Psychology Today blogs

I had blogged earlier regarding the Magical Thinking article in Psychology Today. It seems that Psychology today also has a blog by its editors called Brainstorm and in it there are a couple of blogs regarding the same article by the same author and readers may find them wroth checking out.

While we are at it, Psychology Today also has many other blogs of note there and authors include people like Satoshi Kanazawa, Peter Crammer , William Todd Schultz etc. So have a look!

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Genocide and Mortality Saliance

There is an interesting article at We're Only Human, that argues that being exposed to people who have a different philosophy or world-view form our own can lead to feelings of Mortality Salience or awareness of our own Mortality. We all know that humans are aware of their own mortality and yet, can go about their daily business, nonchalantly , as they find solace in their cultural world-view , of being part of a religion or group with shared philosophy/ world-view. This is the basis for the Terror Management theory.

Now the article further argues, that if we witness the annihilation of people whose philisophy / world-view is different from ours , and who by their mere presence have induced a Mortality salience in us; then we can , by witnessing their annihilation, overcome the terror of death and manage its impact. thus, our propensity for genocide. all this is not based on mere speculation, but there is experimental evidence, that thinking about people with a different philosophy does lead to thoughts of personal death and fear of ones mortality; that witnessing or being told about the death of members holding that alternate philosophical view does lead to proper management of that terror and thus theoretically the rationale of hidden reasons behind genocide.

All that is fine; but the research was conducted using a religious paradigm. what if the other group exposed to was that of atheists; or a capitalist group was pitted against communist ideologies; would the results still hold. Historically, there has been much bloodshed between religious factions, and memories of that may color the results as people realistically feel threatened due to the checkered history of mankind. If we can be user that the terror is due to mortality salience induced by exposure to different philosophy ; and not just due to memories flooding back; than the results could have a greater implication.

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Brain Feminization of males with schizophrenia?

I don't really know what to make of Mendrek's results as discussed in this article that claim to have discovered “masculinization” of females and “feminization” of males with schizophrenia (at least at the neuroanatomical level).

The study, that used emotive film clips and fMRI to find the pattern of activation on watching emotional stimulation in a schizophrenic population, did not have any normal controls. Thus, while the fact that their results showed greater activation in Males as compared to females may be true, they do not tell us how this is related to the activation in normal population? Are schizophrenic in general more emotional than baseline normal people or less emotional is not clear. It is presumed that the baseline normal activity falls midway from what was observed in males and females and thus males more feminized while females more masculanized.


I also do not know how to integrate this finding with my framework that sees Autism and Schizophrenia/ psychosis as opposite ends of spectrum. If we juts limit our discussion to Males, then everything seems fine. Autism is the 'extreme male brain' theory while schizophrenia in males is 'feminization' of Masculine brain. but what when we extend the ambit to cover females. should one posit that schizophrenia is characterized by movement away from gender based brain development; while Autism is characterized by movement towards gender specific brain development. In this case one would conclude that female autistics were an extreme female brain. I don't like this argument as there seems scarce evidence for that. I would instead argue that even females in Schizophrenia are more feminized and this may have to do with the imprinting genes that we have discussed earlier. If the evidence was there that both males and females are more feminized in schizophrenia, life would be simple. Let me know what you think in comments and of any evidence you may be aware of.

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A Schizophrenia quiz

I always believe that questions and quizzes are an integral part of learning and retaining new information. So from now on , I'll be regularly posting some quiz questions on a particular topic on the left had side bar of The Mouse Trap. You have to click on the 'next question' button to get at the first question. Then you have to click the buttons on the top of each alternative for the correct answer. The tool keeps track of your number of tries and correct responses and also provides explanations for the correct answers.

I intend to use this tool extensively in the future. do let me know, whether you find the tool useful and would love to see similar quizzes hosted on the Mouse Trap.

I know that many of you read the Mouse trap as part of an RSS blog reader. However, I would request you to visit The Mouse Trap and give this a shot.

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And we thought only humans have art

Another Human 'unique trait' bites dust. It seems elephants can make self-portraits. Please see the video at the link below.

Elephant makes self-portriat

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Autism, the middle cingulate and reputation management

There was an article on which I had wanted to comment earlier. the study by Chiu et al shows that in autistic individuals the middle cingulate cortex is hypofunctional during the self phase of the iterated Trust game, wherein one has to infer the mind of another, decide whether to trust him or her and accordingly decide what money to give to the trustee and what to keep for oneself.

Recent work using the multiround trust game has identified activations along human
cingulate cortex consistent with agent-specific response patterns generated during interpersonal exchange with another human. These patterns differentiate outcomes following revelation of the partner’s decision (‘‘not self’’ or ‘‘other’’ response) from those following submission of one’s own decision (‘‘self’’ response). Remarkably, the patterns are spatially complementary , and almost no manipulation perturbs them except one: the removal of the interactive partner . Removal of the social partner causes the cingulate response patterns to disappear even though the sensory, motor, and reward elements of the task remain intact. These results from the trust game are consistent with agent specific cingulate responses observed in a range of other experiments. Anterior and posterior cingulate activation occurs in response to the revelation of decisions of others in two-person games like the Ultimatum and Prisoner’s Dilemma games. Furthermore, increased middle cingulate activation is commonly observed in response to one’s own social decisions or emotions.

Chris and Uta Frith do an excellent job of putting these findings in perspective and argue that the autistic is less concerned with reputation management (as it has inability to infer others mind states it does not care hat they think) and suggest a simple experiment that could elucidate the point.

Our speculation is that this process of reputation management is impaired in autistic individuals, because it depends on the ability to read the minds of others. This hypothesis can be tested experimentally. If we are concerned with our reputation then our behavior will be strongly affected by whether or not an audience is present to observe our actions. Consider, for instance, another sharing game known as the dictator game. One player is given $100 and is allowed to share any amount he or she chooses with the other player. In this situation, the rational thing to do would be to give the other player no money at all, because the second player is powerless to respond. Even "dictators" will typically dole out a small proportion of the money, however. When there is an audience for the transaction, dictators give away even more money. Presumably, they do not want to have a reputation for meanness or for acting unfairly. If autistic people are not concerned with their own reputation, then their behaviour should not be affected by the presence of an audience.

I would like to extend their experiment and suggest one for those susceptible to psychosis. I have argued that Autism and Schizophrenia/ psychosis are extreme ends of a continuum and would thus conclude that in the iterated trust game, psychotics/ those susceptible to psychosis would show hyperfunctioning of middle cingulate cortex. I have elsewhere already argued that Psychotics have an enhanced ToM or mind reading ability. I would also hypothesize that psychotics would also show enhanced reputation management and an enhanced donation of money in the trust game when an audience is present as compared to controls or the autistics.


While an experiment is the best to settle such conjectures, it is tempting to see how this adds up and can explain certain symptoms of psychosis/ mania. If one is overly concerned with reputation management one can end up being a spendthrift / show irresponsible financial behavior as one tries to build a hypothetical reputation in the minds of the audience. Taken with the fact that psychosis comes clubbed with a belief in supernatural agents, magical thinking and super agency detection etc, one may not even need an actual audience - a make-believe audience may suffice to make one get overly concerned with reputation management and thus trusting too much the others -even with their money. when reality proves otherwise and people prove to be not worthy of the trust, one may dissociate with reality altogether and become paranoid on the other extreme. We know that the ACC is dysfunctional in schizophrenics, what about the middle cingulate? is it hypoactive during trust games in the self condition? Only a hypothesis, but worth investigating!

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Stress contagion: from parents to the child?

Greg Downey at the excellent Neuroanthroplogy blog comments on a recent article by Mary Caserta, on the relationship between parental stress and illness in the children and the child's immune response. What the research team found was that :

Family processes have a substantial impact on children’s social and emotional well-being, but little is known about the effects of family stress on children’s physical health. To begin to identify potential links between family stress and health in children, we examined associations between specific aspects of family psychosocial stress and the frequency of illnesses in children, measures of innate and adaptive immune function, and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) reactivation

Greg, thinks of several possible reasons for this association:

1. Stressed out parents interact differently with their children and stress them.
2. Mirror neurons or similar systems may underlie the fact that the child may be mirroring the internal stressed environment of the parent and consequently feeling stressed.
3. Chemical mechanisms including pheromones released on being stressed (!!) may be at work and responsible for the contagion.
4. Reverse causation: the stick children may be causing the parents to feel more stressed.

I find all the above explanations (except 3) interesting and plausible, but Greg has also ignored another potential reason. Being an anthropologist he has overlooked the genetic aspect. What if some underlying gene which endows the parent to feel more stressed is also responsible for the children being more susceptible to illness/ having more auto-immune response. After all the stress system and immune system are very much cloistered together. It is not hard to imagine that a gene that causes vulnerability to stress( or felling stressed) also increases sensitivity to environmental pathogens and sensitivity of immune response. As the child is sharing 50 % of the gene of the parent, there is a great likelihood that the sensitivity to stress and sensitivity to pathogens may be inherited in the same manner. Food for thought.

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War and Peace

There is a new article by John Horgan, in the Discover Magazine regarding the eternal question of whether aggressiveness is in our genes and inevitable or can be done away with and lead to peaceful human existence.

I was introduced to psychology by reading Eric Fromm's excellent treatise on the same titled The Anatomy of human destructivity, in which he passionately argues that the animals are not cruel or destructive; but that it is a uniquely human trait. that book is a classic and I recommend it whole heartedly to anyone who has interest in the matter.

The Discover magazine article in particular quotes too of my favorite scientists: Robert Sapolsky and Frans De walls and they are on the side of 'peaceful humans' . It also has discusses those hwo belive in a darker view of human nature.

Some excerpts follow:

Frans de Waal stands in a watchtower at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center north of Atlanta, talking about war. As three hulking male chimpanzees and a dozen females loll below him, the renowned primatologist rejects the idea that war stems from “some sort of blind aggressive drive.” Observations of lethal fighting among chimpanzees, our close genetic relatives, have persuaded many people that war has deep biological roots. But de Waal says that primates, and especially humans, are “very calculating” and will abandon aggressive strategies that no longer serve their interests. “War is evitable,” de Waal says, “if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.”
De Waal acknowledges that “we have a tendency, and all the primates have a tendency, to be hostile to non–group members.” But he and other experts insist that humans and their primate cousins are much less bellicose than the public has come to believe. Studies of monkeys, apes, and Homo sapiens offer ample hope that we can overcome our aggressive tendencies and greatly reduce or maybe even eliminate warfare.

Biologist Robert Sapolsky is a leading challenger of what he calls the “urban myth of inevitable aggression.” At his Stanford University office, peering out from a tangle of gray-flecked hair and beard, he tells me that primate studies contradict simple biological theories of male belligerence—for example, those that blame the hormone testosterone. Aggression in primates may actually be the cause of elevated testosterone, rather than vice versa. Moreover, artificially increasing or decreasing testosterone levels within the normal range usually just reinforces previous patterns of aggression rather than dramatically transforming behavior; beta males may still be milquetoasts, and alphas still bullies. “Social conditioning can more than make up for the hormone,” Sapolsky says.

De Waal suspects that environmental factors contribute to the bonobos’ benign character; food is more abundant in their dense forest habitat than in the semi-open woodlands where chimpanzees live. Indeed, his experiments on captive primates have established the power of environmental factors. In one experiment, rhesus monkeys, which are ordinarily incorrigibly aggressive, grew up to be kinder and gentler when raised with mild-mannered stump-tailed monkeys.

De Waal has also reduced conflict among monkeys by increasing their interdependence and ensuring equal access to food. Applying these lessons to humans, de Waal sees promise in alliances, such as the European Union, that promote trade and travel and hence interdependence. “Foster economic ties,” he says, “and the reason for warfare, which is usually resources, will probably dissipate.”

Fry has also identified 74 “nonwarring cultures” that—while only a fraction of all known societies—nonetheless contradict the depiction of war as universal. His list includes nomadic hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung in Africa and Aborigines in Australia. These examples are crucial, Fry says, because our ancestors are thought to have lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers from the emergence of the Homo lineage just over 2 million years ago in Africa until the appearance of agriculture and permanent settlements about 12,000 years ago. That time span constitutes 99 percent of our history.

Lethal violence certainly occurred among those nomadic hunter-gatherers, Fry acknowledges, but for the most part it consisted not of genuine warfare but of fights between two men, often over a woman. These fights would sometimes precipitate feuds between friends and relatives of the initial antagonists, but members of the band had ways to avoid these feuds or cut them short. For example, Fry says, third parties might step between the rivals and say, “‘Let’s talk this out’ or ‘You guys wrestle, and the winner gets the woman.’”

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