Should Psychology Ignore the Language of the Brain?

ABSTRACT— Claims that neuroscientific data do not contribute to our understanding of psychological functions have been made recently. Here I argue that these criticisms are solely based on an analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, fMRI is only one of the methods in the toolkit of cognitive neuroscience. I provide examples from research on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that have contributed to our understanding of the cognitive architecture of human language functions. In addition, I provide evidence of (possible) contributions from fMRI measurements to our understanding of the functional architecture of language processing. Finally, I argue that a neurobiology of human language that integrates information about the necessary genetic and neural infrastructures will allow us to answer certain questions that are not answerable if all we have is evidence from behavior.     

The refractory headache patient--II. High medication consumption (analgesic rebound) headache

'Analgesic rebound headache' is identified by habituation of an individual to pain reducing medication, the exacerbation of headache pain a few hours after medication consumption and a marked increase in headache frequency and intensity for several weeks after medication is discontinued. We describe three studies undertaken to clarify the existence and characteristics of this proposed headache syndrome. In Study 1 we compared a group of headache sufferers who consume large amounts of analgesic medications to headache sufferers who did not consume excessive analgesics. It was found that the two groups did not differ on age, duration of headache problem or gender. However, the groups did differ on subjective headache pain (with the high medicators experiencing more headache pain than low medicators) and diagnosis (with high medicators being more likely to have a muscle contraction component to their headaches). In an analysis of drug use within the high medication group, it was found that 91% were taking some kind of analgesic and that a majority (84%) were taking more than one type of medication. In Study 2 we found that the group of high medicators were not as successful in reducing headache activity as a result of a self-regulatory behavioral treatment as the matched controls. Furthermore, there was a direct relationship between reduction and treatment success in the high medication consuming population. Lastly, in Study 3 we examined the current psychological functioning of the two groups; no differences were found between the two groups indicating the lack of 'addictive' personality characteristics as an explanation for the high medicating population. These findings all support the existence of a sub-population of headache sufferers who consume excessive amounts of analgesic medication and who are relatively refractory to behavioral treatment.     

Is ten years a life review?

Looking back on ten years of involvement with near-death studies and with the International Association for Near-Death Studies, I review some of the major questions and accomplishments of that decade both in our understanding of the near-death experience and in our service as an organization.International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)     

Pain tolerance selectively increased by a sweet-smelling odor

The mechanism underlying reported analgesic effects of odors in humans is unclear, although odor hedonics has been implicated. We tested whether odors that are sweet smelling through prior association with tasted sweetness might influence pain by activating the same analgesic mechanisms as sweet tastes. Inhalation of a sweet-smelling odor during a cold-pressor test increased tolerance for pain compared with inhalation of pleasant and unpleasant low-sweetness odors and no odor. There were no significant differences in pain ratings among the odor conditions. These results suggest that smelled sweetness can produce a naturally occurring conditioned increase in pain tolerance.     

身体拥有感错觉对疼痛的影响及其作用机制

身体拥有感错觉以多通道的感官整合为基础,包括视觉-触觉、视觉-本体感觉、触觉-本体感觉、视觉-内感受的整合等。来自实验室急性痛以及慢性痛的大量结果表明拥有感错觉可产生镇痛作用。身体部位尺寸大小、肢体透明度等相关影响因素也逐渐得到揭示。拥有感错觉影响疼痛的机制与身体表征的改变有关,该过程可能涉及“身体网络”与“疼痛网络”间的连接,其中后顶叶皮层可能有重要作用。未来研究应更为深入地探索拥有感错觉范式以考察不同因素对疼痛的影响;在现有多感官整合的范式中重视内感受的作用;考察拥有感错觉改变疼痛的认知神经机制;区分急、慢性痛条件下以及不同慢性痛类型中拥有感错觉对疼痛的不同影响。     

There is no such thing as environmental ethics

Engineers and scientists, whose professional responsibilities often influence the natural environment, have sought to develop an environmental ethic that will be in tune with their attitudes toward the non-human environment, and that will assist them in decision making regarding questions of environmental quality. In this paper the classical traditions in normative ethics are explored in an attempt to formulate such an environmental ethic. I conclude, however, that because the discipline of ethics is directed at person-person interactions, ethics as a scholarly discipline does not help us understand how we ought to treat non-human nature. We therefore cannot look to ethics as a source for understanding our attitudes and for providing guidance to our actions with regard to the environment. To do so is to ask too much of ethics. If we are to find an acceptable environmental morality, it must come from a new paradigm. One approach might be to understand our attitudes on the basis of spirituality, modeled after animistic religions.     

An appraisal of the ethical issues involved in high-technology cancer pain relief

...We will turn our attention to the current state of pain relief technology and the ethical questions surrounding the use of advanced technology, otherwise referred to as "high-tech," pain relief. It is obvious that pain may decrease the quality of life for cancer patients. The availability of long-acting narcotics, such as MS Contin or methadone, affords cancer patients long-duration pain relief at minimal cost. The use of adjuvant medications may also be important. Clinical examples of the effective use of adjuvant medications include the addition of a nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory agent to help patients cope with bone pain and the use of a serotonin blocking agent to reduce the transmission of pain impulses in the spinal cord. Only a small percentage of patients are good candidates for high-tech delivery systems for narcotic administration. In our pain management clinic, all patients are initially placed on oral medications. When the side effects of oral medications become excessive, or the patient becomes unable to take oral medications, high-tech modalities are considered for use.     

Temperament and Vulnerability to Psychopathology: Introduction to the Special Section

Several authors have highlighted associations with temperament as promising avenues for understanding vulnerability to psychopathology (e.g., Muris and Ollendick, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8, 271–289, 2005; Nigg, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 47, 395–422, 2006). The successful integration of models of temperament and models of psychopathology will undoubtedly increase our understanding of both. The current special section intends to present important new ideas and evidence in this field and tries to formulate answers to a couple of emerging questions. To set the stage for the papers, we provide a brief state of the art of research on temperament—psychopathology associations. After that, we discuss emerging questions in the field, some of which are addressed in the papers of this special section. To conclude, we point out a couple of future research perspectives.     

影响无痛分娩推广的因素分析及临床对策

分娩是生殖健康的一个重要组成部分,如何减轻分娩疼痛,倡导生殖健康是现代医学领域研究的课题之一。本文通过反映我国无痛分娩率较低的现状,分析了影响无痛分娩推广的因素,指出了无痛分娩推广的重大临床意义及社会效益,并提出有效提高无痛分娩率的临床对策。     

A thematic analysis of attributions to others for the origins and ongoing nature of pain in community pain sufferers

Research suggests that pain sufferers can attribute their pain to others. However, this work is scarce, lacking in detail and does not focus on any particular time during the pain experience. To understand how these attributions operate in pain, this study sought to examine as an exclusive focus the types, context of, and rationale for attributions made to others for the origins and ongoing nature of pain. A community pain sample was voluntarily recruited into the study to gain a comprehensive understanding of these attributions and minimise potential group-specific bias. Sixty-two participants were interviewed using semi-structured questions about cause, responsibility and blame for pain. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis. Attributions to others emerged across interview questions. Acquaintances, professionals and strangers were implicated in pain onset for reasons including negligence, accident and attack. Few additional attributions were made for pain now. Those made were mostly to medical professionals for perceived poor treatment of an original pain condition encompassing issues related to compliance, diagnosis and treatment and searching for alternative pain solutions. This research provides insight into the social context in which pain attributions to others are reported, and provides the basis for research into largely untapped areas including the implications particular attributions have for adjustment to pain and relationships with others.     

Measuring pain: an introspective look at introspection

The measurement of pain depends upon subjective reports, but we know very little about how research subjects or pain patients produce self-reported judgments. Representationalist assumptions dominate the field of pain research and lead to the critical conjecture that the person in pain examines the contents of consciousness before making a report about the sensory or affective magnitude of pain experience as well as about its nature. Most studies to date have investigated what Fechner termed "outer psychophysics": the relationship between characteristics of an external stimulus and the magnitude and nature of pain experience. In contrast, Fechner originally envisioned that "inner psychophysics" should investigate the relationship between physiological states and subjective experience. Despite the lack of established research tradition, inner psychophysics has a potential utility in elucidating underlying mechanisms for the production of phenomenal self-report. We illustrate this, using causal modeling analyses of the accuracy of self-reported pain ratings from our laboratory. We submit that the results are inconsistent with representationalist assumptions. Converging trends from several domains of consciousness studies seem to suggest that we need to abandon the unquestioned doctrine of representationalism and search for a more viable framework for understanding the generation of subjective self-report.     

Pain language of bone marrow transplantation patients.

Previous studies have shown that hypnosis may be effective in reducing intensity of pain among bone marrow transplantation patients whereas cognitive behavioral intervention without imagery was not effective for this group of patients. Since hypnosis alters patients' perception of pain and cognitive behavioral intervention changes patients' beliefs and improves their coping with pain, we hypothesized that sensory pain is more important than affective pain in understanding the pain experience of patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation. To test this hypothesis we administered the McGill Pain Questionnaire longitudinally to 50 consecutive eligible recipients of bone marrow transplantation during hospitalization to assess the different dimensions of pain they experienced. Consistent with our hypothesis, sensory pain fluctuated with treatment stages, and the pattern was consistent with previous findings. Patients reported significantly higher sensory pain than affective pain at all assessment points. In contrast, affective pain remained low and stable throughout the treatment. Our results contribute to the understanding of the nature of pain in bone marrow transplantation and suggest pain management strategies that focus on sensory pain as in hypnosis are more useful for such patients.     

Responsivity to pain in rats changed by the ingestion of flavored water

Sprague-Dawley male rats drank flavored water and subsequent pain responsivity was assessed using a hot plate first after isotonic saline and later after either 2.75 (Experiment 1) or 2.5 (Experiment 2) mg/kg of morphine hydrochloride was injected. A 48-h exposure to any one of several different flavors resulted in a reduction of the analgesic effects of morphine as shown by an attenuation of the increased latency to paw lick caused by the morphine. This effect was independent of the amount consumed. A 26-h exposure to a flavor decreased pain reactivity before and after morphine as shown by an overall increase in latency to paw lick. This effect was not influenced by whether the normally preferred flavor was made aversive by a previous pairing with lithium chloride-induced illness. These findings are consistent with the idea that many flavors, independently of palatability and amount consumed, increase the release and utilization of endogenous opioids.     

From Intentions to Neurons: Social and Neural Consequences of Disbelieving in Free Will

The problem of free will is among the most fascinating and disputed questions throughout the history of philosophy and psychology. Traditionally limited to philosophical and theological debate, in the last decades it has become a matter of scientific investigation. The theoretical and methodological advances in neuroscience allowed very complex psychological functions related to free will (conscious intentions, decision-making, and agency) to be investigated. In parallel, neuroscience is gaining momentum in the media, and various scientific findings are claimed to provide evidence that free will is nothing more than an illusion. Why do neuroscientific findings have such a strong impact on our notion of free will? Does it really matter what neuroscience tells us about free will? Here we critically examine studies in experimental philosophy, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience that attempt to provide an empirical answer to these questions. This overview of the literature demonstrates that inducing disbelief in free will has an impact on folk psychology, social behavior and intentional action.     

The developmental cognitive neuroscience of functional connectivity

Developmental cognitive neuroscience is a rapidly growing field that examines the relationships between biological development and cognitive ability. In the past decade, there has been ongoing refinement of concepts and methodology related to the study of ‘functional connectivity’ among distributed brain regions believed to underlie cognition and behavioral control. Due to the recent availability of relatively easy-to-use tools for functional connectivity analysis, there has been a sharp upsurge of studies that seek to characterize normal and psychopathologically abnormal brain functional integration. However, relatively few studies have applied functional and effective connectivity analysis techniques to developmental cognitive neuroscience. Functional and effective connectivity analysis methods are ideally suited to advance our understanding of the neural substrates of cognitive development, particularly in understanding how and why changes in the functional ‘wiring’ of neural networks promotes optimal cognitive control throughout development. The purpose of this review is to summarize the central concepts, methods, and findings of functional integration neuroimaging research to discuss key questions in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. These ideas will be presented within a context that merges relevant concepts and proposals from different developmental theorists. The review will outline a few general predictions about likely relationships between typical ‘executive’ cognitive maturation and changes in brain network functional integration during adolescence. Although not exhaustive, this conceptual review also will showcase some of recent findings that have emerged to support these predictions.     

Deluding the motor system

How do we know that our own actions belong to us? How are we able to distinguish self-generated sensory events from those that arise externally? In this paper, I will briefly discuss experiments that were designed to investigate these questions. In particular, I will review psychophysical and neuroimaging studies that have investigated how we recognise the consequences of our own actions, and why patients with delusions of control confuse self-produced and externally produced actions and sensations. Studies investigating the failure of this 'self-monitoring' mechanism in patients with delusions of control will be discussed in the context of the hypothesis that overactivity in the parietal cortex and the cerebellum contribute to the misattribution of an action to an external source.     

Conditioned placebo responses

Following earlier animal research, we attempt to condition placebo effects in human subjects. Four groups of 8 voluntary subjects were told that the experimenters would test a powerful new analgesic cream over three sessions by assessing its ability to reduce experimentally induced pain. The analgesic cream was, in fact, a placebo. In the first session all subjects were tested with and without the cream to assess their placebo response. In the second session, to condition two groups (with differing stimulation levels) to experience pain relief in response to the placebo, we repeatedly paired a reduction in nocioceptive stimulation with placebo administration. (Subjects were unaware that stimulation levels were manipulated). To condition the other two groups (with different stimulation levels) to experience an exacerbation of the pain, we paired an increase in nocioceptive stimulation with placebo administration. In the third session, all subjects were again tested for placebo response. Results suggested that placebo responses are conditionable in the laboratory in both a positive and negative direction. The clinical implications of a learning theory of placebo behavior are discussed.     

Classical conditioning and pain: Conditioned analgesia and hyperalgesia

This article reviews situations in which stimuli produce an increase or a decrease in nociceptive responses through basic associative processes and provides an associative account of such changes. Specifically, the literature suggests that cues associated with stress can produce conditioned analgesia or conditioned hyperalgesia, depending on the properties of the conditioned stimulus (e.g., contextual cues and audiovisual cues vs. gustatory and olfactory cues, respectively) and the proprieties of the unconditioned stimulus (e.g., appetitive, aversive, or analgesic, respectively). When such cues are associated with reducers of exogenous pain (e.g., opiates), they typically increase sensitivity to pain. Overall, the evidence concerning conditioned stress-induced analgesia, conditioned hyperalagesia, conditioned tolerance to morphine, and conditioned reduction of morphine analgesia suggests that selective associations between stimuli underlie changes in pain sensitivity.     

Free Will and Moral Responsibility: The Trap, the Appreciation of Agency, and the Bubble

In Part I, I reflect in some detail upon the free will problem and about the way its understanding has radically changed. First I outline the four questions that go into making the free will problem. Second, I consider four paradigmatic shifts that have occurred in our understanding of this problem. Then I go on to reflect upon this complex and multi-level situation. In Part II of this essay, I explore the major alternative positions, and defend my views, in new ways. Instead of trying to spread over many issues, I present one new argument against compatibilism, which I call ??The Trap??. This tries to explicate the main problem that I find with this position. Then I present an exposition of what we nevertheless need to follow, which I call ??the Appreciation of Agency??. This supports a measure of compatibilism in a more modest form, and opposes hard determinism. On this basis, we can confront the philosophical and practical questions, as to what we ought to believe and how we ought to live, with respect to free will and moral responsibility. This leads to what I call ??The Bubble,?? which addresses the way in which we deal with the tension between the absence of libertarian free will and The Trap, and the crucial need for the Appreciation of Agency. I conclude by reflecting upon three attributes of the free will problem that I consider central, but that have been neglected in the debate: complexity, risk and tragedy.     

A biopsychosocial formulation of pain communication

We present a detailed framework for understanding the numerous and complicated interactions among psychological and social determinants of pain through examination of the process of pain communication. The focus is on an improved understanding of immediate dyadic transactions during painful events in the context of broader social phenomena. Fine-grain consideration of social transactions during pain leads to an appreciation of sociobehavioral events affecting both suffering persons as well as caregivers. Our examination considers knowledge from a variety of perspectives, including clinical health psychology, social and developmental processes, evolutionary psychology, communication studies, and behavioral neuroscience.