< 0 Detracted from science

“Research” that detracted from science

Can a study exclude the limbic system and adequately find how we process value?

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Limbic system, Lower brain ,

This 2014 human study was notable for defining away the limbic system and lower brain from consideration in processing positive and negative stimuli for value.

However, the researchers didn’t fully reveal their biases until the last paragraph of the supplementary material, where they were obligated to comment on a previous study that included the limbic system. Good for the reviewer if that was how the researchers became obligated to deal with the previous study.

It isn’t difficult to include the limbic system in studies of value. For example, the Teenagers value rewards more and are more sensitive to punishments than are adults study found:

  • Cerebral areas increased activity when the expected value of the reward increased.
  • Limbic system areas increased activity when the expected value of the reward decreased.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/5000.full “Disentangling neural representations of value and salience in the human brain”

Problematic research that excluded the most influential human epigenetic environments

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Epigenetics ,

This 2014 ivy league human study found that what appeared to be genetic links may have been epigenetic responses to our environment.

Curiously, none of the news articles covering this study highlighted the lack of the most influential environments on epigenetic DNA changes:

  • The mother’s prenatal environment provided for the fetus, and
  • The family environment during infancy and early childhood.

This omission may have been because the study intentionally didn’t support such an interpretation. Here’s a partial explanation from the study’s supplementary material of the “family fixed-effects model” the researchers developed:

“The family fixed-effects model blocks both genetic factors and parental characteristics/behaviors that are common to family members (e.g., siblings), including unmeasured factors; therefore, from the perspective of confounding, the fixed-effect specification is preferred.”

When the preferred model blocked the most important environments in which epigenetic DNA changes occur, what environments remained?

“These results suggest genetic influences on complex traits like obesity can vary over time, presumably because of global environmental changes that modify allelic penetrance.”

Although a finding attributing “global environmental changes” made more funding available to the researchers, it was rightly an outlier from the majority of epigenetic studies.

This finding made me start a negative rating for studies that DETRACT from science!

Why was the reviewer okay with the study’s model omitting the most important factors in human development? The study’s model defined away both the:

  • Out-of-favor genetic factors, and the
  • Predominant but nonpolitically-correct epigenetic factors

in order to manufacture a politically-correct epigenetics meme!

How else to interpret this statement, if not intended to generate a meme?

“Our results underscore the importance of interpreting any genetic studies with a grain of salt and leave open the possibility that new genetic risk factors may be seen in the future due to different genetically driven responses to our ever-changing environment.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/354.full “Cohort of birth modifies the association between FTO genotype and BMI”

Problematic research: If you don’t feel empathy for a patient, is the solution to fake it?

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

If you don’t experience empathy for another person, this 2014 Harvard study showed how to use your cerebrum to manipulate your limbic system into displaying a proxy of empathy.

Is this what we want from our human interactions? To have a way to produce an emotion the same way that an actor would as they read their lines?

How to finesse the effect of “no empathy” was the focus. Because these researchers didn’t define a lack of genuine empathy as a symptom of a fundamental problem, they absolved themselves from investigating any underlying causes.

Nice trick in the academic world.

In the real world, in which we are feeling human beings, what may be a cause of no empathy?

Let’s say that someone is in a position that helps people. They have daily encounters where they may be expected to be empathetic, but they seldom have these feelings for others.

One hypothesis of Dr. Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy is this condition’s origin may be that in the past, a person needed help as a matter of survival, and they weren’t helped. Their unconscious memories of being helpless impel them to act out being helpful in their current life.

This person’s frequent reaction to any hint in the present of the agony of not receiving help back when they desperately needed it is to act out what they needed to have done back then. Helping others also gives them momentary distraction from such painful memories, but any relief is transitory. So they repeat the process.

Let’s say that unconscious needs pressed them into making a career choice of actively helping people. They’re usually too caught up in their own thoughts and feelings and behavior, though, to sense feelings of the people they’re helping.

Something isn’t right, but what’s the problem? They see indicators such as: their actions that should feel fulfilling aren’t fulfilling, they seldom feel empathy, and so on.

Primal Therapy allows patients to therapeutically address origins of such conditions. A symptom such as lack of empathy for others will resolve as historical pains are ameliorated.

Or we can do as this study suggested: produce an inauthentic display – and thereby ignore the lack of empathy as a symptom – and never address causes of no empathy.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4415.full “Episodic simulation and episodic memory can increase intentions to help others”

Problematic research on hardwired differences in human male and female brains

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Brain development, Brain hemispheres, Epigenetics

At the risk of wading into a quagmire, it’s hard to take this 2013 Pennsylvania study’s findings seriously, that there were new and significant hardwired differences in human male and female brains in addition to what we already knew. The authors didn’t explain all the factors involved in why they found what they did.

For example, can we raise kids in our culture along typical gender roles and biases, then at ages 12-14, say that the differences in their brains are solely due to their genders? To do so would be to ignore what’s known about epigenetic and environmental influences in shaping the brain.

Here’s an ancient (2011), 90-minute, poor-quality-of-science panel discussion of the subject that included the author of Is the purpose of research to define opportunities for interventions?

Kevin Mitchell had the last word in his 2017 post Debunking the male-female brain mosaic where he both exposed this and other conceptual fallacies, and explained how framing and data cherry-picking can mislead accurate analysis. Feel free to apply what he said to the above video and to the below study.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/823.full “Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain”

Problematic research: Feigning naivety of the impact of prenatal, infancy and early childhood experiences

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Brain development, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Memory, Stress

What I found curious in this 2012 UK review of 82 studies was the reviewer’s reluctance to highly regard a human’s life before birth, during infancy, and in early childhood.

There was no lack in 2012 of animal studies to draw from to inferentially hypothesize how a human fetal environment causes the fetus to adapt with enduring epigenetic changes.

To take just one study that I won’t curate on this blog because it’s too old:

Weinstock M (2008) The long-term behavioural consequences of prenatal stress. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 32:1073–1086, “Stress, [to the pregnant mother] in rodents as well as nonhuman primates, produces behavioral abnormalities [in the pup], such as

  • an elevated and prolonged stress response,
  • impaired learning and memory,
  • deficits in attention,
  • altered exploratory behavior,
  • altered social and play behavior, and
  • an increased preference for alcohol.”

Yet the reviewer posed the question:

“There is a need to determine just what epigenetic changes do and do not account for. Put succinctly, do they explain individual differences in response to adversity and do they account for variations in health and behavior outcomes?”

I suspect that the cause of this feigned naivety was the political incorrectness of adequately placing importance in the human fetus’ experience of the development environment provided by their mother.

The PC view would have us pretend that there aren’t lasting adverse effects from human prenatal, infancy, and early childhood experiences.

The follow-on pretense to this PC view would be that later-life consequences aren’t effects, but are instead, mysteries due to “individual differences.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/Supplement_2/17149.full “Achievements and challenges in the biology of environmental effects”

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Is this science, or a PC agenda? Problematic research on childhood maltreatment and its effects

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Amygdala, Brain development, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Lower brain, Memory, Stress ,

This 2013 Wisconsin human study’s goal was to assess effects of childhood trauma using both functional MRI scans and self-reported answers to a questionnaire. The families of the study’s subjects (64 18-year-olds) participated with researchers before some of the teenagers were born.

How could the teenagers give answers that described events that may have taken place early in their lives, before their cerebrums were developed, around age 4? Even if the subjects were old enough to remember, would they give accurate answers to statements such as:

“My parents were too drunk or high to take care of the family.

Somebody in my family hit me so hard that it left me with bruises or marks.”

knowing that affirmative answers would prompt a visit to their family from a government employee?

Although some data may have been available, data from the teenagers’ prenatal, birth term, infancy, and early childhood wasn’t part of the study design. Intentional dismissal of early influencing factors ignored applicable research!

No

Was the study’s limited window due to the political incorrectness of placing importance in the development environment provided by the subjects’ mothers? The evidence was there for those willing to see.

One clue of ignored early traumatic events was provided by the lead researcher’s quote in news coverage:

“These kids seem to be afraid everywhere,” he says. “It’s like they’ve lost the ability to put a contextual limit on when they’re going to be afraid and when they’re not.”

This finding of “fear without context” possibly described the later-life effects of traumas that were encountered in utero and during infancy. A pregnant woman’s terror and fear can register on the fetus’ lower brain and the amygdala from the third trimester onward.

Storing a memory’s context is one of the functions that the hippocampus performs. Because the hippocampus develops later than the amygdala, though, it would be unable to provide a context for any earlier feelings and sensations such as fear and terror.

The researchers attempted to place the finding of unfocused fear into later stages of child development without doing the necessary research. They tried to force this finding into the subjects’ later development years by citing rat fear-extinction and other marginally related studies.

But citing these studies didn’t make them applicable to the current study. Cause and effect wasn’t demonstrated by noting various “is associated with” findings.

Was this science? Was it part of furthering an agenda like protecting publicly funded jobs?

Was this study published to make a contribution to science? Were the peer reviewers even interested in advancing science?

And what about the 64 18-year-old subjects? If the lead researcher’s statement was accurate, did these teenagers receive help that addressed what they really needed?

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/47/19119.full “Childhood maltreatment is associated with altered fear circuitry and increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence”

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Problematic research on memory

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

This 2013 Harvard human study investigated brain areas that stabilized and updated memories when reactivated:

“The timing of neural recruitment and the way in which memories were reactivated contributed to differences in whether memory reactivation led to distortions or not.

Stronger reliving improved memory.”

However, like researchers often do, they stripped all emotional memory content out of the study, presumably because messy feelings would confound their conclusions. The study used non-emotional pictures only.

The researchers wanted to apply this study to eyewitness accounts. What are the chances that an eyewitness to a murder or a violent accident or crime would have a non-emotional memory of the event?

The study’s exclusion of emotional memories called into doubt that the finding “stronger reliving improved memory” also applied to reliving emotional memories. The categorical statements the researchers claimed about memory, in particular about the hippocampus – the center of emotional memories – weren’t shown to be applicable to emotional memories.

Also, the researchers didn’t include areas of the limbic system, other than the hippocampus, that would likely participate in the reliving of emotional memories. The Making lasting memories: Remembering the significant summary study cited many studies that provided evidence of other brain areas’ involvement.

The researchers had too narrow a basis for a finding that applied across the spectrum of what can be termed memory.

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/49/19671.full “Neural mechanisms of reactivation-induced updating that enhance and distort memory”

Problematic research on human brain development

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Brain development, Cerebrum, Limbic system , ,

This 2013 UK human study provided details of the growths of infants’ cerebral and limbic system structures. With 55 of the 65 infants in the study born prematurely, the UK researchers found:

“Rapidly developing cortical microstructure is vulnerable to the effects of premature birth, suggesting a mechanism for the adverse effects of preterm delivery on cognitive function.”

The infants’ first set of measurements were taken from 27 to 46 weeks after birth. Follow-up measurements were taken when the infants were two years old.

Only the politically-correct adverse effects on brain development were included in the study, which led to the researchers making only politically-correct findings. Is this what we want from publicly funded scientific research?

  • Although 40 of the 65 infants experienced Caesarian deliveries, no attempt was made by the researchers to study any effects on brain development of their delivery method, an omission presumably due to the political incorrectness of suggesting any adverse effects to non-vaginal deliveries.
  • Similarly disregarded for analysis were the effects on brain development in 14 infants of preeclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy associated with the development of high blood pressure and protein in the urine.
  • Also disregarded for analysis were the effects on brain development in 13 infants of chorioamnionitis, a condition in pregnant women in which the membranes that surround the fetus and the amniotic fluid are infected by bacteria.

Further, was this all we should expect from the peer review process? The data was presumably there for the reviewers to go back to the researchers and suggest analysis of something other than the predetermined agenda.

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/23/9541.full “Development of cortical microstructure in the preterm human brain”

Problematic research with telomere length

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Stress, Telomeres , ,

This 2014 study purportedly linked the effect of shorter telomere length in children to twin causes of a disadvantaged social environment and genetics. Two questionable areas were even more egregious than the study’s lack of a control group.

The first questionable area was that the researchers purposely measured telomere length using methods that couldn’t be directly compared with the telomere length measurements found in almost all other telomere studies. There was no attempt to make findings equivalent, no map with cited studies! They offered up rationale after rationale, but the direct incomparability with other studies remained.

The largest questionable area was the way the researchers produced the study’s concluding sentence:

“We suggest that an individual’s genetic architecture moderates the magnitude and direction of the physiological response to exogenous stressors.”

The researchers’ process deliberately skewed the sample of forty 9-year old boys. Next, they split this forty-member sample in half according to maternal depression! Maternal depression is an experimentally proven contributor to epigenetic changes that are detrimental to developing fetuses, infants, and young children.

The researchers asserted that the results of compounding their questionable choices represented something about stress and genetics in a larger population of children.

Of course, “an individual’s genetic architecture moderates the magnitude and direction of the physiological response to exogenous stressors.” These researchers didn’t do the work to determine whether it was the genetic architecture that the 9-year-olds were either epigenetically changed into or conceived.

I presume that this additional work on genetic architecture wasn’t pursued by the researchers because it may not produce the race-baiting headlines of the press coverage this study achieved. If the additional work pointed to epigenetic causes of adverse effects, the headline may have been non-politically correct like “Maternal depression and poor caregiving damages fetuses, infants, and young children.”

Was this study published to further an agenda? If so, did this study also represent a failure of the peer review process?

Was it predetermined that this study would be published in PNAS regardless of its methods? Were the researchers and reviewers even interested in advancing science?

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/16/5944.full “Social disadvantage, genetic sensitivity, and children’s telomere length”