Mind and matter: psychological brain changes
A Canadian study reports that brain changes involving ribosomal DNA have been detected on autopsy in victims of childhood abuse who ended up committing suicide. This finding somewhat complements animal studies showing that early neglect changes the dendrites of rats.
Of course, the Canadian study is not without its flaws. It suffers from a common problem with human research, low sample size. The comparison was between 18 men in the study group and 12 controls who had not been neglected and who died from causes other than suicide. Therefore one huge possible flaw is that the brain changes might be from some aspect of the suicidal tendencies of the subjects rather than the abuse itself. It’s even possible that the brain changes might represent congenital differences rather than reactive changes.
But there’s probably something to the idea that the brain anomalies are not innate. For example, with the advent of improved brain imaging, there’s been a rash of studies that suggest that psychotherapy itself can cause brain changes similar to those achieved by medication. Here, for example, is research indicating that treatment for OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) can induce such changes, and the same seems true for depression.
People are often surprised at any findings that there can be brain changes related to thought, feelings, and personal history. But it stands to reason that the entire system is a feedback loop in which influences go both ways.
The brain is one of the most amazing and mysterious parts of the human body—or perhaps of the universe. It is made of matter, and although it is far more than “mere” matter, every thought must still have a chemical/physical mediator. The brain is where the material world intersects with the world of abstraction, and shows us that, though they might seem to be separate domains, there is no true separation between the two.
And so what may have seemed to Descartes to be a “ghost in the machine” is revealed by modern machines to be no specter at all.
[NOTE: I was thinking as I wrote this post that if brain imaging had been invented at the time of Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments, I bet they would have documented vast changes in those monkeys’ brains. I was going to link to an earlier post I’d done on the subject of Harlow, but when I went back and looked at it I decided instead to repost it.]
I still believe there is a ghost in the machine. Simply put, in spite of all of our will, efforts, self-,allowed-, or forced-indoctrination, and education, we still do things we know, feel, and or sense are wrong, or not self serving, or just odd or artistic, etc. Where does doing the wrong thing, creating something that is original, or free will itself come from, since we understand that all things must have a source, usually that source is a greater similar subject (such as freezing things by placing them near a source which is constantly colder than a freezing temperature).
Essentially, at times, there are things other than animal and beyond reason which drive us to do either great or horrific things, as individuals and societies. If one believes in external though influencing forces of good and evil, I think the discrepancies are accounted. If one does not believe, one is a confused and frustrated liberal. *laughs*
What I think is most amazing about life systems is thier pragmatics–which is virtually synonymous with life system. Every thought must have a medium (“chemical/physical mediator”) but the meaning or content of the thought cannot be derived from the medium. The medium is used. Machines cannot use media to create information, but only to react to it; otherwise, they’d be as perverse as humans. All life systems are users of the environment to greater or lesser degree. Human are the ultimate development in pragmatics. Lower life forms are more machine-like. And we need those lower machine-like processes for our bodily functions. We don’t want our hearts setting their own idiosyncratic rhythms. (But bio-feedback training may provide more “usage” available than we thought.) If I physically hurt you, I may expect you’ll get away from me. But what if you enjoy pain and want more? When the last neural event dealing with psychological/sociological affairs is charted, we will have only statistical averages for a given population and the old slogan will still have force: given the structure, we cannot predict the function.
As for DNA changes, the most exciting research in the coming century or two will be in the area of genetic encoding and transmission of learned information/behavior. Darwin’s theory of evolution will be substantially modified to include “intelligent design.” Instead of being a kind of black box for unexplainable behavior, “instinct will have substantive meaning. All this I have seen in my hollow crystal ball filled with tea leaves.
another problem is determining neglect.
given todays victim culture, people feel left out if they dont come from broken homes and bad places. they have to somehow be worse off in order to be a regular person and not be priveledged, even though they have a lot.
so obamas wife cant be from a good home and a good place, it has to be made bad in someway, so that she has her prol credits.
if they want to do a study on a lot of people thats easy. one only has to go to russia, they have huge quantities of abandoned kids that are totally neglected and left untouched in their beds even worse than harlows monkeys… at least some of the monkeys had fake parent to hold.
bascially a prmite that has no social group is a drag on the local area.. the species as a group does better if they fail out. and in the normal world of subsistence, this is what would happen.
Observers and adoptive parents have accused Russian orphanages of neglect and abuse. The reality is, these orphanages are underfunded, understaffed and over populated with children. Roughly 230,000 children are residents of the state orphanage system with over 650,000 in some form of state care. Itar-Tass has reported that some 90 percent of children in orphanages are not true orphans as they do have living parents. Due to poor conditions, inadequate nutrition and insufficient emotional care, many of these children are underdeveloped mentally and physically. The older the child and the longer he/she is in the system, the greater the emotional and, often, physical problems become. Disease passed on by the birth mother is frequent. In one orphanage in central Russia, all but one out of a group of 30 children had syphilis.
In most orphanages, children are bathed together with no hot water available. They dine on porridge and bits of chicken with no fresh fruits, vegetables or red meat available. They sleep in wards of typically 12 children on old mattresses with ragged blankets. Many of these facilities are under heated and toys or other tools to stimulate a child’s mind are scarce. Many of these orphans suffer from weakened immune systems and, thus, all manner of illness. Their mental, emotional and physical development often seriously stunted.
of course we dont pay much attention to what happens AFTER socialism.
Human Rights Watch continues to report countless cases of routine abuse of children in orphanages. Roughly 20,000 children run away from orphanages every year, according to the Interior Ministry University. This statement went on to say that of the ca.15,000 children released from orphanages annually, some 10 percent commit suicide, 30 percent commit crimes and 40 percent are unemployed and homeless. Do the math – this leaves only about 20 percent who are able to make it on their own.
According to compilations published by UNICEF in 1997, some 611, 034 Russian children are “without parental care.” Of these, 337,527 are housed in baby houses, children’s homes, and homes for children with disabilities.8 According toa Russian expert in their field, the latter figure includes children living part-time at home, and the full-time orphan population in institutions is closer to 200,000. Of these, at least 30,000 are committed to locked psychoneurological internaty for “ineducable” children, run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development.9
“It suffers from a common problem with human research, low sample size. The comparison was between 18 men in the study group and 12 controls who had not been neglected and who died from causes other than suicide.”
Well, it’s a horribly designed study. It needs not only a larger sample, but a 2×2 matrix:
-neglected, suicide
-neglected, other cause of death
-not neglected, suicide
-not neglected, other cause of death
the simple comparison used makes the study near worthless, except perhaps as an instigator of a better study.
This is a big problem in Russia, of course, but it is not evident that these anomalies were aquired and not congenital. Most of this children were born by alcoholic mothers and conceived by drunk fathers. Female alcoholism is rampant in Russia, and every fifth man is alcoholic by official statistics. Number of systematically binge drinking men comprises 30%, in some rural regions up to 80%.
darwin will not be modified to make room for intelligent design.
what will happen is that we will produce a more valid model for what life is.
[i am working on a paper with a geneticist on this subject in which i am attempting to define the real model which is separate from the mental model. the mental model we carry today is like the planet model of atoms]
two cells fuse, then the system is basically a fractal chaos based on.
its a non linear dynamic iterative system in which influences in the world transfer information and test the functions of that system. at one end of life is the highly conserved, and at the other end, old age, you have a mathematical seive in which cancer is organ genesis potental.
specific answers are slowly moved down the scale towards earlier and earlier time in the lineages of the cells since conception. bad qualities are pushed off after death.
after the cells fuse, you have a map, and a player.
the map has to be played on the right player. the player defines the next iteration.
the player and map do their thing. division is the player playing the map to create two new players with different make up to them.
each of these players play the conserved map differently…
in life, there is only one song, and tons of players that pick out themes from that song..
in this way, each cell is the player that iterates the machine to the next level.
our view of this system is not this way at all.. you read papers and you will read the researchers say… this is the genetic thing that ‘turns’ cells cancerous….
but thats not how life works… cells dont turn cancerous… the player gets modified, and the lineage that are iterated out are not whats intended, but are somethign else based on that ‘reason’.
even our family trees are false maps… you have to throw away have the connections to get one tree… so it doesnt actually represent the actual layout of whats going on.
the layout if graphed would look more like two threads coming together, tying a knot, and 0 to x threads then come out from there.
its more like a net than a tree…
its this messed up set of maps that give us the space to argue magic from complexity.
dont get me wrong, i am not an athiest, but i also dont equate not knowing at a certain place in time with the need to invoke abstraction.
for me that abstraction was their, and unlike the twiddlers, such a thing does not have to tweak the design… if the design of reality is fractal (which is seems to be), then all that is required is the right initial conditions… there is no reason to tweak the model.
intelligent design is not an answer since there is no real question.
just to point something out that you might not realize. an athest has to have just as much faith as a theist!!!
which is the funny part…
look… god cant be proved, since the realm of god and the god ‘question’ is one of faith. any time a christian says they know that god exists, they are in violation of the key test of their religion. faith.
the ability to believe when there is no proof.
and when their is no proof, either side of the coin of belief takes FAITH.
you have to have blind faith that god doestn exist since you cant prove either!!!
its looking for a needle in all haystacks when you dont know there is a needle.
if you went through it all, did you prove there was none? not unless you were perfect…
basically intelligent design is a limitation on the concept of gods mind. and the game is played both ways on both sides. and the problem stems from the religious people being too bothers with trying to convince people there is a god when their own doctrines say its a matter of faith.
like the needle in the haystack its a null argument. unless you know prior that there is or isnt a neeld, the argument about it means nothing. its jsut shifted from the here and now, the next level. like the game of saying if god created the world then who created god.
intelligent design implies that god sets forth the test and then cheats for some over others.
i didnt want to get into ID… but the point touched here is that darwin and ID have nothing to do with each other… they only appear to because someone is pikcing an arbitrary stage in ‘design’ and it happens to sit in evolutions way because we as a people dont understand it.
but its really quite simple.. its just generating soliutions sorting them on ALL the criteria that is important and can be felt in some way, and picking winners over losers and moving on.
our problem is that we see life like we see the things we design.
here is how much.. what is old age?
well, to those that design linear objects (cars, etc), we have an end to the design. a final state. so we imaging there is this creation point, then a build point, then a stable point in which the entity battles with the elements till it loses and becomes broken.
we then apply that to people.
we have conception… childhood.. and then imagine this finale state point in which the body tries to remain static, etc..
we dont have a proper view of it, and so we dont see that that is VERY wrong.
for instence, we think that if we can find a thing to extend life and make old age further off…
thats because we think like we are a car.. so all we have to do is solve the problems of the final entity and we can extend it.
well, here is a peek into a better model.
as described above, we start off as a fusion of two, that then creates one, and that one then self iterates.
the first few cells that divide are extreemly conserved in how they work. after all, a problem here kills…
however, go through the lineaged and as you get older the lineaged have more chance to have cancer…
self iterative systems have no final plan
they NEVER reach a static stasis. they can reach a stable state but not by holding still.
old age is the stories of the cell lineages running out.
when a cell divides and its lineage becomes an organ… these cells all still slowly divide.
all tehse things are happening in relation to each other, and they are all jugglable a bit. earlier in life, less juggle, later more.
so there is no way to define a point in all these lineages (2 cells to 60 trillion in an adult), when you can add secret chemical x and then put them into a loop… because each lineage would need different answers to have stasis.
you can have lots of things that improve the life and so extend the level to which the system remains stable as the cellular story or plan runs out… but you cant tack on a single answer to all these separate stories and get a solution
400 year old man is not possible because each of those 60 trillion cells has a distinct lineage, and place in that lineage and line in time.
identical twins should show you how freaking specific this is.
when we get this model more pat, your going to find all new methods of medicine.
your going to be able to select the proginator cell that expanded out and later becomes the key cells in a cancer. but you have to take your medicine in your 12th year… because at 12 the lineages are at the right branchings to meet the problem off.
this kind of thought will come… but it will take a while.. it wil come though…
why?
because the system model is not about the messy real world expression, but about the functional way information in the messy system really is when boiled down to functions not proteins.
life is a system that learns and compresses information… its fractal.. everything counts in inputs, and every level of answer is worked on at once. billions of them…
what you are is the product of 10+ billion years of this informational fishing expedition…
its not a closed book… its an open ended story… and we are still wrigint it…
[and socialism screws with the books inputs]
i guess i explained that poorly… but its VERY hard for me to get this stuff out in any small form.. ther eis literally huge pools of information from disparate disciplines that make it reveal…
right now most of the researchers are tall and narrow in expertise… while my specialty is high and wide…
Recent studies shown that regeneration capabilities of human brain were seriously underestimated before last several years. Patterns of dendrite connections are continuously changing in response to stimulation, including verbal stimulation and cognitive activity of individuals. New neurones arise from stem cells, and whole new neuron nets originate.
sergey,
dont get me wrong.. i was not making a statement either way as to the russian situation and the reasons there.
just that these unfortunate current situatiosn there, create a large pool of people that fit the study. in the west such a pool can be foudn too, but its smaller.
what i am sad about is that while the left is whining about this and that.. the real concern is revealed when you know how much is really going on, and how much they are just ignoring it.
the reason is simple. there is no power in helping russian orpans and making a better world.
if one actually succeeded,they would have to fold up and go home and find something else to do the next day.
i know that doesnt help the kids…
which is what peeves me..
i am a capitalist.. and such pain bothers me more than a leftist becusue i hiave no false illusions as to the situation, and its not good.
a socialist looks at a wealthy healthy family and says, no one should live like that.
a capatalist looks at a wealthy healthy family and says, everyone should live like that.
well, when i look at my son, and my family, and how much we love each other… and have none of the crapola that is common…
i think.. everyone should live like that.
when i was a kid i might not have had a lot of toys growing up a very poor white child in bronx housing projects. but i never lacked for hugs, and love around me.
i think.. everyone should live like that.
and people who think that thats horrible and want the other thigns not caring as to what it does… well they make children like in russia, and they deny that ANYONe can live like i did, and that its a lie.
i would adopt a thousand of them and raise them in a place… but then the US state would come along and take them all and destroy them because i was not a liberal and that i must be (Even though i am not) an authoritarian… heck thats why ALL the kids were taken from FLDS…
its a sad state… and the fact that the liberals are running into the burning barn because someone tacked up an exit sign outside, really is annoying.
As far as the”ghost in the machine” idea; my favorite explanantion is the one Schroedinger put forth about 60 years ago: the “ghost” is the mental manifestation of quantum uncertainty. Since, as Neo points out, thought must involve chemical mediation, and that those molecules are without doubt quantum entities, then the probabalistic nature of QM may give the rise of the concept of free will.
Of course, at present this is all sheer speculation, but as a physicist I certainly like it. 🙂
I suspect even our tiniest of fleeting thoughts make measurable changes in our brains if we could only see that precisely.
Artfldgr Says: “darwin will not be modified to make room for intelligent design.”
I shouldn’t have used that term, “intelligent design.” The research area I was describing was phylogenetic memory, and it would have been more appropriate to say that classic evolution theory will have to make room for the idea that life intelligently designs itself.
DM-S–Have you seen the Nature paper on the platypus genome? Evolution and developmental biologists have plenty to think about from this enormous amount of info.
MikeM Says: “and that those molecules are without doubt quantum entities, then the probabalistic nature of QM may give the rise of the concept of free will.”
Many years ago as a medic in the Navy I did dressing changes on infants in the dependents ward that had had surgery on our service. I soon learned that if I approach a child’s crib in a white lab coat, he’d start to cry before I touched him. On the other hand, if I went from surgery to the ward in scrub greens, I could often change a dressing without a cry. The whiteness of the lab coat (let’s call it a sign) elicited the crying response. Even older children will often start crying at the first sight of a doctor’s office, and nothing a parent can do or say will stop the reaction. The pairing of sign and significance is absolute.
But the infant’s world is very unstable. Sometimes the white approaches with a painful injection, sometimes with a bottle, sometimes with a clean diaper, etc. Here’s where your idea of probability enters: so long as there is only determinism, singularity–one gross sign, one gross response–the world cannot stabilize for the child. The child must achieve a greater information context for the sign. When the child can recognize the difference between a nurse carrying a hypodermic and a nurse carrying a bottle, the possibility of different significations within the context arises. So polysemy, at least in information processing, may push probability assessment. But there is another factor involved. The infant must reach the point developmentally that they are able to defer/mediate response pending assessment of context. Physiological and cognitive development are surely mutually enabling. One the absolute pairing of sign and significance launches the affect, you cannot reason with the child. You may be able to distract it with toys, etc. So the child must be able to mediate between sign and immediate affective response. Like many liberals and other adults, the child finds that difficult. But what is it that mediates the sign-significance conjunction? Context. An informational complex in which some things are more probable than others, and which must be assessed according to the probability. For example, a doctor’s office in my mind is a context of informational items I’d expect to be part of the doctor’s office context, some more probable, some less. (One of the reasons why metaphor is so useful informationally is that it enables a contextual transaction unavailable in “literal” language. Hence the joy of poetry. As a side note, children almost always take metaphor literally or simply don’t understand it.)
Free will, in my understanding, requires the ability to defer affective responses pending realistic assessments of a context’s relational potentials and choosing or acting according to the assessment. The infant, for example, has no free will in its response to signs it pairs. Nor do adults unable to mediate between their affective/drive states and their actions.
In sum, free will is an artifact of information processing, and to an extent, drawing parallels between information contexts and quanta is tempting. And I’m sure as a physicist with information processing interests, you’ve rightly seen “uncertainty” as a big dark shadow lurking behind all that I’ve written here. But I remember so well the metaphoric intoxications of Shannon and Weaver as they found parallels between the formula for calculating the amount of entropy in information and in the physical universe. I’ve taken the pledge. No more metaphor binges for me.
expat Says:
Thanks, no I haven’t, but I’d like to. Do you have a reference?
Does our thought create the matter change, or does the the matter change originate the thought. Answer that and you might prove (given the scientific constraints of the word) free will, and whether we are originators (with a maker since no others that we are aware of are originators and we (in our originator process) need to be sourced) or whether we are animal, merely advanced ones, subject to physical phenomena. Essentially, a possible proof of God, or not.
Maybe? Though for me, faith will suffice. Still, the work would be interesting. Far beyond most, however, maybe all if one believes that proof of God cannot be found. Careful about another Tower of Babel? Wing it.
Just search Nature platypus genome and you’ll get all sorts of results. I just tried yahoo search and it came up on top. The paper just came out on 5/8, so it’s probably being mentioned allover the MSM too.
Why is it that there are still people who think that you can fill the life of a child with pain, brutality, and total lack of love, affection, and proper care and expect this developing human being to have normal moral instincts so as to satisfy their un-nuanced understanding of free will? Look, I’m a Roman Catholic Christian and definitely not a metaphysical materialist (physicalist reductionist), but even an educated Christian can apply reason to the theological challenges posed by the evidence of what happens when neurotransmitters in the brain hammer home synaptic configurations which reinforce patterns of thought and emotion.
We are unlocking some aspects of the dimension of evil. I know some who are physicalist reductionists wince at the use of the word “evil.” But it exists as both a spiritual and physical reality.
expat: Got it. Thanks for the reference. Classifications intrigue me, but the outliers I find even more interesting.
Doom: “Does our thought create the matter change, or does the the matter change originate the thought.”
I’m a process nut, so it’s all transaction, interaction and either/ors are beyond my ken. Without an objective reality to provoke our sensory system and challenge us with its recalcitrance, we’d be profoundly autistic. However, all we ever know of that reality is what our sensory system indicates of it. Think of it as wearing gloves to handle something. All your sensations are of the glove on the skin, but that doesn’t mean the template of what you feel is invalid. So long as your experience enables reliable predictions and practical operations/actions, you have the only truth available–and the only truth of significance. So the material world never originates thought; it is the occasion for sensory data which always invites our representation and analysis. On the other hand, the representation and analysis we call thought would not occur without the occasioning material world. It is a transactional process.
The direct acquisition of objective reality is a red herring invoked largely to justify solipsism–for which the obvious rebuttal is the reality of society. We have pragmatic information (yielding predictions and enabling functional operations) held in common by social groups.
DuMaurier-Smith,
I am not sure but that we might be talking beside each other. I do believe I understand your points. Sincerely, I understand that we need input, to some extent, to seed our considerations, to begin to create or develop thoughts. Much like muscles need extensions and contractions to work or grow. However, I am speaking directly about when a thought is actually occurring. Is the physical manifestation of that thought creating the thought, or is the thought developing the chemical chain?
I see where it would have to be a mixed medium, I suppose it could be said, not dissimilar to the muscles involved with walking. It isn’t one muscle, and the sequence is mixed and so fast that at my last understanding, the sequence had not been sorted out. I am sure there is such an interplay between the idea and the brain chemistry and the physical brain itself. Though perhaps these things are better understood these days?
As well, I have some suspicion that we are autistic. Perhaps not to the level of the severally (comparatively) autistic children we commonly refer our considerations toward, but autistic compared to our greater potential. How much of reality at any one time do we understand, absorb, react to and with, and share and see? How much consciously, unconsciously? I am sorely aware of the fact that I am not aware at all, from time to time. A bit frightening, but once accounted for, just a realization and not to be fretted about (much as gravity, as one learns of the Earth’s polar, solar, et. al. rotations).
Doom: One view of thought is “inner speech.” We can agree it’s more complicated than that, but still use the model. When you ask, “Is the physical manifestation of that thought creating the thought, or is the thought developing the chemical chain?” it sounds to me like asking is the sound of speech the thought, or is the thought developing the speech? Is that close? Consider this: the system’s electrochemical events that enable us to hear “dog” are not what we experience, any more than the movements of a speaker diaphragm are what we hear listening to music. Typically, we don’t even hear the word dog in its accoustic dimensions. We just process the meaning. We only hear foreign languages acoustically (unless we’re phoneticists) or when we repeat a word until it starts to sound strange, silly. At every level our thought is mediated; we think in signs, and a sign is something used as other than what it empirically is. A communication theorist named Colin Cherry summed it all up: mind is real, matter is mystery.
I learned about saying a word until it no longer made sense when I was 6 or 7. I tried it with the word “the”. Odd, after enough repetitions, I could not even spell it. I have even been able to do it with complete ideas.
Ok, I do believe I understand what you are saying. And, though I did not know this, consciously, I think it lends to my notion that we are actually all somewhat autistic. Lost in our own worlds. Only most of us understand and or misunderstand together, or in step with the majority of our peers. Those too distant from average, well, there are difficulties. Though I would guess it is better, even so, to be on top of that wave.
Thank you for the enlightenment. I still have some things I am not quite sure about. I will ponder these, just a bit. *throws a dart at the dart board, through the hurricane… Bullseye!* Ha! 🙂