Neuro-Evolutionary Foundations of Infant Minds: From Psychoanalytic Visions of How Primal Emotions Guide Constructions of Human Minds toward Affective Neuroscientific Understanding of Emotions and Their Disorders

ABSTRACT

As Louis Sander understood, human infants are evolutionarily endowed with emotional minds that allow them to experience themselves as affectively vibrant creatures, who seek to be recognized as important players in the world. If so recognized, they experience themselves as positive individuals; if merely neglected as predetermined beings whose affects and intentions do not matter in the long-term construction of their minds, paths toward adult disturbance are paved. The neuroscience of affective processes has been substantively advancing through the use of animal models where the needed detailed experimental work can be conducted. Critical neural networks and neuro-epigenetic brain changes are being documented that provide neuroscientific confirmations for the insights advanced by Sander and his many colleagues. Here we show how the deeply intersubjective, flexible nature of the mother-infant relationship is firmly expressed in the underlying biology of the basic limbic emotional systems. Rather than being deterministic, hard-wired affective switches, these emotional systems (e.g., CARE, PLAY, PANIC, SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, and LUST) are modulated by (and, in turn, modify) the developing relationship between mother and infant. Thus, the nature-nurture debate can be meaningfully reconceptualized as a bio-psycho-social interactive model, in which biology shapes relationships, which, in turn, shape and sometimes radically modify the biology.     

Fitting the ratcliff diffusion model to experimental data

Many experiments in psychology yield both reaction time and accuracy data. However, no off-the-shelf methods yet exist for the statistical analysis of such data. One particularly successful model has been the diffusion process, but using it is difficult in practice because of numerical, statistical, and software problems. We present a general method for performing diffusion model analyses on experimental data. By implementing design matrices, a wide range of across-condition restrictions can be imposed on model parameters, in a flexible way. It becomes possible to fit models with parameters regressed onto predictors. Moreover, data analytical tools are discussed that can be used to handle various types of outliers and contaminants. We briefly present an easy-touse software tool that helps perform diffusion model analyses.     

Explorations of anticipatory behavioral control (ABC): a report from the cognitive psychology unit of the University of Würzburg

The report comprises recent theoretical considerations, experimental research, and simulations which all aim at a clarification of anticipatory mechanisms of behavioral control.     

... dort, wo ich berühre, werde ich auch berührt Touched by touching

Ziel der Arbeit ist es, die Berührung, den Berührungssinn oder die Haut als dessen Organ ph?nomenologisch und psychodynamisch zu erfassen sowie zu überlegen, wie der Erfahrungsraum der Berührung sich gestaltet und wie diese Dimension des Fühlens in der psychoanalytischen Psychotherapie sich umsetzt. Die ph?nomenologischen Analysen folgen v. a. den franz?sischen Ph?nomenologen und Philosophen Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Emmanuel Levinas, die psychodynamischen Analysen u. a. Didier Anzieu und Danielle Quinodoz. Der Erfahrungsraum der Berührung wird in folgenden Schritten nachgezeichnet: Einleitend wird zu fragen sein, was die Sprache an Erkenntnissen über die Berührung bereith?lt. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die ph?nomenologischen Analysen beschrieben, die den Erfahrungsraum der Berührung (synchron) erfassen. Dabei werden die Verbindungen zwischen dem Selbst und dem Objekt (Personen) im Mittelpunkt stehen, aber auch die Qualit?ten oder die Regulationsvorg?nge, die in der Berührung und durch die Berührung erbracht werden, und schlie?lich die Zeitlichkeit oder die in dem Prozess der Berührung mitschwingenden Zeiterfahrungen. Die Dimensionen der Unmittelbarkeit, der Wechselseitigkeit und des Abstands werden dabei entscheidend sein; sie werden anhand von exemplarischen Darstellungen von Berührungsmustern in der Kunstgeschichte erl?utert. In einem dritten Teil wird eine Fallvignette aus den Behandlungen der Basler Psychotherapeutischen Tagesklinik zum Ausgangspunkt genommen, um zu zeigen, wie die frühesten Berührungserfahrungen das Selbstverst?ndnis bilden und zur Ich- St?rke beitragen, und wie Psychotherapie, durch eine Berührung mit Worten, bei dem Wiederfinden oder dem neuen Entdecken von Berührung hilft. Anstelle einer Zusammenfassung wird ein Gedicht zum Thema der Berührung erneut die Frage stellen, ob Worte berühren k?nnen.     

Performance as annihilation or integration?1

What happens when the analyst has the impression of being annihilated by the patient? Analysts have a tendency to use more general, i.e. simplifying, constructions such as destructiveness, psychosis or death instinct as explanatory models. In the authors' view, these constructions in the end evade rather than mirror clinical reality. More recent research points to promising possibilities of differentiation, e.g. psychotic mechanisms which are‐as yet undiscussed‐based on Freud's notion of the partial ‘rent in the relation between ego and external world’. These findings emphasize the restitutive function of a symptom or disturbance, i.e. destruction of a relationship which hinders the therapeutic process and which is not understood initially, instead of solely stressing the destructive meaning in a tabooing gesture. The concept of performance attempts to replace simplifying models with a discriminant process, and will be preliminarily defined and explained in delineation to terms already in use such as acting out, enactment, and role responsiveness. The authors explore the question of how the perception of unthought certainty in the performance can either be recognized as a blueprint, i.e. organizing activity, or as the destruction of the relationship so that a new one can emerge. The evidence from a detailed clinical example shows that many treatments can fail at this point and demonstrates how an understanding of performance in this sense offers a chance for integrating processes that otherwise impede treatment.     

Towards a balanced social psychology: causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition

Mainstream social psychology focuses on how people characteristically violate norms of action through social misbehaviors such as conformity with false majority judgments, destructive obedience, and failures to help those in need. Likewise, they are seen to violate norms of reasoning through cognitive errors such as misuse of social information, self-enhancement, and an over-readiness to attribute dispositional characteristics. The causes of this negative research emphasis include the apparent informativeness of norm violation, the status of good behavior and judgment as unconfirmable null hypotheses, and the allure of counter-intuitive findings. The shortcomings of this orientation include frequently erroneous imputations of error, findings of mutually contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to explain the sources of behavioral or cognitive achievement, and the inhibition of generalized theory. Possible remedies include increased attention to the complete range of behavior and judgmental accomplishment, analytic reforms emphasizing effect sizes and Bayesian inference, and a theoretical paradigm able to account for both the sources of accomplishment and of error. A more balanced social psychology would yield not only a more positive view of human nature, but also an improved understanding of the bases of good behavior and accurate judgment, coherent explanations of occasional lapses, and theoretically grounded suggestions for improvement.     

Acute stress facilitates trace eyeblink conditioning in C57BL/6 male mice and increases the excitability of their CA1 pyramidal neurons

The effects of stress (restraint plus tail shock) on hippocampus-dependent trace eyeblink conditioning and hippocampal excitability were examined in C57BL/6 male mice. The results indicate that the stressor significantly increased the concentration of circulating corticosterone, the amount and rate of learning relative to nonstressed conditioned mice, and the excitability of CA1 hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Behaviorally, there was no effect of the stressor on control mice that received unpaired presentations of the tone and periorbital shock, i.e., neither stressed nor nonstressed control mice showed an increase in conditioned responding that was above baseline levels. Biophysically, the stressor significantly decreased the amplitude of the post-burst afterhyperpolarization (AHP) and decreased spike frequency accommodation relative to cells from nonstressed control mice. The effect was significant for mice that were stressed either 1 h or 24 h earlier. The results suggest that the stressor increases the excitability of hippocampal pyramidal neurons and that the mechanism underlying this increase may contribute to the more rapid acquisition of hippocampally dependent eyeblink conditioning.