Human have a free will, right? My gut feeling tells me no. The field of psychology is a science that figures out what makes humans tick. If humans had a free will, we would just snap out of a deep depression and be happy at will. Psychologist wouldn't have a job to go to. It simply does not work that way. There is even a book about the science of fear. It shows how gut feeling interferes with rational thinking and even leads to riskier behavior.
The human gut feeling are the remains of fully functional instincts. Instincts guide behavior in animals, the perceived situation triggers one or another response. Reflexes are more simpler, sensory input leads to a motoric action. Instincts are like an advanced version of it.
Instincts are good for animals, but not so good for humans. We live in a more complicated world, where our actions should not solely be guided by gut feelings. As mentioned in the book, our gut feeling might be a disadvantage. In difference to animals, humans possess rational thinking, which leads to better outcomes.
Neoteny is an explanation for the dwindling human instincts. While most animals are born with a fully myelinated brain, humans are not. Those animals join the flock after a short rest following birth and show instinctive behavior. Newborn humans show few reflexes and very few instincts.
Neoteny works by slowing down maturation of the affected parts up to the point of standstill. The processes responsible for development simply work at a slower speed. Myelination of the human brain does not happen in uterus, it takes many years of human life. During this time, we learn how to cope with the challenges our environment throws at us, and we develop strategies for survival. Those strategies can work along with our instincts or work against them.
Neoteny appeared due to evolution. This means the maturation processes were faster in some individuals, and slower in others. Those small variations are enough to give an advantage to the ones going into the right direction. Moreover, not all maturation processes are slowed down equally. Compared with chimpanzees the body needs like 3 times the amount to mature, while the brain needs several more times.
Rebellion during the teenage years are a good example for instincts. The irrational behavior is exactly that: irrational. It often is attributed to raging hormones, but is better explained by instincts. The orientation towards age peers and conforming to their pressure is more important than obedience to parents. Even more important is the attraction towards the opposite sex. Parents might forbid it and age peers might ridicule one, nevertheless the opposite sex must be conquered. Some teenagers are more obsessed with it than others. This is so irrational, that instincts must be responsible for that. We all know how teenagers behave who were gifted with more than the usual amount of teenagers instincts.
Those, who have a lesser amount of teenage instincts, will behave according to the learned norms and conform to requests. Since the current society wants to keep adolescents immature for a prolonged time, those children will stay children. Stunted psychological or emotional development is real. There are several theories why this happens, but i'm missing the role instincts play. One very important instinct is the heterosexual mating instinct. If that one does not manifest, then the genes don't make it into the next generation. This is the disadvantage that evolution uses to stop the dwindling instincts from disappearing altogether.
Since i'm always seeking the connection to pedophilia, this is no exception. Quite too often i found on the internet the notion that boylovers see themselves as emotionally young. One even wrote that it is tiring to pretend to be an adult all the time. If one feels himself as a teenaged boy, one probably is stunted in his emotional development. It might be as simple as this. The heterosexual mating instinct is too weak in pedophiles. The obstacles for a normal heterosexual relationships offer too much a resistance for this instinct to overcome. Those obstacles might come in different forms. Sometimes the family environment is diametral to the romantic advances of the child, sometimes it is just missed opportunities. Common factor is the absence of "raging hormones".
Showing posts with label psychological disorders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychological disorders. Show all posts
2015-09-06
We are using just 10% of the brain, aren't we?
Well, I broke a bone the other day and wondered, wouldn't it have been nice to have an extra pair of arms. It surely would help opening a bottle - the one arm is up to no use. Luckily I have like 90% spare brain capacity, switched that on and started thinking.
Evolution gave us only two arms, why? When did that happened? Of course, some million years ago. But then, our ancestors didn't walked upright, so we had 4 feets more or less. It would have been nice if we had insects as ancestors, but reptiles are just fine. Reptiles like alligators have this fine art of moving. One paws goes down on each side, the other one goes up by a twist of the torso. Another twist of the body and the whole animal has moved forward. One can image how evolution had pity with a wriggling worm, adding some more tissue here and there.
Ok, evolution didn't foresee my accident and didn't anticipate my dilemma with my broken bone. Maybe I'm not that important after all. It would have been nice having a kevlar skin and a skeleton out of adamantium. Wouldn't that be nice, having an accident, getting up, locking down on the smashed concrete and go on with life? No, humans have to break bones. What they told me on the emergency room seems to be true - I'm not the only one. Apparently, humans break bones all the time. Whoever designed the human body should be fired, at least it is not an intelligent design.
Luckily I have 90% spare brain capacity, so I can think about that too. What kind of calculation did evolution resort to when it calculated the bone thickness. As it turned out, it didn't used Excel - this time no blame on Microsoft. But it makes no sense, if we have intelligence in abundance, then we should have enough bone tissue too.
Everything in nature is there for a reason, right? But evolution does not reason, it is not an entity that has a PhD in structural design. Evolution does not exist! Surprised? It is nothing more than a set of laws that dictate what survives and what not. The magic ingredients are variations. Some guy gets bigger bones. I would loved to have been that guy with twice the bone thickness. Although it would have required much more energy to escape those bullies during childhood. But I guess I'm on the thin bone side. That is how evolution selected the right bone size for humans, simply by trial and error.
As it turns out, evolution uses this simple method for everything. Everything? Haven't I just used spare brain capacity? Isn't the brain an exception? As a matter of fact, there is a very good reason for not being an exception. The human brain uses twenty percent of the oxygen. This is so much that we need to cook our meals in order to get enough nutrition. Everybody with a smaller brain would have to eat much less. Did I really used spare brain capacity? No, we humans have brains about the right size for the job.
What does right size mean? The more brain we have, the less frequent are the breakdowns. The less brain we have, the less nutrition we need. At some point the costs of breakdowns offsets the additional costs of nutritions. Like broken bones, insufficient brain sizes (breakdowns) are part of the evolutionary game.
So what happens when I do not have enough brain? Not winning a Nobel-prize is not enough. It must be so severe that I either don't have offspring, or my offspring does not reproduce.
Evolution gave us only two arms, why? When did that happened? Of course, some million years ago. But then, our ancestors didn't walked upright, so we had 4 feets more or less. It would have been nice if we had insects as ancestors, but reptiles are just fine. Reptiles like alligators have this fine art of moving. One paws goes down on each side, the other one goes up by a twist of the torso. Another twist of the body and the whole animal has moved forward. One can image how evolution had pity with a wriggling worm, adding some more tissue here and there.
Ok, evolution didn't foresee my accident and didn't anticipate my dilemma with my broken bone. Maybe I'm not that important after all. It would have been nice having a kevlar skin and a skeleton out of adamantium. Wouldn't that be nice, having an accident, getting up, locking down on the smashed concrete and go on with life? No, humans have to break bones. What they told me on the emergency room seems to be true - I'm not the only one. Apparently, humans break bones all the time. Whoever designed the human body should be fired, at least it is not an intelligent design.
Luckily I have 90% spare brain capacity, so I can think about that too. What kind of calculation did evolution resort to when it calculated the bone thickness. As it turned out, it didn't used Excel - this time no blame on Microsoft. But it makes no sense, if we have intelligence in abundance, then we should have enough bone tissue too.
Everything in nature is there for a reason, right? But evolution does not reason, it is not an entity that has a PhD in structural design. Evolution does not exist! Surprised? It is nothing more than a set of laws that dictate what survives and what not. The magic ingredients are variations. Some guy gets bigger bones. I would loved to have been that guy with twice the bone thickness. Although it would have required much more energy to escape those bullies during childhood. But I guess I'm on the thin bone side. That is how evolution selected the right bone size for humans, simply by trial and error.
added 2015-09-11: Actually bones grow according to their usual stress exposed pressure. If the experienced pressure exceeds a certain amount, the bone growth. This is how weightlifters end up with a body that really can list 100 kg, while my bones would break.
As it turns out, evolution uses this simple method for everything. Everything? Haven't I just used spare brain capacity? Isn't the brain an exception? As a matter of fact, there is a very good reason for not being an exception. The human brain uses twenty percent of the oxygen. This is so much that we need to cook our meals in order to get enough nutrition. Everybody with a smaller brain would have to eat much less. Did I really used spare brain capacity? No, we humans have brains about the right size for the job.
What does right size mean? The more brain we have, the less frequent are the breakdowns. The less brain we have, the less nutrition we need. At some point the costs of breakdowns offsets the additional costs of nutritions. Like broken bones, insufficient brain sizes (breakdowns) are part of the evolutionary game.
So what happens when I do not have enough brain? Not winning a Nobel-prize is not enough. It must be so severe that I either don't have offspring, or my offspring does not reproduce.
Something has to go wrong, really wrong.
2015-08-23
Missing white matter - why is it important?
James Cantor PhD from CAMH made the discovery of missing white matters in some of his research subjects, which i discussed recently. It is a brilliant discovery, since virtually nobody looks for the expected amount of this cabling matter in fMRI images.
White matter denotes the area filled mostly with the dendrites and the axons of neurons, while the lump with the nucleus sits in the gray matter. Electrical impulses travel along those tentacles, a bit faster on those with a myelin sheath than along those without. Hence calling it cabling matter is quite correct. Without any cabling matter, our brains simply wouldn't work. But what are the effects if we are missing a bit here and there?
Everybody knows and loves cars. Imagine you are driving in winter time on an icy road. Something happens and you have to break. The foot presses onto a pedal, hydraulic pressure increases by that action and via brake lines is transferred to the wheels. Here, cylinders are expanding and moving brake pads onto disk or drums. Modern cars have ABS. This system has wheel speed sensors, which are connected to a controller by some cabling matters. Another set of cabling goes to valves. If everything works fine, this system will prevent the wheels from locking; and even on an icy road one maintains full control over the vehicle.
What we have here is a control system (the ABS) on top of another one (human - pedal - brake lines - brakes). Even newer cars have traction control and automatic brakes. The latter are intended to avoid rear-end collisions. Those are control systems on top of the other two. One can think of them as a hierarchy of control systems.
The brain is a more advanced version of that. Not only do we have neurons in our brains, we also have endocrine glands. In addition to that, our brain is getting rewired all the time. Our reflexes are like the simple brake system in cars, and everything else sits on top of it. Like the ABS in cars, those higher brain functions work like moderators.
Pretty often, questions with respect to mental illnesses are formulated as "What causes symptome X?" This type of questions shows the traces of the medical heritage, where viruses cause illnesses like influenza. Understanding the brain as a hierarchy of control circuits, one should rather ask "why aren't the emotions sufficiently moderated in bipolar disorders?"
I wonder, if missing white matter is responsible for that. The missing white matter discovery by James Cantor seems to be more important than commonly known. To my layman's eyes some psychological disorders look like missing some kind of moderation at some level. Often one reads the phrase "loss of control", which is similar to a car with a broken ABS on an icy road. If missing white matter were responsible, then we could find a treatment that rebuilds it. Missing white matter also rises the question, what prevented its growth in the first place? Already we suspect that children placed under lot of duress and stress during their childhood show long lasting mental damages later in life. It seems like higher hormonal values of cortisol and adrenaline might have had an impact. So how can we counter the effects?
If i were a benevolent dictator, i would initiate research programs:
Addendum 2015-09-09: James Cantor reported the missing white matter, he also reported a lower IQ among his pedophile subjects. Glial cells are considered to be related to IQ, the more glial cells the higher the IQ. Glial cells provide the myelin sheathing of axons, hence contribute to white matter density. It could be as simple as JC has seen a lower IQ on his sMRI pictures.
White matter denotes the area filled mostly with the dendrites and the axons of neurons, while the lump with the nucleus sits in the gray matter. Electrical impulses travel along those tentacles, a bit faster on those with a myelin sheath than along those without. Hence calling it cabling matter is quite correct. Without any cabling matter, our brains simply wouldn't work. But what are the effects if we are missing a bit here and there?
Everybody knows and loves cars. Imagine you are driving in winter time on an icy road. Something happens and you have to break. The foot presses onto a pedal, hydraulic pressure increases by that action and via brake lines is transferred to the wheels. Here, cylinders are expanding and moving brake pads onto disk or drums. Modern cars have ABS. This system has wheel speed sensors, which are connected to a controller by some cabling matters. Another set of cabling goes to valves. If everything works fine, this system will prevent the wheels from locking; and even on an icy road one maintains full control over the vehicle.
What we have here is a control system (the ABS) on top of another one (human - pedal - brake lines - brakes). Even newer cars have traction control and automatic brakes. The latter are intended to avoid rear-end collisions. Those are control systems on top of the other two. One can think of them as a hierarchy of control systems.
The brain is a more advanced version of that. Not only do we have neurons in our brains, we also have endocrine glands. In addition to that, our brain is getting rewired all the time. Our reflexes are like the simple brake system in cars, and everything else sits on top of it. Like the ABS in cars, those higher brain functions work like moderators.
Pretty often, questions with respect to mental illnesses are formulated as "What causes symptome X?" This type of questions shows the traces of the medical heritage, where viruses cause illnesses like influenza. Understanding the brain as a hierarchy of control circuits, one should rather ask "why aren't the emotions sufficiently moderated in bipolar disorders?"
I wonder, if missing white matter is responsible for that. The missing white matter discovery by James Cantor seems to be more important than commonly known. To my layman's eyes some psychological disorders look like missing some kind of moderation at some level. Often one reads the phrase "loss of control", which is similar to a car with a broken ABS on an icy road. If missing white matter were responsible, then we could find a treatment that rebuilds it. Missing white matter also rises the question, what prevented its growth in the first place? Already we suspect that children placed under lot of duress and stress during their childhood show long lasting mental damages later in life. It seems like higher hormonal values of cortisol and adrenaline might have had an impact. So how can we counter the effects?
If i were a benevolent dictator, i would initiate research programs:
- one for looking into the missing white matter indicator for certain disorders,
- another one in laboratories: what prevents and what encourages white matter growth.
Psychotherapy means learning on a rational and emotional level. Often it means to recognise signals of distress or to identify certain situations. Then "supporting thoughts" should aid us to get through the situation. From my personal experience i know that psychotherapy can be demanding and one gets a headache from them. Taking a paracetamol might be ill-advised, it could harm the establishment of new circuitry. If pharmacy had something else, something that would make white matter growth easier - maybe it could support traditional psychotherapy.
Disclaimer
I'm not a psychiatrist, neurobiologist, or psychologist. The views presented here are based on common knowledge, which might not be scientifically correct.
Google on "white matter disorder" gives several results, among other this, where the connection between white matter and bipolar disorder is mentioned.
Google on "white matter disorder" gives several results, among other this, where the connection between white matter and bipolar disorder is mentioned.
Addendum 2015-09-09: James Cantor reported the missing white matter, he also reported a lower IQ among his pedophile subjects. Glial cells are considered to be related to IQ, the more glial cells the higher the IQ. Glial cells provide the myelin sheathing of axons, hence contribute to white matter density. It could be as simple as JC has seen a lower IQ on his sMRI pictures.
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