Kandel

Suzanne Ardanowski

Feeling Brain

May 6, 2008

            I am writing about Kandel for my conference project, so I was curious to read his article this week.  I thought it was interesting how he noted that the growing field of psychopharmacology prompted the return to neurology in psychiatry.  It was also thought provoking to read, “behavioral disorders that characterize psychiatric illness are disturbances of brain function, even in those cases where the causes of the disturbances are clearly environmental in origin” (p.460).  Society, culture can cause disturbances in the way your brain actually functions.  As he states, “all sociology must to some degree be sociobiology This emphasizes Kandel’s integration of neurology and psychology.  The idea that learning can alter gene expression seems easy to conceptualize when I think about a fear response.  When I think about dysfunctional behavior learning, for example narcissism or domestic violence, actually changing neurons and gene expression I am repeatedly wowed. It is really amazing to me to think that everything thing one does has a neural pathway that can be altered by learning. Kandel continues, “There can be no changes in behavior that are not reflected in the nervous system” (p.464).  He also goes further to say that at times, these changes may not be detectable, but nonetheless they are occurring.  I liked his questions at the end which would work well with my conference work, regarding the different schools of though regarding consciousness. 

'Don't Cry, be a Man...it is Good for You!'

In the emerging field of emotion regulation, it has been taught that our emotions can be modulated, hopefully only after are they expressed and finally determined. I think Gross has done a good job in separating the terms of what an emotion, an emotional episode and a mood are from each other. It clarifies the picture but it also disintegrates it.
Can one definition exist without the other? Isn’t the primal question of what is an emotion further alienated from us by now defining how such emotional processes might shape the primal impulsive emotion? Can the term emotion be separated from the social, psychological, biological processes involved in attaining the final response? From this social perspective, does the definition of emotion and emotional process not seem interchangeable?
Gross has suggested a wide range of definitions to why we need to regulate our emotions, what are the processes and their benefit for our healthy acclimation in a social setting. Our capacity to adaptive, conscious coping process is the base for understanding emotional regulation. Other then my assumption that ‘let your feelings be your guide’ is the evolutionarily smarter mechanism it turns out that actually ‘he who keeps a cool head prevails’. Emotional adaptational intelligence can be quite necessary for us, not only in the context of social order, but in concern of mental health. Gross has noted a few plausible problems that might occur if non-regulation occurs: “emotion dysregulation is associated with clinical problems…sustained physiological response exceeding metabolic demand and immune suppression.” This lets us assume we should not blindly trust our emotions, which might harm us more in the long run then the suppression of the emotion at stake in the moment. His definition: “Emotion regulation must be inferred when an emotional response would have proceeded in one fashion but instead is observed to proceed in another.” Soon we discover that this is problematic as we need to first know the emotion which we will regulate; that does not necessarily always happen consciously but rather adaptively, and we may blur the two together, the initial emotion and the regulated response. (I wonder: If ego defenses occur out of awareness, why the term then? does not ‘id defenses’ suit it much better?)
He then proceeds into detail of four processes of emotional regulation:
1. Situation selection occurs when you select consciously in what situations you place yourself in, so you may avoid encountering unpleasant emotions associated with such kind of situations.
2. Situation modification is an unwanted situation in which emotional response might be provoked and we try to alter the situation in order to distance ourselves from the unwanted emotion.
3. Attentional deployment means literally shifting your emotional attention away from the situation that calls forth the unpleasant emotion; in other words distracting yourself from reality by concentrating on different tasks or ruminating in a subsequent emotional reality.
4. Cognitive change happens in the process of bonding meaning to a precept, elevating it to an emotional experience. For example when things go wrong one should ‘think positive’ this would be a cognitive reframing of a plausible unpleasant emotional situation, in order to decrease the overall negative emotions.
Last but not least he mentions, response modulation, which is directed at the ‘aftermath’ in emotional regulatory processes and tackles the response in an emotion generative situations. Regulating our behavior and response to the emotion is perhaps the most common process that is tangible to us; it is directed at modulation and emotional response, the final stages of James’s still accepted formula of emotional response tendency. It seems as though we feel we can execute more power over what we put out into the world rather then what we take upon us, in terms of emotions, emotional regulation and responding. The goal of this system is mostly context specific, matching our response to the expected social pattern.
Beyond the self-noted problematic data assimilation through interview and questionnaire methods, which is untrustworthy, there are many other unanswered perplexities in regards to this model of emotional regulation. The fact that it is all according to a ‘process model’ (emphasis mine) makes me suspicious. What about the idea that each individual has their own individual model for how they experience and deal with emotions in social context. Don’t we tend to generalize in a subject so subjective as emotional regulation? We have focused on the unwanted negative emotions but what happens when people are placed in situations in which they have to regulate positive emotions? Is this still healthy? Can such alteration eventually lead to a genetic change in emotional responsiveness? Will we ever reach a place of constant balance of emotions? Is this favorable? What would individuality mean and how could it be expressed if we would be at perfect harmonic, emotional reactivity? The question if emotional harmony can exist, might be answered once we learn to listen to our emotions, without immediately acquiring meaning to them. These multi-regulatory processes confined to a process-oriented approach is ought to bring us closer to understanding emotion regulation but I wonder if it really will, rather constrict us to a pattern, a diagram which makes a lot of sense and in a way seems oversimplified to me.
After Gross has spread the umbrella and clarified general formulation, social context of normal modes for regulation. We are invited through social neuroscience to look into the lens of specified disorders looking at structural detail and differences between individuals. The two papers are bound together through the idea that behavioral disorders are in turn the greater outcome of deregulation of emotions. By focusing on disorders it gives a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms and contributes in our understanding of what a healthy mind requires in social adaptation.
Individuals as said, differ not only in efficiency of mechanisms, but in the amount of specific mental activations when such processes as emotional regulation should take place. People with behavioral disorders might have salient parts in their emotional regulatory mechanisms. Could one understand this idea through people that experience a ‘fit’ (= an uncontrollable emotional burst), individuals who in that moment cannot regulate their emotion, as the neural mechanisms are maybe unavailable?

Mikal Shapiro

I suppose it is only appropriate that in the final weeks of conference work, we would be studying emotion regulation. What better way to learn how to manage the end-of-year pressures? For example, according to Lerner et al., subjects expressing anger and disgust versus fear in response to stress-challenge tasks exhibited lower cortisol responses and blood pressures. The lesson here: Frustrated with schoolwork? Don’t get scared… Get pissed! It’s better for your health (Lerner et al, p. 258). I find it particularly funny that the “annoying” tasks used in the above experiment were math-related problems--recalling the arithmetic we were instructed to calculate during a presentation on memory (and the ensuing fear-filled facial expressions). It’s interesting to note that in the Lerner et al article, anger is associated with a greater sense of control over a stress-filled situation and is thus related to optimism; the stuff of progressive social uprising? Vive la Revolution!
When we discussed optimism in earlier readings, we discovered that feeling un-pragmatically positive could have negative effects on our ability to prepare and respond to real situations. Though this may be the case, “people often have positive illusions about themselves that maintain their mental health” (Cacioppo et al, pg. 106). Self-relevant processing (associated with m-PFC activation--a site related to moderating socially-appropriate actions and personality) often results in over-estimating our own abilities to the benefit of our actions. When we think we can do better than we really can, we often do better than we normally would (“Positive Illusions and Well-Being Revisited,” Taylor and Brown, 1994--this was cited in the Cacioppo et al article and I highly recommend it). “Realism” in our self-perceptions is not as important as a positive and consistent sense of “self.” Although the study of social neuroscience has in the past focused mainly on psychopathology, researchers “now pay greater attention to normative emotional regulatory processes” such as maintaining a solid sense of self as it relates to a larger community (Gross, p. 274). By developing a greater understanding of the biology behind socially relevant emotions (which emotions aren’t socially relevant?) and “healthy” emotion regulation, we can develop more clearly an understanding of the bi-directional communication between higher cognitive functions and deeper, less conscious processes of affectation. This understanding can, in turn, facilitate a more vital definition of the importance of emotions in our personal and social lives than psychology, philosophy, or biology can reveal alone. Reading articles about these cross-disciplinary approaches is inspiring, especially given the history of separation between the fields. Kandel’s article on the new directions of psychiatry reminded me of the fact that psychiatrists have suffered en masse from their own ego-driven defense mechanisms by “[spending] most of the decades of [psychoanalysis’] dominance… on the defensive” (p. 458). It’s amazing that he was encouraged not to read or do any research during his studies in psychiatry at Harvard!
Gross furthers the merging of disciplines by dialoging emotions in a way that allows other disciplines to participate in the conversation. By acknowledging the social, psychological and biological economics of emotional processes, he proposes that emotional “well-being may be most likely when we (a) regulate emotion antecedents so that we are emotionally engaged by those pursuits that have enduring value…” (p. 288). These “pursuits” are surely personally and culturally defined and depending on how and in which ways we spend our resources on them, we can either herald or negate (counter-intuitively) what gives our lives meaning. In developing a more sophisticated awareness of our emotional economics--biologically, psychologically, and socially--we can nurture Gross’ notion of a “cooperation between reason and emotion… helping us decide which battles are worth taking up and which to avoid” (p. 288) This kind of cognitive/emotion middle-road approach may pave the way for the multiple disciplines of social neuroscience to move forward with less contention--by contributing to a more inclusive, more effective feeling-brain language.

social neuroscience

Lily Thom
This week’s readings examined some of the ways that neuroscience might contribute to psychiatry and the emerging interdisciplinary field of social neuroscience. Cacioppo et al make an argument for neuroscience’s ability to contribute to our understanding of mental disorders. I thought the work effectively strikes a balance between social and biological factors and gets at the heart of how inextricable these two forces are in determining human behavior. They give an impressively extensive overview of neuroscience findings, which was very exciting because now we really have a context for how all these findings fit into what we have learned this semester.
Kandel’s look at interdisciplinary possibilities is very critical of the psychiatric side of the field, particularly because of its roots in psychoanalytic theory. However, Kandel does a good job of explaining the historical reasons why psychoanalysis split with biology and showing that this is not a predestined or natural divide for these fields. He emphasizes that this schism occurred in part because neural findings at the time were just not advanced enough to contribute to Freud’s emerging model in a meaningful. Yet with our current understanding of the brain and genetic expression Kandel proposes some ways in which the fields might find common interest. It’s interesting to imagine how Freud’s model of the mind might be different if he had access to the findings Kandel discusses. On the other hand, neuroscience’s model of the mind may also look different without Freud’s contributions on conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind.
Gross’ discussion of emotion regulation focuses on many distinctions between different aspects of emotional experience. I was intrigued by this comment: “I prefer to think of a continuum from conscious, effortful, and controlled regulation to unconscious, effortless, and automatic regulation (275).” Especially in light of the findings about unconscious emotion, I think that this is a helpful model. I think this speaks to LeDoux’s model by acknowledging a range of interactions between feelings and conscious appraisal. What do others think?
Lerner et al study the differences between indignation (anger and disgust) and fear in response to “annoyingly difficult stress-challenge tasks.” They found that fear displays were positively associated and indignation displays were negatively associated with cardiovascular and cortisol stress levels. They distinguished between indignation, as a situation-specific response and dispositional hostility as a stress disorder with comorbidities. Thus, it seems that in certain situations anger is an adaptive response that can mediate stress. This made me think back to a study that arose in my presentation about parent-child discussion of emotion. The study (Miller and Sperry, 1988) illustrated a difference in expressions of anger between inner-city, single working-class mothers and upper-middle class parents. For working-class mothers, anger was an important tool to teach children who needed to learn to face challenging situations throughout life. Lerner at al explain that indignation can confer a sense of control. This seems to allow the angry study participants to externalize the stressful, annoying aspects of situations rather than internalizing stress or blaming themselves. This may be a truly important skill for working-class people who may face unfair, discriminatory or dehumanizing situations on a daily basis. Interestingly, anger and indignation are usually a fundamental part of movements for social change and civil rights struggles. Perhaps this is because those emotions infer on oppressed people that sense of control that Lerner at al mention. However, Lerner et al point out that adaptive use of indignation may easily approach chronic hostility and its accompanying health disorders.

april 30th, 2008

Kaila McIntyre-Bader

April 30^th, 2008

Throughout this week’s readings, I noticed that mirror neurons seem to be neuroscience’s current Messiah. The excitement they are causing and the weight scientists are putting on them is remarkable. It seems that mirror neurons just may help bring us a step closer to figuring out the seemingly impossible problem of consciousness.

Social cognition is a way of sharing experiences and a view of the world that depends on the exchange of signals and is highly beneficial to survival. The chameleon effect was mentioned in a couple of the articles, and it was interesting to read about such a common phenomenon being described in such scientific terms. “When we interact with someone we often mirror each other’s movements and mannerisms. We are unaware of this mirroring, but when it occurs it creates the feeling that we have good rapport with each other- the chameleon effect. Interestingly, the rapport associated with the chameleon effect may be destroyed if we become aware that we are being imitated. Instead we may feel we are being mocked”(Frith and Frith, 2007). This reminds me of many occurrences in everyday social life. How many times have you watched or experienced two people getting to know each other, initially mirroring each other to show enthusiasm and engagement, but later on becoming irritated by that person for picking up too many of their mannerisms? This idea also sparked a question in my mind about the innateness of self-absorption. Are humans generally Narcissists? Does mirroring make us feel we have good rapport with another person because they are reminding us of ourselves? Or how much of it is being comforted by the familiar? Lately I’ve been noticing examples of the contagiousness of facial expressions and body postures everywhere I go.

Frith and Frith also bring up social referencing, and reflect on how we use other people’s emotional reactions to learn about novel situations. Infants tend to avoid touching a toy if the mother shows fear, but if she is showing pleasure it will explore it. But there are some reactions that seem to be programmed in the brain. “Infant monkeys who had never met a snake… rapidly acquired fear of snakes when observing a model in a video being afraid of a snake. In contrast, they did not acquire fear of a flower even after 12 trials of observation. By it’s evolutionary history the brain is pre-prepared to learn archaically threatening stimuli.”

I found the apparent innateness of prejudice and racism to be slightly startling. Several of the articles commented on an experiment in which the subjects were shown black faces and the fear reaction that came with it. I found it particularly interesting, though, that “consciously held attitudes about race are often at variance with our implicit prejudices, and there is evidence that we try to suppress these rapid automatic responses” (Frith and Frith, 2006). The amygdala response to these black faces was reduced when the faces were presented for longer, and there was increased activity in the areas of frontal cortex concerned with control and regulation. While I’m not sure about how I feel about this implicit reaction to a face of a certain skin color, I do find it fascinating that making alliances with fortunate groups of people is an evolutionary benefit, thus we may tend to harbor negative feelings toward the disadvantaged. But how does this work with empathy? What is the balance between survival of the fittest and being capable of feeling sorry for a group of people because we can see their point of view and want to help them?

I would love to discuss in class the difference between empathy for those we know and those we don’t know, and the processing for empathy for positive and negative emotions, as well as non-human or robotic empathy. The experiments with eye gaze and robots is crazy. Do we try and access things’ mental states if we know they aren’t the same as we are?

Apparently sometimes we do. Abstract shapes such as triangles can be made to move about in such a way that views will readily attribute emotions, desires, and false beliefs to them. This reminds of a stage in childhood development and magical thinking. I definitely remember giving my forks and spoons personality traits. (Is that weird?)

I also found the idea of awareness of self is really aware of self as others see us intriguing. How much of what we believe about ourselves is internal, and how much is it affected by how others perceive us?

I particularly enjoyed the ending of the “How we predict what other people are going to do” article: “It is likely that almost all our speculations will turn out to be wrong…”

Rejection

Suzanne Ardanowski

Feeling Brain

4-28-08

 

            “Why Rejection Hurts” was really interesting.  The idea of social rejection and physical pain sharing neural mechanisms was intriguing, especially if you consider it in an evolutionary context, as the authors explains.  Eisenberger and Lieberman suggest that human infants are dependent on their mother for an extended time, thus experiencing pain if socially separated from her would be an adaptive mechanism to prevent the negative consequences of maternal separation.

The ACC is involved in the emotionally distressing “components” of physical and social pain. I thought the use of the word “component” was interesting; couldn’t they have used the word “feelings”?  It also was amazing to me that one could feel pain, but not experience the sensory “feeling” of pain.  “Patients who have undergone cingulotomies for chronic pain report that they are still able to feel the pain but that it no longer bothers them [6], highlighting the ACC’s role in the distressing, rather than the sensory, component of physical pain”.

The authors also suggest another way to think about self-esteem.  They suggest that self-esteem is linked to one’s level of social connectedness.  It was particularly interesting how even if one was consciously aware that they were not being excluded, although it did appear that they were, the ACC was activated.  This implicit exclusion highlights the idea that we may have lowered self-esteem, even though we consciously think otherwise.  If a situation resembles rejection, no matter what we may tell ourselves, our self-esteem may suffer (Box p.295).

The studies showed that an enhanced sensitivity to physical pain correlates with sensitivity to emotional pain.  The last few sentences of the article mentions anti-depressants link to alleviating psychological and physical pain. I always thought that prescribing antidepressants for physical pain was due to the idea that if people psychologically felt better, than they would feel better physically in a cause and effect type way. However, this article suggests that the neurology is actually connected, thus providing more neurological support for the practice of prescribing such medication for physical pain.

Social Neuroscience

Kevin Goldstein
Week 13: April 30th: Social Neuroscience

This week’s readings on social cognition illuminate many of the topics we have addressed this semester; as we have already concluded, in charting human emotional life we are charting human social life. Central to these readings is a reorientation of cognitive neuroscience toward the interpersonal, a great example being Rizzolatti’s mirror neurons coupled with the chameleon effect. The notion that there exist neurons which are stimulated equally by actions either performed or observed has immense implications for a species. As Ramachandran argues, this mimetic predisposition could have fueled the big bang in human evolution some 40,000 years ago; at the very least, sudden innovations would have become sustainable very quickly.

More generally, mirror neurons decenter the concept of the autonomous, perceiving subject, placing the emphasis instead on self-in-relation-to others (Frith and Frith). In a sense, perceived action (when the agent is conspecific) is initiated action; this necessarily touches on empathic reasoning—putting oneself in another’s shoes—and similarly, to aesthetic perception—catharsis and other emotions, especially when observing a drama. Naturally our sociality cannot be separated from our creativity, our great capacity to learn and innovate. As Blakemore, Winston, and Frith (2004) explain, “there is increasing evidence that a large portion of the human motor system is activated by the mere observation of action” (217). How extraordinary that perceived events in space can initiate a motor response—indeed, that observation is fundamental in this operation!

In the case of the chameleon effect, we largely unintentionally mimic social partners, unconsciously establishing good rapport. The chameleon effect is representative of a range of human signals which both affirm self-other relationships and sustain a mutually perceived reality. I was reminded of Donald Winnicott’s notion of transitional objects in child development. In short, anything from toys to words can constitute objects of mutual contemplation—very often as play objects—between the developing child (starting at around one year of age) and caregiver, aiding in the process of self-construction. As Frith and Frith (2007) explain, “a major function of social cognition in humans is to allow us to create a shared world in which we can interact” (R727). Both unconscious and conscious gestural and linguistic signals do not merely serve to exchange information, but to establish and sustain human relationships through a mutually understood paradigm.

Frith and Frith (2007) continue their review by delving into the question of consciousness and social cognition: “Rather than being private, conscious experiences are represented in a form that can be shared by others, thereby creating the common ground for culture” (R720). Bringing us back to the discourse of emotions, can we say then that what defines the “feeling” as a phenomenological event is precisely its communicability? Even a linguistic construct built around a nebulous “emotion” has real social value. For example, how we choose to construct social displays and thus manage reputation—to the extent that we can—, what signals we express, can engender palpable affective responses in those around us.

Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) conjecture that the common neural alarm system between physical and social pain, which has its origins in the mammalian youth’s (and especially Homo sapiens) especially long ontogenesis, has produced a lifelong need for social connections and distress when those connections are severed. Such conjecture is intriguing, though ultimately it would seem sociality is evolutionarily advantageous not merely in childhood but throughout one’s lifetime. The need for human connection can arguably be traced back to the concept of reciprocal altruism. Nonetheless, this feature of social behavior is not simply a life-long series of minute business transactions, but as we have seen time and again, is entrenched in an affect-rich network of interpersonal associations.

Empathy

Molly Moody

This week’s readings were startling in clarity and comprehensibility. While doing research for my conference paper, I had decided that empathy was a complicated and controversial subject. However, each of this week’s articles brings forth a refreshing point of view by connecting obvious human social behaviors and empathy. Frith’s “Social Cognition” article is a brilliant guide to a foggy subject. One topic the paper mentioned that I found most interesting was the “chameleon effect”:

When we interact with someone we often mirror each other’s movements and mannerisms. We are unaware of this mirroring, but when it occurs it creates the feeling that we have good rapport with each other.

As I read this quote I become hyper-aware of every fashion trend, every dance move, and every piece of slang I have acquitted myself with in this past year alone. Does this camaraderie-producing effect explain why people love the electric slide so much? Did I start using Northern colloquialisms like “mad” and “wicked” to better bond with my Pennsylvania-raised roommate?

More questions are raised by Qui’s article, “Does it Hurt,” when researchers must use their own empathy to determine a newborn’s susceptibility to pain: How do you measure pain and consciousness in a nonlinguistic creature? As we’ve seen from many of our previous readings, neuroscientists use verbal communication to gauge the intensity of emotions in humans. This specific paper questions methods for gauging pain and consciousness in premature, incommunicative babies.

Sharing is Caring

Molly McDonough
4.30.2008

The readings this week were a great way to sum up some of the things we have been discussing in class and a nice review after Aidan and Oliver’s presentation on aesthetics. They were dealing with the aesthetics of art, but art is a division (or diversion) of everyday life, making aesthetics a central theme in our making of daily decisions. This may be in part why I found the first reading Social Cognition in Humans, Frith and Frith (2007), so fascinating. The way we treat people is based on what they look like and how they present themselves. We are able to know if we find someone trustworthy in less than 100 milliseconds. I found this all very interesting and completely applicable to every day life, but my question is whether or not we are aware of looking untrustworthy? If so why not try to help that reaction? I am not talking about attractive versus unattractive, I’m referring to things we wear or facial expressions we choose to have to put up a certain façade.

We are so aware of others and their affect on us, but what about our affect on ourselves? I think the physical reaction to the way we look affects every aspect of our behavior. This doesn’t seem to coincide with Frith and Frith’s view that the awareness of self is described as awareness of self as others see us. How can we be different enough to be unique, and yet the same enough to be accepted?

This brings me to similar questions I had regarding the Frith and Frith (2006) How we predict what other people are going to do. In this paper they again address trust. Trust is intertwined with verbal and non-verbal communication. In the Hirschfield et al. experiment 2.2.4 (pg. 39) a situation of group stereotypes is conflicted with personal dispositions. It’s hard for me to determine whether or not this is a beneficial experiment because if a lot of young children’s mother’s cook, then they might choose the woman. If their father’s cook; they might choose the man, regardless of the individual question.

Our need for interpersonal relations is strange when it really comes down to it. Frith expresses that when we trust someone we are inclined not only to like their friends, but to dislike their enemies. Do we dislike the enemy because we are experiencing the bad feelings through our friends? I think this is another way of living through observing other’s experiences without having to get as emotionally involved. Then it brings the question of whether or not it can even be referred to as an experience of ours without the emotional attachment.
Although we can predict certain things about others, like whether or not our family will disappoint us by being late to some soccer game, the unpredictability of knowing is what leads to the way we mirror others and the need to share. I sometimes wonder why people can become so physically distraught with grief. Maybe it’s because through that depression, lack of nourishment, or sleep at some level we are trying to become a part of another’s experience.

Emotions are the joker...

Katie Moeller

I’ve been finding that over the past few weeks there’s been a slight shift in our readings which I’ve found quite exciting; it seems that at this later stage in the course, having spent significant time building a base knowledge of emotional processes and the brain systems they involve, we are now in a better place to focus on some of the more “real world” applications of the basic concepts we’ve been piecing together. It’s almost as if many of the “but what about…” questions we’ve been asking as we’ve been looking at the bigger picture of emotions are now being given center stage. I find this to be not only satisfying but also important for my own ability to utilize all of what we’ve learned to help explain the everyday goings-on of our emotions, and what the greater system actually looks like “in action” i.e. when confronted with any of the million situations we might encounter as we move through the world.

This week’s topic of social consciousness provided just such an opportunity to think about how our emotions work in specific circumstances, and since interactions (and relationships) with others occupies a fairly large percentage of most of our daily lives, these seven articles had a lot of ground to cover. One of the concepts that many of the readings touched on, and that seems key to our understanding of social interaction is that of mirroring. In “Social Cognition in Humans,” Frith and Frith (2007) identify the exchange of signals as the essential core of human interaction, and they distinguish between the unconscious, automatic versus the conscious, deliberate processing of these signals. Mirroring illustrates the former; when interacting, both individuals will tend to align their movements and gestures with that of the other person without even noticing this is taking place. Interestingly, in mirroring this not noticing aspect is key, as the feeling of good rapport built by this unconscious alignment can be damaged if one or the other person becomes aware of imitation and ends up feeling mocked.

I find it fascinating to think about all the ways in which we are constantly adjusting ourselves to one another in our social interactions, especially in light of other reading and thinking I’ve done about anxiety. Though I don’t think anxiety came up specifically in any of this week’s materials, I found the ideas about unconscious signal exchange between individuals to be consistent with my own experiences of how anxiety can feel in a social situation. For me, anxiety has at times acted as a kind of (annoying) inner voice that constantly narrates the moments of an interaction with another person, in a sense “calling out” all the signals that perhaps should be taking place unconsciously but in the anxious individual are being deliberated and monitored consciously instead. It’s no wonder that anxiety can be viewed as socially maladaptive – as Frith and Frith (2007) point out, when signal exchanges between two people are brought to awareness, there is the potential to end any feelings of rapport that were in the process of being built.

Though not specifically delineated in any of the articles, it seems likely that a hyper-consciousness of the social interaction on the part of one of the participants would in turn have an inhibitory or negative effect on the other person. In “How We Predict What Other People Are Going to Do,” Frith and Frith (2006) describe facial expressions and body postures as “contagious,” (p. 40), and cite evidence that the simple act of watching someone else be touched on the face activates our brain as if we ourselves are being touched. Although I think it might be difficult to tell in the moment that an interaction we are having with someone is being affected by our own or the other person’s anxiety (because everything is happening so quickly and seemingly automatically), the idea of mirroring indicates that when one person is having difficulty relaxing enough for the unconscious alignment and exchange of signals to take place, the interaction itself will not result in the same type of rapport-building as it could.

Somewhat related to the ways in which mirroring enables us to exchange signals and get on the same social “page” as others, the idea that we acquire information and learn about our world through our social interactions with other was raised this week. I find this idea most interesting when applied to children taking emotional cues from their parents or other adult caregivers, as Frith and Frith (2007) point out in “Social Cognition in Humans.” The authors state that “generally speaking, if the mother shows fear, the infants will tend to avoid touching the toy, but if she shows pleasure, they will explore it,” (p. R725).

I found myself discussing just this phenomenon with a fellow preschool teacher recently, as I was pondering over how to help one of the little boys I work with to have an easier time transitioning into school in the morning. He is two and a half, and has been coming to the group since September, but even now, in our eighth month of school, he has mornings where he cries hysterically when his mother drops him off. While this isn’t entirely developmentally inappropriate, I talked a lot to my friend about how anxious his mother seems to be about the whole situation, and how much her mood in the mornings seems to affect him. Some days when she brings him in, she casually chats with other parents and then slowly eases out of the room, but some mornings – and often the times when he has the most trouble – she is very focused on his transition, and does lots of prompting to try and get him involved in school so he won’t be upset. In a basic way, it seems that the more fearful his mother is of the morning transition, the harder time he has, which is entirely consistent with Frith and Frith’s (2007) assessment that people, and especially children, use other people’s emotional reactions as signals or sources of learning about how they themselves should react to a particular stimulus or situation.

While there are dozens of other points of intrigue I could write about from the articles, and real life examples I can think of to go along with them, there were a few questions that came up for me as I moved through the social consciousness materials that I wanted to raise here for possible discussion. Firstly, I am interested but somewhat confused by the definition of self-esteem and the relationship between self-esteem and social rejection posited by Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) in “Why Rejections Hurts: A Common Neural Alarm System for Physical and Social Pain.” While I am clear on the idea the authors present that social pain may overlap with physical pain in order to help us avoid social isolation (particularly early on in life when we are so physically dependent on the care and attention of others for survival), and while I agree that self-esteem is traditionally linked with “positive psychological health,” (p. 295), I am not sure I agree that self-esteem can be entirely defined by one’s perception of oneself as either included or excluded by a social group. Although social rejection clearly does have an impact on our self-concept, doesn’t our own assessment of self, or more specifically of our performance have something to do with it? In the example given, research participants reported lower self-esteem when they told they were being excluded from a game of catch even by a computer program, not just when there were other human participants involved. I guess my question about this example is whether the reports of lower self-esteem might be linked to being denied to opportunity to perform, or achieve, rather than just to the denial of social inclusion.

A second question I had was regarding prejudice and bias, which also came up in many of the articles. The general consensus seems to be that our top-down processes of social cognition do give us the ability to control and modify the more automatic emotional responses we have to “untrustworthy” or feared categories of people, responses which more than one article argues are in fact adaptive (and unavoidable?), even if they are socially undesirable. What I wonder, I guess, is why so many people are still compelled to express these prejudices and biases outright when in general as human beings we have the capacity to understand that it is not particularly socially acceptable or desirable to do so. Although it seems reasonable that our biases would show up in some of our more automatic behaviors and actions, what Frith and Frith (2006) argue is that we do have the capacity, at least in social situations, to control the expression of our responses when we know our original reactions are prejudiced and unfounded. They write, “Increased amygdala activity is a largely automatic response to people of other races. However, this activity too can be modulated by conscious, controlled processes associated with frontal activity,” (p. 43). So why don’t we always do this? Why do people continue to make racist, sexist, etc. remarks and judgments out loud when they have the capacity not to? I am fully aware there may not be an answer to this question, but it’s a particularly important issue to me and I am always interested in understanding more about why we as humans - as societies - are so capable of making radical, positive change in some aspects of our collective existence, and not in others.

A Social Consciousness

Tessa Noonan

The Feeling Brain

4/30/08

Having done quite a bit of research on social consciousness, particularly on mirror neurons in relation to autism, I found the back and forth dialogue between the articles to be very interesting. In particular, the different ways in which the authors conceived of self-consciousness in relation to the social world. Frith and Frith (2007) end their paper with a suggestion that "awareness of the self might be more accurately described as awareness of the self as others see us" (p. R730). This idea clearly incorporates strong influences of social signals, as discussed in the paper, and social feedback; the link between social signals and individual consciousness is invaluable here. 

Ramachandran makes a similar evolutionary argument, putting mirror neurons at the forefront of much cognitive development for humans. However, he does bring up an example which seems to reverse the directionality the the Friths propose: in relation to anosognosia patients, Ramachandran supposes that in order to make a judgement about another's movements you must be able to virtually simulate the corresponding movement within your own body and brain. Because people with anosognosia deny their own paralysis, they also subsequently deny the paralysis of others as well. Although mirror neurons still establish a connection between two individuals by assessing the likeness of their situations, Ramachandran's theory originates with the central subject, as opposed to the social world.

I also found Eisenberger and Lieberman's article on physical and social pain to be fascinating in its results and its implications. Not only do physical and social pain overlap in their brain processes, but they can in fact complement or supplement each other. Eisenberger and Lieberman claim that enhanced sensitivity for one type of pain accompanies a similar enhanced sensitivity for the other type, but also that increased social support decreases both social and physical pain (chronic ailments, during cancer, following heart surgery, and during childbirth). Again, the idea that input from the social world can so drastically change our consciousness, even of something so seemingly basic as the pain levels within our own bodies, is truly amazing. 

These ideas began applying themselves in Adolphs article, as he was discussing a woman who had suffered damage to her amygdala and could not properly identify emotions in faces, particularly fear. The experimenters isolated the eyes as the area with which she had the most difficulty, because she did not spend time looking at them. I first wondered if the damage to her amygdala prohibited her from forging emotional connections with others because she had a lowered susceptibility to emotions herself, and thus could not even identify them on another's face. However, once the experimenters told her to look at the eyes of the face, she could easily identify fear, meaning that she had some internal guide for what fear looked like. This example brings up many perplexing questions, including whether or not the amygdala gives us certain proclivities for finding and addressing emotion within the social world, so we are still able to "feel" it to some extent. Adolphs of course also addressed the question of autism, and whether there are similar issues behind the inability to make eye contact and thus lack of emotional identification. The fact that other areas of the brain can compensate for certain disadvantages is certainly incredible as well, and another example of its ability to evolve and adapt. 

Thoughts about Pessimism & ACC

Suzanne Ardanowski

Feeling Brain Post

4-22-08

 

            I immediately wanted to read the article titled “Is Optimism Always Best?” because it has always bothered me when people criticize others for being “pessimistic.” I’m not saying that it is particularly comfortable to be around pessimistic people, but I have always felt that there must be a reason why one would behave in such a way. The author’s opinion that “optimism and shifts from optimism serve a similar goal: the need for preparedness” offers a logical reason for such behavior.  Preparedness is defined as “a goal state of readiness to respond to uncertain outcomes.”  If one feels pessimistic, then we can deduce that they feel anxious, and feel the need to perhaps minimize to avoid feeling disappointed or caught off guard.  This is not necessarily a “bad” or “negative” thing.  I also thought the idea of pessimism being linked to magical thinking was interesting in a cultural sense.  We do often avoid talking optimistically about something for fear of “jinxing” the outcome. Research also shows that people tend to shift from optimism when the outcome is very personal and/or mostly out of their control. It would be interesting to see if a study like this has been conducted in other countries, because I do think optimism/pessimism is, to some extent, learned. Both are necessary, but balance seems to be the key.

            I really enjoyed reading the “Fool me once, shame on me-fool me twice, blame the ACC” because it really got me thinking about addictive and compulsive behavior.  The study showed that the monkeys with the ACC lesions could change their behavior on a single trial, but could not sustain their new response, despite the fact that the reward was connected to the new response.  The authors note that changing behavior in response to changing rewards could be a separate process from consolidating behavior to a new strategy.  I can definitely see the correlation to addiction, and helps explain why people continue to do things that they know are not good for them or lack rewards. However, with unhealthy addictions, aren’t there immediate rewards, but long-term losses?  I guess this should still motivate people to change their behavior. However, concepts such as impulse control, pleasure seeking, relieving anxiety, and chemical dependency are also important to consider when discussing addictions and compulsive behavior.  This study clearly speaks to how the brain can continue to behave according to old patterns and illustrates how difficult change is. The specific discovery that the ACC is connected to depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, and addiction opens many doors for treatment.  Have they found that the ACC in humans is impaired in some way, thus contributing to these disorders? If so, in what way is it impaired? 

unconscious "liking" versus emotion

Molly Esp

Key words and themes this week were hedonics, pleasure, pain, reward, optimism, pessimissm, conscious, emotion, unconscious emotion, feeling, behavior, and decision making. This week's readings echoed last week's in references to decision making and emotion, although this week's focus became whether or not emotion can be unconscious and the affects of unconscious "emotion" on consciousness.
I tried to justify this argument on my own as I was reading by thinking of repression and denial as examples of unconscious emotion, but these didn't quite fit because it seems that in both these instances, there has to be a sort of acknowledgement of the emotion at some point in order to repress and deny it. My thoughts then shifted to the "Simple Pleasures" article by Kent Berridge, specifically to the pleasure experiment and whether or not this proved that emotion can be unconscious. I was not convinced since the article's focus was on biological stimulation. I suppose I should lay my bias out there and say that I suspect that I have constructed a view of emotion and feeling that relies on the acknowledgement and internalization of a stimulation. After this week's readings, I have discovered that I am skeptical of the use of "emotion" when talking about unconscious processes.
The readings obviously seemed to go against this view, evident through the experiments used and discussed. The article, "What is an Unconscious Emotion? (A Case for Unconscious "Liking")" summarizes some of the confusion surrounding whether or not emotion can be unconscious. On page 25, the conclusion states,

William James' (1894) theory defined subjective feeling as the essence of emotion. Yet he posited that conscious emotional feeling depended on a unconscious prior case, namely, the bodily reaction to the emotional stimulus. That immediate neurobiological behavior was automatic, but shared certain features with the conscious emotion it enabled, such as elicitiing stimulus and a valenced response. This Jamesian reaction seems to encompass several features of what we have called unconscious core processes of emotion.

I would agree with what is being said here, that unconscious processes are integral to the emotional experience. However, I would disagree that the unconscious processes, or "neurobiological behavior" is an unconscious emotion. It is all part of the experience, but the way I understand it, an emotion is a sequence of processes, including conscious recognition. The second paragraph of the conclusion writes,

Although the contemporary psychology of emotion has tended to emphasise the view of emotion as intrisically conscious, we propose that unconscious emotions also exist. To mediate unconscious emotion, there appears to be a subcortical network available to generate core "liking" reactions to sensory pleasures. In normal adults under some conditions, core "liking" reactions may influence a person's consumption behaviour later, without a person being able to report subjective awareness of the affective reaction at the moment it was caused. When the brain generates an affective response of which the mind is unaware, as we have described here, there exists a truly unconscious emotion.

The use of the word "liking" is very striking to me and I would agree with its use because to use emotion would be to eliminate the difference between unconscious and conscious. I think this is what I have a problem with. The inabiliy to "report subjective awaresness of the affective reaction at the moment it was caused" as an indication of unconscious emotion does not seem to be fair as it seems to me that the authors are signaling out one part of the emotional experience and calling it an entire process. To me, it seems that they are talking about one part of emotion, the unconscious, but in order to call something an emotion I think that there must be a form of conscious recognition, however fleeting and seemingly insignificant.
I found the readings on optimissm and pessimism to be interesting as well, particularly the argument that pessimism makes for more adaptable individuals because they anticipate negative circumstance. However, is it possible to decide your demeanor? Isn't this a combination of personality, environment, and experience? The studies were intriguing because it is generally thought best to be optimistic, but the articles proved that pessimism has its place too and may make someone more readily able to deal with changing circumstance.

unconscious pleasure

Endira Ferrara

The most intriguing aspect of this weeks reading’s is the idea of unconscious emotion, and in particular relation to unconscious pleasure or dislike over a period of time. In examining Berridge and Winkileman’s suggestion that we do possess unconscious emotions, or that certain feelings may be activated by unconscious processes, it is interesting to note that this is clearly evident in our predictions about emotional experience over time.

For example, the Gilbert et. all study looked at feelings of distress or contempt and the researchers concluded that “people may sometimes recover more quickly from truly distressing experiences than from slightly distressing ones.” Participants expected that their feelings at the time of a distressful moment would be a clear indicator of the extent to which they would experience similar feelings some time later. Therefore, the longer these feelings would last is dependent upon the intensity of the feeling when it first occurred. However, results showed that in fact five minutes later participants felt less contempt, and for the partner rather than the nonpartner. When it comes to future events, we generally do not succeed in predicting how we feel. Berridge refers to the notion of implicit emotion with the possibility that “unconscious emotion is most generally expressed as an unconsciously caused emotion that is nonetheless consciously felt. (p.186)” In the case of predicted intensity of emotion, it is clear that participants in Gilbert’s study were not conscious of the cause of their feelings even though they were conscious of the feelings themselves.

Loewenstein discusses the knowledge of information about future events as directly related to how they will experience them. The idea is that information about an event itself causes either pleasure or pain before the event has actually happened. These anticipatory feelings that occur in this waiting process prove to have a huge impact on decisions that are made over a period of time. While economic theory states that generally people want to experience pleasant events more immediately while wanting to delay the experience of unpleasant ones, Loewenstein proposes that with the knowledge of information, people should want to prolong the pleasant event so as to make the pleasurable outcome more desirable or because the period of anticipation itself is pleasurable. They might want to experience distress sooner in order to get it over with.
In terms of the article concerning the benefits of optimism, it is also interesting to note our unawareness in the predictions for the emotional experience of future events. We experience more pleasure in anticipating future events when they are farthest in the future, possibly due to the fact that we unconsciously enjoy the period of anticipation and therefore adopt a hopeful outlook. Finally when the event is closer to occurring, we feel more pessimistic because we gain realization that we must prepare for it, and thus we adopt a more realistic outlook.

If it is true that we are not always aware of the fact that we find pleasure in the anticipation of future events nor are we aware of the extent to which we feel intensity of emotion in the future, then this may prove the fact that as Berridge concludes, “we do not have direct conscious access to core psychological processes that occur within pleasure.”

hedonics/reward

Maggie Fenwood

Week 12

This week’s readings were particularly interesting because they address subtle distinctions between unconscious and conscious processes of assessing the amount of pleasure that we experience and how we perceive these experiences concretely. I thought that the Gilbert article addressed this issue and I was also surprised at his findings. It seems that the perception we have of the relationship between intensity of emotion and duration is not in actuality what happens. It is interesting to put this in a neural context because it seems to explain a lot. Because our brains have a mechanism for dealing with ‘intense hedonistic states’ that can relieve some of the intensity we can recover more quickly from them but we are not consciously aware of it. As such, Gilbert’s studies showed that people “mistakenly expect more intense states to last longer than less intense states” (p. 12). That was unexpected for me but it makes sense when considering the idea of holding a grudge for something minor or even harboring resentment for something big, the reaction doesn’t last as long as we expect because our body regulates for it. Similarly, Berridge and Winkielman (2003) emphasize the unconscious process of emotion in their article that explores the way in which ‘liking’ is mediated by specific brain systems. It is true that even something as simple and liking something can sometimes arise without any conscious effort. Berridge and Wikielman reference Zajonc’s work on unconscious emotions in that are activated independently of consciousness.

This also seems to connect to an unconscious element that is addressed in the Sweeny et al. article. The idea that people shift from optimism and adopt a negative expectation in order to prepare themselves for an unfavorable outcome doesn’t seem to be something that we are totally conscious of. Rather, as they describe in the paper, “a shift from optimism best serves the goal of preparedness by directing thoughts and actions toward assessing and responding to changes in the local environment.” (p. 302). Thus, our changing outlook is influenced by our environment and perhaps a superstitious belief that we can actually “jinx” ourselves by having too much of an optimistic outlook. This points to another important aspect of optimism which is the amount of control that we can have of an undesirable outcome. In other words, we are more likely to adopt an optimistic attitude if we feel like we have more control over the outcome. This is similar to the idea of ‘incentive salience’ in Berridge and Robinson’s article which is a motivational rather than an affective component of reward, in the sense that the sensory information about an outcome within the environment can determine our motivations.

The experiments that Berridge talks about concerning ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ in which people are shown happy and angry faces and then offered a beverage to drink. There was a subliminal manifestation of their emotion shown through their desire to drink even though they did not exhibit any conscious emotional reaction when they were shown the pictures themselves. So, Berridge comes the conclusion that this “dissociation of emotional reaction from conscious feelings suggests that unconscious dissociations among underlying pleasure ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ components might also occur without being felt” (p. 2). This seemed to be a big part of this week’s reading, the idea that we can feel without being aware of the emotion that is creating the feelings. So, while we are conscious of our perception of a situation this does not always mean that we are conscious of our emotional reaction to it.

Amy Fleischer
Hedonics/Reward

A theme of a previous class discussion was that we must understand consciousness in order to understand feeling. We ended that class with the idea that gaining greater cognitive control over our emotional processes allows us to make better decisions, and therefore it should be our collective aim. The following week, we discussed the implications of these findings for neuroeconomics– as well as evidence for the value of somatic feedback during decision-making. This week, we have come across another possibility that adds extra dimension to our understanding of how decisions are made: hedonics and reward. These theories dance around the assumption that we are motivated by complex emotions to experience pleasure.

Among other things, this week’s readings presents us with a case for non-conscious emotional experiences that may not be felt but serve to guide our behavior in powerful ways. Coincidentally, the very last article that I read, What is an unconscious emotion? The case for unconscious “liking”), served as a type of umbrella for the others. Below, I will try to draw out the themes of each paper as they relate to the one above.

In Parsing Reward, by Barridge and Robinson, the effects of subliminal messaging is used to illustrate the differences between affective “liking” and motivational “wanting” (507). The authors suggest breaking down what seems to be a single experience (seeking pleasure) in order to examine various consequences and dissociable neural substrates. The paper states, “if implicit reward is separable from its subjective feelings, […] then core reward processes might be more amenable to objective measurement” (508). This language echoes a type of mechanistic metaphor of the brain, wherein a human organ is made of isolated, interchangeable parts like the modern car. Of course, the picture is not entirely bleak because motivation is further complicated by attention, learning, and cognition.

The Pleasures and Pains of Information describes the veritable Information Age in which we live– where scientists assert that abstract information has very concrete values in terms of how it is perceived in the brain. This article also points to a topic that was raised at the end of our last class: the relationship between language and materiality. A related question might be: at what level/s do we extract utility from information? Is it while we predict what could occur as a result of new knowledge or is it only after we have experienced the effect of what we’ve learned? What follows is the ability to form “motivated” beliefs or to process information in a biased way (705). Here, we are faced with many implications of presenting information.

In the Peculiar Longevity piece by Gilbert et al., the amazing thing about people is that we can imagine or “envision” alternatives to the present situation, enabling us to discover consequences of an event without actually having to experience it (3). This interesting article is about the region-b paradox, which concludes that intense states abate more quickly than mild ones (2). Among several things, it points to the fact that outside observers may feel more intensely negative than a victim for reasons that exceed logic; this finding is especially relevant to the discussion of unconscious emotion.

Another major issue raised in this week’s readings is, again, how we categorize emotional events in tandem with sophisticated neuroimaging techniques. Using more and more detailed information, we make maps of the brain in order to know more than we can feel. Various levels of awareness combine to form interactive systems that demonstrate how we process information and make decisions based on that information. We also act
on what we feel, but how much do we really know about our motivation?

In The Optimistic Brain, Schacter and Addis attempt to sketch out specific locations (or routes) for optimism and, by default, provide another possible physical correlate to depression (1346).

Within almost all of the readings, framing emerges as a device that is used to color information. [As an aside, I recommend “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate” (a guide for progressives) by cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff– just to see how he explains why conservatives in America are controlling dialogue when they frame the issue of the estate tax as “the death tax”, for example.] Several other articles also reintroduce valence as means to categorize emotion. The paper that asks, in its title, “Is Optimism Always Best?” draws some seemingly obvious conclusions. That people should hope for the best and prepare for the worst is an old adage; and although it may not provide the same degree of complexity attempted in this theoretical discussion, it is often used to suggest the virtue of being prepared. Again, this article re-frames a familiar topic (optimism) in a way that shakes up the divide between positive and negative expectations. Among the “future directions” listed at the end of this study is whether or not children learn about the utility of shifting from optimism through experience or “increased cognitive abilities”; however, these two are not such separate options because the former can clearly cause the latter (305).

At the very least, common themes of feeling-as-information (186) and the interrelationship of affect and cognition (190) are latent within the longer paper by Berridge and Winkielman concerning unconscious emotion. There are many more relevant connections as this text raises so many questions about emotional processes in the brain. Luckily, the authors recognize that it is not an all or none situation- and that emotions can occur consciously and unconsciously in various parts of the brain- even if normal structures/functioning is disturbed.

Finally, I really liked the Peculiar article because it approaches the complexity of emotions and shows how love and hate can go hand-in hand– even if just for a brief moment. It also provides some interesting questions for how to manage crisis intervention, such as when to intercede.

Hedonics

Oliver Edwards

            I noticed a very strong connection, both between the readings for the last two weeks, and between this subject matter and that of my conference project. In studying the neural substrates of addiction and their correlative explanations in the realm of philosophy and neuroeconomical theory, I have come to some interesting but slightly chilly conclusions. Much of what governs what we ‘want’, and thus how we behave, is severely detached from what gives us pleasure and from how we want to behave. I think Berridge and Robinson, two authors who have provided much of my conference material, do a very nice job of outlining this somewhat counter-intuitive notion. First of all, they have to demonstrate that it is possible to experience an unconscious, or implicit, emotion.

            Beginning, as we did in our own course, with James, Berridge questions the Jamesian assertion that all emotions are consciously felt. He runs us through a series of arguments that support the notion that unconscious emotions do not exist. He then proceeds, however, to demonstrate through an elegantly simple experiment, that our affective states can indeed change our behavior without conscious awareness. I had trouble with the experiment at first, but have decided that I think he makes his point quite strongly. The subliminal exposure to happy faces seems to have undeniably caused a Jamesian, physiological, change in the body that, although not explicitly recognized by the subject, subsequently changed the subject’s behavior. I wonder, was everyone else convinced as strongly as I was by the experiment?

In the end, Berridge gives James the credit he deserves by recognizing that James perhaps just had a different definition of emotion. He was referring more specifically to the ‘feeling’ of emotion, a distinction that we have learned to make over and over throughout our course discussions. More and more, with the advent of much more sophisticated understanding of the neural substrates of ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, we need to examine the many facets of hedonics and ‘parse’ them out as Berridge says. He stresses that there are at least three psychological processes involved in hedonics: learning, subjective pleasure, and the motivation to act. Though we normally conflate the three, Berridge demonstrates well the need to understand them separately. Perhaps understanding the neural substrates of the three, something we cannot quite do in detail yet, will contribute to a more clear-cut distinction in our minds.

 

I found the article on perceived hedonic duration fascinating, but also shocking in a way I don’t quite understand. It demonstrated in a more concrete, everyday manner, the phenomenon that Berridge describes. In much of our daily lives, especially in the social realm, we are governed by our implicit desires and motivations. I think much of the inadequacy some of us have felt in attempting to describe emotions like love speaks to this phenomenon. Why are we more likely to forgive those that we love. While the study seems to demonstrate that they hurt us less because we love them, couldn’t it also be that we ignore the hurt because implicitly we ‘want’ them even when we don’t love them.

We also see a similar phenomenon in the two discussions of optimism. While instinctually we all probably feel that optimism is the healthy, beneficial response to all of life’s variegated situations, the first paper especially demonstrated that is common and also beneficial for a person to become more pessimistic directly before an expected event. This shed a lot of light for me on the question of why these implicit emotional responses seem to be evolutionarily selected. Do we have a prejudice towards conscious emotions simply because we are aware that they give us pleasure. Just as we have seen with LeDoux’s assessment of fear responses, organisms may need to experience ‘wanting’ subconsciously simply because it is more efficient. Similarly, although pessimism is certainly unpleasant, it may cause us to behave advantageously in certain situations. It is sometimes disturbing, especially in the field of addiction research, to think how strongly our drives and pleasures may be below the surface of our conscious awareness. 

Sylviane--Week 11 Blog (Decision Making and Neuroethics)

A theme that I found particularly interesting, and one that resonated in many of this week’s readings on decision making and neuroethics, was the idea of evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. In the Sanfey article on neuroeconomics and cross-currents in research on decision making, he discusses a “growing tradition in neuroscience in which optimal performance is defined for a given behavioral domain, and is then used for constructing theories about underlying neural function.” He goes on to comment that while this technique has its merits, and that complex behavior can be optimal, “simpler evolutionarily conserved mechanisms might prove to be closer to optimal, or at least to have been so in the environment in which they evolved.” This idea intrigued me, for it seems that a great deal of human behavior, and therefore likely the neural foundations of these behaviors, takes the simplest form that has benefited mankind from the earliest generations. A number of the other articles also conveyed this idea; Daw’s article on cortical substrates for exploratory decisions in humans mentioned that the classic “exploration-exploitation” dilemma is “far from representing idle curiosity” and that “such exploration is often critical for organisms to discover how best to harvest resources such as food and water.” Greene’s article on moral judgment states that intuitions such as reciprocity, loyalty, purity, and suffering, are shaped as much by natural selection as they are by cultural forces. Finally, Grimes’s article on human trust discusses the evolutionary advantages of trusting one another: “Out social brain is also adapted to be cooperative. Individuals can benefit by working together. But that requires trust, which is why, according to Zak, we have a biological urge to trust one another.”

I never cease to be amazed by molecular biology, but this is one of the first times I have been so fascinated by evolutionary biology. Morality, specifically trust, is something that I have never truly considered the origin of, seeing as I have encountered both trusting and untrusting people in my life. Grimes’s explanation for the simple evolutionary advantage to this human trait appears so obvious after reading his article, leading me think that many of human behaviors are likely as result of such simple biological adaptations as well. It would be extremely interesting if there were some way to compare the brains, both in structure and in functioning, of the earliest humans with humans today to see how they have evolved over time, or if they even have.

The other article on morality (Zimmer’s “Whose Life Would You Save) was also interesting to read but for different reasons. In his brief recap of the history of the study of morality, he mentions a philosopher named David Hume who argued that people can an act good not because they rationally determine it to be so but because it makes them feel good. Similarly, an act is deemed bad if it fills someone with disgust, and these ideas led to him propose that moral knowledge comes partly from an immediate feelings and diner internal sense.” This reminded me of countless conversations concerning moral issues in which someone said that something was wrong “because it just was.” I am curious about the neural mechanisms that could potentially support Hume’s theory. In the article, Greene uses fMRI to examine brain patterns while patients ponder moral dilemmas. Are there specific regions of the brain that are present in all humans that will allow not only for a general sense of morality but also for a similar sense of what is right and wrong? Further, is empathy the key to this? Later in the article, Greene mentions studies where it has been determined that while criminal psychopaths can acknowledge emotions in others, they often have trouble recognizing these emotions. Finally, Greene argues that “different cultures produce different kinds of moral intuition and different kinds of brain.” This view, which I suppose is a sort of cultural morality, seems to suggest that morality and moral development is guided more by social and cultural factors than biological ones. I am curious about how the brain activation patterns would compare in individuals from a variety of cultures.

To be, or not to be.... a proponent of the multi-system view?

Super corny title, yes.

For anyone that has iTunes, and that's probably everyone, I found a Stanford podcast that relates directly to the topic we're discussing, though I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Get on iTunes, select "iTunes Store" from the toolbar on the left > search "Stanford U" > select "Stanford U"> go to "Health and Medicine" > choose "Mental Health > the podcast is "Perception, Decision and Reward: Toward a Neurobiology of Decision-making" by William T. Newsome. Hope you enjoy!

I'd like to start the body of my post with a quick summary of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, which I feel that the Bechara et al., article did not quite explain. (This is a mix my my own limited knowledge supplemented by Wikipedia.)Essentially, the SMH proposes the existence of a mechanism through which emotional processes may either guide or bias behavior, particularly in the realm of decision-making. This proposal indicates that the view held by the authors is one of a multi-system process in decision-making. Oftentimes, one has to make a decision between conflicting alternatives, at which point cognitive processes may become overloaded and are unable to provide an informed option. It is here that somatic markers come into play; somatic markers are psychologically affective states that have been induced by reinforcing stimuli from the environment.
On a superficial level, I was highly entertained by the way Bechara et al. went about defending their hypothesis, and given what little I do know about the matter, I adamantly support them in their defense. Though I am not certain that I wholeheartedly agree with their hypothesis, they present incredibly valid points. For instance, Bechara et al. studied patients with VMPC damage, whereas Maia et al. studied regular Moreover, Bechara et al. point out that Maia et al.'s study, "undermines traditional methods for identifying implicit knowledge" (159). The reason for this accusation is that Maia et al. simply questioned their participants about what they know, undercutting the idea of implicit knowledge, which may be unconscious. In the end, Maia et al. show that even normal participants without damage to the VMPC, with adequate knowledge, are not guaranteed to make the correct decision.
Moving on, while reading the article by DeMartino et al., I found myself thinking, "Aha! This sounds like the SMH". However, I feel that while DeMartino et al. present two systems through which information is processed in decision-making, that they put forth the idea that the overriding system is one of "simple heuristics," or trial and error, while Bechara et al. (though I may be mistaken), propose that emotions, of affective states, are the deciding factor. To simplify, both believe that decisions are not made in the brain by only one system; when the fast and dirty system falls through, another one comes up to take the slack and makes the final decision. The difference between the two papers is that the authors differ on which of the two systems is the overriding one.

When I read the title for the Sanfey et al. article, I was a bit taken-aback to see the term "Neuroeconomics". However, once I began to read the article, it made perfect sense to me. An idea that caught my attention right off was the idea that behavior can be interpreted as choosing alternatives with the goal of maximizing utility. To me, this seems intuitively true, and as such, I thought it might be interesting to discuss this idea in class and see how other people feel. Later, Sanfey et al. provide two processes for decision-making (as do Bechara et al. and DeMartino et al.): automatic processes and controlled processes. To my understanding, automatic processing, true to its name, is quick, or "fast and dirty" and can be compared to the low road in the brain system, while controlled processing, as it is flexible and can support many goals, resembles the high road. Included in the functions of controlled processing are introspection, reasoning, etc., and so it would be reasonable to fit emotions into this category rather than that of automatic processing. This model for the interaction between the two systems, at least to me, resembles that presented by Bechara et al., though I do not wish to simplify the complexities of each of the different models. So my question is simple: Have I gotten it all wrong?
I would really love to hear others voice in on the similarities and differences of all these models of multi-system processing proposed by the different authors we read.

Automatic and Controlling Systems

Frances Clayton

Radio Lab - http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/28

This is a fascinating Radio Lab that talks about exactly what we have been looking at this week. The episode is called Morality and the link above should take you right to it. Not only do they talk to Dr. Joshua Greene and Franz da Waal (both discussed in the Whose Life Would You Save? article), but the look at morality in a play group of 3-year olds and at some of the roots of our early penitentiary system. Some of the examples we read about (the M.A.S.H. reference for example) are mentioned and taken a step further. It is cool to hear some of the folks we are reading about talk about their own work.


The Green and Haidt article looks at the differences in moral and non-moral decisions and in personal and impersonal experiences. In looking at brain area activation, Greene and Haidt align impersonal moral decisions more closely with other non-moral conditions than with personal moral choices. The main difference pointed to is the activation of social/emotional areas in personal moral decision-making. It seems then that impersonal moral decisions are not processed in the brain much differently than is other decision-making. The areas of the brain show in Table 1 in the Greene and Haidt article that are activated in impersonal moral judgment are also activated when doing other cognitive tasks.
These two different processes of decision-making can be looked at in light of automatic and controlled processing as described in the Neuroeconomics article. (112) Emotions are highly automatic (System 1) and contrast with the deliberative manner of controlled processing (System 2). It could also be said that the automatic process is inline with Kantian philosophy and controlled processing with Mill/utilitarian philosophy. (To be clear, I know that these systems are best seen on a continuum as stated in the Neuroeconomics article.) The field of economics is based on the idea that “behavior can be interpreted as choosing alternative with the goal of maximizing utility.” (108) which can be seen as part of controlled processing. It is the automatic/System 1 kinds of processes that the economic framework does not take into account.
It is the controlled system that people are using in both non-moral and impersonal moral decision-making. It seems that it is the “personal” aspect of the moral questioning that does not allow the control system to override the automatic. We do see a few people allowing the override – those few who are willing to push the man over the footbridge. The Neuroeconomics model clearly says that controlled/System 2/utilitarian processing “monitors the quality of the answer provided by System 1 and sometimes corrects and overrides these judgments.” (111)
The areas of the brain that light up with personal moral decisions and automatic processing, Green suspects are “part of a neural network that produces the emotional instinct behind many of our moral judgments.” (Zimmer, 4) There will be times that System 2 disagrees with the emotional intuitions of System 1 and at point in time the ACC acts as mediator – as the scales deciding if moral intuition or rationality overrides. The Ultimatum Game mentioned in both of articles I have mentioned looks at how this balance works much of the time – with the evolutionary instilled sense of fairness outweighing reason. *
According the “Whose Life Would You Save?”, it could be that evolution is not the only way the instincts of the automatic system are formed. Towards the end of the article Greene uses Haidt to aid his proposition that culture may also have significant influences on a persons sense of morality. “All human societies share certain moral universals, such as fairness and sympathy. But Green argues that different cultures produce different kinds of moral intuition and different kinds of brains.” (Zimmer, 5) This concept is taken even further and the suggestion is made that many of the great conflicts of humans may be rooted in brain circuitry.

* Could one not put up an argument that rationality is at the basis of this dominance of fairness – a way to prevent a person from setting him or herself up to be “taken advantage of”? How does time play into this? What may not be reasonable in the moment could be argued to be reasonable over time. If this is the case however, it seems to be the opposite side of the ‘hyperbolic time discounting’ coin? This question may not make much sense – simply mental ramblings on my part….

Moral Questions

Suzanne Ardanowski

Feeling Brain

4-11-08

 

            Whose life would you save?  Those moral questions were always so impossible to answer.  I can follow the logic of moral judgments occurring on a neuronal level, but I think Zimmer is a little confusing/misleading when he states “if right and wrong are nothing more than the instinctive firing of neurons, why bother being good?” (p.5).  He then goes on to say, “by the time we become adults, we’re wired with emotional responses that guide our judgments for the rest of our lives” (p.5).  This statement sounds like the pathways are a result of learned behavior. Maybe he was referring to the firing as instinctual, but saying “nothing more than” is confusing to me. It is more, a lot more, as he recognizes when he discusses genes, culture, and personal experience. Furthermore, it is possible to change these pathways. The firing may be instinctual, but the pathway isn’t.

            While we may wish for the decision making process to be “understood in terms of unitary evaluative and decision making systems” (Sanfey et al, p.111) as the economic approach suggests, I think this is a tall order for the subjective, multifaceted human experience. I think science, and people in general, want a clear definitive answer, with clearly predictable and measurable results. Sanfey et al also speak to the “assumption of optimality” and desire for formal theory (p109).   They question the possibility of a single system, noting how different systems can compete, causing different disposition toward the same information (p.111).   The descriptions of System 1 (automatic) and System 2 (controlled) reminded me of Ledoux’s low road/high road comparison. It is amazing how much of our functioning is the combination of the unconscious/automatic and the conscious/cognitive.  We have discussed this theme a lot. I think we often tend to minimize the intuitive System 1 in favor of the mighty System 2, because as a culture we devalue things we cannot measure.  But haven’t we all had those times when we say, “I knew it, but I didn’t say it, do it…etc.”  I think you can become more in tune with System 1 if you give it more value. It makes sense to me that “strategic interactions between individuals involves an interplay between emotion and deliberation” (p.113). It makes me think of the cartoon angel/devil on your shoulder.

            Speaking of consciousness, the Bechara et al article states, “pure cognitive processes unassisted by emotional signals do not guarantee normal behavior in the face of adequate knowledge” (p.160).  I think this is strong support for my value of System 1.  

            I remember learning about the Kohlberg moral reasoning scale last semester.  We spoke a lot about how biased this scale was, and how it valued certain kinds of reasoning while not even considering others.  So I am not convinced that it is a good measure of moral judgment.  I thought it was really interesting that despite having preserved IQ and cognitive function, and abstract social knowledge, patients with prefrontal damage had “disastrous real life judgment” (Greene & Haidt p.518).  The whole idea of emotions influencing moral judgment makes sense.  It makes me wonder if there is “no specifically moral part of the brain” (Green & Haidt p.522) than is it possible to really be objective?  When we give advice, are on a jury, work with children and families, can we ever truly be impartial?  I don’t think so, even if we think we are.

             I am also curious if antipsychotic drugs are targeting the areas discussed in the Green & Haidt article and would like to know if drug treatment can improve moral behavior.

            

Sort of answer to my own questions

I looked back at chapt 8 of Ledoux and he does talk about repressed memories and the hippocampus. He mentions that the memory loss could be due to damage to the hippocampus because of the stress, which we discussed in class. But what about dissociative behavior or denial?Is what we term "consciousness" that subjective? One who dissociates from an experience or denies what we would call conscious facts-how can we explain this biologically.

Frances Clayton

I too have lots of questions about repression! It does not seem so shocking that some memory can be buried way down below and emerge later on, but it is shocking when it comes to the kind of traumatic situations some people repress. Defense mechanisms are a powerful thing. (This is all assuming that you are not one of the decenters of belief in repressed memories.) It seems to me clear (and I think it is stated in this weeks readings althought I can’t put my finger on it) that Freudian unconscious is different from the unconscious we speak of here, yet there must be some simple overlap. Is it – oversimplified – that things in Freudian unconscious are less capable of being retrieved whereas unconscious in the readings for this week means two different things: first, it is talking about the state of alertness and secondly that they are not presently in working memory but that does not mean that they are buried in the Freudian sense?
I also understand that behavior can be caused by those things that a person is not conscious of (Tsuchiya and Adolphs, 165). Not only can the things we are not conscious of result in behaviors and “feelings”, we can also attribute feelings to what is currently in consciousness even when it is not the correct root of the feeling. This leaves lots and lots up in the air! Can we ever really know what is causing our feelings?
Another topic that came up a good bit for me is the awareness of or sense of self. I am not sure I totally understand what is meant by a sense of self. The Tsuchiya article cleared it up for a moment, saying that it was not a concept of ones own body but had more to do with awareness of that one is perceiving through ones own eye’s for example. However it then goes on to say to talk about the psychological idea of core self and how it is the basis for the autobiographical self and a sense of continuity. What does this say about people who deal with sensory integration issues? In regards to emotion is it that they loose a sense of self in sensory overload (for example) that they loose a sense of the continutity of emotional self as well?
In this same sense, we saw some brain images of a woman with dissociative identity disorder in one of my classes today. The brain scans were actually different for the different personalities. Is this to say that the same biological person, because they have different autobiographical selves, they also have differing emotional selves?

I found the Emotion and Consciousness article very straight forward in defining the different parts of emotion and consciousness.

I will also have to say that the Southern use of the word “state” ran through my head throughout these readings: “She was really in a state.” “Now don’t get yourself in a state.” ☺

Repression/Consciousness

Suzanne Ardanowski

Feeling Brain

4-8-08

            So now I feel like I need things redefined. Is consciousness just working memory? I guess you could define it this way, but what about things I may not be thinking about, but I can retrieve from long or short term memory-we only call them conscious when they enter working memory? We were reading about repressed traumatic memory in Jan’s pathology class and I was wondering how these memories can be “blocked” from a scientific perspective. I feel that when science talks about “unconscious” we are not talking about the Freudian/psychoanalytic unconscious per se.  The article “Emotions and Consciousness” states, “..stimuli can, under certain experience, fail to lead to conscious experience, even though they can trigger emotional responses…..but can there be a failure to experience the emotional responses themselves? (Later)…Can emotion states that are not experienced at all still motivate behavior?” These questions in the framework of trauma, especially childhood trauma, are important. Trauma can influence behavior, even if not consciously, and even if emotional responses were not experienced. I can see how LeDoux’s fear response, the blinding studies, and the subliminal studies are unconscious processes that may or may not become conscious, but what about conscious turned unconscious? Are the same systems, pathways, brain regions involved? How do our defenses turn conscious into unconscious? What about dissociation, and as I mentioned, repression?  How does this happen? Do they become blocked from working memory? Ochner and Gross added the term “mood” to the mix of our terminology. I thought it was interesting that they defined emotions as distinct from moods because emotions have “identifiable objects or triggers.” More food for thought.