I Have Felt
i have felt pain so dark
that it turned black bright sunlight
i have felt sorrow so strong
that it made my chest crush
i have felt sadness so bottomless
that it drowned me like a sea
i have not
not once in all these years
felt happiness
Riding my bike into lack of reality
Morning’s gloom and crisp cold freeze the brain so, that it perceives of blank writing screen as of something lined with wadding in which characters are strewn or embroidered in undulating rows on the terraces of the respective lines., at times more pulling them out of the wadding rather than inserting them into it.
The keys bearing weird characters themselves, look like little irregular cubes from bones, sitting in a jelly like shelf moving erratically around in their assigned position, from where they can be hit in order do build coherence in this grey and indeterminate wadding space…the moving characters are hit by try and error, keep their swimming movement in their lines and sometimes skip characters, already inserted. Writing like this resembles bringing a flock of characters into an alignment that can convey sense, but is sabotaged by the resilience of the flocking characters who are completely void of understanding and perceptions of sense, whatsoever. There association seems to be guided rather by something in the bathe of physical conditions of the waded space.
Listening to Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9 is only intensifying the derealisation, as it seems to attract characters out of their linguistic bonds into the blurring, glistening free realm of sound and musical structure…. whence restlessness within the forming text increases permanently .
If that means losing grip on reality, I am not suffering from it. I am on the contrary, enjoying it…
Linguistic Niche Hypothesis – Language Structure Partly Determined by Social Structure
Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Memphis have released a new study on linguistic evolution that challenges the prominent hypothesis for why languages differ throughout the world.
Geographic distribution of the 2,236 languages included in the present study.
The study argues that human languages may adapt more like biological organisms than previously thought and that the more common and popular the language, the simpler its construction to facilitate its survival.
Traditional thinking is that languages develop based upon random change and historical drift. For example, English and Turkish are very different languages based upon histories that separate them in space and time. For years, it has been the reigning assumption in the linguistic sciences.
The recent report, published in the current issue of PLoS One, offers a new hypothesis, challenging the drift explanation. Gary Lupyan, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and Rick Dale, an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Memphis, conducted a large-scale statistical analysis of more than 2,000 of the world’s languages aimed at testing whether certain social environments are correlated with certain linguistic properties.
The researchers found striking relationships between the demographic properties of a language — such as its population and global spread — and the grammatical complexity of those languages. Languages having the most speakers — and those that have spread around the world — were found to have far simpler grammars, specifically morphology, than languages spoken by few people and in circumscribed regions. For example, languages spoken by more than 100,000 people are almost six times more likely to have simple verb conjugations compared to languages spoken by fewer than 100,000 people.
Larger populations tend to have simpler pronoun and number systems and a smaller number of cases and genders and in general do not employ complex prefixing or suffixing rules in their grammars. A consequence is that languages with long histories of adult learners have become easier to learn over time. Although a number of researchers have predicted such relationships between social and language structure, this is the first large-scale statistical test of this idea.
The results draw connections between the evolution of human language and biological organisms. Just as very distantly related organisms converge on evolutionary strategies in particular niches, languages may adapt to the social environments in which they are learned and used.
“English, for all its confusing spelling and exceptions — if a baker bakes, what does a grocer do? — has a relatively simple grammar,” Lupyan said. “Verbs are easy to conjugate and nouns are mostly pluralized by adding ’s.’ In comparison, a West African language like Hausa has dozens of ways to make nouns plural and in many languages — Turkish, Aymara, Ladakhi, Ainu — verbs like ‘to know’ have to include information about the origin of the speaker’s knowledge. This information is often conveyed using complex rules, which the most widely-spoken languages on earth like English and Mandarin lack.”
Lupyan and Dale call this social affect on grammatical patterns the “Linguistic Niche Hypothesis.” Languages evolve within particular socio-demographic niches. Although all languages must be learnable by infants, the introduction of adult learners to some languages (for example, through migration or colonization) means that aspects of a language difficult for adults to learn will be less likely to be passed on to subsequent generations of learners. The result is that languages spoken by more people over larger geographic regions have become morphologically simpler over many generations.
A remaining puzzle is why languages with few speakers are so complex in the first place. One possibility, explored by researchers, is that features such as grammatical gender and complex conjugational systems, while difficult for adult learners to master, may facilitate language learning in children by providing a network of redundant information that can cue children in on the meanings of words and how to string them together.
The results and theory proposed by Lupyan and Dale do not aim to explain why a specific language has the grammar it does. Because the findings are statistical in nature, many exceptions to Lupyan and Dale’s theory can be identified. Their work, however, provides a comprehensive analysis of how some social factors influence the structure of language and shows that the relationships between language and culture is far from arbitrary.
The study was funded by an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training award to the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at Penn and by the National Science Foundation.
PLoS ONE, 2010; 5 (1): e8559 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008559
Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure
Gary Lupyan1*, Rick Dale2
1 Institute for Research on Cognitive Science and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America,
2 Department of Psychology, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America
Abstract
Background: Languages differ greatly both in their syntactic and morphological systems and in the social environments in which they exist. We challenge the view that language grammars are unrelated to social environments in which they are learned and used. Methodology/Principal Findings We conducted a statistical analysis of >2,000 languages using a combination of demographic sources and the World Atlas of Language Structures— a database of structural language properties. We found strong relationships between linguistic factors related to morphological complexity, and demographic/socio-historical factors such as the number of language users, geographic spread, and degree of language contact. The analyses suggest that languages spoken by large groups have simpler inflectional morphology than languages spoken by smaller groups as measured on a variety of factors such as case systems and complexity of conjugations. Additionally, languages spoken by large groups are much more likely to use lexical strategies in place of inflectional morphology to encode evidentiality, negation, aspect, and possession. Our findings indicate that just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, language structures appear to adapt to the environment (niche) in which they are being learned and used. As adults learn a language, features that are difficult for them to acquire, are less likely to be passed on to subsequent learners. Languages used for communication in large groups that include adult learners appear to have been subjected to such selection. Conversely, the morphological complexity common to languages used in small groups increases redundancy which may facilitate language learning by infants. Conclusions/Significance We hypothesize that language structures are subjected to different evolutionary pressures in different social environments. Just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, language structures appear to adapt to the environment (niche) in which they are being learned and used. The proposed Linguistic Niche Hypothesis has implications for answering the broad question of why languages differ in the way they do and makes empirical predictions regarding language acquisition capacities of children versus adults.
Beautiful People (Paperback) by Simon Doonan
# Paperback: 320 pages
# Publisher: Collins (1 May 2008)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 0007269544
# ISBN-13: 978-0007269549
Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York, was called by Guy Trebay in The Times “the fox-crazy impresario of Barneys’ notorious windows.” The saying goes, that he has taken the derided window-dresser’s metier from culture’s fringes and moved it front and center. He also writes a column for The New York Observer and has been a regular commentator on several television networks.
Beautiful People goes back to Reading, England, where, born in 1952, Mr. Doonan was raised in a family including his parents and his sister, but also a lobotomized grandmother, a blind aunt with a succession of Seeing Eye dogs and a schizophrenic uncle who kept a souvenir three-inch toenail under the bed. Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family, or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best-friend Biddie to London, where they hope to find the Beautiful People, that elusive clan who luxuriate on floor pillowsand amuse each other with bon mots.
Throughout the memoir— a pastiche of anecdotes about family holidays, the tart who lived next door, his first job—Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.
The moment, I first started reading Beautiful People I was sure that I was going to love its quirky episodes which at first were just amusing and touching but soon turned out to be moments of hilarious observation that me laughing aloud or had me swallow tears.
Not Size Matters, But Diet Complexity
Many people think the success of dieting, seemingly a national obsession following the excesses and resolutions of the holiday season, depends mostly on how hard one tries — on willpower and dedication. While this does matter, new research has found that a much more subtle aspect of the diets themselves can also have a big influence on the pounds shed — namely, the perceived complexity of a diet plan’s rules and requirements.
Cognitive scientists from Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin compared the dieting behavior of women following two radically different diet plans and found that the more complicated people thought their diet plan was, the sooner they were likely to drop it.
“For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it,” reported Peter Todd, professor in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Jutta Mata, now a professor of psychology at Stanford University, said this effect holds even after controlling for the influence of important social-cognitive factors including self-efficacy, the belief that one is capable of achieving a goal like sticking to a diet regimen to control one’s weight.
“Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking that the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts,” she said.
Dieting is not all in one’s head — environment matters, too, the professors say. The physical environment has to be set up properly, such as putting snack foods out of sight to avoid mindless eating. But the cognitive environment, they say, must also be appropriately constructed, by choosing diet rules that that one finds easy to remember and follow.
For people interested in following a diet plan, Mata suggests they take a look at several diet plans with an eye toward how many rules the plans have and how many things need to be how many things need to be kept in mind.
“If they decide to go with a more complex diet, which could be more attractive for instance if it allows more flexibility, they should evaluate how difficult they find doing the calculations and monitoring their consumption,” she said. “If they find it very difficult, the likelihood that they will prematurely give up the diet is higher and they should try to find a different plan.”
About the study: The study examined both the objective and subjective complexity of two diet plans. Brigitte, the cognitively simpler of the two, is a popular German recipe diet that provides shopping lists for the dieters, thus requiring participants to simply follow the provided meal plan. Weight Watchers assigns point values to every food and instructs participants to eat only a certain number of points per day. The 390 women involved were recruited from German-language Internet chat rooms dealing with weight management and were already in the midst of using one of the two diet plans. They answered questionnaires at the beginning, mid-point and end of an eight-week period.
While losing weight initially isn’t rocket science, keeping it off remains a challenge to dieters. It generally is believed that the longer people can adhere to their diet plan, the more successful they will be long-term with their weight loss maintenance. And the more like rocket science one’s diet plan feels, Todd and Mata report, the less likely that long-term adherence and maintenance is to succeed.
Appetite, 2009; DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.09.004- Article in Press, Corrected Proof
When weight management lasts: Lower perceived rule complexity increases adherence.
Jutta Mata a, b, Corresponding Author
Peter M. Todda, c,
Sonia Lippke d
a Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany
b International Max Planck Research School “The Life Course: Evolutionary and Ontogenetic Dynamics (LIFE)”, Berlin, Germany
c Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1101 E. 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
d Department of Health Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Received 27 December 2008;
revised 4 September 2009;
accepted 8 September 2009.
Available online 12 September 2009.
Abstract Maintaining behavior change is one of the major challenges in weight management and long-term weight loss. We investigated the impact of the cognitive complexity of eating rules on adherence to weight management programs. We studied whether popular weight management programs can fail if participants find the rules too complicated from a cognitive perspective, meaning that individuals are not able to recall or process all required information for deciding what to eat. The impact on program adherence of participants’ perceptions of eating rule complexity and other behavioral factors known to influence adherence (including previous weight management, self-efficacy, and planning) was assessed via a longitudinal online questionnaire given to 390 participants on two different popular weight management regimens. As we show, the regimens, Weight Watchers and a popular German recipe diet (Brigitte), strongly differ in objective rule complexity and thus their cognitive demands on the dieter. Perceived rule complexity was the strongest factor associated with increased risk of quitting the cognitively demanding weight management program (Weight Watchers); it was not related to adherence length for the low cognitive demand program (Brigitte). Higher self-efficacy generally helped in maintaining a program. The results emphasize the importance of considering rule complexity to promote long-term weight management.
Keywords: Cognitive complexity; Weight management; Weight loss program adherence; Cox hazard regressions; Self-efficacy
Primates’ Social Intelligence Overestimated?
… at least that of humans sometimes is.
Leaving the joke aside, grooming behaviour displayed by primates is due to less rational behaviour than often thought. According to a computer model developed by scientists at the University of Groningen, one basic rule explains all possible grooming patterns: individuals will groom others if they’re afraid they’ll lose from them in a fight.
Primates are assumed to reconcile their conflicts by grooming each other after a fight. They are also supposed to carry out intricate trading of grooming for the receipt of help in fights. Professor and theoretical biologist Charlotte Hemelrijk shows in a computer simulation that many patterns of reconciliation and exchange surprisingly emerge simply from fear of losing a fight with another individual. ‘This shows that reconciliation and exchange behaviour are not necessarily conscious behaviour’, Hemelrijk — specialist in self-organization in social systems — states. ‘It’s simply a consequence of rank and of which primates are in the vicinity of the primate that wants to groom.’ The results of the research conducted by the group that worked with Hemelrijk on the computer model have appeared in late December in the journal PloS Computational Biology.
Intelligence
‘Primates are intelligent, but their intelligence is overestimated. The social behaviour of primates is explained on the basis of cognitive considerations by primates that are too sophisticated’, Hemelrijk continues. ‘Primates are assumed to use their intelligence continually and to be very calculating. They’re supposed to reconcile fights and to do so preferably with partners that could mean a lot to them.’ This would explain why primates prefer grooming partners higher in rank in order to gain more effective support in fights. Moral considerations would bring them to repay the grooming costs by grooming others.
Such behaviour patterns all presuppose a rational thought process, according to Hemelrijk: ‘In order to reconcile, the primates must recall exactly which fight they last had and with whom. They must also be able to gauge the importance of each relationship. And for the reciprocity and repayment, they must keep careful track how often and from whom they have received which grooming or support ’service’ in order to be able to repay it sufficiently.’
GrooFiWorld
However, all these suppositions are unnecessary according to Hemelrijk: ‘Our computer model GrooFiWorld shows that complex calculating behaviour is completely unnecessary. We can add the simple rule to the existing DomWorld model that an individual will begin grooming another when it expects to lose from it upon attacking the other. This in itself leads to many of the complex patterns of friendly behaviour observed in real primates.’ In the DomWorld model, individuals group together and compete with their neighbours.
With the help of the computer model, Hemelrijk shows that most friendship patterns are due to the proximity of other animals. In turn, the proximity is the result of dominance interactions. The fear of losing a fight also plays an important role. ‘Apparent reconciliation behaviour is the result of individuals being nearer their opponent after a fight than otherwise’, the professor explains. Repaying grooming that has been received is the result of some individuals being nearer to certain others more often. Since they groom nearby primates in particular, any grooming received will automatically be repaid.’
The model and reality
That this is shown by the computer model does not mean that primates are not capable of displaying intelligent social behaviour, according to Hemelrijk. ‘The resemblance of patterns of friendly behaviour in our model to those in reality means that more evidence is needed to be able to draw the conclusion that friendly relationships are based on human, calculating considerations. Our model is a ‘null model’ providing simple explanations which are especially useful for further research into friendly behaviour in primates, in particular into that of macaques.’
Such computer models are not only useful in analyzing primate behaviour, but also to gain insight into the social behaviour of all sorts of species that live in groups. It could for instance provide ideas for further research into the flocking behaviour of starlings. Hemelrijk: ‘Simulations thus are also very important for researchers working out in the field. They can research the connection between models and reality.’
PLoS Computational Biology, 2009; 5 (12): e1000630 DOI: doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000630
Emergent Patterns of Social Affiliation in Primates, a Model.
Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, Hanno Hildenbrandt, Charlotte K. Hemelrijk
Abstract Many patterns of affiliative behaviour have been described for primates, for instance: reciprocation and exchange of grooming, grooming others of similar rank, reconciliation of fights, and preferential reconciliation with more valuable partners. For these patterns several functions and underlying cognitive processes have been suggested. It is, however, difficult to imagine how animals may combine these diverse considerations in their mind. Although the co-variation hypothesis, by limiting the social possibilities an individual has, constrains the number of cognitive considerations an individual has to take, it does not present an integrated theory of affiliative patterns either. In the present paper, after surveying patterns of affiliation in egalitarian and despotic macaques, we use an individual-based model with a high potential for self-organisation as a starting point for such an integrative approach. In our model, called GrooFiWorld, individuals group and, upon meeting each other, may perform a dominance interaction of which the outcomes of winning and losing are self-reinforcing. Besides, if individuals think they will be defeated, they consider grooming others. Here, the greater their anxiety is, the greater their “motivation” to groom others. Our model generates patterns similar to many affiliative patterns of empirical data. By merely increasing the intensity of aggression, affiliative patterns in the model change from those resembling egalitarian macaques to those resembling despotic ones. Our model produces such patterns without assuming in the mind of the individual the specific cognitive processes that are usually thought to underlie these patterns (such as recordkeeping of the acts given and received, a tendency to exchange, memory of the former fight, selective attraction to the former opponent, and estimation of the value of a relationship). Our model can be used as a null model to increase our understanding of affiliative behaviour among primates, in particular macaques.
ASMALLWORLD Or Rather ASMALLBRAIN?
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”–Matthew v:3.
WHAT IT IS TO BE POOR IN SPIRIT? This certainly is: after me posting an event in Berlin:
When
19th Jan 2010 at 20:30
Where
BKA-Theater
Mehringdamm 34
10961 Berlin (Germany)
Host
unerhoerte-musik@bka-theater.de
Website
http://www.unerhoerte-musik.de/2010_jan/dienstag3jan2010.htm
Description
Meitar-Ensemble Tel Aviv
On Sun, 10 Jan 10, 07:36, ASW Webmaster deleted my post and wrote:
Subject Your event post – deletion
Dear Dirk,
Your post has been deleted as we require that all posts be in English only. Please feel free to translate your text, included below, and to repost it in English. Thank you!
Kind regards,
ASW
…and here is the sweet little E-Mail-conversation ensuing, which proves to me, that this world is just big enough for limited frames of mind:
*
On Sun, 10 Jan 10, 07:50, Dirk Stemper wrote
* SubjectRE: Your event post – deletion
Are you guys making fun of me? Except the addresses and proper names there were no German words included, whatsoever!
I suggest, you keep up your own event schedule, as long as you can afford dealing with your network member’s posts like this.
In the meantime i will take my time to think, if this is the kind of network, where i want to have a profile.
Regards,
Dr. Dirk Stemper (untranslated German – hope you can bear it)
*
On Sun, 10 Jan 10, 07:57, ASW Webmaster wrote
* SubjectRE: Your event post – deletion
Dear Dirk,
Sorry for not being clear.
Please translate your event post title as per our request and feel free to repost your event.
Kind regards,
ASW
* To ASW Webmaster
* Date10 January 10 at 08:08
Dear ASW,
sorry for not being clear: there are just names included in the post. I will not translate them.
ASMALLWORLD will deal without the event post. And the event will take place nonetheless.
Please refrain from replying to this, if you did not take the time to read the original post first.
Regards
Dr. D. Stemper (still untranslated)
it’s a world of laughter, a world or tears
its a world of hopes, its a world of fear
theres so much that we share
that its time we’re aware
its ASMALLWORLD after all
(I hope you do not mind the post being in English, folks… )
GHRELIN Can Regulate Aspects Of Eating Behavior
The premise that hunger makes food look more appealing is a widely held belief — just ask those who cruise grocery store aisles on an empty stomach, only to go home with a full basket and an empty wallet.
Prior research studies have suggested that the so-called hunger hormone ghrelin, which the body produces when it’s hungry, might act on the brain to trigger this behavior. New research in mice by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists suggest that ghrelin might also work in the brain to make some people keep eating “pleasurable” foods when they’re already full.
“What we show is that there may be situations where we are driven to seek out and eat very rewarding foods, even if we’re full, for no other reason than our brain tells us to,” said Dr. Jeffrey Zigman, assistant professor of internal medicine and psychiatry at UT Southwestern and co-senior author of the study appearing online and in a future edition of Biological Psychiatry.
Scientists previously have linked increased levels of ghrelin to intensifying the rewarding or pleasurable feelings one gets from cocaine or alcohol. Dr. Zigman said his team speculated that ghrelin might also increase specific rewarding aspects of eating.
Rewards, he said, generally can be defined as things that make us feel better.
“They give us sensory pleasure, and they motivate us to work to obtain them,” he said. “They also help us reorganize our memory so that we remember how to get them.”
Dr. Mario Perello, postdoctoral researcher in internal medicine and lead author of the current study, said the idea was to determine “why someone who is stuffed from lunch still eats — and wants to eat — that high-calorie dessert.”
For this study, the researchers conducted two standard behavioral tests. In the first, they evaluated whether mice that were fully sated preferred a room where they had previously found high-fat food over one that had only offered regular bland chow. They found that when mice in this situation were administered ghrelin, they strongly preferred the room that had been paired with the high-fat diet. Mice without ghrelin showed no preference.
“We think the ghrelin prompted the mice to pursue the high-fat chow because they remembered how much they enjoyed it,” Dr. Perello said. “It didn’t matter that the room was now empty; they still associated it with something pleasurable.”
The researchers also found that blocking the action of ghrelin, which is normally secreted into the bloodstream upon fasting or caloric restriction, prevented the mice from spending as much time in the room they associated with the high-fat food.
For the second test, the team observed how long mice would continue to poke their noses into a hole in order to receive a pellet of high-fat food. “The animals that didn’t receive ghrelin gave up much sooner than the ones that did receive ghrelin,” Dr. Zigman said.
Humans and mice share the same type of brain-cell connections and hormones, as well as similar architectures in the so-called “pleasure centers” of the brain. In addition, the behavior of the mice in this study is consistent with pleasure- or reward-seeking behavior seen in other animal studies of addiction, Dr. Zigman said.
The next step, Dr. Perello said, is to determine which neural circuits in the brain regulate ghrelin’s actions.
Biological Psychiatry, 2009; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.10.030
Ghrelin Increases the Rewarding Value of High-Fat Diet in an Orexin-Dependent Manner
Mario Perelloa, Ichiro Sakataa, Shari Birnbaumb, Jen-Chieh Chuanga, Sherri Osborne-Lawrencea, Sherry A. Rovinskya, Jakub Woloszyna, Masashi Yanagisawac, Michael Lutterb and Jeffrey M. Zigmana, b, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author
a Department of Internal Medicine (Divisions of Hypothalamic Research and Endocrinology & Metabolism), The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas
b Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas
c Department of Molecular Genetics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas
Received 12 May 2009;
revised 25 September 2009;
accepted 23 October 2009.
Available online 24 December 2009.
Background Ghrelin is a potent orexigenic hormone that likely impacts eating via several mechanisms. Here, we hypothesized that ghrelin can regulate extra homeostatic, hedonic aspects of eating behavior.
Methods In the current study, we assessed the effects of different pharmacological, physiological, and genetic models of increased ghrelin and/or ghrelin-signaling blockade on two classic behavioral tests of reward behavior: conditioned place preference (CPP) and operant conditioning.
Results Using both CPP and operant conditioning, we found that ghrelin enhanced the rewarding value of high-fat diet (HFD) when administered to ad lib-fed mice. Conversely, wild-type mice treated with ghrelin receptor antagonist and ghrelin receptor-null mice both failed to show CPP to HFD normally observed under calorie restriction. Interestingly, neither pharmacologic nor genetic blockade of ghrelin signaling inhibited the body weight homeostasis-related, compensatory hyperphagia associated with chronic calorie restriction. Also, ghrelin’s effects on HFD reward were blocked in orexin-deficient mice and wild-type mice treated with an orexin 1 receptor antagonist.
Conclusions Our results demonstrate an obligatory role for ghrelin in certain rewarding aspects of eating that is separate from eating associated with body weight homeostasis and that requires the presence of intact orexin signaling.
Key Words: Food intake; food reward; ghrelin; orexin
Avatar 3D (2009)
After Arthur And The Minimoys, now comes Jake And The Megamoys. Na’vi, that is, to be precise.
Next to correspondence in shape and bodysize, i wish the sequence were also on other behalf more like Swift’s “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver”. While that book presented itself as a simple traveller’s narrative with a disingenuous title, it rendered a Menippean Satire in four parts about, by then modern, society and human nature. Next to this, the reader gets the proof, that satire is neither conflicting with SciFi nor good literature.
In Avatar, a paraplegic war veteran Jake, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. He meets the right way of living, misses it and then sets out for a quest to find it again and save it. Sounds familiar? No wonder
In Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the Story of the Grail, written between 1181 and 1190, Perceval, a young guy, virgin and ignorant to the ways of men until the age of 15, meets a crippled Fisher King and sees a grail, not yet identified as “holy”, but he fails to ask a question that would have healed the injured king. Upon learning of his mistake he vows to find the Grail castle again and fulfill his quest but Chretien’s story breaks off soon after, to be continued in a number of different ways by various authors afterwards.
So the plot, known from a medieval bestseller, is knitted into the weaving of Swift’s 18th century block buster, not sparing any stereotype successful in history, from biblical Armaggedon, over eighteenth century sentimentalist “noble savage”, to Westerns .
And while the movie does depict the devastating consequences of material greed, gone wild, it seems to suggest totemistic religiousness as the way out of it. So, people in Afghanistan, perceived as “humanoids” at best, in their cultural alienness, being in the way of hegemonic oil and gas interests, are reconnecting themselves with their nature and send American troups home after deafeat? This naive play with stereotypes does even backfire, however noble its original intentions might be: it promotes a new tribalisation and thus yields a religious justification to the conflicts arrising from globalization worldwide. But this world is not functioning on totemistic idols anymore. Nowadays human rights are remorselessly sacrificed by megalomaniacal fantasies of transnational corporation leaders about an omnipotent international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology. And it is the same human rights in Khabul or Washington, that are at stake.
Rather than adding a third optical dimension, the movie would have deserved a third dimension in depth, if it pretends itself to more than a kiddie’s story. “It wouldn’t be fair to slap the “all style, no substance” label on James Cameron’s latest sci-fi epic, but it’s certainly tempting”, says Jamey Codding. It certainly is. Nonetheless, the movie looks spectacular in 3D. For a pity, the impressive computer graphic realisations are soaked in a pompous melodramatic sound carpet that sounds like Wagner on Glühwein. Some music would not have done any harm.
Alas, if it did not turn out well this time, there are still Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrig, Luggnagg, and Japan and Part IV: A Voyage to Houyhnhnms to try again…
Survival Of The Kindest – Empathy In Our Genes
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.
In contrast to “every man for himself” interpretations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of “Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life,” and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.
They call it “survival of the kindest.”
“Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others,” said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct.”
Empathy in our genes
Keltner’s team is looking into how the human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic.
The study, led by UC Berkeley graduate student Laura Saslow and Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University, found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances.
Informally known as the “cuddle hormone,” oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, nurturing and romantic love, among other functions.
“The tendency to be more empathetic may be influenced by a single gene,” Rodrigues said.
The more you give, the more respect you get
While studies show that bonding and making social connections can make for a healthier, more meaningful life, the larger question some UC Berkeley researchers are asking is, “How do these traits ensure our survival and raise our status among our peers?”
One answer, according to UC Berkeley social psychologist and sociologist Robb Willer is that the more generous we are, the more respect and influence we wield. In one recent study, Willer and his team gave participants each a modest amount of cash and directed them to play games of varying complexity that would benefit the “public good.” The results, published in the journal American Sociological Review, showed that participants who acted more generously received more gifts, respect and cooperation from their peers and wielded more influence over them.
“The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated,” Willer said. “But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status.”
“Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish,” he added.
Cultivating the greater good
Such results validate the findings of such “positive psychology” pioneers as Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research in the early 1990s shifted away from mental illness and dysfunction, delving instead into the mysteries of human resilience and optimism.
While much of the positive psychology being studied around the nation is focused on personal fulfillment and happiness, UC Berkeley researchers have narrowed their investigation into how it contributes to the greater societal good.
One outcome is the campus’s Greater Good Science Center, a West Coast magnet for research on gratitude, compassion, altruism, awe and positive parenting, whose benefactors include the Metanexus Institute, Tom and Ruth Ann Hornaday and the Quality of Life Foundation.
Christine Carter, executive director of the Greater Good Science Center, is creator of the “Science for Raising Happy Kids” Web site, whose goal, among other things, is to assist in and promote the rearing of “emotionally literate” children. Carter translates rigorous research into practical parenting advice. She says many parents are turning away from materialistic or competitive activities, and rethinking what will bring their families true happiness and well-being.
“I’ve found that parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become,” said Carter, author of “Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents” which will be in bookstores in February 2010. “What is often surprising to parents is how much happier they themselves also become.”
The sympathetic touch
As for college-goers, UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton has found that cross-racial and cross-ethnic friendships can improve the social and academic experience on campuses. In one set of findings, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he found that the cortisol levels of both white and Latino students dropped as they got to know each over a series of one-on-one get-togethers. Cortisol is a hormone triggered by stress and anxiety.
Meanwhile, in their investigation of the neurobiological roots of positive emotions, Keltner and his team are zeroing in on the aforementioned oxytocin as well as the vagus nerve, a uniquely mammalian system that connects to all the body’s organs and regulates heart rate and breathing.
Both the vagus nerve and oxytocin play a role in communicating and calming. In one UC Berkeley study, for example, two people separated by a barrier took turns trying to communicate emotions to one another by touching one other through a hole in the barrier. For the most part, participants were able to successfully communicate sympathy, love and gratitude and even assuage major anxiety.
Researchers were able to see from activity in the threat response region of the brain that many of the female participants grew anxious as they waited to be touched. However, as soon as they felt a sympathetic touch, the vagus nerve was activated and oxytocin was released, calming them immediately.
“Sympathy is indeed wired into our brains and bodies; and it spreads from one person to another through touch,” Keltner said.
The same goes for smaller mammals. UC Berkeley psychologist Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney, a professor of biological psychiatry and neurology at McGill University, found that rat pups whose mothers licked, groomed and generally nurtured them showed reduced levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, and had generally more robust immune systems.
Overall, these and other findings at UC Berkeley challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last, and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion.
“This new science of altruism and the physiological underpinnings of compassion is finally catching up with Darwin’s observations nearly 130 years ago, that sympathy is our strongest instinct,” Keltner said.
PNAS December 8, 2009, 106 (49)
Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans
1. Sarina M. Rodrigues a,b,1,2,
2. Laura R. Saslow c,1,2,
3. Natalia Garcia c,
4. Oliver P. John a,c and
5. Dacher Keltner c
+ Author Affiliations
1.
a Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720;
2.
b Department of Psychology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331; and
3.
c Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
1.
↵1 S.M.R and L.R.S. contributed equally to this work.
2.
Edited by Michael I. Posner, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, and approved October 9, 2009 (received for review August 24, 2009)
Abstract
Oxytocin, a peptide that functions as both a hormone and neurotransmitter, has broad influences on social and emotional processing throughout the body and the brain. In this study, we tested how a polymorphism (rs53576) of the oxytocin receptor relates to two key social processes related to oxytocin: empathy and stress reactivity. Compared with individuals homozygous for the G allele of rs53576 (GG), individuals with one or two copies of the A allele (AG/AA) exhibited lower behavioral and dispositional empathy, as measured by the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test and an other-oriented empathy scale. Furthermore, AA/AG individuals displayed higher physiological and dispositional stress reactivity than GG individuals, as determined by heart rate response during a startle anticipation task and an affective reactivity scale. Our results provide evidence of how a naturally occurring genetic variation of the oxytocin receptor relates to both empathy and stress profiles.
