May | 2019 | Surface Your Real Self

This 2019 UK review discussed delusions, aka false beliefs about reality:

“Delusions are characterized by their behavioral manifestations and defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. In this overview paper, we ask whether delusions can be adaptive notwithstanding their negative features.

We consider different types of delusions and different ways in which they can be considered as adaptive: psychologically (e.g., by increasing wellbeing, purpose in life, intrapsychic coherence, or good functioning) and biologically (e.g., by enhancing genetic fitness).”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1502 “Are clinical delusions adaptive?”

A. Although section 4’s heading was Biological Adaptiveness of Delusions, the reviewers never got around to discussing evolved roles of brain areas and beliefs (delusions). One mention of evolutionary biology was:

“Delusions are biologically adaptive if, as a response to a crisis of some sort (anomalous perception or overwhelming distress), they enhance a person’s chances of reproductive success and survival by conferring systematic biological benefits.”

B. Although section 5’s heading was Psychological Adaptiveness of Delusions, the reviewers didn’t connect feelings and survival sensations as origins of beliefs (delusions) and behaviors. They had a few examples of feelings:

“Delusions of reference and delusions of grandeur can make the person feel important and worthy of admiration.”

and occasionally sniffed a clue:

“Some delusions (especially so‐called motivated delusions) play a defensive function, representing the world as the person would like it to be.”

where “motivated delusions” were later deemed in the Conclusion section to be a:

“Response to negative emotions that could otherwise become overwhelming.”

C. Feelings weren’t extensively discussed until section 6 Delusions in OCD and MDD, which gave readers an impression that feelings were best associated with those diseases.

D. In the Introduction, sections 4, 5, and 7 How Do We Establish and Measure Adaptiveness, the reviewers discussed feeling meaning in life, but without understanding:

Feelings = meaning in life, as I quoted Dr. Arthur Janov in The pain societies instill into children:

“Without feeling, life becomes empty and sterile. It, above all, loses its meaning.“
Beliefs (delusions) defend against feelings.
Consequentially, the stronger and / or more numerous beliefs (delusions) a person has, the less they feel meaning in life.

E. Where, when, why, and how do beliefs (delusions) arise? Where, when, why, and how does a person sense and feel, and what are the connections with beliefs (delusions)?

F. The word “sense” was used 29 times in contexts such as “make sense” and “sense of [anxiety, coherence, control, meaning, purpose, rational agency, reality, self, uncertainty]” but no framework connected biological sensing to delusions. Papers from other fields have detailed cause-and-effect explanations and predecessor-successor diagrams for every step of a process. Not this one.

Regarding any therapeutic value of someone else’s opinion of a patient’s delusions:

I’ll reuse this quotation from the Scientific evidence page of Dr. Janov’s 2011 book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” p.166:

“Primal Therapy differs from other forms of treatment in that the patient is himself a therapist of sorts. Equipped with the insights of his history, he learns how to access himself and how to feel.

The therapist does not heal him; the therapist is only the catalyst allowing the healing forces to take place. The patient has the power to heal himself.“

Another way Dr. Janov wrote this was on p.58 of his 2016 book Beyond Belief as quoted in Beyond Belief: The impact of merciless beatings on beliefs:

“NO ONE HAS THE ANSWER TO LIFE’S QUESTIONS BUT YOU. How you should lead your life depends on you, not outside counsel.

We do not direct patients, nor dispense wisdom upon them. We have only to put them in touch with themselves; the rest is up to them.

Everything the patient has to learn already resides inside. The patient can make herself conscious. No one else can.”

This 2019 Washington State University rodent study from Dr. Michael Skinner’s lab found:

“A cascade of epigenetic alterations initiated in PGCs [primordial germ cells of F₃ males] appears to be required to alter epigenetic programming during spermatogenesis to modify the sperm epigenome involved in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance phenomenon.

Following fertilization there is a DNA methylation erasure to generate stem cells in the early embryo, which then remethylate in a cell type-specific manner. DNA methylation erasure is thought to, in part, reset deleterious epigenetics in the germline. However, imprinted gene DNA methylation sites and induced transgenerational epimutations appear to be protected from this DNA methylation erasure.

A germline with an altered epigenome has the capacity to alter the early embryo’s stem cell’s epigenome and transcriptome that can subsequently impact epigenomes and transcriptomes of all derived somatic cells. Therefore, an altered sperm epigenome has the capacity to transmit phenotypes transgenerationally. Experiments have demonstrated that epigenetic inheritance can also be transmitted through the female germline.

Previously, agricultural fungicide vinclozolin was found to promote transgenerational inheritance of sperm differential DNA methylation regions (DMRs) termed epimutations that help mediate this epigenetic inheritance. The current study was designed to investigate developmental origins of transgenerational DMRs during gametogenesis.

The current study with vinclozolin-induced transgenerational inheritance demonstrates that sperm DMRs also originate during both spermatogenesis and earlier stages of germline development, but at distinct developmental stages. Fetal exposure initiates a developmental cascade (i.e., distinct developmental origins) of aberrant epigenetic programming, and does not simply induce a specific number of DMRs that are maintained throughout development.”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15592294.2019.1614417?needAccess=true “Transgenerational sperm DNA methylation epimutation developmental origins following ancestral vinclozolin exposure”

The study’s main hypotheses were:

“Following fertilization, the hypothesis is that transgenerational epimutations modify early embryonic transcriptomes and epigenomes to re-establish the cascade for the next generation.

As the individual develops, all somatic cells have altered epigenomes and transcriptomes to promote disease susceptibility later in life.”

Researchers: adopt these hypotheses, and apply them to human studies.

1. Don’t get off track by requiring that the same phenotype must be observed in each generation for there to be transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, because:

“Fetal exposure..does not simply induce a specific number of DMRs that are maintained throughout development.”

Animal transgenerational studies have shown that epigenetic inheritance mechanisms may both express different phenotypes for each generation, and entirely skip a phenotype in one or more generations!

2. Don’t limit your study designs to F₁ children as did:

3. Don’t stop at F₂ grandchildren as did:

4. Continue studies on to F₃ great-grandchildren who had no direct exposure to altering stimulus. Keep in the forefront of your research proposals that there are probably more than 10,000,000 F₃ descendants of DES-exposed women just in the US!