Behavioral Neuroscience

There has been a revolution in medicine concerning how we think about the diseases that now afflict us. It involves recognizing the interactions between the body and the mind, the ways in which emotions and personality can have a tremendous impact on the functioning and health of virtually every cell in the body. It is about the role of stress in making some of us more vulnerable to disease, the ways in which some of us cope with stressors, and the critical notion that you cannot really understand a disease in vacuo, but rather only in the context of the person suffering from that disease.This is the subject of this book.

Some of Law and Economics’ basic claims have come to be criticized as a result of empirical findings that question their viability. Particularly, the premise that agents consistently act rationally and with their self-interest in mind seems problematic. What the consequences of the criticism mean for Law and Economics’ tenability depends largely on the questions whether (1) some elements are unassailable to the alternative’s objections and (2) the alternative is a systematic whole. It is argued that Law and Economics may be salvaged, if it is minimized and its ambitions are tempered. This means focusing on the stable, a priori, elements inherent to it.

The short title of this work: Autobiography, Time, and Narrative in Philosophy and Psychology, expresses the principal topics discussed. The temporal dispersion of an individual's actions throughout life, makes their unification and stability in purpose challenging, as such temporal separation of human actions makes it difficult to view the effects and significance of particular acts, and their long-term impact. Fortunately, narrative self-understanding and autobiographical thinking in orienting the whole human life, resolves the challenge posed by temporal dispersion. In this work, Ogunyemi explores the relationship between the anthropological theories of the dynamics of temporality with narrative self-understanding that are developed from an Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, and recent theories in psychology and neurosciences, through her reading and interpretation of contemporary authors. She presents scientific observations related to habit formation and self-improvements that are congruent with philosophy. MacIntyre as well as other philosophers often analyzed the validity of psychology's methods and frameworks and Ogunyemi contributes to this dialogue by pointing out similarities between autobiographical temporality seen in disparate fields. She explores concepts of narrative philosophy from the first-person perspective, and makes a synthesis of elements of autobiographical temporality which could form an anthro-pological framework for observations made from research in different subspecialties of contemporary psychology and neurosciences. Her interdisciplinary approach highlights prospects of mutual enrichment between different fields. The need for interdisciplinary studies, such as this one, is ever increasing and urgent since the development of particular sciences, that promote human flourishing today, requires a deeper understanding of the human being in his totality. Omowumi Ogunyemi obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery. She has worked as a medical practitioner in various hospitals in Nigeria including The Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos, where she managed patients with substance induced disorders. She holds a licentiate degree and a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.

Term paper for Evolution and the Mind class, taught by Dr. Pieter Lemmens, which I co-authored with Frederik Walter and two other students who wish to remain anonymous. We are a philosopher, a linguist, a neurophysiologist and a scholar of artificial intelligence, and we look at the notion of "the gap" from these different perspectives, that is, the question of what is it that truly sets humans apart from other species and makes them unique -- or if there even is such a thing.
Although we all contributed ideas in roughly equal proportions, most of the writing was done by Walter.

Compared to the original version, apart from anonymizing two co-authors at their request, I edited the layout considerably, as well as reformatting the references and rewriting a small number of sentences to make them flow slightly better.

ERRATUM: Alfred Russell Wallace's name is misspelled in the bibliography.

If you find any other ERRATA, please let me know!

"Current antidepressants are crude compared with the ideal and patents on most have expired. There are therefore strong clinical and commercial pressures for new drugs to replace them. The prospects for this are, however, now markedly reduced as several major pharmaceutical companies have abandoned work in this area whilst many others have sharply decreased their research investment. These changes and the lack of progress over such a long period are indicative of a catastrophic systems failure which, it is argued, has been caused in large part by a logical flaw at the animal modelling stage. This tautology has served to lock the current antidepressant drug discovery process into an iterative loop capable only of producing further variations of that which has gone before. Drugs produced by this approach have proved to be only poorly effective in the context of the clinically depressed population as a whole. Hence, the inevitable failure of the current antidepressant drug discovery process has left little behind that can be salvaged. Therefore, it is suggested that this be urgently reformulated on more rational grounds using more appropriate species in new animal models based upon a thorough understanding of the behavioural expressions of depression in the clinic." Hendrie CA, Pickles AR (2013) J Psychopharm 27(5) 407–416

In this study, we reported the reliability and validity of Bedside version of Persian WAB (P-WAB-1) adapted from Western Aphasia Battery (WAB-R) (1,2). P-WAB-1 is a clinical linguistic measuring tool to determine severity and type of aphasia in brain damaged patients based on Aphasia Quotient (AQ) as a functional measure. For the purposes of a quick clinical screening of aphasia in Persian, we adapted the bedside version of WAB-R to assess the performance of Persian aphasic patients. The data we reported on adaptation, validity and reliability of P-WAB-1 are based on faithful translation and criterion validity ratio (CVR) taken from the expert panel and the performance of 60 consecutive brain damaged patients referred to different university clinics for rehabilitation and 30 healthy subjects as norms and 40 age-matched epileptic patients as the control group. Based on the results of this study, P-WAB-1 has internal consistency (a=0.71) and test-retest reliability (r=.65 P<0.001) ...

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

BACKGROUND:
In spite of its indusrial usefulness and varied daily uses, lead (Pb) pollution is a widespread ecological problem that faces the humans in the 21th century. Pb was found to produces a wide range of toxic effects including neurotoxicity especially to the developing and young offspring. Recently, the utilization of herbal plants has received a significant attention where there has been rising awareness in their therapeutic use; among these is the garlic.
AIM OF THE WORK:
In light of the above, the current study is designed experimentally in female pregnant rats in order to investigate the beneficial role of garlic extract in the protection from the maternal and fetal cerebellar damage that produced by administration of different doses of Pb during pregnancy.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Positively pregnant female rats were divided into five groups; one control group, two Pb-treated groups (exposed to 160 and 320 mg/kg b.wt. of Pb, respectively) and two groups treated with both Pb and garlic (exposed to Pb as previous groups together with 250 mg/ kg b.wt. /day of garlic extract). Treatments started from day 1 till day 20 of pregnancy, where the mother rats of different experimental groups were sacrified to obtain the fetuses. Pb level in the maternal nd fetal blood and cerebellum was estimated by spectrophotometry. Specimens of the cerebellum of different mother and fetal groups were processed to histological and immunohistochemical staining for microscopic examination.
RESULTS:
The results showed that administration of Pb to pregnant rats resulted in a dose-dependent toxicity for both mothers and fetuses in the form of decrease of maternal weight gain, placental and fetal weights, brain weight and diminished fetal growth parameters, which were prominent in rat's group treated with larger dose of Pb. In Pb-treated rats, Pb level in blood and cerebellum was high when compared to the control. The histopathological examination of the cerebellum of treated dams and fetuses showed marked alterations mainly in the form of Purkinje cell degeneration and lack of deveopmet of fetal cerebellum. Co-treatment of garlic extract along with Pb resulted in a significant decrease in Pb levels as compared with those treated with Pb alone with improvement of the histopathological changes.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study was useful in evaluating the hazardous effects of uncontrolled use of Pb in general and in assessing the developmental and neurotoxicity of fetuses due to exposure during pregnancy in particular. Co-administration of garlic has beneficial effects in amelioration of Pb-induced neurotoxicity and reversing the histopathological changes of the cerebellum of mother rats and fetuses.
KEYWORDS:
garlic; glial fibrillary acidic protein; lead; purkinje cells

Social Legal Theory (SLT) has been heralded as the “third pillar” of jurisprudence, offering a social scientific alternative to the rational relativity of legal positivism and the moral determinism of natural law. Yet recently SLT’s most ardent champion, Professor Brian Tamanaha, appears to have broken ranks. Assuming a “holistic” perspective, Tamanaha now contends that law “emerges” from both social and naturalistic influences. This move not only undermines SLT, it seemingly transforms that view into the existing theory of jurisilience, which uses the holistic epistemology of consilience to provide a bio-socio-cultural account of law’s essence.

Despite outward appearances, however, these approaches are far from identical. Unlike the revamped version of SLT, which is ontologically constrained and conflicted, jurisilience explains law’s emergence through systems science and cutting-edge sociology. It shows that law is not a simple assemblage of social and/or natural forces. Instead, it is a complex information network of interdependent “jurisystems.” Grounded in our natural need for homeostasis, human legality originates in our genetic and neurobiological systems, scales up to our normative social systems, and becomes externalized as a supreme system of formal law. Once entrenched, law does not remain stagnant, but continuously coordinates human conflicts, relieves social stress, and reinforces social bonds. Over time, law’s dynamism changes social behavior and cultural memory, initiating a cycle of epigenetics and gene-culture coevolution that renews our biological disposition for legality. Given law’s systemic nature, any socio-centric jurisprudence now seems obsolete. The fact is, jurisilience and jurisystems do not just systematize SLT; they systematize SLT right out of existence.

Behavioral Insights in Peace Building and Development: Workshop on 29-30 August 2019

The Research Centre "Poverty, Equity and Growth in Developing Countries" at Göttingen University will host the workshop "Behavioral Insights in Peace Building and Development" between the 29th and 30th of August in Göttingen. It is organized by Prof. Marcela Ibañez Diaz, Ph.D., Professor for behavioral development economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics.

The objective of the workshop is to bring together academics working in the areas of behavioral economics, conflict and more general development economics to discuss the pathways to peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas.

The keynote speakers are Ana Maria Arjona, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Northwestern University (USA), and Chris Blattman, Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago (USA).

https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/behavioral+insights+in+peace+building+and+development%3A+workshop+on+29-30+august+2019/611579.html

Incomplete response to monoaminergic antidepressants in major depressive disorder (MDD), and the phenomenon of neuroprogression, suggests a need for additional pathophysiological markers and pharmacological targets. Neuronal zinc is concentrated exclusively within glutamatergic neurons, acting as an allosteric modulator of the N-methyl D-aspartate and other receptors that regulate excitatory neurotransmission and neuroplasticity. Zinc-containing neurons form extensive associational circuitry throughout the cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, which subserve mood regulation and cognitive functions. In animal models of depression, zinc is reduced in these circuits, zinc treatment has antidepressant-like effects and dietary zinc insufficiency induces depressive behaviors. Clinically, serum zinc is lower in MDD, which may constitute a state-marker of illness and a risk factor for treatment-resistance. Marginal zinc deficiency in MDD may relate to multiple putative mechanisms underlying core symptomatology and neuroprogression (e.g. immune dysfunction, monoamine metabolism, stress response dysregulation, oxidative/nitrosative stress, neurotrophic deficits, transcriptional/epigenetic regulation of neural networks). Initial randomized trials suggest a benefit of zinc supplementation. In summary, molecular and animal behavioral data support the clinical significance of zinc in the setting of MDD.

""Largely based on pre-theory that ties high testosterone (T) to masculinity, and low T to femininity, high T is mainly studied in relation to aggression, mating, sexuality, and challenge, and low T with parenting. Evidence, however, fails to support this, and the social variability in T is better accounted for by a competition–
nurturance trade-off as per the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (van Anders et al., 2011). Four key domains are discussed: adult–infant interactions, sexual desire, sexual behavior, and partnering. Empirical engagements with gender/sex are shown to lead to important insights over assumptions about masculinity–femininity. Humans are discussed within a comparative framework that attends to cross species principles informed by human insights alongside human-specific particularities like social constructions, which are critical to evolutionary understandings of the social role of T. This paper thus integrates seemingly orthogonal perspectives to allow for transformative approaches to an empirically supported social phenomenology of T.""

Special issue of "Culture Unbound". Through an introduction and six original articles, the issue investigates a variety of cultural and scientific discourses and practices that in different ways are related to neuroscience and the brain.

The special issue was edited by guest editors Peter Bengtsen and Kristofer Hansson.

The aim of this article is to discuss the following questions: Can neurophysiology reveal something new about behavior—something that we could not know only by means of behavior analysis? Can neurophysiology influence the way we think about behavioral relations? To investigate these questions, I present an example in which neurophysiological events controlled, in addition to behavioral events, the verbal behavior of theorizing about behavior. The example under analysis concerns the biobehavioral approach hypotheses about the operant-respondent distinction and the unit of selection. It will be discussed how information about the neurophysiology of retention contributed to this debate by sometimes favoring the ideas proposed by the biobehavioral approach, but, in some cases, by also providing evidence that challenge these very same ideas. I will argue that this example provides a positive answer to both of the aforementioned questions.

Este texto tem como objetivo apresentar conceitos fundamentais na psicopatologia e na neurobiologia dos transtornos associados ao uso de substâncias e dos comportamentos aditivos. Em relação à psicopatologia, são definidos os conceitos de adição, dependência, tolerância, sensibilização e abstinência. Do ponto de vista neurobiológico, é enfatizada a hipótese de que drogas de abuso e determinados comportamentos aditivos cooptam sistemas cerebrais encarregados do processamento da recompensa e também da configuração de estados motivacionais, gerando os sinais e sintomas comportamentais destas graves condições psiquiátricas.

Efficient retrograde access to projection neurons for the delivery of sensors and effectors constitutes an important and enabling capability for neural circuit dissection. Such an approach would also be useful for gene therapy, including the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by pathological spread through functionally connected and highly distributed networks. Viral vectors, in particular, are powerful gene delivery vehicles for the nervous system, but all available tools suffer from inefficient retrograde transport or limited clinical potential. To address this need, we applied in vivo directed evolution to engineer potent retrograde functionality into the capsid of adeno-associated virus (AAV), a vector that has shown promise in neuroscience research and the clinic. A newly evolved variant, rAAV2-retro, permits robust retrograde access to projection neurons with efficiency comparable to classical synthetic retrograde tracers and enables sufficient sensor/effector expression for functional circuit interrogation and in vivo genome editing in targeted neuronal populations.

Provocările lumii hipertehnologizate și digitalizate în care trăim sunt foarte mari. Ele ating din ce în ce mai mult principiile morale și spirituale ale copiilor, tinerilor și adulților. Astăzi lumea experimentează transformări extreme și fără precedent, ca urmare a evoluției tehnologiei digitale, cu o largă influență asupra oamenilor și întregii societăți. Schimbările sunt atât de rapide, încât cei mai mulți nu au timpul necesar să le observe, să le perceapă, să reflecteze asupra lor în liniște și să le înțeleagă consecințele. Cercetări științifice recente demonstrează că transformările societății ne influențează pe fiecare, indiferent dacă dorim sau nu lucrul acesta și indiferent dacă suntem conștienți sau nu de această realitate. Din acest motiv, oamenii ar trebui să ia măsuri clare și obiective în viața personală și în viața familiilor lor.
Cercetarea noastră abordează trei „teze” fundamentale: postul informațional, ca o formă distinctă și mai nouă a postului în lumea contemporană, semnificația și importanța liniștii, și efectele tehnologiei și dispozitivelor digitale în viața omului. Cartea pornește de la analizarea principiilor morale care stau la baza acestor teme și continuă prin studierea câtorva dintre cele mai recente cercetări științifice din domeniul psihologiei, al științelor cognitive și al altor ramuri de cercetare contemporană. Ea încadrează cele trei teze în liniile spiritualității răsăritene și ale moralei creștine, care tind spre desăvârșirea neîncetată a omului în Hristos, prin efort personal și lucrarea virtuților.

Consciousness is usually defined through the way we experience things:
We are experiencing visual images of the physical world as it is reflected through our senses, we experience feelings, and above all, we experience thoughts.
It is obvious we experience all these, but can we prove these experiences are the 'real us' the way most people believe? There are many cases where our strong beliefs, were proven wrong. Are we wrong here too?

Behavior analysis relies on the idea of a science dealing with specific interactions between the organism and its environment. Yet it is not always clearly defined what does an “organism” mean. I will contend that disagreements arise from the roles the organism is said to have in behavioral settings. I will also argue for the organismal level as appropriate for explaining behavior in an attempt to reconcile physiology with behavior analysis thus considering organismal variables as either bodily conditions or physiological mechanisms without neglecting the selective pressures of the environment for guiding behavior.

The unconscious mind tends to disregard negations in its processing of semantic meaning. Therefore, messages containing negated concepts can ironically prime mental representations and evaluations that are opposite to those intended. We hypothesized that the subtle presentation of a negated concept (e.g., “no smoking”) would activate ironic motivational orientations as well. We tested this hypothesis in a public health context. Smokers viewed photographs in which no-smoking signs were either inconspicuously embedded (prime) or edited out (control). Primed smokers showed amplified automatic approach tendencies toward smoking-related stimuli, but not toward smoking-unrelated stimuli. Since passive priming effects generally serve to facilitate forms of action, not inhibit them, anti-smoking and other public health campaigns may ironically increase the very behaviors they seek to reduce.

The view that humans comprise only two types of beings, women and men, a framework that is sometimes referred to as the “gender binary,” played a profound role in shaping the history of psychological science. In recent years, serious challenges to the gender binary have arisen from both academic research and social activism. This review describes 5 sets of empirical findings, spanning multiple disciplines, that fundamentally undermine the gender binary. These sources of evidence include neuroscience findings that refute sexual dimorphism of the human brain; behavioral neuroendocrinology findings that challenge the notion of genetically fixed, nonoverlapping, sexually dimorphic hormonal systems; psychological findings that highlight the similarities between men and women; psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals’ identities and experiences; and developmental research suggesting that the tendency to view gender/sex as a meaningful, binary category is culturally determined and malleable. Costs associated with reliance on the gender binary and recommendations for future research, as well as clinical practice, are outlined.

Emotional Training
A practical guide to emotional management

How can we cope with our natural death anxiety and create the sense of a safe place in the changing world? How can we efficiently cope with crisis and trauma? How can we learn to create relationships and find love? How can we realize our potential and be happy? And can we do all this without approaching psychotherapy or counseling or coaching?

Dr. Dror Green has researched hundreds approaches to psychotherapy, and found that they all ignore our inborn emotional skills, which enable us to attune ourselves to reality, avoid crisis, realize our potential and be happy. Emotional Training is a simple and practical way of life, based on improving our emotional skills and creating a sense of a safe place.

Emotional Training is based on a new concept of human nature

The myth of the 'mind' and the belief in the separation between body and mind have been the corner stones of Western culture for more than 2,000 years, but they remain vague. Dr. Dror Green has defined a new, revolutionary concept of human nature that regards emotions as physical responses to stimuli from reality. This concept is compatible with new researches in neuroscience and the understanding that empathy is inborn. The emotional process is not a mystical concept, as is customarily assumed, but the autopilot that navigates our lives, warns us of dangers and directs us to a safe place.

Emotional Training suggests a new understanding of our lives

Emotional Training is an efficient path to a healthy and productive life, and it also enables us to review all aspects of our lives: interpersonal relationships, professional relationships, social and political systems, thought and research, creativity and art. Emotional Training supplies us with efficient ways of coping with the challenges of the 21st century, global warming and the Internet revolution.

Dr. Dror Green is a psychotherapist, lecturer and supervisor. He is the director of the Institute of Emotional Training in Bulgaria, where he gives seminars to couples, parents, directors, etc. He has trained psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists and educators. He was one of the pioneers of online psychotherapy and developed the first online clinic. He is also a musician, an illustrator and the author of about 40 books for children, adults and professionals

Findings using exploration models of anxiety such as the Elevated Plus Maze (EPM) and Elevated Zero Maze (EZM) are remarkably consistent given the differences in layout and number of walls used to describe their closed areas. These factors therefore do not appear to be critical. The present studies were conducted to determine if anxiolytic activity could be detected using an apparatus that presented animals with only one wall. Mice were pre-treated with either vehicle, diazepam (2-4 mg/kg) or 5-10 mg/kg chlordiazepoxide (CDP) and placed for 5 minutes onto a square platform containing a 12 x 14 cm wall. Measures were taken of frequency/duration of contacts with the wall and of general activity. Time spent in contact with the wall was selectively reduced by 4 mg/kg diazepam. 10mg/kg CDP also decreased this measure but increased measures of general activity,indicating a possible mild stimulant effect. The closed areas of the EPM are described by 3 walls. The EZM uses 2. Current findings show that anxiolytic effects can also be detected in a model with just one wall. These data provide further evidence that variations in the layout of these mazes are not critical for detecting anxiolytic action. Thigmotactic cues remain present regardless of the physical characteristics of these mazes or the local conditions they are employed under. Hence, it is suggested that thigmotactic cues may be the common source of motivation to behave in these models and that this may explain their robustness.

The genesis of the psychopath has long been debated, typically within the framework of the long-held nature versus nature argument. Are psychopaths born psychopathic or are they molded by society? Like all personality disorders , the development of the psychopathic brain is dynamic, and as the psychopath remains a consistent, albeit small, part of the population, one has to wonder why psychopathy continues to reappear in generation after generation. I explore the characteristics of psychopathic behavior, current theories on the adaptive qualities of this behavior, and psychopathy as it manifests in women. I argue that psychopathic behavior is not itself selecting for psychop-athy. Psychopathy is a mental disorder that increases the likelihood of a set of behaviors, but these behaviors are not unique to the psychopath, and so will not favor the continued presence of psychopaths in the population. I also discuss the biological characteristics of the male brain that may make it more susceptible to psychopathy than the female brain.

To contribute thoughtfully to the dialogue on the spatial design of learning environments, and because at the moment with the trend for creating activity based learning environments, i.e.  Fab Labs, Maker Spaces along with STEM and STEAM buildings, the questions that need to be asked are:
• What is activity-based learning?
• What is an activity-based learning environment?
• What are the principles for creating activity based learning environments?

Hence, the goal of this article will be to examine and define activity-based learning and provide insight in how to create them.