Reducing mind to molecular pathways: explicating the reductionism implicit in current cellular and molecular neuroscience

As opposed to the dismissive attitude toward reductionism that is popular in current philosophy of mind, a “ruthless reductionism” is alive and thriving in “molecular and cellular cognition”—a field of research within cellular and molecular neuroscience, the current mainstream of the discipline. Basic experimental practices and emerging results from this field imply that two common assertions by philosophers and cognitive scientists are false: (1) that we do not know much about how the brain works, and (2) that lower-level neuroscience cannot explain cognition and complex behavior directly. These experimental practices involve intervening directly with molecular components of sub-cellular and gene expression pathways in neurons and then measuring specific behaviors. These behaviors are tracked using tests that are widely accepted by experimental psychologists to study the psychological phenomenon at issue (e.g., memory, attention, and perception). Here I illustrate these practices and their importance for explanation and reduction in current mainstream neuroscience by describing recent work on social recognition memory in mammals.     

Neurologizing the Psychology of Affects: How Appraisal-Based Constructivism and Basic Emotion Theory Can Coexist

ABSTRACT— Abundant neurobehavioral data, not discussed by Lisa Feldman Barrett (2006) , support the existence of a variety of core emotional operating systems in ancient subneocortical regions of the brain ( Panksepp, 1998a, 2005a ). Such brain systems are the primary-process ancestral birthrights of all mammals. There may be as many genetically and neurochemically coded subcortical affect systems in emotionally rich medial regions of the brain as there are "natural" emotional action systems in the brain. When emotional primes are aroused directly, as with local electrical or chemical stimulation, the affective changes sustain conditioned place preferences and place aversions, which are the premier secondary-process indices of affective states in animals. Humans are not immune to such brain manipulations; they typically exhibit strong emotional feelings. Human emotion researchers should not ignore these systems and simply look at the complex and highly variable culturally molded manifestations of emotions in humans if they wish to determine what kinds of "natural" emotional processes exist within all mammalian brain. Basic emotion science has generated workable epistemological strategies for understanding the primal sources of human emotional feelings by detailed study of emotional circuits in our fellow animals.     

Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals

The standard behavioral index for human consciousness is the ability to report events with accuracy. While this method is routinely used for scientific and medical applications in humans, it is not easy to generalize to other species. Brain evidence may lend itself more easily to comparative testing. Human consciousness involves widespread, relatively fast low-amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical core of the brain, driven by current tasks and conditions. These features have also been found in other mammals, which suggests that consciousness is a major biological adaptation in mammals. We suggest more than a dozen additional properties of human consciousness that may be used to test comparative predictions. Such homologies are necessarily more remote in non-mammals, which do not share the thalamocortical complex. However, as we learn more we may be able to make "deeper" predictions that apply to some birds, reptiles, large-brained invertebrates, and perhaps other species.     

EVOLUTION OF THE PSYCHENCEPHALON

In evolving to its great size the human brain has retained the distinctive features and chemistry of three kinds of brains that reflect an ancestral relationship to reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals. It constitutes, so to speak, a psychencephalon comprised of three-brains-in-one, a triune brain. In the evolution from reptiles to mammals two key changes were the development of nursing and maternal care. Through the agency of “newer” parts of the brain a parental concern for family eventually generalizes not only to other members of the species but to the entire biosphere, a psychological development that amounts to the evolution of responsibility and what we call conscience. Given our freedom to decide “yes” or “no” on various issues, we need not look beyond the evolving family to find a reason for being, an ethic to live by.     

Effects of Prenatal Social Stress on Offspring Development: Pathology or Adaptation?

ABSTRACT— In nonhuman mammals, the social environment in which pregnant females live is critical for their offsprings' brain development, endocrine state, and social and sexual behavior later in life. Social instability during pregnancy generally brings about a behavioral and neuroendocrine masculinization in daughters and a less pronounced expression of male-typical traits in sons. We favor the hypothesis that such behavioral effects of prenatal social stress are not necessarily "pathological" (nonadaptive) consequences of adverse social conditions. Rather, pregnant mothers could be adjusting their offspring to their environment in an adaptive way.     

Explaining brain size variation: from social to cultural brain

Although the social brain hypothesis has found near-universal acceptance as the best explanation for the evolution of extensive variation in brain size among mammals, it faces two problems. First, it cannot account for grade shifts, where species or complete lineages have a very different brain size than expected based on their social organization. Second, it cannot account for the observation that species with high socio-cognitive abilities also excel in general cognition. These problems may be related. For birds and mammals, we propose to integrate the social brain hypothesis into a broader framework we call cultural intelligence, which stresses the importance of the high costs of brain tissue, general behavioral flexibility and the role of social learning in acquiring cognitive skills.     

Dominance styles mediate sex differences in Dark Triad traits

We sought to determine what styles of social dominance are associated with Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and whether sex differences in Dark Triad traits are mediated by dominance styles measured by the Dominance and Prestige Scale, and the Rank Styles with Peers Questionnaire. Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism are strongly associated with dominance-striving, but only narcissism is consistently correlated with prestige-striving. Dark Triad traits are negatively correlated with coalition-building, but positively correlated with dominant leadership and ruthless self-advancement. Sex differences in Dark Triad traits were mediated by various dominance styles, but mainly by dominance-striving and ruthless self-advancement. These results suggest that particular styles of social dominance are utilized by both men and women with Dark Triad traits.     

The central role of the parietal lobes in consciousness.

There are now various approaches to understand where and how in the brain consciousness arises from neural activity, none of which is universally accepted. Difficulties among these approaches are reviewed, and a missing ingredient is proposed here to help adjudicate between them, that of "perspectivalness." In addition to a suitable temporal duration and information content of the relevant bound brain activity, this extra component is posited as being a further important ingredient for the creation of consciousness from neural activity. It guides the development of what is termed the "Central Representation," which is supposed to be present in all mammals and extended in humans to support self-consciousness as well as phenomenal consciousness. Experimental evidence and a theoretical framework for the existence of the central representation are presented, which relates the extra component to specific buffer working memory sites in the inferior parietal lobes, acting as attentional coordinators on the spatial maps making up the central representation. The article closes with a discussion of various open questions.     

Race, brain size, and intelligence: another reply to Cernovsky

Five sets of observations require explanation. Firstly, within both black and white populations there is a small positive correlation between IQ and brain size whether or not there is control for body size. Secondly, racial differences in average brain size occur such that Mongoloids greater than Caucasoids greater than Negroids especially with control for body size. Thirdly, mammals with larger brains relative to their bodies perform better on learning tasks than mammals with smaller brains relative to their bodies. Fourthly, average racial differences on measures of cognitive performance parallel the differences in average brain size. Fifthly, average racial differences on numerous other traits parallel the differences in intelligence and brain size. It is incumbent on scientists to explain these facts.     

Developmental structure in brain evolution

How does evolution grow bigger brains? It has been widely assumed that growth of individual structures and functional systems in response to niche-specific cognitive challenges is the most plausible mechanism for brain expansion in mammals. Comparison of multiple regressions on allometric data for 131 mammalian species, however, suggests that for 9 of 11 brain structures taxonomic and body size factors are less important than covariance of these major structures with each other. Which structure grows biggest is largely predicted by a conserved order of neurogenesis that can be derived from the basic axial structure of the developing brain. This conserved order of neurogenesis predicts the relative scaling not only of gross brain regions like the isocortex or mesencephalon, but also the level of detail of individual thalamic nuclei. Special selection of particular areas for specific functions does occur, but it is a minor factor compared to the large-scale covariance of the whole brain. The idea that enlarged isocortex could be a "spandrel," a by-product of structural constraints later adapted for various behaviors, contrasts with approaches to selection of particular brain regions for cognitively advanced uses, as is commonly assumed in the case of hominid brain evolution.     

Some Considerations of “Hate” and a Reconsideration of the Death Instinct

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was a leading figure of second-generation Viennese modernism. Appreciated in his time as an extraordinary draughtsman, he was also notorious for the blatant eroticism of his young female nudes and the ruthless honesty of his tortured self-portraits. A historically informed psychoanalytic approach reveals both the intrapsychic and psychohistorical significance of his work.

Schiele's explorations in portraiture were partly the product of internal conflicts on many levels. But they were also refracted through a turn-of-the-century crisis in European masculine identity. The crisis was born of social and political developments that worked to undermine middle-class males' sense of power and self-esteem, among them the woman's movement and a new cultural awareness of the psychological power of mothers and of female sexuality. These factors were especially powerful in the psychology of artists, who often felt both marginal and effeminate in a culture that valued the manly virtues of the warrior and the entrepreneur. Their effects are reflected in the fragmented self-images, overpowering mothers, and seductively self-certain girls and women of Schiele's paintings.     

The Song of the Siren: Dealing with Masochistic Thoughts and Behaviors

Masochism is a complex emotion that can be tenacious and ruthless in inflicting psychic pain on selected patients. It is the authors' intent to illuminate the intrapsychic dynamics of two patterns of self-defeating masochism. One is cognitive in nature, in which the patient's masochism is limited to their thoughts, without acting it out behaviorally. When, on the other hand, masochism becomes behavioral as well, the punitive super-ego dictates surrender to self-defeating and self-depriving behaviors. Theoretical discussions and case studies will show how Family, Cultural, and Religion contribute to the patient's mental and behavioral suffering. Various treatment strategies, such as modeling, creating distractions, identifying the sources of the voices of the past by analyzing the roots of masochistic feelings, providing the corrective emotional experience, are discussed as techniques designed to heal the struggles of the masochistic patient.     

“FREEDOM TO GROW”

Writing is a dangerous activity, especially as it is seemingly harmless: we rarely know what we are getting into at the start. Continuing her work on the writings of J.M. Barrie, especially on the question of the “lost child” who never grows up, the author invites the reader to listen to Sándor Ferenczi’s “lost childhood” between the lines of his Clinical Diary. He begins the Diary on January 7, 1932 and the last entry is October 2 of the same year; Ferenczi died on May 22, 1933. The exceptional text of the diary is the fruit of his incisive clinical insights, his disappointment and anger with Freud and his ruthless self-analysis. The author pinpoints her reading of Ferenczi, the “wise baby—lost child”.     

Survival with an asymmetrical brain: advantages and disadvantages of cerebral lateralization

Recent evidence in natural and semi-natural settings has revealed a variety of left-right perceptual asymmetries among vertebrates. These include preferential use of the left or right visual hemifield during activities such as searching for food, agonistic responses, or escape from predators in animals as different as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There are obvious disadvantages in showing such directional asymmetries because relevant stimuli may be located to the animal's left or right at random; there is no a priori association between the meaning of a stimulus (e.g., its being a predator or a food item) and its being located to the animal's left or right. Moreover, other organisms (e.g., predators) could exploit the predictability of behavior that arises from population-level lateral biases. It might be argued that lateralization of function enhances cognitive capacity and efficiency of the brain, thus counteracting the ecological disadvantages of lateral biases in behavior. However, such an increase in brain efficiency could be obtained by each individual being lateralized without any need to align the direction of the asymmetry in the majority of the individuals of the population. Here we argue that the alignment of the direction of behavioral asymmetries at the population level arises as an "evolutionarily stable strategy" under "social" pressures occurring when individually asymmetrical organisms must coordinate their behavior with the behavior of other asymmetrical organisms of the same or different species.     

Good times, bad times: how personal disadvantage moderates the relationship between social dominance and efforts to win

Recent work has linked social dominance orientation (SDO) to ruthless, uncaring individuals who see the world as a competitive jungle. This need to "rule the jungle," then, should become activated when high SDOs are in positions that threaten their chances of victory. In Study 1, the authors manipulated advantage and disadvantage in the form of resources; in an ensuing task, they observed higher levels of greed only among disadvantaged high SDOs. In Study 2, high SDOs with less opportunity to compete relative to others evidenced significantly more extra-effort to win, even though their effort broke the rules. In Study 3, the authors replicated this effect and demonstrated that extra-effort predicted increased beliefs in actual performance, which in turn predicted decisions to argue for a higher score. In sum, the results provide support for the notion of SDO reflecting underlying needs to compete and win at all costs.     

The convergent evolution of neural substrates for cognition

This review describes a case of convergence in the evolution of brain and cognition. Both mammals and birds can organize their behavior flexibly over time and evolved similar cognitive skills. The avian forebrain displays no lamination that corresponds to the mammalian neocortex; hence, lamination does not seem to be a requirement for higher cognitive functions. In mammals, executive functions are associated with the prefrontal cortex. The corresponding structure in birds is the nidopallium caudolaterale. Anatomic, neurochemical, electrophysiologic and behavioral studies show these structures to be highly similar, but not homologous. Thus, despite the presence (mammals) or the absence (birds) of a laminated forebrain, ‘prefrontal’ areas in mammals and birds converged over evolutionary time into a highly similar neural architecture. The neuroarchitectonic degrees of freedom to create different neural architectures that generate identical prefrontal functions seem to be very limited.     

Counselling in the enterprise culture

The way in which therapeutic models and language have been dravm upon to provide support for concepts of human flexibility and 'human resource development' in the enterprise culture ofthe 1980s and 1990s is described. The use ofhumane managerial rhetoric to mask the practice of increasingly ruthless public and private-sector organisations, and the dilemmas posedfor counsellors operating within these kinds of institutional settings, are examined.     

Reducing the dauer larva: molecular models of biological phenomena in Caenorhabditis elegans research

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows one to appreciate that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of (1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and (2) only within a replicable experimental background. These identities—which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account, 2003)—are criticised as merely “local” (Sullivan, Synthese 167:511–539, 2009) or “fragmentary” (Schaffner, Synthese, 151(3):377–402, 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, demonstrating a complex phenomenon that has been successfully reduced.     

The evolutionary origin of the mammalian isocortex: towards an integrated developmental and functional approach

The isocortex is a distinctive feature of mammalian brains, which has no clear counterpart in the cerebral hemispheres of other amniotes. This paper speculates on the evolutionary processes giving rise to the isocortex. As a first step, we intend to identify what structure may be ancestral to the isocortex in the reptilian brain. Then, it is necessary to account for the transformations (developmental, connectional, and functional) of this ancestral structure, which resulted in the origin of the isocortex. One long-held perspective argues that part of the isocortex derives from the ventral pallium of reptiles, whereas another view proposes that the isocortex originated mostly from the dorsal pallium. We consider that, at this point, evidence tends to favor correspondence of the isocortex with the dorsal cortex of reptiles. In any case, the isocortex may have originated partly as a consequence of an overall "dorsalizing" effect (that is, an expansion of the territories expressing dorsal-specific genes) during pallial development. Furthermore, expansion of the dorsal pallium may have been driven by selective pressures favoring the development of associative networks between the dorsal cortex, the olfactory cortex, and the hippocampus, which participated in spatial or episodic memory in the early mammals. In this context, sensory projections that in reptiles end in the ventral pallium, are observed to terminate in the isocortex (dorsal pallium) of mammals, perhaps owing to their participation in these associative networks.