocampal NO production via estrogen receptor-β–mediated neuronal NO synthase expression. Thus, low estrogen in the female hippocampus accounts for lower local NO than in the male hippocampus. Although estrogen has important significance in modulating affective behaviors, it is not estrogen but NO in the hippocampus that mediates the sex difference of affective behaviors directly, because hippocampal NO was necessary for the behavioral effects of estradiol, and NO was an independent factor in modulating behaviors. Stress promoted hippocampal NO production in males because of glucocorticoid release, thus leading to local NO excess. In contrast, stress suppressed NO production in females because of decreased estrogen, thereby resulting in hippocampal NO shortage. Whereas activating cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) rescued the depression-like effects of the intrahippocampal NO donor diethylenetriamine/nitric oxide adduct (DETA/NONOate), inactivating CREB abolished the antidepressant-like effects of the intrahippocampal NO donor DETA/NONOate. Our findings suggest a molecular mechanism underlying the sex difference of affective behaviors.

Investing in Karma - When Wanting Promotes Helping

An interesting piece from Converse et al. provides reliable evidence that people do good deeds when they want something beyond their control. This suggests that they act in accord with a karmic tenet rooted in immanent justice (but doesn't necessarily imply pervasive explicit belief in karma.) Here is the abstract slightly edited:

People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate’s favor by doing good deeds proactively. Four experiments support this karmic-investment hypothesis. The first two experiments show that when people want an outcome over which they have little control, their donations of time and money increase, but their participation in other rewarding activities does not. A third experiment shows that, in addition, at a job fair, job seekers who feel the process is outside (vs. within) their control make more generous pledges to charities. A final experiment shows that karmic investments increase optimism about a desired outcome. We conclude by discussing the role of personal control and magical beliefs in this phenomenon.

Some clips from their discussion:

Past research has found that people automatically anticipate negative outcomes following behaviors that tempt fate, and that people associate positive outcomes with virtuous behaviors. Thus, people may develop a basic good-behavior—good-outcome association, such that hoping for good outcomes activates the cognitive script to do good deeds...whether based on explicit or implicit belief, some version of a karmic belief system must be at least momentarily activated when people face important, uncontrollable outcomes...our findings fit with the notion that people turn to external sources of control, such as gods and governments, when internal control is lacking, and may even turn to apparently magical systems when necessary...rather than increasing selfishness, wanting can increase helping...people may not only pursue reciprocal exchanges interpersonally, but may also attempt to bargain with the universe.

Alcohol and group formation.

Sayette et al. do what looks like a thorough piece of work, but I also have a "Duh...tell us something else we didn't already know" kind of reaction. This is why evidence of human grape fermentation is found very early in the archeological record, and probably extends beyond it.

We integrated research on emotion and on small groups to address a fundamental and enduring question facing alcohol researchers: What are the specific mechanisms that underlie the reinforcing effects of drinking? In one of the largest alcohol-administration studies yet conducted, we employed a novel group-formation paradigm to evaluate the socioemotional effects of alcohol. Seven hundred twenty social drinkers (360 male, 360 female) were assembled into groups of 3 unacquainted persons each and given a moderate dose of an alcoholic, placebo, or control beverage, which they consumed over 36 min. These groups’ social interactions were video recorded, and the duration and sequence of interaction partners’ facial and speech behaviors were systematically coded (e.g., using the Facial Action Coding System). Alcohol consumption enhanced individual- and group-level behaviors associated with positive affect, reduced individual-level behaviors associated with negative affect, and elevated self-reported bonding. Our results indicate that alcohol facilitates bonding during group formation. Assessing nonverbal responses in social contexts offers new directions for evaluating the effects of alcohol.

Where thinking about thinking happens in the brain.

We evaluate and alter the cognitive functions we perform, as when we revise or edit our writing or speaking. This monitoring and controlling is usually referred to as metacognition. Middlebrooks and Sommer have recently done an elegant study of metacognition in Macaque monkeys, using a simple betting paradigm:

Humans are metacognitive: they monitor and control their cognition. Our hypothesis was that neuronal correlates of metacognition reside in the same brain areas responsible for cognition, including frontal cortex. Recent work demonstrated that nonhuman primates are capable of metacognition, so we recorded from single neurons in the frontal eye field, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and supplementary eye field of monkeys (Macaca mulatta) that performed a metacognitive visual-oculomotor task. The animals made a decision and reported it with a saccade, but received no immediate reward or feedback. Instead, they had to monitor their decision and bet whether it was correct. Activity was correlated with decisions and bets in all three brain areas, but putative metacognitive activity that linked decisions to appropriate bets occurred exclusively in the SEF. Our results offer a survey of neuronal correlates of metacognition and implicate the SEF in linking cognitive functions over short periods of time.

Highlight points:

-Monkeys made decisions and wagered on their performance in a metacognitive task

-Single neurons were recorded in three frontal cortical region

-Only supplementary eye field (SEF) neuronal activity correlated with metacognition

-The SEF metacognitive signal provided a temporal “bridge” between decision and bet

The unimaginable complexity of our evolved human systems.

In the face of all the current hubris about redesigning and engineering humans using modern genetic and biochemical tools, trying to reverse engineer brain systems that were never engineered in the first place, Randolph Nesse offers a very therapeutic essay. Here is a slightly edited version:

The products of natural selection are … not merely complicated in the way that machines are complicated, they are organically complex in ways that are fundamentally different from any product of design. This makes them difficult for human minds to fully describe or comprehend. So, we use that grand human gambit for understanding, a metaphor, in this case, the body as machine…it easy to portray the systems that mediate cell division, immune responses, glucose regulation, and all the rest, using boxes for the parts, and arrows to indicate causes what. Such diagrams summarize important information in ways we can grasp. .. But, they fundamentally misrepresent the nature of organic complexity.

Thinking about the body as a machine was a grand advance in the 16th century, when it offered an alternative to vitalism and vague notions of the life force. Now it is outmoded. It distorts our view of biological systems by fostering thinking about them as simpler and more sensibly "designed" than they are. Experts know better. They recognize that the mechanisms that regulate blood clotting are represented only crudely by the neat diagrams medical students memorize; most molecules in the clotting system interact with many others. Experts on the amygdala know that it does not have one or two functions, it has many, and they are mediated by scores of pathways to other brain loci. Serotonin exists not mainly to regulate mood and anxiety, it is essential to vascular tone, intestinal motility, and bone deposition. Leptin is not mainly a fat hormone, it has many functions, serving different ones at different time, even in the same cell. The reality of organic systems is vastly untidy. If only their parts were all distinct, with specific functions for each! Alas, they are not like machines. Our human minds have as little intuitive feeling for organic complexity as they do for quantum physics.

Recent progress in genetics confronts the problem. Naming genes according to postulated functions is as natural as defining chairs and boats by their functions. If each gene were a box on a blueprint labeled with its specific function, biology would be so much more tractable! However, it is increasingly clear that most traits are influenced by many genes, and most genes influence many traits. For instance, about 80% of the variation in human height is accounted for by genetic variation. It would seem straightforward to find the responsible genes. But looking for them has revealed that the 180 loci with the largest effects together account for only about 10% of the phenotypic variation. Recent findings in medical genetics are more discouraging. Just a decade ago, hope was high that we would soon find the variations that account for highly heritable diseases, such as schizophrenia and autism. But scanning the entire genome has revealed that there are no common alleles with large effects on these diseases. Some say we should have known. Natural selection would, after all, tend to eliminate alleles that cause disease. But, thinking about the body as a machine aroused unrealistic hopes.

The grand vision for some neuroscientists is to trace every molecule and pathway to characterize all circuits in order to understand how the brain works. Molecules, loci, and pathways do serve differentiated functions, this is real knowledge with great importance for human health. But, understanding how the brain works by drawing a diagram that describes all the components and their connections and functions is a dream that may be unfulfillable. The problem is not merely fitting a million items on a page, the problem is that no such diagram can adequately describe the structure of organic systems. They are products of miniscule changes, from diverse mutations, migration, drift, and selection, which develop into systems with incompletely differentiated parts and incomprehensible interconnections, that, nonetheless, work very well indeed. Trying to reverse engineer brain systems focuses important attention on functional significance, but it inherently limited, because brain systems were never engineered in the first place.

If bodies are not like machines, what are they like? They are more like Darwin's "tangled bank" with its "elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner." Lovely. But, can an ecological metaphor replace the metaphor of body as machine? Not likely. Perhaps someday understanding how natural selection shapes organic complexity will be so widely and deeply understood that scientists will be able to say "A body is like…a living body," and everyone will know exactly what that means. 

Mapping discrete and dimensional emotions onto the brain.

Here I am passing on the abstract and one summary figure from a useful recent review article by Stephan Hamann:

A longstanding controversy in the field of emotion research has concerned whether emotions are better conceptualized in terms of discrete categories, such as fear and anger, or underlying dimensions, such as arousal and valence. In the domain of neuroimaging studies of emotion, the debate has centered on whether neuroimaging findings support characteristic and discriminable neural signatures for basic emotions or whether they favor competing dimensional and psychological construction accounts. This review highlights recent neuroimaging findings in this controversy, assesses what they have contributed to this debate, and offers some preliminary conclusions. Namely, although neuroimaging studies have identified consistent neural correlates associated with basic emotions and other emotion models, they have ruled out simple one-to-one mappings between emotions and brain regions, pointing to the need for more complex, network-based representations of emotion.

Figure - Levels of mapping between emotion models and the brain. The left panel illustrates the most commonly proposed one-to-one mappings between elements of emotion theories and individual brain regions. For example, amygdala activation typically correlates with emotional arousal, whereas activation in the orbitofrontal cortex correlates with emotional valence. As noted in the text, these one-to-one mappings run afoul of numerous experimental findings that show that, for example, fear consistently activates regions other than the amygdala, and the amygdala in turn is associated with several emotion processes. Such difficulties with one-to-one mappings have motivated a shift to more complex interrelationships, such as functional networks. For example, in the right panel, network mappings may involve individual brain regions (small rectangles) participating in networks that carry out the processing mediating different emotions. An individual region, such as the amygdala (red rectangle) can participate in multiple networks and that region's role can be modulated according to the currently active network configuration. These network dynamics have important implications for evaluating the neuroimaging evidence for different emotion theories.

How childhood musical training shapes the adult brain.

From Skoe and Kraus:

Playing a musical instrument changes the anatomy and function of the brain. But do these changes persist after music training stops? We probed this question by measuring auditory brainstem responses in a cohort of healthy young human adults with varying amounts of past musical training. We show that adults who received formal music instruction as children have more robust brainstem responses to sound than peers who never participated in music lessons and that the magnitude of the response correlates with how recently training ceased. Our results suggest that neural changes accompanying musical training during childhood are retained in adulthood. These findings advance our understanding of long-term neuroplasticity and have general implications for the development of effective auditory training programs.

Scientific basis of a psychotherapy.

I've been wanting to pass on elements of a nice essay written by Eric Kandel for last year's Edge question, which describes Aaron Beck's development of cognitive behavioral therapy, a systematic psychological treatment for depression that focuses on distorted thinking rather than presumed unconscious conflicts. This is a pragmatic relatively value-neutral approach that avoids considerations of, and lacks the richness of, dealing with object relations, morality, or origins. (A random aside: I remember from my postdoctoral years at Harvard Medical School's Neurobiology Department (1967-68) that Eric Kandel, trained as a psychiatrist, would drop by at our communal lunch time to talk about his new work on a strange sea slug named Aplysia, work which was the basis of his later Nobel prize for uncovering a neuronal basis for memory. He was quizzed by Hubel and Wiesel, also to win the prize for their work in vision.) Kandel describes Beck's basic innovations:

First, he introduced instruments for measuring mental illness..beginning with a Depression Inventory, a Hopelessness Scale, and a Suicide Intent Scale. These scales helped to objectify research in psychopathology and facilitated the establishment of better clinical outcome trials.

Second, Beck introduced a new short-term, evidence-based therapy he called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Third, Beck manualized the treatments. He wrote a cookbook so method could be reliably taught to others. You and I could in principle learn to do Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Fourth, he carried out with the help of several colleagues, progressively better controlled studies which documented that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy worked more effectively than placebo and as effectively as antidepressants in mild and moderate depression. In severe depression it did not act as effectively as an anti-depressant but acted synergistically with them to enhance recovery.

Fifth and finally, Beck's work was picked up by Helen Mayberg, another one of my heroes in psychiatry. She carried out FMRI studies of depressed patients and discovered that Brodmann area 25 was a focus of abnormal activity in depression. She went on to find that if—and only if—a patient responded to cognitive behavior therapy or to antidepressants SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) this abnormality reverted to normal.

Freud, the tea party, and deluded individualism.

A nice piece by DeBrabander in The Stone forum on the NYTimes has an interesting take on how it is that stalwart red state tea party supporters who admit they could not survive with government support nevertheless profess a robust individualism, and anger at sustaining others with their tax dollars. I think the basic point is that they perform the same cognitive illusion that was clearly perceived by Spinoza and Freud, the illusion that I provide an updated description of in my "I-Illusion" web/lecture. We imagine ourselves to be the master of our actions while ignoring evidence to the contrary. Some clips from DeBrabander's article:

By Freud's account, conscious autonomy is a charade. "We are lived," as he puts it, and yet we don't see it as such…I was reminded of Freud's paradox by…a study from Dartmouth political science professor Dean Lacy, which revealed that, though Republicans call for deep cuts to the safety net, their districts rely more on government support than their Democratic counterparts…In Chisago County, Minn., The Times's reporters spoke with residents who supported the Tea Party and its proposed cuts to federal spending, even while they admitted they could not get by without government support. Tea Party aficionados, and many on the extreme right of the Republican party for that matter, are typically characterized as self-sufficient middle class folk, angry about sustaining the idle poor with their tax dollars. Chisago County revealed a different aspect of this anger: economically struggling Americans professing a robust individualism and self-determination, frustrated with their failures to achieve that ideal.

Why the stubborn insistence on self-determination, in spite of the facts? One might say there is something profoundly American in this. It's our fierce individualism shining through. Residents of Chisago County are clinging to notions of past self-reliance before the recession, before the welfare state. It's admirable in a way. Alternately, it evokes the delusional autonomy of Freud's poor ego…These people, like many across the nation, rely on government assistance, but pretend they don't. They even resent the government for their reliance. If they looked closely though, they'd see that we are all thoroughly saturated with government assistance in this country: farm subsidies that lower food prices for us all, mortgage interest deductions that disproportionately favor the rich, federal mortgage guarantees that keep interest rates low, a bloated Department of Defense that sustains entire sectors of the economy and puts hundreds of thousands of people to work. We can hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are bold individualists instead.

Thanks to a decades-long safety net, we have forgotten the trials of living without it. This is why, the historian Tony Judt argued, it's easy for some to speak fondly of a world without government: we can't fully imagine or recall what it's like. We can't really appreciate the horrors Upton Sinclair witnessed in the Chicago slaughterhouses before regulation, or the burden of living without Social Security and Medicare to look forward to. Thus, we can entertain nostalgia for a time when everyone pulled his own weight, bore his own risk, and was the master of his destiny. That time was a myth. But the notion of self-reliance is also a fallacy.

Spinoza greatly influenced Freud, and he adds a compelling insight we would do well to reckon with. Spinoza also questioned the human pretense to autonomy…There is no such thing as a discrete individual, Spinoza points out. This is a fiction. The boundaries of 'me' are fluid and blurred. We are all profoundly linked in countless ways we can hardly perceive. My decisions, choices, actions are inspired and motivated by others to no small extent. The passions, Spinoza argued, derive from seeing people as autonomous individuals responsible for all the objectionable actions that issue from them. Understanding the interrelated nature of everyone and everything is the key to diminishing the passions and the havoc they wreak…In this, Spinoza and President Obama seem to concur: we're all in this together.

Wednesday morning music: Faure Barcarolle No. 1

I keep stopping recordings and starting over if I make a mistake, and I finally decided the hell with it, and just recorded a run through, minor glitches and all.

The quotable Gore Vidal.

I just can't resist passing on these wonderful quotes from Gore Vidal,  from the PBS website:

1. “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
2. “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.”
3. “First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.” – from The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, interview by Gerald Clarke, 1974
4. “Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all.” – from The Second American Revolution, 1983
5. “…American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like [Ernest] Hemingway and not seen the joke?” – from United States – Essays 1952-1992
6. “To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.” – from Screening History
7. “The more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes.” – from Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays
8. “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” – from The Sunday Times Magazine, 1973
9. “Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60″
10. “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.” – from Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays, 1972
11. “The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.”
12. “Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels, and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.”
13. “You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?” – from Esquire, 2008
14. “Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.”
15. “A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.” – from The New York Times, 1981
16. “History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.” – from Butt, 2007
17. “The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven’t seen them since.” – from Matters of Fact and Fiction: Essays 1973 – 1976
18. “Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.” – from Palimpsest: A Memoir
19. “I do many different things rather better than most people do one thing.” – from The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, interview by Gerald Clarke, 1974
20. “The usual question everybody asks now is: What are you proudest of, Mr. Vidal, of all your great achievements? To which I answer: ‘Despite intense provocations over the course of what is becoming a rather long life, I have never killed anybody. That is my greatest achievement.’ A little negative maybe, but that’s it.” – from Vanity Fair, 2009

Effect of early institutionalization on brain development.

Sheridan et al. do further studies on the effects of Rumanian institutionalization of children, finding some reversibility its deleterious effects. From their introduction:

UNICEF estimates that there are at least 8 million children who live in institutional settings. Institutional rearing of young children represents a severe form of early psychological and physical neglect, and as such, serves as a model system for understanding how early experience—or the lack of thereof—impacts brain and behavioral development...In most forms of institutional rearing, the ratio of caregivers-to-children is low (e.g., in our sample ∼1:12), care is highly regimented, and caregiver investment in children is low. Children raised in institutions are more likely than children raised in families to have deficits in cognitive function and in language production and comprehension. Relative to noninstitutionalized children, children reared in institutional settings experience a wide range of developmental problems including markedly elevated rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other forms of psychopathology and difficulties with social functioning.

The abstract:

We used structural MRI and EEG to examine brain structure and function in typically developing children in Romania (n = 20), children exposed to institutional rearing (n = 29), and children previously exposed to institutional rearing but then randomized to a high-quality foster care intervention (n = 25). In so doing, we provide a unique evaluation of whether placement in an improved environment mitigates the effects of institutional rearing on neural structure, using data from the only existing randomized controlled trial of foster care for institutionalized children. Children enrolled in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project underwent a T1-weighted MRI protocol. Children with histories of institutional rearing had significantly smaller cortical gray matter volume than never-institutionalized children. Cortical white matter was no different for children placed in foster care than never-institutionalized children but was significantly smaller for children not randomized to foster care. We were also able to explain previously reported reductions in EEG α-power among institutionally reared children compared with children raised in families using these MRI data. As hypothesized, the association between institutionalization and EEG α-power was partially mediated by cortical white matter volume for children not randomized to foster care. The increase in white matter among children randomized to an improved rearing environment relative to children who remained in institutional care suggests the potential for developmental “catch up” in white matter growth, even following extreme environmental deprivation.

The mis-use of Science: PseudoNeuroscience sways judges' sentencing.

One sees frequent discussions in neuroscience journals (like this one in Trends in Cognitive Sciences) over whether, and to what extent, neuroscience should influence public policy. Does the willingness on of some behavioral scientists to translate the legal and policy implications of their work really help, or does this represent growing misuse of neuroscience to attach scientific authority to policy, plus a clutch of neuroscientists trying to overstate their findings for a taste of power? Such debate makes studies like this one of of Aspinwall et al. very relvant:

We tested whether expert testimony concerning a biomechanism of psychopathy increases or decreases punishment. In a nationwide experiment, U.S. state trial judges (N = 181) read a hypothetical case (based on an actual case) where the convict was diagnosed with psychopathy. Evidence presented at sentencing in support of a biomechanical cause of the convict's psychopathy significantly reduced the extent to which psychopathy was rated as aggravating and significantly reduced sentencing (from 13.93 years to 12.83 years). Content analysis of judges' reasoning indicated that even though the majority of judges listed aggravating factors (86.7%), the biomechanical evidence increased the proportion of judges listing mitigating factors (from 29.7 to 47.8%). Our results contribute to the literature on how biological explanations of behavior figure into theories of culpability and punishment.

Reconstructing intolerance.

Luguri et al. in the Yale psychology department relate the tolerance of conservatives to whether their construal level is more abstract versus concrete. They either measured the existing construal level of study participants and tested tolerance, or after measuring construal level, manipulated it to see the consequences. Construal level was manipulated by asking people why (abstract) versus how (concrete) they would think about certain issues such as maintaining good health or moral fairness. Here is their abstract:

Gunnar Myrdal described the “American dilemma” as the conflict between abstract national values (“liberty and justice for all”) and more concrete, everyday prejudices. We leveraged construal-level theory to empirically test Myrdal’s proposition that construal level (abstract vs. concrete) can influence prejudice. We measured individual differences in construal level (Study 1) and manipulated construal level (Studies 2 and 3); across these three studies, we found that adopting an abstract mind-set heightened conservatives’ tolerance for groups that are perceived as deviating from Judeo-Christian values (gay men, lesbians, Muslims, and atheists). Among participants who adopted a concrete mind-set, conservatives were less tolerant of these nonnormative groups than liberals were, but political orientation did not have a reliable effect on tolerance among participants who adopted an abstract mind-set. Attitudes toward racial out-groups and dominant groups (e.g., Whites, Christians) were unaffected by construal level. In Study 3, we found that the effect of abstract thinking on prejudice was mediated by an increase in concerns about fairness.