Biology of Mind

Starting during the mid-18th century, several schools of thought sprung up in relation to the budding field of modern criminology. The first school of thought, the Classical School, was developed by Cesare Beccaria. Beccaria’s book, On Crimes and Punishments, and Other Writings, written in 1764, outlines the major components of the Classical School (Beccaria 1764, Ambroise 2006). The idea that everyone has his or her own free will is the first component. Beccaria also believed that humans are hedonistic, that is we seek pleasure and do what we can to avoid pain.

My review for this week was spurred by a friend who is traveling to Europe over break this winter. She will only be there for two weeks, and wants to take full advantage of every day she can, and was slightly bummed out because she knows she will be jet lagged for at least the first day. That got me wondering about the particulars of ‘jet leg’ and why it occurs, and if there is any way to ease the transition.

Evan Krueger
Anthro 619
12/4/08
Review #13

Bob, Peter. Palus, Milian. Susta, Marek. Glaslova, Katerine. EEG phase synchronization in patients with paranoid schizophrenia. Neuroscience Letters, 2008. Volume 447, pages 73-77.

I started thinking about beauty and our perceptions of people based on beauty and attractiveness after reading an article review by another student. That article motivated me to look into attractiveness and how our brain’s perceive it, and the implications of these perceptions. With that in mind, I found the article by Chen et al. that looks at facial asymmetry, which is an asymmetry of facial beauty, and whether it can be attributed to a perceptual insight or is in the physiognomy of the face being observed. This question of perception versus physiognomy is termed the observer vs.

As if Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) was not strange enough to begin with (see previous blogs), this article I found has to take the cake. While BCI has provided me with some hope as to neuroprosthetics and the possibility that quadriplegic individuals might regain use of new limbs by simply thinking, other uses of similar technology have taken a very different turn. While definitely not going to save lives, author Keisuke Oki describes a new video game that uses the brain’s waves (via EEG) in order to play.

This article is an article supporting a previous post of mine on the effects of vaccinations on the development of autism.

All over the country, public policy regarding vaccinations and autism has been affected by a strongly held belief in some sectors that these treatments directly result in the diagnosis of autism in children, regardless of numerous studies that suggest otherwise.

Two weeks ago, I read an article on how to prevent memory loss, and I decided to continue that subject this week. “Jogging Your Memory (mental discipline in old age),” by Anne Underwood was published in Newsweek in December of 2007. This article discusses hypotheses for memory loss and possible mechanisms to prevent this.

Diffusion tensor imaging is a topic that remains abstruse for many people, including some of the neuroscientists that plan studies around DTI; a grasp of physics is not necessary to perform a DTI study, a versed technician is necessary. Andy Alexander et al., here at UW-Madison, gave a solid review of the mathematics, method, and capabilities of DTI in “Diffusion Tensor Imaging of the Brain” published in Neurotherapeutics: The Journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics.

The characteristic exaggerations found in infant directed speech have also been said to occur in pet directed speech. The specific differences between these two types of speech are not well known. This experiment set out to find the specific acoustic differences between infant directed compared to pet directed speech.

Role-playing is used in all sorts of therapeutic scenarios, from marriage counseling to criminals to angry adolescents. The actor assumes the role of spouse, victim or parent in order to give the patient a sense of how their actions affect others.

A more recent article by Fukei and Toyoshima argues that music may facilitate the regeneration of neurons and contribute to neural plasticity. Based on studies that music alters levels of Cortisol, Testosterone, and Estrogen, and music therapy studies that have shown positive mood and cognitive recovery responses in post-stroke victims, the authors hypothesize that music listening may contribute to the regeneration and repair of neurons by adjusting the secretion levels of these and other hormones and their receptor genes and related proteins.

This paper states that human decision-making is influenced strongly by other people’s behavior, and suggests that the same is true in animals. Individual animals use cues in other animal’s behavior to gain information. The authors state that the use of this “public information” is widespread taxonomically and that it can increase the fitness of animals, leading to cultural evolution.

While I personally am not an avid “gamer”, I do still keep an ear out for interesting games out on the horizon. Recently, a game has come out that seems to be interacting with some peoples’ proprioception- the sense of body via the field of view. In the game “Mirror’s Edge” the appearance of the character’s arms and legs when running apparently add enough reality to the viewers that they can lose themselves in the game and become motion sick on the perceived “reality”. This phenomena is well explained in Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn, Yvonne A. W.

For my review this week I read an article that discussed the use of numbers in various animal species. For a long time it was thought that animals were far from astute mathematicians but this idea has been proven wrong. When considering the importance of numbers in nature, it makes sense that animals would have some mathematical skill: they must calculate the average rates of regrowth in food patches to determine whether it is worth moving to a new location and when facing competition animals often stick to the rule of "strength in numbers".

This study looks at individuals with anorexia and the amount of perfectionism evident in their actions through their daily lives. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by demonstrating severe weight loss, fear of weight gain, and a preoccupation with body appearance. Previous studies have suggested that anorexia nervosa patients score higher on perfectionism, even after they have had long-term weight recovery.

I reviewed another article which looked at the nature vs. nurture issue with regards to music. Is the recognition of certain types of music an innate mechanism, or is taught to infants as they grow up in certain environments and cultures? An article entitled, “Infant Learning: Music and the Baby’s Brain” presented a few studies that looked at the ability of infants to distinguish between certain musical sounds and beats and various languages to look at this question.

This article is concerned with the ways in which people discuss and think about non-natural concepts such as God. Numerous scholars both before and after the publication of this article have grappled with religious and supernatural concepts and their relation to the brain in order to sift out the potentially universal ways in which we construct belief systems. The anthropomorphizing non-natural concepts – like God – is an interesting example because it suggests a struggle that we are all engaged in to conceptualize ideas and phenomena that reach beyond our natural and intuitive experiences.

Is there an association between autism and vaccinations provided to children at a young age?

This week I want to completely diverge from what I have been talking about and look at the psychology of beauty. The article I am reviewing is actually a review of literature on analyzing beauty and it talks about some really interesting points.

With many articles focusing on Parkinson’s Disease onset, development and progression, I was curious about PD treatment options – besides the standard physical therapy and medication. It seems as though PD treatments have been stuck in the 1900’s, where physical therapy was the only option. With all of the technological advances, findings on environmentally induced PD and PD gene sequence identification, shouldn’t there be a more recent treatment option?

It is a fact that in order to stay healthy one must eat right and exercise regularly, there are no substitutes for either. But a new study suggests that all one has to do is have the right mind set, and a healthy body will emerge. Though it’s not quite that simple, recent findings suggest that the mind is capable of manipulating the body to lower blood pressure and shrink waist lines. The power of placebos has been proven before, but only on “subjective findings”, meaning it can influence one’s perception or sense of awareness (Spiegel 2008).

Chen et al. (2008) examined the influence of long-term compulsive treadmill exercise on the hedonic value of MDMA in mice. Previous research has focused on the how exercise influences the modulating effects of the dopaminergic motor system, therefore the investigators decided that it is reasonable that exercise might influence the dopaminergic motivation system. Koob et al. (2003) had previously demonstrated that the mesolimbic dopaminergic system was involved in reward-related motivation.

Memory is one of the most crucial areas of psychological research, considering that almost every person of every occupation requires use of their memory during work and other aspects of their life. Because memory is so important to people, it would be beneficial to maximize its potential. One recent area of research consists of studying the effects of chewing gum on memory. A study conducted by Wilkinson, Scholey and Wesnes (2002), was the first to confirm that chewing gum increases the performance of memory.

Ever wonder why some people always seem to remember their dreams while others never? The article that I chose this week, author A. B. Hill, tested which of the 16 personality traits (a popular idea in the 1970s, prior to the Big Five) are associated with higher rates of dream recall.

The theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, intents, knowledge, etc. to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one’s own. The theory of mind is something that we experience and utilize in our everyday lives and for a few of us, may seem like second nature. However, the mechanics behind theory of mind and the differences in human moods is one aspect that is relatively unknown to researchers.

This article addresses some extremely interesting questions about how people explain phenomena in their lives and how they integrate different explanatory frameworks into their belief systems. The authors of this study set out to investigate three things. First, they wanted to find out more about how much people in South Africa use both biomedical and traditional healing beliefs to explain different phenomena (specifically, illness).

Keeping with my previous blog postings, this week I am continuing to focus on uncovering the source of human morality. I found an interesting article in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law that gives an elementary description of what a lawyer needs to know when participating in a trail pertaining to psychopathic individuals. The article, “Neuroanatomical Background to Understanding the Brain of the Young Psychopath” by James Fallon, gives a biological explanation for the psychological effects seen in psychopathic individuals.

Certain animals such as monkeys are often used as models in psychological research because they experience similar diseases as humans to varying degrees. Diseases such as schizophrenia and autoimmune diseases are more common in humans, and it is hypothesized that this is difference between the species is because the genes for the disorders are inherited with positively selected genes because the difference can not be simply accounted for by differences in lifestyle.

Hallucinations are wildly fascinating, as are the individuals that experience them in my opinion. The spontaneous nature of hallucinations makes them incredibly difficult to study, not to mention that they tend to have a short duration. Dr. Dominic ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry in London has developed a new method of combined techniques in hopes to resurrect the study of these unpredictable apparitions (Palmares, par. 5).

Do you think you could pick a psychopath out from a crowd if all you could do is talk to them? Experts believe that there are tell-tale signs that psychopaths give that people could pick up on to spot out one from the average person. However, it’s important to note that not all psychopaths give off all of these signs, and that everyone has these behaviors is not a psychopath. These are just helpful ways, when joined with their whole behavior profile, to spot a psychopath.