Cerebrum

A missed opportunity to study odor-evoked emotional memories

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Anterior cingulate cortex, Cerebrum, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Memory

The researchers of Can a study exclude the limbic system and adequately find how we process value? published another study. In this 2015 human study, subjects were monitored with fMRI scans while making choices on the identity and pleasantness of rewarding food odors.

I feel that the researchers missed quite a few good opportunities to advance science. Instead of making peripheral assessments of limbic system areas and citing numerous other studies, they could have included emotional content in their study and drawn their own conclusions.

Consider these opportunities:

  • Wouldn’t the odors used in the study such as chocolate cake and pizza and strawberry and potato chips – and other “comfort” foods – potentially be associated with emotional responses?
  • Don’t most humans have memories that include pleasant food odors?
  • Wouldn’t it have been informative to ask the subjects during fMRI scans to identify what emotions were evoked by the pleasant food odors?
  • Wouldn’t these resultant fMRI scans be expected to potentially show more strongly activated limbic system areas, given the hippocampus’ position as the seat of emotional memories?
  • Wouldn’t the additional emotional responses and memories and subsequent limbic system area activations potentially influence the subjects’ value judgments?

Instead, the researchers peripherally included limbic system areas in the study. The supplementary material included passages such as:

“Identity-specific value signals were found in not only the OFC, [orbitofrontal cortex] but also the ACC [anterior cingulate cortex] and hippocampus.”

Like the previous study, the current study’s focus was to provide evidence that areas of the cerebrum were in control when people made value judgments. The term “value” in the current study meant:

“the pleasantness of the odor.”

Like the previous study, areas of the limbic system weren’t addressed until the tail end of the supplementary material. The researchers cited other studies in an attempt to dismiss the role of the ACC in making value judgments, then said:

“Although we are unable to distinguish between these alternative explanations, our findings suggest that value-related signals in ACC—whether signed or unsigned—are specific to the identity of the expected outcome.”

Since the current study found that “identity” was encoded by cerebral areas, the above sentence was written to nudge the reader into inferring that the cerebrum dominated value judgments of “the pleasantness of the odor.”

The researchers similarly cited other studies in the last paragraph instead of specifically discussing how they studied the participation of the hippocampus part of the limbic system. They then speculated that the hippocampus’ contributions to value judgments in the current study were explained by the referenced studies:

“We speculate that the hippocampus is involved in retaining sensory-based information about specific rewards, which may be linked to value-based representations in OFC for later consolidation.”

Like the previous study, the researchers were begrudgingly diverted away from their focus on cerebral areas when they were forced to acknowledge the limbic system’s contributions to value judgments of “the pleasantness of the odor.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/16/5195.full “Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex”

Problematic research that ignored the hippocampus as the seat of emotional memories

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Cerebrum, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Memory

If this 2015 human study from the San Diego Veterans Administration developed findings of any note, I didn’t see them.

Like other studies, this study ignored the hippocampus’ position as the seat of emotional memories. The experiments were designed to not contain any emotional content.

The researchers mainly wanted to fight a 60-year old battle on whether or not the hippocampus contributed to spatial processing. They ignored all the research on place cells, such as:

to name three of the hundreds of place cell studies available.

By ignoring these and other studies, the researchers declared:

“We have not found evidence that this is the case.”

The lead researcher continued with speculations that couldn’t be verified with the current experiments’ data:

“We think they can do these spatial tasks because these tasks can be managed within short-term memory functions, supported by the frontal lobe of the neocortex.

The spatial tasks that we can do with our neocortex using short-term memory must be performed by the hippocampus in rats.”

Basically, the rest of the scientific world must supply irrefutable evidence (which will be ignored) but the reader can just take the lead researcher’s words as fact for what’s going on inside human and rodent brains, although:

  • No fMRI scans were performed during the experiments,
  • No hard measurements were taken.

The findings were based on observations of six subjects:

  • With hippocampal lesions of unspecified duration,
  • Drawing pictures, and
  • Narrating what they imagined about a playground.

I wonder what the reviewers saw in this study that factually advanced science. Did the statement:

“These results support the traditional view that the human hippocampus is primarily important for memory.”

convey something new? Make a contribution to science?

Studies like this one not only detract from science. They are also a waste of resources that supposedly the Veterans Administration have in short supply.

The design and data of such studies are not able to reach levels where they can provide evidence of causes and effects of anything within their scope. That’s a good indication of some other agenda in play.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/15/4767.full “Memory, scene construction, and the human hippocampus”

The amygdala part of the limbic system doesn’t process beliefs

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Amygdala, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Limbic system

Does your desk light switch on or off when other people in the office switch their desk lights on or off? Something in the wiring would probably be wrong if it did.

And wouldn’t you expect that other desk lights would still operate normally if your desk light’s bulb burned out, although everyone may be plugged into the same electrical circuit?

It surprised the researchers of this 2015 CalTech/MIT study when:

“Two patients with bilateral amygdala lesions performed a belief reasoning test.

Both patients showed typical test performance and cortical activity when compared with nearly 500 healthy controls.”

The study’s overall frame of reference was expressed as:

“Humans use a so-called “theory-of-mind” to reason about the beliefs of others. Neuroimaging studies of belief reasoning suggest it activates a specific cortical network. The amygdala is interconnected with this network and plays a fundamental role in social behavior.”

The experimental test:

“Was designed to optimize functional contrast in those brain regions thought to be involved in attempts, be they successful or unsuccessful, to evaluate the veracity of another person’s belief about the world.”

A “belief reasoning test..to reason about the beliefs of others” is a cerebral exercise. The amygdala, in contrast, is an emotional center of a person’s limbic system.

The logic by which the study may be viewed is:

  1. The “belief reasoning test” had no emotional content to activate the subjects’ amygdalae.
  2. fMRI scans confirmed that limbic system areas in the 2 lesioned subjects weren’t activated during the test.
  3. Apply the logic of Occam’s razor, and we arrive at the findings of “typical test performance and cortical activity.”

Task performance and beliefs about task responses are solely cerebral exercises had a similar methodology and result in that those subjects’ limbic systems were monitored during fMRI scans and subsequent reporting, but the subjects’ limbic system areas weren’t activated during any of the experiments.

The researchers stated the results:

“Suggest a reevaluation of the role of the amygdala and its cortical interactions in human social cognition.”

But per the beginning analogy – if your desk light’s bulb burned out, would you be surprised that it didn’t affect the normal operations of desk lights in other offices, although they all may be plugged into the same circuit?

This study informed us that the amygdala isn’t slaved to the cerebrum. It’s hard to change the current research mindset/social meme of cerebral dominance, though, so maybe this information will be overlooked.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/15/4827.full “Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning”

Can you give emotionally informed yet reasoned responses to moral questions within 3 seconds?

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Limbic system, Memory

Could you give a 3-second informed decision that reflected your true feelings about this statement?

“Inflicting emotional harm is just as bad as inflicting physical harm.”

Could you then express your confidence about your answer on a 1-7 scale within 1 second? How about your 3-second response to this statement:

“Developing a child’s character is central to raising it good.”

The researchers of this 2015 Swedish study asserted that it:

“Demonstrates that moral choices are no different from their preferential and perceptual counterparts; they are highly constrained and coupled to the immediate environment through sensory interaction.”

The subjects’ moral choices about statements such as:

“One should never intentionally harm another person.”

weren’t weighted any differently than their “top of the head” answers to questions such as:

“Is Denmark larger than Sweden?”

There was a time limit of 3 seconds for the subjects to answer 63 “moral” and 35 “factual” questions. The subjects were asked to express their confidence in the answer during an additional 1-second time frame. Answers after these time limits were discarded.

In the supplementary material, the researchers:

“Justified our design. When no time-out condition was included, 33% of participants realized that their eye movements were influencing the timing of the trial.”

So the 3-second time frame was imposed to keep the subjects from gaming the experiment. The experiment’s time limit of 3 seconds didn’t have anything to do with properly modeling moral decision-making.

The time period wasn’t the only questionable area. The researchers focused on eye gaze as the important homogenous factor influencing the subjects as they made their “moral” choices.

However, one person’s eye gaze is not necessarily the same as the next person’s, as demonstrated by studies such as:

An individual’s attention and perception that are incorporated into their eye gaze are behaviors that may have many differing historical components. For example, one subject may have kept their gaze on the:

“Value animals equally.”

answer to the:

“Animal welfare should not be valued equally with human welfare.”

question because their initial reaction involved their cuddly pet. Another subject may have kept their gaze on the same answer because their initial reaction involved a stray dog that attacked them.

Did the study shed light on its initial statement?

“Moral cognition arises from the interplay between emotion and reason.”

I didn’t see that the study’s design allowed its subjects to produce emotionally informed yet reasoned responses to the 98-question battery.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/4170.full “Biasing moral decisions by exploiting the dynamics of eye gaze”

A common dietary supplement that has rapid and lasting antidepressant effects

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Cerebrum, Epigenetics, Glutamate, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Stress , , ,

This 2012 Italian rodent study found that a common dietary supplement had rapid and lasting antidepressant effects:

“Remarkably, L-acetylcarnitine displayed a clear-cut antidepressant effect already after 3 and 7 d[ays] of daily dosing. No tolerance was developed to the action of L-acetylcarnitine. The drug was even more effective after 21 d[ays], and the effect persisted for at least 2 w[ee]k[s] after drug withdrawal.”

The researchers studied stressed mice and rats to determine that:

  1. An effect of the stress was to epigenetically change the hippocampus to produce less of an important molecule – type 2 metabotropic glutamate (mGlu2).
  2. A reduction of the mGlu2 molecule decreased the hippocampus’ regulation of the glutamate neurotransmitter.
  3. Under-regulation of glutamate, in turn, caused symptoms of depression.

L-acetylcarnitine reversed the immediate causes of stress-induced symptoms by acetylating histone proteins. These control the transcription of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and mGlu2 receptors in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

LAC putative action

A commentary on this research, Next generation antidepressants, had the above graphic that showed possible mechanisms for the effects of L-acetylcarnitine. Epigenetic histone modifications seem to be more easily reversible than epigenetic DNA methylation.

“Currently, depression is diagnosed only by its symptoms,” Nasca says. “But these results put us on track to discover molecular signatures in humans that may have the potential to serve as markers for certain types of depression.”

It’s tempting to extrapolate this study to humans and test whether depression symptoms could be effectively treated with some multiple of a normal acetyl-L-carnitine dietary supplement dose of 500 mg at $.25 a day. This dietary supplement is better for depression symptoms than placebo analyzed randomized control trials that tested and demonstrated its efficacy.

To cure stress-induced illnesses in humans, though, ultimate causes of stress should be removed or otherwise addressed.

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/12/4804.full “L-acetylcarnitine causes rapid antidepressant effects through the epigenetic induction of mGlu2 receptors”

A study of visual perception that didn’t inform us about human conscious awareness

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Cerebrum, Limbic system, Lower brain ,

This 2015 Vanderbilt study with a Princeton reviewer stated that they found “compelling evidence” related to:

“How the brain begets conscious awareness.

Identifying the fingerprints of consciousness in humans would be a significant advancement for basic and medical research, let alone its philosophical implications on the underpinnings of the human experience.”

Let’s begin with the “conscious” part of the study’s conscious awareness goal. A summary article of 105 studies entitled Evolution of consciousness: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and emergence from general anesthesia that I curated found:

“The core of human consciousness appears to be associated primarily with phylogenetically ancient structures mediating arousal and activated by primitive emotions.”

The current study ignored the evolutionary bases of human consciousness and didn’t include any limbic system and lower brain areas. The researchers’ biases were further indicated by the statement from their press release:

“Focal theories contend there are specific areas of the brain that are critical for generating consciousness, while global theories argue consciousness arises from large-scale brain changes in activity.”

The researchers were in the “global” camp of this unnecessary divide.

Let’s next examine the “awareness” part of the study’s conscious awareness goal. The subjects were 24 students in a visual perception experiment that used fMRI. The visual events that were perceived went into the “aware” bucket and the others into the “unaware” bucket.

The study’s subject selection criteria and experiment seemed a little odd for developing “compelling evidence” related to “how the brain begets conscious awareness.” By equating visual perception with awareness, the researchers excluded the contributions of other senses and methods of awareness.

Would it follow from the study’s methodology that blind people can’t be consciously aware?

The supplementary material showed that 7 of the 24 subjects’ results for one experimental condition, and 12 – half – of the subjects’ results for another condition were excluded because they apparently had problems reporting confidence in their visual perception. I wonder why the reviewer agreed that it was appropriate to discard half of the subjects’ experimental results?

Whatever else it was that the study found, the researchers didn’t reach their goal of developing “compelling evidence” related to “how the brain begets conscious awareness.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3799.full “Breakdown of the brain’s functional network modularity with awareness”

A study on online cooperation with limited findings

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Cerebrum, Limbic system, Lower brain ,

This 2015 Cambridge/Oxford study found:

“Global reputational knowledge is crucial to sustaining a high level of cooperation and welfare.”

Basically, the subjects learned how to “game” a cooperative online game, and the researchers drew up their findings.

To me, the study demonstrated part of the findings of the Reciprocity behaviors differ as to whether we seek cerebral vs. limbic system rewards study, the part where the cerebrum was active in:

“Reputation-based reciprocity, in which they help others with good reputations to gain good reputations themselves.”

The current study ignored how people’s limbic system and lower brain areas may have motivated them to cooperate.

I didn’t see how excluding people’s emotional involvement when cooperating with others improved the potential reach of this study’s findings. Doesn’t a person’s willingness to cooperate in person and in online activities usually also include their emotional motivations?

The findings can’t be applied generally to cooperative motivations and behaviors that the researchers intentionally left out of the study. The study’s findings applied just to the artificial environment of their experiment, and didn’t provide evidence for how:

“Cooperative behavior is fundamental for a society to thrive.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3647.full “The effects of reputational and social knowledge on cooperation”

This post has somehow become a target for spammers, and I’ve disabled comments. Readers can comment on other posts and indicate that they want their comment to apply here, and I’ll re-enable comments.

Epigenetic DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene affected the perception of anger and fear

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Amygdala, Anterior cingulate cortex, Brain development, Brain hemispheres, Cerebrum, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Thalamus ,

This 2015 Virginia human study:

“Reveals how epigenetic variability in the endogenous oxytocin system impacts brain systems supporting social cognition and is an important step to better characterize relationships between genes, brain, and behavior.”

The researchers did a lot of things right:

  • They studied a priori selected brain areas, followed by whole brain analyses;
  • Their subjects were carefully selected

    “Because methylation levels have been shown to differ as a function of race, we restricted our sample to Caucasians of European descent”

    but they didn’t restrict subjects to the same gender;

  • They acknowledged as a limitation:

    “A lack of behavioral evidence to reveal how these epigenetic and neural markers impact the overt social phenotype.”

One thing on which I disagree with the researchers is their assessment of what needs to be done next. Their news release stated:

“When imagining the future possibilities and implications this DNA methylation and oxytocin receptor research may have, the investigators think a blood test could be developed in order to predict how an individual may behave in social situations.”

Nice idea, but the next step should be to complete the research. The next step is to develop evidence for how the oxytocin receptor gene became methylated.

The subjects had a wide range of DNA methylation at the studied gene site – from 33% to 72% methylated!

Why?

At the same gene site:

“There was a significant effect of sex such that females have a higher level of methylation than males.”

Why?

Given these significant effects, why was there no research into likely causes?

Aren’t early periods in people’s lives the most likely times when the “Epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor gene” that “influences the perception of anger and fear in the human brain” takes place?

Wouldn’t findings from research on the subjects’ histories potentially help other people?

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3308.full “Epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor gene influences the perception of anger and fear in the human brain”

Differing characteristics of languages shape people’s brains differently

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Brain development, Brain hemispheres, Cerebrum

This 2015 Chinese study found that the differing characteristics of the Chinese and English languages shape people’s brains differently:

“Our results revealed that, although speech processing is largely carried out in the common left hemisphere classical language areas (Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas) and anterior temporal cortex, speech comprehension across different language groups depends on how these brain regions interact with each other.”

For an informed discussion of the study and related issues, visit http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17949 and comments.

We can infer from the Would you deprive your infant in order to be in a researcher’s control group? study that this shaping process begins during womb life.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/10/2972.full “Cross-language differences in the brain network subserving intelligible speech”

Would you deprive your infant in order to be in a researcher’s control group?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Brain development, Cerebrum, Epigenetics , , , ,

This 2015 Harvard study found that exposing extremely premature babies to sounds of their mothers enlarged their auditory cortex.

The lead researcher stated:

“Our findings do not prove that the brains of these babies are necessarily better, and we cannot conclude that they will end up with no developmental disabilities.

We don’t know the advantages of having a bigger auditory cortex.”

It’s too bad that studies like this one have to take deprived infants and further deprive them for use as a control group. I suppose it’s possible that the control group members’ development could just be shifted, similar to the Maternal depression and antidepressants epigenetically change infant language development study.

However, given the findings of the Our early experiences are maintained and unconsciously influence us for years, if not indefinitely study, it’s also possible that the last trimester of womb life is a critical period for a child’s auditory cortex. If timely development doesn’t take place within the environment provided by the mother, there may not be another period to fully catch up on growth and learning, even given the effects of neural plasticity.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/10/3152.full “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation”

Why do we cut short our decision-making process?

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Dopamine, Limbic system, Memory, Neurochemicals, Serotonin , , ,

This 2014 Zurich study found that people adapt their goal-directed decision-making processes in certain ways.

First, the researchers found that the subjects usually acted as though the computational cost of evaluating all outcomes became too high once the process expanded to three or more levels. Their approach to a goal involved developing subgoals. For example, for a three-level goal:

“Level 3 was most frequently decomposed into a tree of depth 2 followed by a depth-1 tree.”

A level 3 tree had 24 potential outcomes (24 outcomes = 3*2x2x2) whereas a level 2 tree followed by a level 1 tree had 10 potential outcomes (10 outcomes = 2*2×2 + 1*2).

Second, the subjects memorized and reused subgoals after their initial formation. The researchers found that this practice didn’t produce results significantly different than the optimal solutions, but that could have been due to the study’s particular design. The design also ensured that the subjects’ use of subgoals wasn’t influenced by rewards.

Further:

“It is known that nonhuman primate choices, for instance, depend substantially on their own past choices, above and beyond the rewards associated with the decisions. Similar arguments have been made for human choices in a variety of tasks and settings and have been argued to be under dopaminergic and serotonergic control.”

Third, ALL 37 subjects were unwilling to evaluate decisions that had initial large losses, even if they could see that the path to reach the optimal solution went through this loss outcome! The researchers termed this behavior “pruning” and stated:

“Pruning is a Pavlovian and reflexive response to aversive outcomes.”

The lead author relied on a previous study he coauthored to elaborate on the third finding. One statement in the previous study was:

“This theory predicts excessive pruning to occur in subjects at risk for depression, and reduced pruning to occur during a depressive episode.”

The current study’s subjects were screened out for depressive conditions, though. They were somewhat conditioned by the study design, but not to the extent where their behavior could be characterized as Pavlovian responses.

Fourth, the subjects’ use of larger subgoals wasn’t correlated to their verbal IQ.

So, what can we make of this research?

  1. Are shortcuts to our decision processes strictly a cerebral exercise per the first and second findings?
  2. Do we recycle our decision shortcuts like our primate relatives, uninfluenced by current rewards?
  3. Or is it rewarding to just not fully evaluate all of our alternatives?
  4. Do all of us always back away from decisions involving an initial painful loss, even when we may see the possibility of gaining a better outcome by persevering through the loss?
  5. Is it true that we excessively cut decision processes too short – such that many of our decisions are suboptimal – when we’re on our way to becoming depressed?
  6. Are we overwhelmed when depressed such that we don’t summon up the effort to cut short or otherwise evaluate decisional input?

Let me know your point of view.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/10/3098.full “Interplay of approximate planning strategies”

Research that identified the source of generating gamma brain waves

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Acetylcholine, Cerebrum, Neurochemicals , , ,

This 2015 Harvard rodent study found that specific brain neurons trigger cortical band oscillations in the gamma wave length. The cell type:

“Has increased activity during waking and is involved in activating the cerebral cortex and generating gamma oscillations, enabling active cortical processing.

Cortical gamma band oscillations are correlated with conscious awareness.”

1. News coverage of the study misreported the research’s consciousness findings by regurgitating the Harvard press release word-for-word. Several speculations thrown in by the PR staff weren’t supported by the findings regarding:

  • “Awareness of consciousness;
  • Aware of the lower levels of consciousness and their contents.”

2. The researchers used optogenetic stimulation of neurons, similar to the Activation of brainstem neurons induces REM sleep study. The current study took the extra step of lesioning cholinergic neurons to ensure the activity studied was due to the target neurons.

3. The neurons generated gamma waves by simultaneously turning off all receptor neurons, then simultaneously switching them all back on. The researchers said:

“Our results are surprising and novel in indicating that this presumptively inhibitory”

neuron type acted this way.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3535.full “Cortically projecting basal forebrain parvalbumin neurons regulate cortical gamma band oscillations”

How do we assess “importance” in our lives? An example from scientists’ research choices

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Primal Therapy , ,

This 2015 Virginia study found that scientists preferred research projects that had the potential to make:

“Deeper vs. broader contributions.

The scientists surveyed considered a hypothetical broader study, compared with an otherwise-comparable deeper study, to be riskier, a less-significant opportunity, and of lower potential importance.”

What were underlying motivations for subject scientists to become the Big Frogs in tiny puddles?

For example, if scientists recognized that there was an opportunity to positively influence a great number of human lives with a “broader” study, such as the hunger research proposed in Do the impacts of early experiences of hunger affect our behavior, thoughts, and feelings today? why would they prefer a “deeper” study such as starving fruit flies?

These researchers said that “scientists’ personal dispositions” accounted for this finding. I agree, but not for any of the specific reasons they stated.

Subjects’ “lower potential importance” judgments were key, and bear closer examination. The study’s supplementary material showed this consideration was made on a sliding scale in response to a question:

“Would you describe Project A (B) as potentially very important?”

The “lower potential importance” finding was an accumulation of each scientist’s personal judgment of a project described as:

“A broad project that spans several topical domains, including at least one that coincides with your area(s) of expertise and interest.

compared with:

“A focused and specialized project that fits your particular interests and leverages your deep expertise in a specific area.”

Weren’t personal judgments of the hypothetical project’s “potentially very important” aspect how each scientist predicted the project would make them feel important?

Given vague project descriptions in above quotations, I assert that their judgments’ contexts were “important to me” rather than “important to science” or “important to society” or important to some other context.

A relevant hypothesis of Dr. Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy that applies to the “lower potential importance” finding is: the need to feel important is a defense against feeling unimportant due to early experiences of neglect.

Using principles referenced in the hunger post, the need to feel important is:

  1. A derivative need;
  2. A substitute for an unfulfilled need; and
  3. Caused by the impact of an early unmet need.

A corollary is that if an infant didn’t have early experiences of neglect, and their early needs were met, they likely wouldn’t develop derivative needs such as the need to feel important as they progressed through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Are people motivated to act like the scientists who were subjects of this study? Do we make career and personal choices based on whether or not our work and other people make us feel important?

See my Welcome page and Scientific evidence page for further elaborations of this topic.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3653.full “Different personal propensities among scientists relate to deeper vs. broader knowledge contributions”

New role discovered for a speech area of the human prefrontal cortex

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Brain hemispheres, Cerebrum

This 2015 human study found that an area in the left hemisphere of the prefrontal cortex involved with speech has characteristics not previously known:

“Broca’s area coordinates the transformation of information across large-scale cortical networks involved in spoken word production.”

The study found that this area:

“Disengages when we actually start to utter word sequences.”

It was previously thought that the Broca’s area was active during speech.

I looked throughout the study, footnotes and references, and couldn’t find the list of words that were used. The study would have shown more promise if the researchers had made an effort to include words with emotional content. For example, it’s possible that the Broca’s area may have different activation patterns when speaking with emotional content, or that it may account for part of the slowdown that normally occurs when we speak with feeling.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/9/2871.full “Redefining the role of Broca’s area in speech”

An agenda-driven study on beliefs, smoking and addiction that found nothing of substance

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Primal Therapy ,

The researchers of this 2014 Virginia Tech study said that they found something profound about beliefs and the brain and addiction and smoking.

I’ll assert the short versions of some relevant understandings before assessing the study.

1) A principle of Dr. Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy is: we all have needs that start at the beginning of our lives. Our needs change as we grow.

If our basic needs aren’t satisfied anywhere along the way, we feel pain.

When the unmet needs are early in our lives and the painful conditions persist, enduring physiological changes may occur.

This basic truth is supported by the findings of much of the recent research I’ve curated on this blog, the references in those studies, and older research elsewhere.

2) Another fundamental of Primal Therapy is that the physiological impacts of these unmet needs drive our behavior, thoughts, and feelings.

The painful impacts of our unfulfilled needs impel us to be constantly vigilant for some way to fulfill them.

This is a richly insightful and truly empathetic method of interpreting people’s behaviors and expressions of thoughts and feelings.

3) A hypothesis of Primal Therapy is: a major function that our cerebrums have evolutionarily adapted is to use ideas and beliefs to repress pain and make us more comfortable.

I value this inference as an empathetic method of interpreting people’s expressions of thoughts and feelings. Click the Beliefs category to view samples of how beliefs, expectations, and predictions are studied using cerebral measurements.

So – what did this study contribute to science about beliefs and the underlying causes of addiction and smoking as found by measuring the subjects’ brains?

Nothing new, really. The study was all about the effects, the symptoms. There was nothing about:

  • Impelling physical conditions and causes,
  • What primarily drives people’s beliefs and addiction behaviors, and
  • What may permanently help someone with their need for the next cigarette.

I wonder what the study’s reviewer saw that factually advanced science.

Everybody already knew that beliefs can temporarily substitute for addicting substances, as well as temporarily change behaviors. It’s a foundation of AA and detox centers.

It’s also a foundation of AA and detox centers that these beliefs have to be constantly reinforced. That fact in and of itself demonstrates that underlying causes aren’t addressed in the AA and detox center approaches. The symptoms always bubble up, and require thought remedies and other interventions in order to stay suppressed.

The research provided details about an approach that wasn’t capable of anything more than temporarily suppressing symptoms. What does the following quote from the Significance statement sound like to you?

“Our findings suggest that subjective beliefs can override the physical presence of a powerful drug like nicotine by modulating learning signals processed in the brain’s reward system.”

Any human therapeutic approach won’t supply the addicting substance. That leaves just beliefs and their required constant reinforcement.

The unsupported overconfidence of the researchers that:

“The implications of these findings may be far ranging”

led to one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve seen in a while:

“Just as drugs micromanage the belief state,” Montague said, “maybe we can micromanage beliefs to better effect behavior change in addiction.”

This hubris just added to the stench of an agenda.

Since smoking isn’t politically correct, I’d guess that it wasn’t that difficult for this study to be funded and promoted. It apparently wasn’t an obstacle that the research DETRACTED from science and didn’t really help people.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/8/2539.full “Belief about nicotine selectively modulates value and reward prediction error signals in smokers”