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We are products of complexity,
but our evolution has focused our
understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the
African savanna.
As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact
the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend
them. So this web frame
explores significant real world complex
adaptive systems (CAS):
- Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the
wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of
stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and
retirement savings of the working class. The
assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
- The US nation was built
from two divergent political
views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also
reflects the development
of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and
Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall
Street into a position of power, while the middle and
working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing
financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions
helped hide the shift.
- Most US health care is still
operating the way cars built in the 1940s did.
Geisinger is an example of better solution. But
transforming the whole network is a challenge. And
public health investment has proved far more
beneficial.
- Helping our children learn to be
effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have
created a robust but deeply flawed education system.
Better alternatives have emerged.
- Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our
good ideas to
become a second genetic material.
- The emergence
of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent
development;
It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all
have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and
explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It
outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.
Example systems frame |
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and
manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these
systems can have disastrous consequences for their human
managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties
psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental
strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage
CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
- Effective iterative planning and
- Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he
reviews.
Complexity catastrophes |
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to
date and explains how the two systems can coexist most
effectively.
Adaptive ecology |
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President
Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and
energy goals.
US vds alignment |
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite
and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly
executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their
successful strategy used the credibility of conservative
religious leaders to:
- Demonstrate religious issues
with the New Deal.
- Integrate the corporate
elite and evangelicals.
- Use the power of corporate
advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American
people to view the US as historically religious and
the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious
socialism.
- Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham.
- Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower.
- Add religious elements to
mainstream American symbols: money, pledge;
- Push for prayer in
public school
- Push Congress to promote prayer
- Make elections more
about religious positions.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends
on persistence.
Inventing Christian America |
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become
highly corrupt.
Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the
transformation:
- Junk bonds,
- Derivative
deregulation,
- CMOs,
ABS and analyst fraud,
- Financial network deregulation,
- Financial network consolidation,
- Short term incentives
Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the
situation to build
a global bubble, which Wall Street
leveraged. The bursting of the
bubble: managed
by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve;
was advantageous to some.
Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated
financial services industry is damaging to
the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics.
He sees the result being a rigged system.
Ferguson offers his proposals
for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS
amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often
relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become
entrenched.
Financial WMD |
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic
alignment of the American justice system. The result
he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into
resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as
it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a
potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to
extract profits and leave the victim deflated.
Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the:
activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes,
prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are:
Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare
recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by
complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the
justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and
responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to
win.
Aligned justice |
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of
staff.
Mechanics of power |
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and
libertarianism.
Libertarianism |
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their
organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs.
He promotes strategies
that help OKR success: Focus,
Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance
reviews, and provides illustrative success
stories.
Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's
view that employees are adaptive and will
respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them
framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture
is tailored for the startups KPCB
invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all
CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the
association to planning.
Startup PDCA |
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take
hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces
including famine and
oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured
that thoughtful leaders
were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the
crisis.
Voltaire's disruptive network |
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges
during the enlightenment.
It was a poem
encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a
humanist book hunter.
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and
reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the
foundation of the modern world.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms
are discussed.
Constraining happiness |
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of
web services to explore Ada
Lovelace's ideas about thinking
machines and poetic
science. He highlights the value of computer
augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to
fulfill the process.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and
collaboration are discussed.
Arts technology & intelligence |
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of
consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on
the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he
describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the
potential and challenges of associative neural
networks.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the
additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling
evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that
Haikonen's neural
architecture, Smiley's Copycat
architecture and molecular biology's intracellular
architecture leverage the same associative properties.
Associatively integrated robots |
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior
developments that have been successfully implemented.
Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of
memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Developing ideas |
A government sanctioned monopoly
supported the construction of a superorganism
American Telephone and
Telegraph
(AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of
three networks:
- The evolving global scientific
network.
- The Bell telephone network. And
- The military
industrial network deploying 'fire and missile
control' systems.
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation
engine.
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing
ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent
opposition and enable the creation and growth of new
ideas.
Once the monopoly was
dismantled, AT&T disrupted.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are
discussed.
Strategic innovation |
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of
BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory and
reviewed.
BREXIT |
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google
are monopolists that
trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues
should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle
class.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments
assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).
While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts
with relevant CAS history and theory.
Monopoly job killers |
The IPO of Netscape is
defined as the key emergent event of
the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary
of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted.
New economy |
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of
rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was
enabled by the experience of Keynes
and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard,
the necessity of improving
the situation between the wars and the opportunity created
by the catastrophe of the Second
World War.
He describes how it was planned
and developed. How it
emerged from the summit.
And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy.
Like all plans there are
mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as
best it could.
And then Conway describes the period after
Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed
and also compares the relative performance of the various
periods before during and after Bretton Woods.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS)
theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and
infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.
He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and
against the development
and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a
key piece of the history of our global economic CAS.
Bretton woods |
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008
housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential
mortgage value delivery system (VDS)
by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS
was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one
incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.
Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Housing amplifiers |
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to
introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives
system. Das describes the components of the value delivery
system and the key
transactions. He demonstrates how the system
interacted with emerging economies
expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the
induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the
complex adaptive system (CAS)
aspects are highlighted.
Derivative systems |
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt
provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as
creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate
different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the
eighteenth century administrations of England and France.
The US embodies two different political and economic systems which
approach the national debt differently:
- Taxes to support a sinking
fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in:
Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social
programs; Starting with Hamilton,
Lincoln & Chase,
Wilson, FDR;
- Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by
individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison,
Reagan,
George W. Bush (Gingrich);
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US
government does. They argue that the conflicting
sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in
the middle' with a future problem.
And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help
assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the
future.
They conclude the question is still political. They hope
it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed
explanations. They ask who is willing to
push all the coming risk onto individuals.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery
system, key CAS features are highlighted.
National debt |
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second
industrial revolution were the foundation for
American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people
into difficult rural America built a population base
which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets,
Clothes in
department stores;
that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.
The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities;
terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to
leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow
the economy.
Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
- Communications
and advertising
- Credit
and finance
- Public
health and the health
care network
- Health insurance
- Education
- Social
and welfare services
Counter intuitively the constraints
introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2
provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and
fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970
creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post
war America.
Subsequently the
rate of growth was limited until the shift of women
into the workplace and the full networking of
voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web
completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were
muted by the narrow reach of the technologies.
The development of Big Data, Robots,
and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth,
but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of
the middle class.
Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
American growth |
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of
money based on the attractive features of precious metals.
He compares the potential for government edicts to create money
but sees them as lacking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that
precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.
Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
- Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy
transaction intermediates and
- Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in
supporting survival and replication in the currently
accessible niches.
Emergence of money |
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith
developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth? To do
this he replaces traditional
economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an
economy is a system in
equilibrium, with complexity
economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex
adaptive system (CAS).
He introduces Sugerscape
to illustrate an economic CAS model in action. And then he
explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics,
Agents, Networks, Emergence, and
Evolution.
Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to
the economy to build wealth. He explains how design spaces
map strategies to instances of physical and
social
technologies. And he identifies the interactors and
selection mechanism of economic
evolution.
This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition
of wealth.
In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of
adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance,
& Politics
& Policy.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions
and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we
leverage.
Economic complexity |
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the
growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and
their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global
commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for
the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land
and labor to work it including slaves.
He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for
industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of
the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly
copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized
cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to
operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages
and the ways found to
mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton
CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.
Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all
prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when
the US civil war
blocked access to the major production nodes in the
American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global
reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways
of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion
further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation
states. Beckert explains how other countries responded
by copying the colonial strategies and creating the
opportunities for future armed conflict among the original
colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in
the colonized global south and how over time they joined
the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing
nodes and creating the current global CAS
dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart
pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers,
spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each
other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of
disconnected peasant farmers,
pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a
highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over
time: of military force, global transportation and communication
networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows,
models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at
key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and
evolved amplifiers. The emergent
system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of
extended phenotypic alignment.
Globalization from cotton |
The structure and problems of the US
health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory.
The network:
- Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the
conflict between two
opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net
or low tax without. The emergence
of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further
constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of the network.
- The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous
levels of: salt,
sugar, cigarettes,
guns, light, cell phones, opioids,
costly education, global travel,
antibacterials, formula, foods including
endocrine disrupters;
- Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's
offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress,
amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of
walking, microbiome
collapse;
- Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges,
humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That
is reducing the proximate natural environment's
connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and
far less diverse. This disconnects predators from
their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that
transform the local parasite
network and their reservoir and amplifier
hosts. The situation is setup so that man is
introduced to spillover
from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but
increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming
broadly infected. The evolved
specialization of the immune system
to the proximate environment during development
becomes undermined as the environment transforms.
- Is incented to focus on localized competition generating
massive & costly duplication of services within
physician based health care operations instead of proven
public health strategies. This process drives
increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope
for each new technological breakthrough.
- Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation
and indirection of service development,
provision, reimbursement and payment.
- Is impacted by the different political strategies for
managing the increasing
cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.
- Is presented with acute
and chronic
problems to respond to. As currently setup the network
is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions
with patients tend to be transactional.
- Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure
which is:
- Costly and inefficient
- Structured around yearly
contracts which undermine long-term health goals and
strategies.
- Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT
which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has
entrenched commercial EHR
products deep within the hospital systems.
- Is maintained, and kept in
alignment, by massive network
effects across the:
- Hospital platform
based
sub-networks connecting to
- Physician networks
- Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA
narrow network legislation
- Hospital clinical supply and food
production networks
- Medical school and academic research network and NIH
- Global
transportation network
- Public health networks
- Health care IT supply
network
Health care |
Deaton describes the wellbeing
of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public
health strategies and the effect of growth in
material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of
aid.
Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory. The situation he describes is complex including
powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap
broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The
biosphere, Politics, Economics,
Philosophy and Health care.
Improving wellbeing |
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations
of the major problems afflicting US
health care as of 2006.
Problems of US health care |
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the
modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse
following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the
business, they describe how a calamity
unfolding around them supported building a vision of a
better US health care network. And they explain:
- How they planned
out the transformation,
- Leveraging an effective
governance structure,
- Using a strategy
to gain buy in,
- Enabling
reengineering at the clinician patient
interface.
- Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic
& hot
spot care; to help the patients and help the
physicians.
- Geisinger's leverage of biologics.
- Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.
- Where Geisinger is headed next.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory.
E2E insured quality care |
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader
and son who know that the current health care network interacts
with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that
caused his father's death. But he is confident that these
problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he
asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated,
collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their
patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be
made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical
errors and make care more cost effective.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We
frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
including synergistic examples of these systems in
operation. The health care network is built out of
emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals
they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker
explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and
hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh
Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson
highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives.
Bad medical models |
US healthcare is ripe for
disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that
technologies are emerging which will support low cost business
models that will undermine the current network. Applying
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist
these progressive forces.
Disrupting health care |
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent
improvement in quality in medicine by organizing
to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic
plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists.
With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates
the effects of
complexity and how to organize to cope with it.
Following the short review RSS
additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of
complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within
the network of US health care,
contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping
his various examples and reviewing facets of complex
failures.
Complexity checklists |
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on
1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman
starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects'
lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking
broadly across each subject's: Personality,
Education, Parental impacts,
Energy
levels, Partnering,
Careers, Religion,
Social networks,
Gender, Impact from war and
trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways,
which each individual could be seen to select and travel
along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long
life. Others were problematic. The models imply that
the US approach to health and
wellness should focus
more on supporting
the development and selection of beneficial pathways.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most
applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support
necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving
to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may
be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network,
starved of resources.
Promoting longevity |
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots
of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping
with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on
aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to
show how technology has amplified
this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the
independent self, living fully while aging with the
support of the extended family. Central
planning responded to the technological and societal changes
with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But
Gawande then contrasts the power of
bottom up innovations created by experts responding to
their own family situations and belief
systems.
Gawande then explores in depth the challenges
that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.
He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will
have to understand the dilemma of
integrating medical treatment and hospice
strategies. He notes that all parties
involved need courage to cope.
He proposes medicine must aim to assure
well being. At that point all doctors will practice
palliative care.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death,
evolution, cooperation and adaptations
to new technologies are discussed.
Agent death |
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles
mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are
infected each year with malaria and one million die.
Malaria |
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution
of medical science.
Medical science events |
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex
systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of
design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies
that generate complexity
within systems. They do this through a focus on
modularity.
Modular designed systems |
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the
strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer
company IBM.
Compartmented systems |
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer
software design.
Object based systems |
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for
creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data
types and inheritence make object orientation a superior
methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive
system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy
to the use of objects.
Software construction |
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved
dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools |
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the
World. He highlights:
- A list of
preconditions resulting in
- Additional niche
capture & more free time
- Building a network
to interconnect memes processes & tools which
- Enabling inter-generational
transfers
- Innovations
that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil
fuels
Memetic trading networks |
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported
the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man
building cultures and
later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson
identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these
are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a
change of approach.
He:
- Explores creativity:
how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer,
enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the
evening around the campfire. He notes the power of
fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing
signature of aesthetic
surprise.
- Looks at the current limitations of the
humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.
- Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and
culture:
- Ultimate causes viewed
through art, & music
- The bedrock of:
- Ape senses and emotions,
- Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied
by humanities,
&
- Exponential change in science and
technology.
- How the breakthrough from
our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat,
supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory &
language.
- Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.
- The impact on human nature.
- Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are
destroying.
- Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes,
exploration, irony, and
considers the potential for a third enlightenment,
supported by cooperative
action of humanities and science
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
- The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework
for representing the cultural CAS while
- Wilson's desire
to integrate the humanities and science gains support from
viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS.
Evening campfire rituals |
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the
economy. They argue it has generated exponential
growth. This has been due to innovation.
It has created a huge bounty of
additional wealth.
But the wealth is spread unevenly across
society. They look at the short and long term implications of
the innovation bounty and spread
and the possible future of
technology.
Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the
perspective of CAS theory.
Brilliant technologies |
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is
inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling
students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane
roles. He highlights a radical and already proven
alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning
processes supported by technology and freed up attention of
teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of
helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative,
Khan:
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based
assessments, College
education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for
change but if its force is used to support the current teachers
to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the
current educational network?
Education versus guilds |
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The
Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed
by CAS theory and reviewed.
What drives success |
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires
developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining
the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin
shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth
rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the
summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
is used to augment Turchins findings.
Warrior groups |
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael
Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of
complex adaptive system (CAS)
theory highlights the value of evolutionary
testing of the food chain.
Natural systems |
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can
take hold. Various social insects have developed
strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable
available niches. Like humans they invest in
specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped
competitors.
Insect superorganisms |
Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
Computationally adapted mind |
Evolved female brain |
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
CAS behavior |
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not
include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is
localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational.
It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears
particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations
evolve together with events, not things
Then he
explains how in a physical world without time its perception can
emerge:
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time
and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one
of the variables of the gravitational field.
With our scale we don't
register quantum fluctuations, making space-time
appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive
differences in time of different clocks, so we experience
a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is
helpful to our decisions
Emergence of time |
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for
centuries. Now it is finally being characterized
scientifically. That required a transformation of
approach.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous
psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective
assessments opened the
window to contrast totally unconscious
brain activity with those
including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the
contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the
psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to
specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal
workspace' to position all the experimental details into a
whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and
treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent
consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and
operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Conscious access |
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's
brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With
imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the
retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters?
What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound
like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene
explains the importance of
education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as
well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But
he notes the reading
networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.
And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing
reading and culture.
He explains the cultural
engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that
enable and constrain reading and culture.
Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural
complex adaptive system (CAS) are
related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use
his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading
and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge.
Evolved reading |
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In
particular he explains how:
- Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that
allow
- Life changing real-time
decisions to be made, and how
- Schematic structures provide
encodings of computable control
structures which operate through and on incomputable,
schematically encoded, physically active structures and
operationally associated production
functions.
Receptor indirection |
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific
investigation of meditation's
impact on the brain. They introduce
the book by describing their experiences with meditation,
science and the research establishment, their friendship, how
meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered
traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which
the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to
back them up.
Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology
graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds
work. They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern
tradition of exploring and altering the mind.
Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model
of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at
Harvard. Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of
consciousness. It took over twenty years for
scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align
with this model. Much of the prior
experimental data had to be abandoned.
They introduce meditation's
impact on the amygdala
responding to pain and stress.
They look at the changes in:
- Stress
- Compassion
- Attention
- Self-awareness; and the
potential for use of mediation
in psychiatry.
And they warn of the occurrence of dark
nights.
They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters,
starting with Mingyur Rinpoche,
and detect meditation altering
traits.
Finally they discuss the potential
benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it
broadly to a busy America.
Meditating neurons |
Tara Brach was worried from
a young age that there was something terribly wrong with
her: she like many others felt unworthy. She responded
by developing Radical
Acceptance. Brach then explains the steps in
applying it: pause,
greet what happens next with unconditional
friendliness; allowing us to:
- Initially attend to the sensations
of our body,
- Accept the
wanting self and discover its source of boundless
love.
- Welcome
fear with a widening
attention, accept the pain of death and become
free.
- Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves
and others.
- Focus on
our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed,
towards ourselves. Extend observing this goodness in
everyone. This enables the use of loving-kindness.
- Leverage
friendships to understand more about our shared nature
and strengthen Radical Acceptance.
- Realize our Buddha nature.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of
the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic
code and machinery. It provides an analog of the Buddhist
presence.
Compassionate CAS |
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
Enneagram strategies |
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
Emergence of feelings |
Robert Coram highlights the noble life of John Boyd. John
spent a lot of time alone
during his childhood.
He: excelled at swimming and was a lifeguard, enlisted in the
Army Air Corp while at school which rejected him for pilot
training, was part of the Japan occupation force where he swam;
so the US paid for him to attend University
of Iowa, where he: joined the Air Force Officers' training
corps, was accepted to be an Air Force pilot, and got engaged to
Mary Bruce.
Boyd trained at Nellis AFB to become a
combat ready pilot in
the Korean War.
While the US Air Force focused on
Strategic bombing, Boyd loved
dogfights. His exceptional tactical ability was
rewarded with becoming an instructor. Boyd created new
ways to think about dogfighting and beat all-comers
by using them in the F-100.
He was noticed and enabled by Spradling. As he trained, and defeated the top
pilots from around the US and allied base network, his
reputation spread. But he needed to get
nearer to the hot spring in Georgia, and when his move to
Tyndall AFB was blocked he used the AFIT to train in engineering at
Georgia tech. While preparing to move he documented his FWS training
and mentored Ronald Catton.
While there he first realized the
link between energy
and maneuverability.
At Eglin, in partnership with Tom Christie,
he developed tools to model the link. They developed
comparisons of US and Soviet aircraft which showed the US
aircraft performing poorly. Eventually General Sweeney
was briefed on
the theory and issues with the F-105, F-4, and F-111.
Sent to the Pentagon
to help save the F-X budget, Boyd joined forces with Pierre Sprey to
pressure procurement into designing and
building tactically exceptional aircraft: a CAS tank killer and a
lightweight maneuverable
fighter. The navy aligned with
Senators of states with navy bases, prepared to sink the
F-X and force the F-14 on
the Air Force. Boyd saved
the plane from the Navy and the budget from Congress, ensuring
the Air Force executive and its career focused hierarchy had the
freedom to compromise
on a budget expanding over-stuffed F-X (F-15). Boyd requested to
retire, in disgust.
Amid mounting hostility from the organizational hierarchy Boyd
and Sprey secretly
developed specifications for building prototype lightweight
fighters with General Dynamics: YF-16;
and Northrop: YF-17; and enabled by Everest Riccioni.
David Packard
announced a budget of $200 million for the services to spend on
prototypes. Pierre Sprey's friend Lyle Cameron picked a
short takeoff and landing transport aircraft and Boyd's lightweight fighter to
prototype.
Boyd was transferred to Thailand
as Vice Commander of Task
Force Alpha, inspector general and equal opportunity
training officer; roles in which he excelled. And he
started working on his analysis of creativity: Destruction
and Creation. But on completion of the tour Boyd was
apparently abandoned and sent to run
a dead end office at the Pentagon.
The power hierarchy moved to protect the F-15, but: Boyd,
Christie, Schlesinger,
and the Air Force chief of staff; kept the
lightweight fighter budgeted and aligned with Boyd's
requirements in a covert campaign. The Air Force
threw a phalanx of developers at the F-16, distorting Boyd's
concept. He accepted he had lost the fight and retired
from the Air Force.
Shifting to scholarship Boyd reflects on how rigidity must be destroyed to enable
creative new assemblies. He uses the idea to explain
the operational success of the YF16 and F-86 fighters, and then
highlights how the pilot can take advantage of their
infrastructure advantage with rapid decision making he
explains with the O-O-D-A Loop.
Boyd encouraged Chuck Spinney
to expose the systemic cost overruns
of the military procurement process. The military
hierarchy moved to undermine the
Spinney Report and understand the
nature of the reformers. Boyd acted as a progressive
mentor to Michael
Wyly, who taught the
Marine Corps about maneuver
warfare, and Jim Burton.
Finally, after the military hierarchy appears to have
beaten him, Boyd's ideas are tested during
the First Gulf War.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Boyd was Darwinesque, placing the art of
air-to-air combat within a CAS framework.
Air warrior |
Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful life of Vincent
van Gogh in Arles.
Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven
to create, and successfully
invented new methods of representing feeling in paintings, and
especially portraits. Vincent
worked hard to allow artists like him-self
to innovate. But
Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis.
Nemeczek also provides a brief history of
Vincent's life.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Vincent creates |
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious
memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip, which describes his
immediate family, upbringing, development as a singer
songwriter, stardom and its support for his problems, collapse
and eventual recovery.
Elton stresses the serendipitous nature
of his emergence as a musician. He describes
the contributions of his parents, Stanley & Sheila, mother's
sister, and her mother Ivy;
who formed his early
childhood proximate environment which prepared
him for a job in entertainment: he
developed his performance in the club circuits, setup a
commercial partnership with Bernie Taupin to write songs;
entering a network based around Dick James Music.
And he almost got married.
DJM focused Elton and Bernie's initial song writing
while they studied the songs they admired and Elton did session
work, tightening his performance skills and paying for the
food. A first album supported touring and the formation of
a band. A second one sent them to the US where Elton became an
overnight sensation. And during this period of time
Elton's testosterone
level ramped. Life changed
dramatically.
Stardom provided many rewards but there
were still life's problems to deal with. Elton was
befriended by his idol, John Lennon; he achieved new heights of
success but, sensitive to any hint of failure and fraud, suicidally disassociated.
His career crested, he struggled with loneliness and drugs, and
foresaw a fearful vision of his future, as fame caged him idly
in hotels between concerts. His hair abandoned him.
But he was saved by the challenge of
transforming the collapsed Watford football club. He
retired from touring which allowed him the time to reconstruct his life.
Empowered by success, supported by the removal of constraints,
Elton dominates - limiting feedback, doing whatever he
hopes will bring him happiness:
trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the
quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid and marrying
Renata.
He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio. Problems stress him. He is
frightened by a cancer
scare, AIDS, inspired by
Ryan White, angered by the
Sun, and saddened at
breaking Renata's heart. But he was there for Ryan White's
final days. And his lover Hugh Williams confronted Elton
about his string of addictions.
Elton finally agreed he had a problem.
He went to rehab, stopped hating himself,
gave up his current addictions, accepted the influence of a
higher force, and began admiring the everyday world and other
people.
It seemed the higher force was
supporting Elton's progress: he wrote the music for the
Lion King, met David Furnish who accepted Elton warts and all;
they both enjoyed a friendship with Gianni Versace; until Gianni
was murdered. Princess Diana
died soon after, and Elton performed at the funeral.
He toured with Billy Joel and aimed to do the same with Tina
Turner. While his new records sold well he found
himself in debt and terminated the management relationship
with John Reid
Enterprises.
Elton and Bernie improved their
situations: Elton started writing film scores, he helped
turn the film Billy Elliot into a musical, Bernie lobbied Elton
to improve the way they were making records, Elton and David
entered into a civil partnership, and Elton made a record with
his seminal influence: Leon
Russell.
Elton and David became parents of
two boys: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm a surrogate
mother and network in California. They quietly get married
when the UK allows.
Elton's mum remains
difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad when she dies, and many
at the funeral recall her fun side with him. Being parents
increases the long-term
stresses on their lives, forcing them to adjust, so they can be there for their boys.
But Elton needs to go out with a bang!
And everyone helps.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details
of the creative process from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
My song |
Richard Feynman
outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story.
Richard's personality
encouraged him to patiently
seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles
with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and
practice through building and fixing radios.
Leonardo's life inspired him to try
innovation, which he
concluded was hard. He played
with the emotion
in communications, a skill
which he used later at
Caltech. And he made a game of avoiding following
orders at MIT. Working during
the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and
practice.
Feynman enrolled as a graduate
student at Princeton, where the successful
approach to science was just like his.
His approach was based on
patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for
qualitative exploration. Overtime he added experimental
techniques. He would test
the assertions in articles with amusing investigations;
with his mind aligned by
feelings of joy. Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized.
He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being
taught at Princeton to his current pick. In his summer
recess he explored biology.
Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his
creativity. And his practical
orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway,
supported his desire for choices
and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural
pursuits. Being mostly self-taught, he
developed different approaches to problems than the
standard strategies provided by mass education.
Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father. But are they very
different?
While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about
the implications of the European war. After a friend
enlisted he decided to dedicate his
summer holiday to helping the war effort. Feynman got involved in the
Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he
experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the
physics of the project, him on Niels
Bohr; but was
freed from them by Von
Neumann. The records & reports of the project
were kept in filing cabinets. Richard explored the weaknesses of
the locks and safes deployed to secure these
secrets. Just after the war he was called up by the draft
board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally
unfit.
After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell.
He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match
expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his
recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on
fun. He enjoyed knowing
about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to
use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate
and approximate a value the fastest.
Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a
physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much
fun for Richard. So he used
the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet
beautiful women. Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque
frequenting one, and later
ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he
drank with to sleep with him.
Richard reflects on various times when he made government
officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape;
Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more
things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech. Both
institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making,
but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste
of time and he saw risks in
a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech
and stay there.
Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in
Japan. Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little
Japanese. Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse
effectively, but stops when he
finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his
individualism.
Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics. He
felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the
latest details, fearful that
he could not cope; as the community
worked to understand the laws of beta decay. But
Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity
premise. Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused
on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of
reports. Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang
discussed a failure and a theory to explain it. Richard
felt terrified and could not understand what they said.
His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student
having fun, read every
line and equation of their paper; he would understand it.
And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what
was happening and what still seemed conflicted. He
reported his ideas back to the community. After Richard
returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with
Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of
Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay.
Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply
describing the details of beta decay. He had identified
the workings of a fundamental law. Years later he was awarded the Nobel
prize for physics. He was conflicted about the prize
and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip,
where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese
ambassador.
Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling
it on a digital computer. He explored hallucinations and the reality of
experiences.
Richard lobbies for integrity
in science.
In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science,
Richard was quirky. He would tease those who asked for his
help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to
their part of the agreement. And he paid no attention to the
logistical details of planning. He loved percussion,
playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success. He
eventually discovered art could be
fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying
mathematical beauty of the physical world. He had a great
art teacher. But he discovered although he could
eventually draw well he did not understand art.
Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful,
who were interested in integrating art and science, did not
understand either subject. He found the situation was
similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and
economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the
strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects
made him angry and
disturbed, so he avoided participating in them. It seemed
ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing
culture to the physicists!
He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil. He gets
involved in the California public school text
book selection process which he concluded was totally
broken, but also reveals how his father
provided him with a vision of how our world works,
inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical
theory.
Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported
his creative development from the perspective of complex
adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Richard draws |
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life,
expanded from his own highlights:
- His naughty
childhood,
- Wasted
schooldays,
- Apprenticeship with Grant,
- His extramural
activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow,
life with FitzRoy on the
Beagle,
- His growing
love for science,
- London: geology, journal and Lyell.
- Moving from
Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other
books.
- He reviewed his position on
religion: the long
dispute with Emma, his
slow collapse of belief
- damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction
being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's
advice; while describing Emma's side of the
argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate
his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self &
Cross-fertilization his strength will be
exhausted.
Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed
evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose
complementary skills helped drive the innovation.
Darwin emerges |
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations
of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the
accumulation of small advantageous changes.
Accumulating small changes |
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and
the emergence of agents.
Autonomous emergence |
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can
induce emergent phenomena
which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are
sustained. The mechanism enables
the development of Darwinian competition.
Constraint based phenomena |
|
|
Evolved female brain
Summary
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the
impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span:
conception, infantile
puberty is a period of 9 months in young boys and 24 months in girls, starting around 6 months after birth, where hormone surges prompt the development of ovaries and testes, as well as reproductive adjustments in their brains. In girls, the ovaries start producing large quantities of estrogen, which induces growth of neural circuits for observation, communication, gut feelings, tending and caring. Blocking estrogen during this period in primates inhibits development of the female's typical interest in infants. , girlhood,
juvenile pause is a developmental phase in girls, following on from infantile puberty, initiated when the ovaries temporarily stop generating estrogen. , adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are
described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in
how emotions are processed
by women compared to men.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with
the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and
behavioral CAS.
The Female Brain
In Louann Brizendine's book
'The Female Brain' she uses the experiences of her medical
practice and research on female brain neuroscience to associate
key behaviors with neuronal and endocrine changes over a life
span.
What Makes Us Women
Brizendine was intrigued by the two-to-one ratio in major depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; rates
for women compared to men globally (across cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
). And the
divergence started only at puberty.
But she notes, researchers have been averse to including females
in scientific behavioral studies, because the monthly hormone
transitions make interpreting the results difficult.
As a psychiatrist Brizendine took women's hormonal state into
account in her evaluations and concluded:
- Hormones are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids: Cortisol; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors. The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy.
have
massive neurological effects during each stage of life:
conception, infantile
puberty is a period of 9 months in young boys and 24 months in girls, starting around 6 months after birth, where hormone surges prompt the development of ovaries and testes, as well as reproductive adjustments in their brains. In girls, the ovaries start producing large quantities of estrogen, which induces growth of neural circuits for observation, communication, gut feelings, tending and caring. Blocking estrogen during this period in primates inhibits development of the female's typical interest in infants. , girlhood,
juvenile pause is a developmental phase in girls, following on from infantile puberty, initiated when the ovaries temporarily stop generating estrogen. ,
adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; shaping desires,
values, and perception
of reality.
- In psychiatric practice, she observed patients suffering
from extreme
premenstrual brain syndrome is Louann Brizendine's label for of patient's with an extreme form of PMS, who felt undermined by their hormones on some days so that they couldn't work or speak to anyone for fear of bursting into tears or responding angrily. Their future looked bleak, they hated themselves, and their lives, and the thoughts felt legitimate. At other times they were engaged, intelligent, productive and optimistic.
; a woman's reality would
also change radically due to the massive hormonal changes
that occur throughout their life.
She responded by founding the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic in
the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF.
Hormonal 'states'
were inducing different neurological connections that supported
new thoughts is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. , emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. and
interests. Women's neurological reality is not as stable
as is men's.
With the latest probes: PET is positron emission tomography which uses a radioactive tracer (Nuclear medicine) to look for disease processes. The tracer is intravenously deployed through the blood stream where it collects in organs and tissues. A whole body scanner is then used to count the indirect gamma ray emissions and a computer builds a 3 dimensional representation. If the tracer is an analog of glucose such as fluorodeoxyglucose the concentrations of tracer imaged will indicate tissue metabolic activity (glucose uptake). This can be used to explore for early signs of cancer (unusually active cells) metastasis. ,
fMRI is functional magnetic resonance imaging. Seiji Ogawa leveraged the coupling of neuronal circuit activity and blood flow through the associated glial cells to build a 3 dimensional picture of brain cell activity. As haemoglobin gives up its oxygen to support the neural activity it becomes magnetic and acts as a signal detected by the fMRI. fMRI easily visualizes the state of activity in the living human brain at millimeter resolution, up to several times a second but it cannot track the time course of neural firing so it is augmented with EEG. ; the brain can be
observed operating. These probe scenarios show men and
women's brains differ: structurally, chemically, genetically,
hormonally, and functionally; and they respond differently to: stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
and conflict.
They use different areas to solve problems, process language,
and experience and store the same powerful emotion.
Women's hippocampus is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25.
is relatively larger, helping them to detect, remember and
express emotions in a different, more nuanced way than men
can.
Women are far more sensitive to and focused on
communication. Adolescent in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents: - Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
girls get the same type of dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
thrill from friendship and talking
as boys do from 'scoring.'
Men have a far larger amount of brain structure dedicated to sex
drive - ensuring they are always monitoring for opportunities
for sex, aligned with men's This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused
by eggs having to include resources required for the development of sexually
reproduced organisms while sperms do not.
The impact of this asymmetry is to force alternative strategies
on males and females. The strategies are outlined.
asymmetric
role in sex, while
women's brains aren't setup to constantly think about sex.
Men have more neural infrastructure, in the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
, dedicated to
registering fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier. and
triggering aggression.
But Brizendine notes that women are more impacted by the stress
of conflict. She concludes that physical and social
threats were very dangerous for women in the cognitive niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. ,
but modern living associates those fears with juggling demands
for: home, kids, work; without enough support. A few
unpaid bills can be perceived as life threatening.
Brizendine asserts that understanding that Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
biological brain states guide our
impulses, allows awareness to manage how you respond to
situations and emotions. Intelligence enables the achievement of goals in the face of obstacles. The goals are sub-goals of genes' survival and reproduction and include: - Obtaining and eating food
- Sex
- Finding and maintaining shelter
- Fighting for resources - in the preferred hunter-gatherer environment loss of resources was critical while possession was often transient.
- Understanding the proximate environment
- Securing the cooperation of others
and
determination can change the effects of sex hormones on brain
structure, The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
behavior, reality, creativity--and
destiny.
The Birth of the
Female Brain
Girls are born with their brains already structured differently
to boys, ensuring they have different impulses, values and
experience a different reality.
Brizendine asserts the
brain affects how we conceptualize the world. Eating
a treat can make the world seem better as the chemicals consumed
change the brain. With genetically determined different
structures, throughout the This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism,
boys and girls will be expected to experience and relate to the
world differently.
Girls are setup to differentially build friendships, process and
signal, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. , in the first 18
weeks of embryonic development by gene driven hormone are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids: Cortisol; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors. The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. signals. In
boys a huge testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic.
surge begins in the eighth week, to transform the developing
default female brain structure into male ones: killing off cells
in the communications nodes and growing more cells in the sex
and aggression centers. Without the additional
testosterone a female brain builds more communication and
emotion neurons. The fetal girl will grow up to use more
forms of communication than a boy will, and it will give her a
female perspective on the world. Girls with CAH is either: - Critical access hospital, a CMS designation to certain rural hospitals, authorized by Congress (BBA) to limit further closures.
- Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which results in abnormally high testosterone levels about 8 weeks after conception, and causes girls brains to be deploy male attributes: making them identify as boys, and act like them - showing reduced eye contact, nurturing, and empathy and good spatial awareness; but they still like dresses and being treated like a girl. It affects 1 in 10,000 infants in the US.
respond more like
boys.
Baby female brains are driven to study faces is a region of the brain which supports advanced mechanisms of shape recognition and implements the early stages of reading. Subliminal priming with words did not depend on the shape of the word. The fusiform gyrus was able to process the abstract identity of a word without caring if it was upper or lower case. While high up in the cortex it can operate below the level of conscious experience. It contributes to social emotions with: - Its face area being more activated by faces with in-group skin color.
- It activating when shown pictures of cars in automobile aficionados.
- It activating when shown pictures of birds in birdwatchers; since it really recognizes examples of items from an individual's emotionally salient categories.
.
Brizendine notes that in comparison, baby boys look everywhere
else, contrary to prior teaching which did not focus on the sex
of the babies being studied. Girls leverage their more
developed communication and emotion networks to develop
mother-infant bonds. Girls build skills in eye contact,
and mutual facial gazing. Brizendine writes it does not
mean they are needier than boys.
Girls develop The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models of themselves is dorsomedial prefrontal cortex which is:
- A major agent of the sense
of self and theory of mind
in human adults.
- It participates in altruism.
based on reactions
from people they signal, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. .
They are concerned if they don't get a response, and will
doggedly persist. They decide if they are worthy, lovable
or annoying. This means a depressed is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; mother, whose
expression will be deadened, will be a problem for a baby
girl. She will decide she is not liked and will shift to
other faces that are more responsive.
Girls are monitoring and adapting to visual and vocal social
cues from an early age. Boys don't monitor the cues often,
or respond to them, doing what they please. Brizendine
stresses the iterative nature of these interactions and that it
results in This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the
expression of new phenotypic
effects within an agent.
phenotypic alignment on
gender and cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
lines
reflected in strengthening of used neural circuits, a network of interconnected neurons which perform signalling, modeling and control functions. In Cajal's basic neural circuits the signalling is unidirectional. He identified three classes of neurons in the circuits: - Sensory, Interneurons, Motor; which are biochemically distinct and suffer different disease states.
.
But Brizendine suggests boys don't
have the neural networks that support these social activities
in similarly aged girls:
- In the cognitive
niche is Tooby & DeVore's theory that reflects a flexible competitive strategy, described by Steven Pinker, which leverages the power and flexibility of intelligence to defeat the capabilities of genetically evolved specialists focused on specific niches. girls needed a network of supporters to ensure
their survival. Their genes aimed to help them fit
smoothly into the social
hierarchy.
Deborah Tannen notes that girls use language that drives
consensus: "Let's ..." They participate jointly in decision making integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations: - Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
,
minimizing stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
,
conflict and signs of status is a publically accepted, signal that one possesses assets: wealth, beauty, talent, expertise, access & trust of powerful people; to be able to help others. .
- Boys know how to talk affiliatively, but they generally
don't use that approach. Their testosterone organized
brain's seek
competition, command, brag, threaten, ignore a partner's
suggestion, override each other's attempts to speak.
They are not concerned about the problems of conflict.
And their risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty.
of ASD is autism spectrum disorder. All these disorders are characterized by difficulty connecting with others. People who suffer from ASD show a reduced fusiform response to faces. ASD is linked to gene variants affecting oxytocin and vasopressin, to nongenetic mechanisms that silence the oxytocin receptor gene and to lower levels of the receptor itself. is 8 times
higher.
Young girls, eighteen months old, monitor if they are being
listened to by adults. They use eye contact
to gain attention and agreement, even if the words they say are
not understood by the adults. It supports their
development of sense of self. This allows them to develop
empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective. It is implemented by spindle neurons. Empathy towards others is controlled by the right-hemisphere supramarginal gyrus. Empathy is context dependently mediated by estrogen. It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them. In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC. If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured. The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help. But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC. In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures. Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people. Brizendine asserts young girls develop empathy earlier than boys, because their evolved greater neuronal investment in communication and emotion networks. Year old girls are much more responsive to the distress of other people than boys are. At 18 months girls are experiencing infantile puberty. By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala. Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do. But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is. Sociopaths do not develop empathy. , while interacting
with their mothers, at a younger age than boys. This is
helped by girl's longer infantile puberty is a period of 9 months in young boys and 24 months in girls, starting around 6 months after birth, where hormone surges prompt the development of ovaries and testes, as well as reproductive adjustments in their brains. In girls, the ovaries start producing large quantities of estrogen, which induces growth of neural circuits for observation, communication, gut feelings, tending and caring. Blocking estrogen during this period in primates inhibits development of the female's typical interest in infants. .
Depending on the environment they grow up in, during pregnancy
and the first two years after birth, and especially the relationship
with their mother, girls will develop differently.
If the situation includes a lot of stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
this will be
reflected in the attitudes and personality describes the operation of the mind from the perspective of psychological models and tests based on them. Early 'Western' models of personality resulted in a simple segmentation noting the tension between: individual desires and group needs, and developing models and performing actions. Dualistic 'Eastern' philosophies promote the legitimacy of an essence which Riso & Hudson argue is hidden within a shell of personality types and is only reached by developing presence. The logic of a coherent essence is in conflict with the evolved nature of emotions outlined by Pinker. Terman's studies of personality identified types which Friedman and Martin link to healthy and unhealthy pathways. Current psychiatric models highlight at least five key aspects: - Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains mental dynamism from socializing or retiring
- Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
- Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
- Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
- Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
deployed
during development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete. .
And due to epigenetic imprinting, it can be passed on through
further generations.
The transition to the juvenile
pause is a developmental phase in girls, following on from infantile puberty, initiated when the ovaries temporarily stop generating estrogen. results in a more stable hormone environment for
young girls aged from two and a half years until the onset of puberty. Levels of
estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
and testosterone
become very low, but girls still have 8 times the estrogen of
boys. Girls enjoy playing with their best girlfriend -
building a one-on-one relationship, and don't like boys and
their rough play, boys - who
are more focused on: the game, toy, social rank, power, defense of
territory, and physical strength.
Girls in the juvenile pause use their well-developed emotional
intelligence to get what they want. That is usually to:
- Forge connections
- Create community
- Organize her world so she is at the center; which results
in the need for aggression.
That can be challenging since overt use of aggression can drive
people out of her community. It is a delicate balance that
will become much more challenging when her hormonal state
destabilizes during the pubescent
teen years.
Teen Girl Brain
Brizendine explains the teen girl's brain is: developing,
reorganizing, and pruning; neural circuits, a network of interconnected neurons which perform signalling, modeling and control functions. In Cajal's basic neural circuits the signalling is unidirectional. He identified three classes of neurons in the circuits: - Sensory, Interneurons, Motor; which are biochemically distinct and suffer different disease states.
,
initially deployed when she was a fetus, that drive the way she
now responds: thinks, feels, and Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page
discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system
(CAS).
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The
examples include a computer program where modeling and actions
are performed by software agents. These software agents
are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some
implications of this are outlined.
acts;
causing her to obsess about her looks. She is encouraged,
by Plans emerge in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) to provide the
instructions that agents use to
perform actions. The component architecture and structure
of the plans is reviewed.
gene driven monthly hormonal are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids: Cortisol; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors. The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. cycles linked to
the newly activated pituitary is a protrusion off the bottom of the hypothalamus. The anterior lobe regulates stress, growth, reproduction and lactation. The intermediate lobe synthesizes and secretes melanocyte stimulating hormone. The posterior lobe is functionally connected to the hypothalamus by the pituitary stalk.
and rampant hypothalamus is essential to many instinctive operations of the body. It can be viewed as the executor of emotion: happiness, sadness, aggression, eroticism and mating, relaying the amygdala's responses to low level sensory signals. It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, parenting, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and similar body operations. Kandel notes it includes a nucleus containing two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates sex and mating. At the intersection neurons are active in both. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus applied to these neurons mating (weak) or aggression (danger) is activated. This probably contributes to sexual rage and is why some couples derive extra pleasure from sexual experiences following an argument. The hypothalamus's (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)-> amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus). It directly signals area 25. :
estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
surges twice a
month, testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic.
peaks at ovulation, progesterone is a steroid hormone. It: - Rarely directly effects areas of the brain. Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas.
- Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions. However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety. It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA.
- Decreases female sex drive during the second half of the menstrual cycle.
is low during the first estrogen wave but rises with the second
smaller one; to make herself sexually desirable, judging herself
relative to her peers and signals of attractive females from the
media. The hormonal surges result in weekly changes in
sensitivity to stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
,
especially in the hippocampus is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25. ,
and pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. . Boys
sensitivity to cortisol is a glucocorticoid produced in the adrenal cortex of the adrenal glands. It: - Stimulates
- Gluconeogenesis to increase production of blood sugar
- Metabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates
- Suppresses the immune system.
- Decreases bone formation
- In excessive concentrations destroy synaptic connections in the: hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex; leading to flattened emotions and impaired memory.
reduces while for girls it increases. Different types of
stress impact boys and girls after puberty. For boys:
challenges to their authority - their position in the hierarchy;
and for girls: relationships - they need to be liked and are
stressed by rejection; are influential.
Female specific brain regions become more aware of emotional
nuance: approval, disapproval, acceptance, rejection; but are
not sure how to interpret the increased attention to her
body. And the interpretation depends on what phase of the
sex hormone cycle is
current. Stress has more impact when progesterone is high
and estrogen is lower. These hormone waves are
significantly affecting the hippocampus is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25. , hypothalamus is essential to many instinctive operations of the body. It can be viewed as the executor of emotion: happiness, sadness, aggression, eroticism and mating, relaying the amygdala's responses to low level sensory signals. It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, parenting, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and similar body operations. Kandel notes it includes a nucleus containing two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates sex and mating. At the intersection neurons are active in both. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus applied to these neurons mating (weak) or aggression (danger) is activated. This probably contributes to sexual rage and is why some couples derive extra pleasure from sexual experiences following an argument. The hypothalamus's (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)-> amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus). It directly signals area 25. and amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
: building
critical thinking skills and emotional capabilities. By
late puberty these brain structures have stabilized into their
adult configuration.
The flood of estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
in teen girls
activates oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. and
sex-focused female neural circuits for: talking, flirting and socializing;
encouraging girls to hangout together and gossip: trading
secrets to build connections and intimacy through
language. So women talk, and listen, a lot more than men
and it relieves their stress and gives them a huge dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
and oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. reward.
And they have some verbal brain areas that are relatively
larger. While boys eventually have equivalent
vocabularies, they never match girls in speed or ability to
overlap speech.
Brizendine contrasts the reality
for pubescent boys:
- Boys disappear into adolescence in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents:
- Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
& into
their room alone
- Testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic.
decreases talking and interest in socializing except for
sports and sex
- Body parts and sex become an obsession. Young boys
are consumed with sexual fantasies and masturbation
- Boys live in fear of others finding out about their new
obsessions and are ashamed of their thoughts; girls who
expect to chat intimately with their boyfriend will be
disappointed. Brizendine stresses this is a major
disappointment women feel all their lives with their
marriage partners. Men don't
need to be social, or crave long talks. Its the
result of marinating in testosterone during puberty.
The goal of the pubescent girl is to maintain
relationships. Their neurology encourages them to ease or
prevent social conflict. Otherwise they feel
anxious. Unlike men, who often enjoy competition and
interpersonal conflict, they have a strong negative alert
reaction to relationship conflict and rejection: feelings of stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
, fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier. ; with cortisol is a glucocorticoid produced in the adrenal cortex of the adrenal glands. It: - Stimulates
- Gluconeogenesis to increase production of blood sugar
- Metabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates
- Suppresses the immune system.
- Decreases bone formation
- In excessive concentrations destroy synaptic connections in the: hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex; leading to flattened emotions and impaired memory.
taking the place
of oxytocin, serotonin is a neurotransmitter. it is: - Inversely associated with: human impulsive, cricket, mollusk, crustacean; aggression. Low levels of serotonin are associated with impulsive aggression ranging from psychological measures of hostility to overt violence and cognitive impulsivity and impulsive suicide.
- Nearly all synthesized in the Raphe nucleus. Tryptophan hydroxylase makes serotonin from the amino-acid tryptophan. Monoamine oxidase degrades serotonin. The serotonin receptor binds serotonin to initiate cross membrane signalling. The serotonin transporter actively removes serotonin from synapses. Serotonin levels can be increased with: exercise, high light levels, consumption of chickpeas and traditional lime boiled corn tortillas. Reuptake is inhibited by SSRIs. Variants of the genes coding for these various enzymes alter the strength of their effects.
- Increasing serotonin signalling does not lessen impulsiveness in normal subjects but did in those prone to impulsivity. However, such experiments are fraught with complexity:
- Transient changes induced by drugs may adjust the immediate levels of serotonin but may not demonstrate structural effects.
- Gene variants likely produce structural changes in the developing brain.
- Effects monitored in experiments are often tiny.
- Behavioral changes: Violence, Arson, Exhibitionism; seen in different test subjects may be difficult to compare.
- Monoamine oxidase has high gene/environment interactions undermining heritability estimates. Its gene promotor is regulated by stress and glucocorticoids. So non genetic factors such as childhood adversity and adult provocation appear to be significant.
& dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
.
Brizendine notes women's response to threats may not be 'fight
or flight,' but rather 'tend and befriend.' Aggression
by males during our hunter-gatherer
past likely generated push-back by the threatened female's
social network, to protect the young.
Estrogen surges, at puberty, alter the operation of the suprachiasmatic
nucleus is a cluster of cells, in the hypothalamus, that coordinate daily, monthly and annual rhythms of the body including: hormones, body temperature, sleep and mood. . It turns on a uniquely female sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. cycle and generates
growth hormone. Males and females rhythms become very
different. At eight to ten for girls, sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. times change leading to
later bedtimes, later wake-up times, and more sleep
overall. And the brain waves during sleep, become
different to boys. Females have a tendency to go to sleep
earlier than males and wake earlier, until menopause.
Estrogen controls the menstrual
cycle:
- At the start of the cycle the girl feels refreshed and
recharged. She becomes socially relaxed for the first
two weeks.
- There is a 25% growth in hippocampal is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25.
connections in the first two weeks making the brain sharper
- At ovulation, around day 14, progesterone is a steroid hormone. It:
- Rarely directly effects areas of the brain. Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas.
- Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions. However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety. It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA.
- Decreases female sex drive during the second half of the menstrual cycle.
is
generated by the ovaries, cutting back the additional
connections built during the first two weeks.
- The brain becomes more sedated and towards the end of the
cycle, more irritable, less focused and slower.
- In the last few days the progesterone level collapses,
leaving the brain upset, stressed and irritable.
Teen girls are shocked at their sudden instability and shift in
needs. Ovaries that make the most estrogen and
progesterone keep their brains resistant to stress. Women
with low estrogen and progesterone are more sensitive to stress,
and have fewer serotonin neurons. They can suffer from PMDD is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, where the ovaries send out relatively low levels of estrogen and progesterone, which affects 2 to 5% of women impairing their normal functioning so they feel: hostility, hopeless depression, suicidal, panic attacks, fear, rage; and the PFC becomes undermined allowing unconstrained emotions to penetrate from the unconscious. It is treated with: the continuous birth control pill, which keeps the estrogen and progesterone levels moderately high and inhibits the ovaries from sending out the hormones with large fluctuations, and, if necessary, an SSRI. and feel: hostility,
hopeless depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult;,
suicidal, panic attacks, fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier. ,
rage is a doomsday machine emotion of uncontrollable righteous anger. ; with the PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
- The front part of the frontal
lobe of the cerebral
cortex. It evolved
most recently. During adolescence
when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.
The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral;
decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex;
and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC
circuits track internal reward
driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The
PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or
restraint, especially between cognition
and emotions. It imposes
an overarching strategy for managing working memory.
It is essential for thinking about multiple items with
different labels. It includes neurons that are
interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.
Once it has made a decision it signals
the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease
excitability of the PFC.
undermined allowing
uncontrolled emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. to
push through from the subconscious.
The PFC develops late in adolescence in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents: - Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
,
and is left unmyelinated is the fatty insulating material deployed by Schwann cells & oligodendrocytes, both types of glial cells, around axons to improve their conduction rate. In humans it is still occurring 25 years after birth. It has great impact on long axons, in neurons that project over long distances, where it helps brain inter-region signalling. The long development time of myelination allows for the later myelinated brain regions to be particularly shaped by the proximate environment.
while it is customized to the particular environment.
Blasts from the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
,
during the pubescent girl's mood swings, overwhelm the PFC,
leaving the adolescent without
adult logical constraints.
By age fifteen, girls are twice as likely to suffer from
depression than boys. It can be treated with cognitive
therapy and antidepressants.
During weeks two and three of the menstrual cycle there are
higher levels of androgens are a class of steroid hormones including testosterone, androstenedione and dihydrotestosterone. They are precursors of estrogens. .
These support estrogen in making girls prone to aggression, as
they become interested in asserting power over boys and other
girls.
Love and Trust
In short-term couplings, men chase and
women choose. But a long-term partnership is
complex: it can be pair-bonding is an increase in the strength of relationship between parents and parents and children in some species: prairie voles, bonobos - not monogamous, and humans. NIMH's Thomas Insel, Emory's Larry Young & Illinois's Sue Carter's research highlighted prairie voles, where pair-bonding is enabled by a genetic difference from montane voles in the operon controlling generation of the vasopressin receptor. Oxytocin is associated with pair bonding. There are: Higher levels of receptors in males (vasopressin) having lots of sex and in females (oxytocin) performing grooming & physical contact, Sex releases oxytocin in the nucleus accumbens of female prairie voles. Such pair-bonded males are less interested in other females. Insel, Young & Carter engineered: (1) Male mice brains to express the prairie vole version of the vasopressin receptor in their brains resulting in grooming and huddling with familiar females. (2) Male montane vole brains to add vasopressin receptors to the nucleus accumbens resulting in their being more socially affiliative with individual females. E.O. Wilson notes in humans the need to extend the bond out to support the long and costly development of their children has resulted in adjustments in genitalia and brains to encourage continued sexual activity to support and maintain pair-bonding.
- but not necessarily, it does reflect our hunter-gatherer
past on the African
savanna is the environment where hunter-gatherers primarily evolved. Its grassland supported large herbivores that could be hunted easily across the plains. Clumps of Acacia trees: with short trunks, and broad bows; & rocks supported places to hide from large carnivores. Streams, especially important in times of drought, and paths add to the signals enabling orientation. . Brizendine stresses that a girl's brain
drives the transformation to them being in love is a passionate emotion reflecting the risky agreement to commit resources to the long term activity of raising children. The genes ensure that once a person has chosen, the critical-thinking pathways shut down. That is especially necessary for women to ignore the uncertainty - they become more passionately in love than men. For both partners initial separations remove the oxytocin (and vasopressin in men) and dopamine rewards from touching & hugging, generating withdrawal driving the couple closer. The same circuits, driven again by oxytocin signalling, encourage a mother to fall in love with her newborn baby. . Signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. from a potential
partner:
This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and
heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism and its emergence are
discussed.
Evolution has captured these The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models and we still use them.
Over time the state of romantic love shifts to long-term
coupling as the dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
driven reward circuit activity reduces and attachment supports a stable sense of connection & calm to another person who provides load sharing, using the 'attachment network': pituitary, hypothalamus, adrenal glands, ACC, VTA, nucleus accumbens, PFC; initially generated in babies by norepinephrine from the locus ceruleus as long as corticosteroid levels are low, which deploys & responds to oxytocin (nucleus accumbens, VTA, amygdala, hippocampus), to maintain critical judgment about our partners, once dopamine from the VTA has reinforced the initial interest of the nucleus accumbens. The evolved attachment network is applied by birds, termed imprinting by conditioning advocates. But Harlow showed clinging in infant monkeys is innate and needed to achieve attachment. circuits
activate and are reinforced by mutually pleasurable and positive
experiences that generate oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. .
Brizendine uses prairie vole studies to The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
model:
- The impact of stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis.
- The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
:
females bond better under low stress, while males can
tolerate higher stress. Human males also respond to
physical stress by increasing interest in sex and bonding,
but females are turned off by stress - possibly because of cortisol is a glucocorticoid produced in the adrenal cortex of the adrenal glands. It: - Stimulates
- Gluconeogenesis to increase production of blood sugar
- Metabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates
- Suppresses the immune system.
- Decreases bone formation
- In excessive concentrations destroy synaptic connections in the: hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex; leading to flattened emotions and impaired memory.
blocking the
action of oxytocin.
- Genetic influence on monogamy - which is higher in prairie
voles than Montane voles, corresponding to a longer vasopressin developed by duplication and subsequent mutation of the vasotocin gene, along with oxytocin, during the initial formation of mammals. It acts as a hormone regulating water retention in the kidneys. It supports paternal behavior stimulated by a female giving birth. Sex releases vasopressin in the nucleus accumbens of male prairie voles. And prairie voles have more receptors in the accumbens than other voles supporting their pair bonding. This situation is similar in bonobos relative to chimps where it encourages social bonding - but not monogamy. Vasopressin is made in hypothalamic neurons which project to the posterior pituitary for release as a hormone. It is also a neuropeptide transmitting from hypothalamic projections to the ventral tegmentum, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal cortex. And it is made & secreted in other areas of the brain. Vasopressin enhances aggression in paternal prairie vole males. But the aggression is then maintained by social learning.
receptor, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal. When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure. In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel. The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. gene.
This association also holds in human males, which over the
population have 17 different lengths for the gene - with the
longest being associated with monogamy. Brizendine
notes that cheating while looking monogamous occurs in both
sexes of various species, including humans.
Brizendine notes that breaking up during a love affair alters
the brain state from the rewards of romantic love is a passionate emotion reflecting the risky agreement to commit resources to the long term activity of raising children. The genes ensure that once a person has chosen, the critical-thinking pathways shut down. That is especially necessary for women to ignore the uncertainty - they become more passionately in love than men. For both partners initial separations remove the oxytocin (and vasopressin in men) and dopamine rewards from touching & hugging, generating withdrawal driving the couple closer. The same circuits, driven again by oxytocin signalling, encourage a mother to fall in love with her newborn baby. to the
emotional are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. state of grief is an emotion which devastates those who have lost a loved one. Pinker suggests it is an internal Doomsday Machine. . The genes
encourage us to find a new partner where sex will induce more
dopamine and oxytocin based highs.
Sex: The Brain
Below the Belt
It takes three to ten times longer for a female than a male to
reach orgasm, in women, is likely an adaptation to ensure the most fit partner's sperm are the ones that reach and fertilize her egg. Women have more orgasm's with their most symmetric partners. Use of contraception and romantic passion did not increase the number of orgasms. The orgasm also increases the attachment between the partners. . The
nerves in the tip of the clitoris are connected directly to the
sexual pleasure centers of the brain. Females can only
trigger an orgasm when the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
has deactivated. Prior to that any worry can undermine the
process. Women need to be comfortable and have their feet
kept warm to feel like engaging in sex. A partner who they
don't yet trust could induce worry. Alcohol, a hot bath, a
vacation, can reduce the possibility of worry. When the
threshold is reached dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
,
oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. & endorphins
are released. As the orgasm subsides waves of oxytocin
cause the chest and face to flush, and she is enveloped by
contentment. Men are unlikely to detect these
signals. And they struggle to relate to the
interconnection of the psychological and physiological
aspects. For men, orgasms are simpler.
For the 4 out of 10 unfortunate females who have had bad prior
experiences with sex, recollections can reactivate the amygdala
undermining progress towards orgasm. And that is also true
of job stress or other worries.
Women respond to male pheromones differently over the menstrual cycle.
Their brains and noses are more sensitive when the estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
level surges,
just prior to ovulation. And those with partners prefer
the smell of, other, more dominant
males signals the power to hurt a rival. Maynard Smith & Parker explain that in group situations females compete for food and males compete for females. Maleness is a huge factor for violence. Fighting to the death is costly for all participants so instead they indicate: - Size and weapons to demonstrate who will win. Males who are, or look like, better fighters: Large heads, Big men, Height; gain in dominance.
- Political acumen to demonstrate they won't be pushed around and have the support of other powerful groups. Dominant males push other rivals aside and gain interest of females, enabling themselves to replicate more. Being a signal its authenticity can be challenged and so must be defended to remain credible. Hotheads leverage the doomsday machine to constrain rational challenges. Bands and cultures leverage honor. Youth and lack of resources reduce the power of rivals' political constraints.
, while single women showed no preference.
Women practicing infidelity are more likely to fake orgasm with
their regular partner. 10% of fathers are not genetically
related to their supposed offspring.
Testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic. is the
trigger for sexual desire
in both men and women. It stimulates the hypothalamus is essential to many instinctive operations of the body. It can be viewed as the executor of emotion: happiness, sadness, aggression, eroticism and mating, relaying the amygdala's responses to low level sensory signals. It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, parenting, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and similar body operations. Kandel notes it includes a nucleus containing two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates sex and mating. At the intersection neurons are active in both. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus applied to these neurons mating (weak) or aggression (danger) is activated. This probably contributes to sexual rage and is why some couples derive extra pleasure from sexual experiences following an argument. The hypothalamus's (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)-> amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus). It directly signals area 25. , igniting
erotic feelings and arousing sexual fantasies and physical
sensations in the erogenous zones. Rising testosterone is
a predictor of first intercourse. Progesterone is a steroid hormone. It: - Rarely directly effects areas of the brain. Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas.
- Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions. However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety. It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA.
- Decreases female sex drive during the second half of the menstrual cycle.
undermines the stimulating effect of testosterone.
Estrogen makes females receptive to sex and is required for
vaginal lubrication.
Men have more neurons dedicated to sex than women do. They
think about it far more often. They have to initiate
sexual activity. They also generate far higher
testosterone levels. Women's sexual interest also varies
over the menstrual cycle. And the stress of work also
reduces women's interest in having sex. But male partners
of work stressed women can feel unloved, rejected and jealous is an emotion driven by the large investment by parents in their children's development combined with a human sexual asymmetry: fertilization occurs inside the female's body, so a male can't be sure it is supporting its own ofspring. . That is
often a surprise to the women in the relationship.
The Mommy Brain
Motherhood results
in an attachment is John Bowlby's model of mother infant bonding. He argued that infants need: love, warmth, affection, responsiveness, stimulation, consistency, reliability; or they become anxious, depressed, and/or poorly attached adults. Evolutionarily, sociopaths may be highly successful as managers and leaders but they are probably anxious. Sapolsky notes the powerful association between murder rates and stopping pregnant girls from terminating unwanted pregnancies. Typical mothers also provide training on social conventions and their children's position in the group hierarchy. Children raised without a mother's support fail to understand social constraints and when to use social behaviors. And in the presence of unsupportive mothers newborns attach to negative stimuli. This response is explained by the SHRP. Abused children subsequently seek out abusive relationships as adults. And a percentage of infants abused by their mothers become abusive mothers.
between mother and child. And it alters the mother's brain
irreversibly. Hormones are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids: Cortisol; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors. The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. :
Oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. ; generated
during the pregnancy, the acts of childbirth, suckling, and
close contact between the mother and baby induce the
transformation. The mother becomes motivated, highly
attentive, and aggressively
protective of the baby.
Allocating time to work, self and family is a huge conflict for
mothers. Genes aim to shift the balance towards
reproduction.
The feel & smell of a newborn baby will stimulate 'Baby
lust' in a female after cradling the baby. The infant's
head carries pheromones that stimulate the female brain to
produce oxytocin, setting up The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
model's
of reality that encourage wanting babies.
During pregnancy the fetus and placenta generate hormonal signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. which enter the
shared blood supply and modify the mother's body and brain:
thirst & hunger centers are activated, the nose becomes
sensitive to chemicals in certain plants that can disrupt
development of the fetus. By the fifth month she can
detect the baby's movements. The mother's brain's smell,
hunger and thirst networks have enlarged, while the hypothalamus is essential to many instinctive operations of the body. It can be viewed as the executor of emotion: happiness, sadness, aggression, eroticism and mating, relaying the amygdala's responses to low level sensory signals. It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, parenting, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and similar body operations. Kandel notes it includes a nucleus containing two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates sex and mating. At the intersection neurons are active in both. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus applied to these neurons mating (weak) or aggression (danger) is activated. This probably contributes to sexual rage and is why some couples derive extra pleasure from sexual experiences following an argument. The hypothalamus's (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)-> amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus). It directly signals area 25. is no
longer triggering menstruation.
Progesterone is a steroid hormone. It: - Rarely directly effects areas of the brain. Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas.
- Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions. However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety. It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA.
- Decreases female sex drive during the second half of the menstrual cycle.
and estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
levels rise
protecting the mother from the very high levels of stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
hormones generated by
the fetus and placenta. She does not feel stressed.
The stress hormones ensure the pregnant woman remains vigilant
about her safety, nutrition and surroundings, although she is
also forgetful, distracted and preoccupied.
Between six months and the end of pregnancy the woman's brain
shrinks, although the cortex includes the paleocortex a thin sheet of cells that mostly process smell, archicortex and the neocortex. The cerebral cortex is a pair of large folded sheets of brain tissue, one on either side of the top of the head connected by the corpus callosum. It includes the occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes.
expands. In the final two weeks of pregnancy the brain
begins expanding again, deploying maternal circuits.
At birth a cascade of oxytocin signals the 'mommy brain' to
start. The fully developed fetus signals that it is ready
to be born, and the mother responds with a collapse of
progesterone. The oxytocin causes the uterus to
contract. As the baby's head moves through the birth
canal, it stimulates more oxytocin signals in the mother's
brain, causing lots of new connections between neurons.
The mother's sense of smell, hearing, touch and sight are
heightened. Dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward. Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP). The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly. Dopamine is released primarily by neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra. The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor. Dopamine signalling: - Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli. So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate. GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. This allows addictions to develop.
- Reflects the anticipation of reward. It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward. Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity. That explains context dependent cravings. And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding. The accumbens supports willpower. And dopamine
- Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex. That makes dopamine central to:
- Motivation. This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.
- The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards. To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens). Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing. Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.
- Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
- The receptor D4's gene shows high variability. The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.
- Dopamine is degraded by COMT. The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.
- Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT.
and oxytocin can generate a feeling of euphoria in the
mother. The brain is forever altered.
The mother will assimilate the key details of her newborn
baby. Soon the mother will attach supports a stable sense of connection & calm to another person who provides load sharing, using the 'attachment network': pituitary, hypothalamus, adrenal glands, ACC, VTA, nucleus accumbens, PFC; initially generated in babies by norepinephrine from the locus ceruleus as long as corticosteroid levels are low, which deploys & responds to oxytocin (nucleus accumbens, VTA, amygdala, hippocampus), to maintain critical judgment about our partners, once dopamine from the VTA has reinforced the initial interest of the nucleus accumbens. The evolved attachment network is applied by birds, termed imprinting by conditioning advocates. But Harlow showed clinging in infant monkeys is innate and needed to achieve attachment. to the baby and maternal aggression supports protection of newborns especially in breeds with high risks of infanticide. During late pregnancy, estrogen and progesterone increase maternal aggression by increasing oxytocin release in the brain. This outcome reflects the specific late pregnancy brain state and presence of both estrogen and progesterone.
will begin. She will develop relatively improved spatial memory is generated by hippocampal ensembles and the memory is altered and consolidated by reactivation during slow-wave sleep. , and
be more To benefit from shifts in the environment agents must be flexible. Being
sensitive to environmental signals
agents who adjust strategic priorities can constrain their
competitors.
flexible, adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary. and
courageous. She falls romantically in love is a passionate emotion reflecting the risky agreement to commit resources to the long term activity of raising children. The genes ensure that once a person has chosen, the critical-thinking pathways shut down. That is especially necessary for women to ignore the uncertainty - they become more passionately in love than men. For both partners initial separations remove the oxytocin (and vasopressin in men) and dopamine rewards from touching & hugging, generating withdrawal driving the couple closer. The same circuits, driven again by oxytocin signalling, encourage a mother to fall in love with her newborn baby.
with the baby. Oxytocin is released as the babies breast
feed, reducing the pain and generating feelings of
pleasure. These changes will be maintained while the
mother remains in physical contact with the child. The
changes caused by breast feeding induce fuzzy mellow thinking,
which reverts to normal after weaning. Often this new love
impacts the mother's desire for her
partner. Sex isn't important or needed. When mothers
wean they are advised to do it gradually so they don't suffer
from withdrawal.
Fathers also experience brain and hormonal changes during the
pregnancy. Pheromones, produced by the mother, make the
father's prolactin levels rise in the weeks before birth, and cortisol is a glucocorticoid produced in the adrenal cortex of the adrenal glands. It: - Stimulates
- Gluconeogenesis to increase production of blood sugar
- Metabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates
- Suppresses the immune system.
- Decreases bone formation
- In excessive concentrations destroy synaptic connections in the: hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex; leading to flattened emotions and impaired memory.
levels
double. In the first weeks after the birth the father's testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic. levels
drop by a third, and estrogen levels rise, to prepare the father
for bonding with the newborn. And the changes lower the
father's sex drive.
When mothers are placed under stress they can fail to attach
properly is John Bowlby's model of mother infant bonding. He argued that infants need: love, warmth, affection, responsiveness, stimulation, consistency, reliability; or they become anxious, depressed, and/or poorly attached adults. Evolutionarily, sociopaths may be highly successful as managers and leaders but they are probably anxious. Sapolsky notes the powerful association between murder rates and stopping pregnant girls from terminating unwanted pregnancies. Typical mothers also provide training on social conventions and their children's position in the group hierarchy. Children raised without a mother's support fail to understand social constraints and when to use social behaviors. And in the presence of unsupportive mothers newborns attach to negative stimuli. This response is explained by the SHRP. Abused children subsequently seek out abusive relationships as adults. And a percentage of infants abused by their mothers become abusive mothers. to their baby which can impact the trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. and security circuits
of the children. And through epi-genetic represent state surfaces within cells and eggs which can be operationally modified so as to provide a heritable structure. DNA, histones and other stable structures provide surfaces where these states may be setup. Egg carriers are in a particularly powerful position to induce epi-genetic changes. Sapolsky notes [childhood] events which persistently alter brain structure and behavior via epi-genetic mechanisms including: pair-bonding in prairie voles, as they first mate, is supported by changes in oxytocin & vasopressin receptor gene regulation in the nucleus accumbens.
effects, more generations can be impacted. If nurturing
grandparents are present, they can break the cycle of trust and
attachment issues. Similarly other people are able to
provide the nurturing that children need, without impacting the
children, which can reduce the stress on the mother.
Brizendine notes that resource predictability is essential for
good mothering. When the environment is unpredictable,
stress increases, oxytocin decreases, mothers struggle to
nurture and become fearful is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier.
and their babies show signs of depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; and become
less outgoing and positive in adolescence in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents: - Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
and
adulthood. Mothers, become focused on their children -
able to assess their children's emotions from non-verbal cues,
but this concentration means they need considerable support from
their partner, parents and friends to sustain a predictable
environment.
Emotion: The
Feeling Brain
Women are much better adapted to sensing emotions are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism. . They can mirror are part of the premotor cortex, responding to signals from the PFC and sending on signals to the motor cortex to drive muscles. This subset of pre-motor cortex neurons, also respond to observation of other higher animals performing the same act requested by the PFC. The mirroring can be abstract: See and hear activate same mirror neurons, Activate only when the action has the same intentionality; and none has been shown to be causally related yet. their
partner's expressions and movements and sense the emotions that
are occurring with their gut
feelings is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
- Focused on the impact of emotion
on decision making
- A participant in limbic
system operations
- Many human behaviors involve interactions between the
vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex. Part of decision making is
for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with
the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what
alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the
results of these somatic
marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.
- Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor
judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to
respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the
issues; and are overly controlled by the logical
contribution of the DLPFC.
. Males are typically not very effective at
this. Brizendine suggests women cry to signal when they
are upset to their male partners. That comes as a complete
surprise to most males. With these two different The agents in complex adaptive
systems (CAS) must model their
environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's
schematic operators and Samuel
modeling together support the indirect recording of past
successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn
how to succeed in the proximate environment.
models of reality, females can
conclude that males are emotionally insensitive, while males
wonder 'why their partner doesn't realize he loves her.'
Evolutionary
psychologists asserts that human culture reflects adaptations that developed during human's long hunter-gatherer past, living on the African savanna. Its implications are described in The Adapted Mind. Subsequent studies of the effects of selection on the human genome show significant changes due to our more recent history as well. speculate feeling
another's pain and rapidly reading emotional nuance
allowed hunter-gatherer
women advance warning of potential aggression
or other dangers, to protect themselves and their
children. But this also results in women startling more
easily and reacting more fearfully is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier. .
Brizendine explains that for males,
emotions are processed rationally, rather than with gut feel.
Males respond to emotions by avoiding them: Simon Baron-Cohen
suggests that Asperger is autism spectrum disorder. All these disorders are characterized by difficulty connecting with others. People who suffer from ASD show a reduced fusiform response to faces. ASD is linked to gene variants affecting oxytocin and vasopressin, to nongenetic mechanisms that silence the oxytocin receptor gene and to lower levels of the receptor itself. 's
reflects this with sufferers avoiding the pain emerged as a mental experience, Damasio asserts, constructed by the mind using mapping structures and events provided by nervous systems. But feeling pain is supported by older biological functions that support homeostasis. These capabilities reflect the organism's underlying emotive processes that respond to wounds: antibacterial and analgesic chemical deployment, flinching and evading actions; that occur in organisms without nervous systems. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were 'imageable'. Today, a wound induced by an internal disease is reported by old, unmyelinated C nerve fibers. A wound created by an external cut is signalled by evolutionarily recent myelinated fibers that result in a sharp well-localized report, that initially flows to the dorsal root ganglia, then to the spinal cord, where the signals are mixed within the dorsal and ventral horns, and then are transmitted to the brain stem nuclei, thalamus and cerebral cortex. The pain of a cut is located, but it is also felt through an emotive response that stops us in our tracks. Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so. Fear of pain is a significant contributor to female anxiety. Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US. Pain is mediated by the thalamus and nucleus accumbens, unless undermined by sleep deprivation. of looking at emotion
laden faces are neurons which respond when the features of a face are presented to the retina. Faces are recognized by dedicated neural networks consisting of face cells grouped into 6 patches of 10,000 cells on each side of the brain in the cortex just behind the ear. The face cells respond abstractly to the dimensions and features of faces. Each face cell responds to a combination of facial dimensions, creating a holistic representation. A single face cell represents a vector of about 6 dimensions. Two hundred cells can together represent the 50 dimensions which are required to identify a face in a face space where an infinite number of faces can be represented. Cal tech's Chang & Tsao argue there is an average face at the origin of the face space and each actual face is represented as differences from it in the face space (Jun 2017). . Men
don't like being confronted with the helplessness they feel
regarding responding usefully to their partner's crying, sadness is a feeling, which can induce empathy and compassion. It can last for days, in contrast to the emotions, fear & anger. Mild sadness induces a beneficial state in the brain: improved judgment, memory, motivation, and more socially sensitive and generous. and despair.
When in trouble, men work things out alone. Women have to
push hard to get males to process emotions, except for threats
of abandonment or violence, and anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend. When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. Anger is mostly experienced as a rapid wave that then quickly dissipates. When it is repressed, for example by a strong moral sense (superego), it can sustain, inducing long term stress. .
Women are expecting the same level of social support they
get all the time from their girlfriends. Brizendine
notes that women
remember these emotional episodes in more detail and retain
them for longer than men do. This is because their amygdalae contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
are more
sensitive to emotional nuance, more often activating the hippocampus is a part of the medial temporal lobe of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory. It includes the dentate gyrus. Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation. The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation. It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new explicit memories. The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point. Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits. It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky. Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy. He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. Specific cells within the hippocampus and its gateway, the entorhinal cortex, are compromised by Alzheimer's disease. It directly signals area 25. to tag the
event.
Men have a larger amygdala while women have a relatively larger
PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
- The front part of the frontal
lobe of the cerebral
cortex. It evolved
most recently. During adolescence
when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.
The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral;
decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex;
and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC
circuits track internal reward
driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The
PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or
restraint, especially between cognition
and emotions. It imposes
an overarching strategy for managing working memory.
It is essential for thinking about multiple items with
different labels. It includes neurons that are
interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.
Once it has made a decision it signals
the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease
excitability of the PFC.
, resulting in men
expressing anger more readily. Especially after puberty,
male amygdala's have more testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic. receptors, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal. When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure. In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel. The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. , stimulating and
increasing its response to anger. Women are more sensitive
to rupturing relationships and the risk of aggression, so they
avoid a rush to anger. Once they commit to anger it will
be supported verbally.
The possibility of pain, or a lack of safety, makes women
fearful. The brain learns
from experience is the basolateral amygdala, a relatively recently evolved part of the amygdala which learns stimuli to fear and then signals the central amygdala. It recieves inputs from all sensory networks. Some are fast pathways that allow the BLA to detect and respond when the sensory cortex is unaware. But it is far less accurate than the cortex. The BLA's learning involves increased excitability of synapses coupling the BLA and central amygdala. This is due to gene driven: Increased levels of growth factors promoting new connections, more receptors for excitatory neurotransmitters in dendritic spines. The BLA also responds to signals from the frontal cortex that a stimulus no longer appears frightening. This subset of BLA cells respond inhibiting the associating subset. Stress and glucocorticoids increase levels of CRH and BDNF encouraging the building of new dendrites and synapses. , about what to fear. Females find it
hard to suppress the anticipation of danger or pain, activating
the amygdala, resulting in anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards. Anxiety disorders are now seen as a related cluster, including PTSD, panic attacks, and phobias. Major anxiety, is typically episodic, correlated with increased activity in the amygdala, results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density. Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women. Women are four times more likely to suffer from anxiety. Louann Brizendine concludes this helps prepare mothers, so they are ready to protect their children. Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. Sufferers of mild autism often develop anxiety disorders. Treatments for anxiety differ. 50 to 70% of people with generalized anxiety respond to drugs increasing serotonin concentrations, where there is relief from symptoms: worry, guilt; linked to depression, which are treated with SSRIs (Prozac). Cognitive anxiety (extreme for worries and anxious thoughts) is also helped by yoga. But many fear-related disorders respond better to psychotherapy: psychoanalysis, and intensive CBT. Tara Brach notes that genuine freedom from fear is enabled by taking refuge. .
Women are four times more at risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty.
of this, across all cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal. CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism. Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering. Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling. Damasio notes prokaryotes and social insects have developed cultural social behaviors. Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset. He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised. Culture: - Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation. Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain. Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes. Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach. And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations! PMS symptoms vary by culture.
- Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play. So parents try to control their children's peer group.
- Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc.
- Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate.
- Can transform dominance into honor. There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures. Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian.
- Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.
- Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire.
- Can provide varying levels of support for innovation. Damasio suggests culture is influenced by feelings:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting
detection and diagnosis of homeostatic
deficiencies, identifying
desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural
instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments
required by the cultural process over time
- Produces consciousness according to Dennet.
,
because it allows them to respond quickly to protect their
children. The intense sensitivity also increases the
likelihood of depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult;
in girls and women in their reproductive years. Severe stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
often induces
depression in women whose families display a genetic
disposition. Estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen: - Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
's
contribution, altering: circadian rhythms is a CAS process that has a 24 hour oscillation driven by a circadian clock. In humans there are many such processes: sleep cycle (Dec 2015), liver, metabolism, immune system, oxidative stress; ,
sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. cycles; indicates to
Brizendine why seasonal affective disorder impacts three times
more women than men. Other hormonal events: pregnancy,
postpartum depression, premenstrual
syndrome is Louann Brizendine's label for of patient's with an extreme form of PMS, who felt undermined by their hormones on some days so that they couldn't work or speak to anyone for fear of bursting into tears or responding angrily. Their future looked bleak, they hated themselves, and their lives, and the thoughts felt legitimate. At other times they were engaged, intelligent, productive and optimistic. , perimenopause; disrupt the female brain's
emotional balance requiring chemical or hormonal
rebalancing.
Brizendine concludes women have different emotional: This page discusses the interdependence of perception and
representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter
and Mitchell's research with Copycat is
reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well
known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed
as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and
abstractly.
perceptions, memories; to
men, resulting in many misunderstandings. And she notes
each hormonal transition introduces additional
possibilities.
The Mature Female Brain
Brizendine explains that menopausal women, feel that their
attitude to the world has changed. She details one patient
who, having spent her prior life
supporting needy, self-absorbed people, decided to change
everything, including divorcing her husband. 65% of
divorces after age 50 are initiated by women. This was
because:
- What had previously been important: connection, approval,
children, keeping the family together; no longer was.
- The attachments is John Bowlby's model of mother infant bonding. He argued that infants need: love, warmth, affection, responsiveness, stimulation, consistency, reliability; or they become anxious, depressed, and/or poorly attached adults. Evolutionarily, sociopaths may be highly successful as managers and leaders but they are probably anxious. Sapolsky notes the powerful association between murder rates and stopping pregnant girls from terminating unwanted pregnancies. Typical mothers also provide training on social conventions and their children's position in the group hierarchy. Children raised without a mother's support fail to understand social constraints and when to use social behaviors. And in the presence of unsupportive mothers newborns attach to negative stimuli. This response is explained by the SHRP. Abused children subsequently seek out abusive relationships as adults. And a percentage of infants abused by their mothers become abusive mothers.
that she had been driven by had suddenly vanished.
- The shifts in brain state caused by estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently. Estrogen:
- Is generated in the ovaries. It supports the generation of oxytocin, and so is associated with attachment, nurturing and other affiliative behaviors.
- Supports verbal memory. Removal of ovaries without immediate estrogen replacement therapy degrades verbal memory performance. The HT reduces age-related shrinkage of the PFC, parietal cortex, and temporal lobe in women, and made them less depressed and angry.
- Supports mitochondrial operation in the blood vessels of the brain.
- Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state. There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects. The level of each type of receptor is independently regulated. Different receptor variants are associated with:
- Higher rates of anxiety among women
- Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
- Is essential for vaginal lubrication
- Facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
- Has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties improving response to stress
and progesterone is a steroid hormone. It: - Rarely directly effects areas of the brain. Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas.
- Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions. However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety. It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA.
- Decreases female sex drive during the second half of the menstrual cycle.
waves
have been replaced by a steady communication between the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral. It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust, heart rate, and suffering from the insula cortex, allowing it to orchestrate emotion. It connects strongly to attention focusing networks. It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision making circuitry of the frontal lobes. It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors. During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning. It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required. Its central nucleus projects to the BNST. It signals the locus ceruleus. It directly signals area 25. The amygdala: - Promotes aggression. Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage. It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.
- Participates in disgust
- Perceives fear promoting stimuli, focusing our attention on these. In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months. Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments).
- Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids. Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more.
- Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety and makes us distracted. It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations. The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment. The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color. The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion. The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon.
- Sees suffering of others as increasingly salient with loving-kindness meditation practice, Goleman & Davidson explain.
- Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure.
- Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens. The amygdala turns off during orgasm.
- Uses but is not directly involved in vision.
and PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
- The front part of the frontal
lobe of the cerebral
cortex. It evolved
most recently. During adolescence
when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.
The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral;
decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex;
and social behavior. It regulates feelings. Different PFC
circuits track internal reward
driven strategies and externally signalled advice. The
PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or
restraint, especially between cognition
and emotions. It imposes
an overarching strategy for managing working memory.
It is essential for thinking about multiple items with
different labels. It includes neurons that are
interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.
Once it has made a decision it signals
the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it. Glucocorticoids decrease
excitability of the PFC.
.
- The hormones are no longer present in the quantities and transitions
over the month to: Ramp the communication
circuits and emotion
circuits, induce the drive to
tend and care, previously generated by oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else. The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening out-group. Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions. It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking. Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them. It is associated with pair bonding. Brizendine explains that oxytocin and dopamine production are stimulated by ovarian estrogen at the onset of puberty, encouraging girls to connect and bond with their girlfriends, reducing stress, and exclude the out-group. It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child. Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin. Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces. Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy. And another receptor gene variant is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships. Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants. Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior. Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning. Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD.
, and the urge
to avoid conflict; disappeared, once the children left home
and physical contact with them stopped. Her need to keep the
peace, disapeared. Her husband's habitualized demands,
or cheating, became irritations.
Perimenopause, when for 24 months the ovaries sporadically make
estrogen before stopping completely, starting around age 45, can
be very traumatic for about 30% of women. The female brain
becomes less receptive to estrogen, initiating a cascade of
symptoms: hot flashes indicating estrogen withdrawal has altered
the hypothalamus is essential to many instinctive operations of the body. It can be viewed as the executor of emotion: happiness, sadness, aggression, eroticism and mating, relaying the amygdala's responses to low level sensory signals. It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, parenting, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and similar body operations. Kandel notes it includes a nucleus containing two distinct populations of neurons: one that regulates aggression and one that regulates sex and mating. At the intersection neurons are active in both. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus applied to these neurons mating (weak) or aggression (danger) is activated. This probably contributes to sexual rage and is why some couples derive extra pleasure from sexual experiences following an argument. The hypothalamus's (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)-> amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus). It directly signals area 25. 's
heat-regulating cells, joint pain, altered sex drive from
reduced testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes, ovaries, and adrenal glands, in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky. That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous. High testosterone in a fetus masculinizes the brain. Males generate 10 times the amount. It is the trigger for sexual desire in males and females, stimulating the hypothalamus. Testosterone's effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged). The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates. Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor. This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal. The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex. But the detected genetic influences are small. Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus. Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons. This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them. Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference. Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety. And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone. People become overconfident and overly optimistic. ,
anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards. Anxiety disorders are now seen as a related cluster, including PTSD, panic attacks, and phobias. Major anxiety, is typically episodic, correlated with increased activity in the amygdala, results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density. Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women. Women are four times more likely to suffer from anxiety. Louann Brizendine concludes this helps prepare mothers, so they are ready to protect their children. Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. Sufferers of mild autism often develop anxiety disorders. Treatments for anxiety differ. 50 to 70% of people with generalized anxiety respond to drugs increasing serotonin concentrations, where there is relief from symptoms: worry, guilt; linked to depression, which are treated with SSRIs (Prozac). Cognitive anxiety (extreme for worries and anxious thoughts) is also helped by yoga. But many fear-related disorders respond better to psychotherapy: psychoanalysis, and intensive CBT. Tara Brach notes that genuine freedom from fear is enabled by taking refuge. , and depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult;. And
the brain's response to glucose alters, causing energy surges,
as well as cravings for carbs. The day of maximum
fertility drifts unpredictably. It can be treated with
estrogen and an antidepressant or SSRI is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor:
- Is a class of drugs used to treat anxiety
and major depression.
- These limit reuptake of the modulatory neurotransmitter
serotonin into the presynaptic
vesicles in effect
- Increases the level of active serotonin. But
boosting serotonin does not help all patients get
better. And SSRIs increase serotonin levels very
rapidly, but people's mood and synaptic
connection levels do not alter for weeks.
- Use increases the risk of:
Suicide in children & adolescents, Osteoporosis, Bleeding by
interacting with warfarin
& aspirin, problems for
patients with severe pre-existing cardiovascular disease.
.
For those perimenopausal women whose testosterone drops to near
zero, their interest in sex shifts to irritation. That can
precipitate relationship problems, but is treatable with a
patch, pill or gel.
Many women fear their husband's retirement will remove much of
their freedom and space. This fear often leads to stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. - The short term response to the stressor
- activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is
- long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:
- Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
- Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.
- Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
- BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.
- Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
- Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
- Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
- Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)
- During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
- Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.
, worry and failure to
sleep facilitates salient memory formation and removal of non-salient memories. The five different stages of the nightly sleep cycles support different aspects of memory formation. The sleep stages follow Pre-sleep and include: Stage one characterized by light sleep and lasting 10 minutes, Stage two where theta waves and sleep spindles occur, Stage three and Stage four together represent deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) with delta waves, Stage five is REM sleep; sleep cycles last between 90-110 minutes each and as the night progresses SWS times reduce and REM times increase. Sleep includes the operation of synapse synthesis and maintenance through DNA based activity including membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation and cholesterol and protein synthesis. Sleep also controls inflammation (Jan 2019) Sleep deprivation undermines the thalamus & nucleus accumbens management of pain. , since they do not see
they can renegotiate that agreement. Brizendine asserts
they can and they must do so.
Post menopausal women can benefit from the positive feedback of
a rewarding job. And they typically enjoy supporting
their grandchildren, which can also reduce the stress on the new mother.
The shift in hormones alters the brain regions that respond to
these signals. The neurons that depended on estrogen soon
shrivel up. Women who had estrogen replacement therapy
soon after removal of their ovaries maintained their memory in the brain includes functionally different types: Declarative, or explicit, (episodic and semantic), Implicit, Procedural, Spatial, Temporal, Verbal; Hebb suggested that glutamate receptive neurons learn by (NMDA channel based) synaptic strengthening: short term memory. This was shown to happen for explicit memory formation in the hippocampus. This strengthening is sustained by subsequent LTP. The non-real-time learning and planning processes operate through consciousness using the working memory structures, and then via sleep, the salient ones are consolidated while the rest are destroyed and garbage collected. function. But
women who did not have the treatment had declining verbal memory occurs in the sleep supported brain in the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, and temporal lobes. The brain can compensate for sleep deprivation by leveraging the parietal lobes, left middle frontal gyrus and right interrior frontal gyrus. .
The Future of
the Female Brain
Brizendine concludes that the 21st century provides an
opportunity for women to leverage their new economic power,
understanding of their unique biology and control over their
bodies to create a new paradigm where a new social contract will
take them and their needs into account, for the sake of our
children and each woman's future.
CAS support for the female brain:
- Sapolsky's
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky
developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time
spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he
outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for
scientific research on behavior.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's
details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured
to successfully enter niches we now occupy.
review of behavior:
- Sapolsky agrees that sex
differences complicate the science.
- Sapolsky notes the confused
sexual strategies of humans.
- Sapolsky describes a general
architecture for how the frontal cortex of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain. It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex. Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do. The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task. It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success. It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower. The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information. The frontal cortex tracks rules. Over a lifetime, that builds into a costly activity. Once it tires, responses become less prosocial. But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum. The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations. The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies. The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation. It does not complete development until the mid-20s. It includes spindle neurons. It is easily damaged. Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system.
integrates emotion are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.
and reason is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. to
make effective
decisions integrates situational context, state and signals to prioritize among strategies and respond in a timely manner. It occurs in all animals, including us and our organizations: - Individual human decision making includes conscious and unconscious aspects. Situational context is highly influential: supplying meaning to our general mechanisms, & for robots too. Emotions are important in providing a balanced judgement. The adaptive unconscious interprets percepts quickly supporting 'fast' decision making. Conscious decision making, supported by the: DLPFC, vmPFC and limbic system; can use slower autonomy. The amygdala, during unsettling or uncertain social situations, signals the decision making regions of the frontal lobe, including the orbitofrontal cortex. The BLA supports rejecting unacceptable offers. Moral decisions are influenced by a moral decision switch. Sleeping before making an important decision is useful in obtaining the support of the unconscious in developing a preference. Word framing demonstrates the limitations of our fast intuitive decision making processes. And prior positive associations detected by the hippocampus, can be reactivated with the support of the striatum linking it to the memory of a reward, inducing a bias into our choices. Prior to the development of the PFC, the ventral striatum supports adolescent decision making. Neurons involved in decision making in the association areas of the cortex are active for much longer than neurons participating in the sensory areas of the cortex. This allows them to link perceptions with a provisional action plan. Association neurons can track probabilities connected to a choice. As evidence is accumulated and a threshold is reached a choice is made, making fast thinking highly adaptive. Diseases including: schizophrenia and anorexia; highlight aspects of human decision making.
- Organisations often struggle to balance top down and distributed decision making: parliamentry government must use a process, health care is attempting to improve the process: checklists, end-to-end care; and include more participants, but has systemic issues, business leaders struggle with strategy.
.
- Pinker
Computational
theory of the mind and evolutionary
psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which
to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its
relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by
natural selection 'building out'
specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs
we call the mind.
He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from
psychology regarding: The visual
system - an example of natural
selections solutions to the sensory challenges
of inverse
modeling of our
environment; Intensions - where
he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers -
making sense of the objects
they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural
selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are
essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's
strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other
people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war.
These conclusions allow him to understand the development and
maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor,
Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments
within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved
amplifiers: Globalization,
Cliodynamics, The green revolution
and resource
bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the
drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.
The implications are discussed.
includes a review of visual perception.
- Damasio
Antonio Damasio argues
that ancient
& fundamental homeostatic processes,
built into
behaviors and updated by evolution
have resulted in the emergence
of nervous systems and feelings. These
feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general
systems supporting enteric
operation, are later ubiquitously
integrated into the 'images'
built by the minds of higher animals
including humans.
Damasio highlights the separate
development of the body frame in the building of
minds.
Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds
supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of
emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the
end-to-end
integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers
hard problem of consciousness.
Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures
and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the
cultural creative process, linking culture to
homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the
development of tools
to improve our lives. But the results of the
creative process have added
stresses to our lives.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from
the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.
Each of the [super]organisms
discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems:
- Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns
well with CAS theory.
- Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS
examples.
shows
- How the
This page reviews the implications of reproduction initially
generating a single initialized child cell. For
multi-cellular organisms this 'cell' must contain all the germ-line schematic
structures including for organelles and multi-generational epi-genetic
state. Any microbiome
is subsequently integrated during the innovative deployment of
this creative event. Organisms with skeletal
infrastructure cannot complete the process of creation of an
associated adult mind, until the proximate environment has been
sampled during development.
The mechanism and resulting strategic options are
discussed.
organism is an integral
whole. He sees the stomach as
the first brain. Chemical, and various neural,
signals link feelings are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture: - As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
from the stomach with the rest of the body including the
brain.
- That episodic memory is the memory of conscious experiences. The entorhinal cortex's place cells record both space AND time details so that the memory stream can be reconstructed episodically. Damasio notes that feelings are indirect aspects of the recalled stream, and how positive or negative the memory is can alter over time.
includes
the feelings are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture: - As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
that
were present. Since females experience the emotions
of a situation they will build more robust 'images.'
- Boy's genes were getting
them ready to leave the band, in adolescence in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents:
- Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
, and
push their way into another.
- E.
O. Wilson
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported
the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man
building cultures and
later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson
identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these
are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a
change of approach.
He:
- Explores creativity:
how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer,
enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the
evening around the campfire. He notes the power of
fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing
signature of aesthetic
surprise.
- Looks at the current limitations of the
humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect.
- Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and
culture:
- Ultimate causes viewed
through art, & music
- The bedrock of:
- Ape senses and emotions,
- Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied
by humanities,
&
- Exponential change in science and
technology.
- How the breakthrough from
our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat,
supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory &
language.
- Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution.
- The impact on human nature.
- Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are
destroying.
- Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes,
exploration, irony, and
considers the potential for a third enlightenment,
supported by cooperative
action of humanities and science
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the
perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory:
- The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework
for representing the cultural CAS while
- Wilson's desire
to integrate the humanities and science gains support from
viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS.
describes the daily life
of hunter-gatherer
tribes, including the cooperative jobs of
hunting & gathering, and the evening campfire
communications which supported language and creativity.
- Levitin
describes how performing
and dancing to music is a complex emergent capability supported by sexual selection and generating pleasure. It transforms the sensing of epiphenomena: Contour, Rhythm, Tempo, Timbre; to induce salient representations: Harmony, Key, Loudness, Melody, Meter, Pitch, and perceptions: Reverberation - echo; which allow musicians: Elton John, Elvis Presley; to show their fitness: superior coordination, creativity, adolescent leadership, stamina; true for birds and humans. Levitin showed that listening to music causes a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: auditory cortex, frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, and finally the mesolimbic system, culminating in the nucleus accumbens. And he found the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout the session. He argues music mimics some of the features of language and conveys some of the same emotions. The brain regions pulse with the beat and predict the next one. As the music is heard it is modeled and generates dopamine rewards for matching each beat and noting creative jokes in the rhythm. The cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized.
signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. genetic
health: sustained energy, powerful muscles, coordination; to
potential romantic partners.
- Parents are designed
to decide how
to allocate their scarce resources amongst their children.
A mother will decide if she has the resources to support a
newborn, before attaching is John Bowlby's model of mother infant bonding. He argued that infants need: love, warmth, affection, responsiveness, stimulation, consistency, reliability; or they become anxious, depressed, and/or poorly attached adults. Evolutionarily, sociopaths may be highly successful as managers and leaders but they are probably anxious. Sapolsky notes the powerful association between murder rates and stopping pregnant girls from terminating unwanted pregnancies. Typical mothers also provide training on social conventions and their children's position in the group hierarchy. Children raised without a mother's support fail to understand social constraints and when to use social behaviors. And in the presence of unsupportive mothers newborns attach to negative stimuli. This response is explained by the SHRP. Abused children subsequently seek out abusive relationships as adults. And a percentage of infants abused by their mothers become abusive mothers.
as explained by Trivers's theory of parent
offspring conflict is Robert Trivers theory to explain the allocation of parental resources to various offspring, from the implications of genetics on the family. Observing that children want to take more than what their parents want to give Trivers concluded a parent should aim to transfer resources depending on the relative benefits to each child and the costs, since each child has the same percentage of the parent's genes. But each child shares only fifty percent of their genes with their siblings so should aim to get resources until the benefit to the others is twice the cost to the child. And the parent may keep back some resources for allocation to further planned offspring. A variety of conflicts ensue: - In the womb the fetus tries to capture nutrients from the mother at the expense of future children. It ties up the mother's insulin to increase the blood sugar available to it and placing the mother at risk of diabetes. Fathers can assist their offspring in this 'fight with the mother' by supplying imprinted genes that help the offspring capture resources.
- At birth mothers must decide whether to let the baby die. This practice is cross cultural but is considered a depravity by present Western culture. That is probably due to the West having captured a majority of the world's resources for centuries.
- Infants use cuteness to encourage parental investment. A mother's attachment delays until it is clear that the baby will live.
- Infants cry to demand milk. Until weaned the mother won't ovulate limiting her future reproductive potential.
- Young children are in conflict with their father over access to their mother.
- Children are in a position to develop paradoxical tactics to push for more resource allocation.
- Older children may have sexual conflicts with their parents, especially their fathers. Fathers compete with sons for sexual partners in many societies. But this competition is not for their mother.
- Adult children may conflict with their parents over allocation of family resources. This has led to murder.
- Parents attempt to train children to assist the parent's social interests. The implication is that children are wary of their parent's suggestions and typically pay more attention to the advice of their peer group according to Judith Harris.
- Parents sell or trade their children. The price paid for a daughter will likely depend on her virginity. Hence fathers take an interest in their daughters' sexuality.
.
- Riso
and Hudson frame personality describes the operation of the mind from the perspective of psychological models and tests based on them. Early 'Western' models of personality resulted in a simple segmentation noting the tension between: individual desires and group needs, and developing models and performing actions. Dualistic 'Eastern' philosophies promote the legitimacy of an essence which Riso & Hudson argue is hidden within a shell of personality types and is only reached by developing presence. The logic of a coherent essence is in conflict with the evolved nature of emotions outlined by Pinker. Terman's studies of personality identified types which Friedman and Martin link to healthy and unhealthy pathways. Current psychiatric models highlight at least five key aspects:
- Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains mental dynamism from socializing or retiring
- Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
- Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
- Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
- Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant.
Enneagrams define personality
types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever,
Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast,
Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of
childhood driven wounds.
The Enneagram becomes
a tool to enable interested people to transform from the
emotionally wounded base, hidden within
the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence.
Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each
of us adopts an induced Basic Desire
of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will
support presence and
undermine the identification
that supports the armor of the type.
The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type
armor:
- Triadic self
revealing: Instinctive,
feeling, thinking; childhood needs
that became significant wounds
- Social style
groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for
managing inner conflict
- Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for
defending childhood wounds
Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual
distortions reflected in the interests of the variants.
The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development:
unhealthy, average, healthy,
liberation; including their
current center of gravity,
steriotypical social role,
wake-up call, leaden rule, red
flag, and direction
of integration and disintegration.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models
presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures
in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven
by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family
and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be
constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies.
using the Enneagram. This
defines nine
personality types that includes
the helper.
The Female Brain is a focused book highlighting key details of
women's psychology and framing them with underlying evolution,
neuroscience and endocrinology.
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