Back with a Vengeance

Summer is upon us (and by us, I mean me), which means slightly more time for this little adventure I like to call NeoCorTEXT.

As previously blogged about, I have begun reading Who Is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel. I highly recommend it. It is a short work that is a collection of his talks given at the Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University in 1963.

Here are some quotations from Part I that resonate with me:

"The animality of man we can grasp with a fair degree of clarity. The perplexity begins when we attempt to make clear what is meant by the humanity of man."

"He knows that something is meant by what he is, by what he does, but he remains perplexed when called upon to interpret his own being."

"Man was, is, and will always remain a beast, and nothing beastly is alien to him. And yet such an epigram, though rationally plausible, is intuitively repulsive."

Here is where it has direct applications to what I see as my future research:

"...man has become man by acts of culture, by changing his natural state."

"One's relationship to the self is inconceivable without the possession of certain standards or preferences of value."

"...the problem of man is occasioned by our coming upon a conflict or contradiction between existence and expectation.

and finally: "How shall we articulate exactly what is sensed by us vaguely?"

Now this was only Part I - the introduction to the lectures - where Heschel introduces all the problems and questions. Because it's Heschel, God will enter into the solution somewhere, but it isn't clear yet how or in what way.

However, I believe that neuroscientists today are asking the same questions that Heschel asked nearly fifty years ago: "How shall we articulate exactly what is sensed by us vaguely?" People have a sense that they are somehow different from other animals. Many would say that culture is a key difference. I would say (and this echoes Heschel) that what sets humans apart - what makes humans human - is the ability to assign value to behavior. We don't merely engage in self-observation, we engage in self-judgement. Animals can perceive their position in physical space; humans can perceive their position in "moral space." The question I'd like to ask is: how does the brain engage in this sort of moral perception? How does the human brain make moral decisions? How do we teach morals to our children, and how did we learn them from our parents and teachers?

My motivation here may at first seem confusing: I am (currently) doing research on reading. I'm asking questions about how reading skill is built up in the brain, and how the environment contributes to it. This is analogous: How is moral decision-making skill built up in the brain? How does the environment (e.g. culture, education) contribute to our development of values? There must be similar underlying processes at the biological level. Many schools and camps and whatnot say that they provide a "values education." I'd like to prove it.

Friendships

The thing about friendships is that they take work. You don't just wake up one morning, and be like "I think I'll be friends with X." You have to take some time to figure out what are the things that X loves and hates. When you do something to annoy X, X needs to tell you explicitly what it was, what you could have done differently, etc - playing an elaborate game of trial and error is a waste of everyone's time and energy. If X is not willing to put a little effort into building a meaningful friendship, then despite what he or she says, he or she probably isn't truly interested in the friendship in the first place.

Vaccines

The buzz on today's front page at scienceblogs:

Sixty-four measles cases were reported in the U.S. from January 1 to April 25, the highest since 2001, according to a CDC report released Thursday. Health officials traced most of those to children who were not vaccinated for religious or philosophical reasons.

This reminds me of an old joke: A man is in a little boat fishing when his motor dies, and he is left in the middle of the open ocean. The first day another fisherman spots him and comes by, and he offers his assistance. He refuses, saying "God will save me." The second day, a tanker comes by and the crew offer their assistance, and again the man refuses, saying "God will save me." The third day, a coast guard helicopter spots him, and the pilot gets on the loudspeaker and offers his help, but the man shouts up to the pilot that "God will save [him]." Finally, on the fourth day, the man is weak, hungry, thirsty, and very tired. Suddenly, the clouds open and golden light spills down and surrounds the man and his boat. A booming voice echoes from the heavens, and the man asks God, "what took you so long? I've been out here for three days!" God responded: "I sent you a boat, a tanker, a helicopter..."

Point is, if you choose to believe in God (or any other supernatural power), you'll not hear an argument from me. But don't be stupid.

Oh, and there is no proof that the MMR vaccine causes autism or autism spectrum disorder. (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/autism/mmr/sub3.cfm)

Talks: Social Context, Art and Science, Neuroeconomics

In the last couple days, I've had the good fortune of attending three very different talks in the department and on campus.

Psychology Dept Colloquium:
The Role of Social Context in Adolescent Delinquency (Julia Dmitrieva)

This young researcher seems to be a star in the field of social psychology, though in her talk she hit on aspects of her research that would be interesting to just about anybody in the field of psychology: developmental, clinical, cognitive, and social...using standing social psychological self- and peer-report measures, neuroimaging, behavior genetics, and so on.

She spoke about her research on the way that social context, at various levels (family, peer, and neighborhood), interacts with adolescent decision-making in contributing to adolescent behavior and delinquency. She examines such environmental stressors as parental hostility and peer delinquency.She also brought in the role of one of the dopamine receptor genes (DRD4) and the dopamingergic pathways in the reward system of the ventral striatum, and the difference between the way that the short (4-repeat) allele and the long (7-repeat) allele expresses in interaction with environmental factors and relates to impulsivity measures.

She did a particularly good job at explaining what a 4-repeat versus 7-repeat allele means, how it comes about, how it works, and especially interesting was one graphic she had that showed the distribution of 4- versus 7-repeat alleles across the globe, making the (not necessary supported but interesting) suggestion that you find increasing proportions of the long allele as you follow migration pathways (e.g. lowest amounts are found in Eurasia/Middle East, with increasing proportions towards east Asia, and then North America with the highest amounts in South America)...suggesting that at some level and in certain environments, high levels of impulsivity can be adaptive.

Citation: J. Dmitrieva (under review) "Interaction between the DRD4 Gene and the Risk Exposure and Adolescent Delinquency, Impulsivity and Trait Anger"

USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative
Science, Art, and Society with K.C. Cole and Alan Alda

The USC Provost, C.L. Max Nikias has created this outstanding program called Visions and Voices, which highlights USC’s excellence in the arts and humanities. The initiative provides a unique, inspiring and provocative experience for all USC students, regardless of discipline, and challenges them to become world-class citizens who will eagerly make a positive impact throughout the world. (adapted from the mission statement of the program)

K.C. Cole is a science writer (who has authored several books, and wrote for years for the LA Times, among other publications) who is on faculty at the USC Annenberg School for Communication in the Journalism department. Alan Alda is a well-known actor, as well as science buff. The spoke about the relationship, and the similarities and differences between science and art. The name Richard Feynman came up several times, who I was introduced to in my 7th grade science class, when we had to read What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Alda pointed out that towards the end of his career, Feynman (who was involved in the Manhattan Project, and was instrumental in discovering what went wrong with the o-rings in the Challenger shuttle) was only interested in doing research that was fun and interesting to him. One example was Feynman noticing (in a Cornell cafeteria) that while a plate tossed into the air was rotating on one axis, it wobbled on a second axis with some sort of regularity. He devoted some several years to discovering what the relationship was between rotation and wobble. Cole responded noting that such discoveries which some people may have said "why is this important?" in the future may lead to important applications. For example, GPS Satellites rely on discoveries made by Einstein in both his general and special relativity theories. At the time, however, it wasn't clear how important those theories would become.

They talked about scientists and artists as both types of people who experiment, who discover, who work towards the common good. Scientists and artists both wonder about the world. They both work and work and work, with many failures along the way, until they uncover their goal, or their truth. It was a fascinating dialogue.

Psychology Dept. Colloquium:
Just Saying "No": Neuroeconomic Perspectives on Self-Control
(John Monterosso)

Another Psychology Department lunchtime colloquium, this time featuring a rising star of the cognitive neuroscience (particularly, decision neuroscience) world. He also spoke to a wide crowd, having something for the neuroimagers, the addiction researchers, the social psychologists, developmental psychologists, those studying decision neuroscience, risk and reward, and so on.

He spoke about delay discounting in human and animal models. The basic idea is that relative to rational maximization, humans are "temporally myopic." For example, we know that eating better will be good in the long run, but we are somewhat blind to that, and choose instead the double cheeseburger from Jack in the Box. That is, we devalue the long term reward as a function of its delay. He proposed a model such that Vd = Vi/(1+DK), where:
Vd = Value following delay
Vi = Immediate value
D = Length of delay
and K = discounting index. The model allows Vd and Vi to be inversely proportional, which makes sense.

Rats discount less than pigeons on the order of 3. Humans differ from rats by a factor of nearly 1 million. He examines this phenomenon using a smaller-sooner/larger-later model. Would you rather have $5 now or $10 next week? If you're addicted to cigarette smoke, would you rather have half a puff now or a full puff next week? Would you rather have $5000 now, or $10,000 next month? Animal models tend to show the same trend for the $5 version or the $5000 version. Humans are clearly more complex creatures, as many of us might opt for the smaller-sooner option when speaking in magnitude of $5, but I don't know anybody who wouldn't opt for the larger-later option when the magnitude is on the order of $10,000. Humans must call upon other resources, folk theories of inhibition, planning and thinking about consequences, and so forth.

He found that increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (not far from the region referenced here) corresponds with an increased preference for the larger-later reward...that is, reduced delay-discounting.

He went on to describe some of his other theories and related research regarding this sort of decision making, and I encourage anybody interested to do a search with his name on Pubmed or Google scholar and read some of his papers. In all, another fascinating talk.

Citation: Monterosso, J. et al (2007). Frontoparietal Cortical Activity of Methamphetamine-Dependent and Comparison Subjects Performing a Delay Discounting Task. Human Brain Mapping 28:383–393�.

2008...the year of the what?

As 2007 comes to a close and 2008 looms on the (very near) horizon, it may be appropriate to reflect on what the year 2008 is supposed to stand for.

It is not very easy to convince the United Nations to declare a year for something, so it is interesting that this year the UN has announced 4 years-of:

1. The Year of the Potato. This was recommended by Peru's government - not because the potato is in any danger, but to highlight the importance of the potato and its possibility for alleviating world poverty. They claim that the potato "produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop."

2. The International Year of Sanitation. This was designated to raise awareness of the plight of roughly 41% of the world's population — at least 2.6 billion people — who don't have access to basic sanitation. This is in line with one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals to reduce this number by half by 2015.

3. The International Year of Languages. Since my research involved reading and language (particularly, reading multiple languages with different alphabets), I am overjoyed to hear this news. An excerpt from the Sixty-First General Assembly Plenary:

...recognizing that genuine multilingualism promotes unity in diversity and international understanding, proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages.

Acting without a vote, the Assembly, also recognizing that the United Nations pursues multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, emphasized the paramount importance of the equality of the Organization’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish)...

4. The International Year of the Planet Earth. Which lasts for three years. Funding for this program started in 2007 and will end in 2009. The aim of this program is to bring more attention to Earth scientists and their research, referencing the 2004 Asian Tsunami as an example of an event which could have involved fewer deaths if more attention was paid to the Earth Sciences.

Outside of the UN, it appears fairly easy to designate various years-of...

1. The Year of the Frog. The Amphibian Ark has highlighted 500 frog species threatened with extinction. Kermit the Frog is the official spokesperson for the program.

2. The (Second) International Year of the Reef, according to the International Coral Reef Initiative. The IYOR aims to educate people about the importance of coral reefs to world ecosystems.

3. The Year of Feta Cheese - in Greece.

4. The Year of Boy Scouts and Engineering - in Australia.

5. The Year of Gardens - in Cheshire, England.

6. The Year of Intercultural Dialogue for the European Union (shouldn't that be EVERY year, in the EU?)

Oh, and 2008 is also the Chinese Year of the Rat.

...with thanks to Nature News for some of the references above.

Babies Have Values?

According to an article published in the journal Nature (summarized here), babies as young as six months old have a preference for choosing "helpful" toys over "neutral" or "naughty" ones, and even preferred to play with the neutral ones over the naughty ones.

The authors (of the review article) argue that this means that some kind of internal values system is innate:

The choice of nice over naughty follows a school of thought that humans have some innate social abilities, not just those learned from their parents.

I'm inclined to disagree with this statement, on the basis that in six months, the child can learn a lot by watching his or her parents and other prominent caregivers (grandparents, etc) and their social interactions.

Now, if there is something innate about this preference (presumably the babies can only decide if the second toy is helpful or hurtful by empathizing with the first toy), then it is probably localized to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This is, incidentally, part of the region destroyed by Phineas Gage's tamping rod accident. The region identified in the image above (borrowed from a different article) shows the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (and part of the medial orbitofrontal as well).

Antonio Damasio and colleagues found, last March, (see summary article here) that individuals with localized damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which generally processes feelings of empathy and compassion, causes a diminished capacity for social emotions but leaves logical reasoning intact. When asked to resolve hypothetical situations - such as tossing one person from a bridge into the path of an oncoming train, when it would save five other lines - those with the lesions tended to sacrifice one to save many...in fact, they were three times more likely to make such a decision than the intact control group.

This may provide some insight into the ability of the babies to make empathic decisions about which toy to play with. However, at six months, the prefrontal cortex is barely developed. Hell, the somatosensory cortex is only just at its peak of synaptogenesis!

I particularly like this diagram, which I was first introduced to in my first child development class, from Casey et al. (2005):

In the end, I'm not sure what to conclude about this research. I think probably the babies are probably just using information gained by watching their parents, and not really making values-rich decisions.