IDEAS

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Ms. Rena Rabei:  thank you for a very interesting article and the informative link. I too believe that neuroscience, one day, will provide us with enough evidence and concrete knowledge about neural correlates of cognition, feelings, and personality . The convergence of field psychotherapy and neuroscience would provide professionals with more sophisticated tools to address concerns such as mental illness, dysfunctional relationships, behavioral problems, and crime in general.

Damage to middle structures of PFC reveals dysfunction in areas of planning regulation of affect, and judgment. Accordingly, in individuals with poor integration ( due to abuse,  neglect and improper upbringing) of these cortical structures with sub cortical areas results in the same dysfunctions.

I see the Profit  seeking inherent in any enterprise in a Capitalistic economic system as an insurmountable obstacle in reforming the way we approach crime and mental illness. Sometimes goals of for profit organizations/corporation are a problem in itself. They benefit by resisting reform and maintaining current approach towards correction.

There is hope that local governments in more 'progressive' states will put the well being of their cities and citizens ahead of  profit by adopting and implementing what scientists are discovering and recommending in areas of mental health and pathological behaviors.

P.S. Disenchanted: I totally agree with your observation and I am afraid it is going to get worse for the study of Humanities in Iran. 

Thank you for your

Thank you for your interesting comments, they certainly open up my horizons for further contemplation. 

Here is a link to a recent interview with Dr. David Eagleman, one of the most well known neuroscientists in this field. In this interview, Eagleman talks about how we should use what we know from Neuroscience to reform the justice system, and gives great anecdotal evidence of individuals that committed horrific crimes simply because they had a tumor developing in their frontal cortex:

//www.npr.org/2011/05/31/136495499/incognito-...

Another advocate for applying our knowledge from Neuroscience to change social policy, is Dr. Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. I attended a riveting lecture by him recently, in which he discussed how mental disorders are the leading cause of medical health disabilities in the developed world, and constitute a global problem. Through Neuroscience we have the tools to study these disorders as developmental brain processes and find new opportunities for treatment. 

Unfortunately from my experience in both American and Iranian cultures, there seems to be a popular view that all people are created equal and have equal potential, and if they don't get as far in life as someone else, it is their fault. What we know from Neuroscience shows that this is simply not true. We all have different brains and different capacities to function within the social world. Hopefully, as scientists become better at communicating their findings to the general public, this 'one size fits all' perspective that we seem to apply to health care and the justice system will change, and we will move towards a more individually tailored approach that will be more efficient and effective and humane. 

Consciousness.

MG had alluded to the concept of consciousness in his post. I will attempt  to start with a definition of it from a non-philosophical perspective; hopefully the writer of the article will discuss it further.

Freud maintained that consciousness is merely property of one part of the mind.  Mind and consciousness may be viewed to be  result of  unified brain processes. We know the Cortex is where consciousness materializes. This knowledge has been formulated from studies of patients with damage to cortex, e.g., damage to Occipital lobe causes deprivation in  of visual consciousness and so on...

It should be noted the visual consciousness is not the same as visual processing, the latter makes the former possible.

In an 'existential' context, consciousness could be referred to state being awake and alert. This wakefulness is due to working of specific structures in  brainstem.

Consciousness (conscious state) is a result of patterns of activation by cortical tissues 'responding' to changes in the world outside the brain.

P.S. I noticed MG actually talked about collective unsonsciousness. It can be viewed as an evolutionary phenomenon that is sum of all the beliefs, and mythology of human race burned  into our 'psyche'.

Thanks for introducing science in Iranian community discourse..

     It's often that I see on this site outlandish and certainly unsubstantiated claims during discussions on politics, sociology and other topics. Absurd claims such as the one that Iran's political problems has its roots in "jealousy of Iranian people" or other such nonsensical statements.

       Iranians have been deprived of the new advances in humanities and social sciences thanks to a dominant religious culture and the fact that their best and brightest often choose either engineering or medicine as their professions while looking down on humanities and to some extent other pure sciences.

      While we are clearly catching up with the developed world in math and hard sciences, the gap in humanities persists if not widening!

     Folks in general consider themselves experts in such domains out of pure ignorance. It takes time to address such attitude and this blog is a good step in the right direction!

Way over my head

 I can't figure out the beginning; the jumping bit from assumed, perceived self-interest to self-perceptions of superiority, let alone the rest. Way over my head.

'Like the first painting though. 

Fascinating blog, and an even better discussion

this is probably the first informed conversation I have read on tis topic, so:

vov, vov, as ve say baak hom.

Khanm Rabei, thanx and  looking forward to more works from you, the art works look  better on your page.

Tangential to the issue of  perception, are all these notion of " collective unconciousness,"  Some one mentioned Jung, and it kind of reminded me of Franz Fanon and how he reworked this whole notion of the collective uncounsiousness, by his idea of a collective cultural counciousness. Any thoughts on that?

My thoughts.

Understanding and recognition of how our brain perceives social
hierarchy, has the potential to allow us to move past the “Us vs Them”
mentality that dominates our current social and global perspective, to a
place where we view such behavioral inclinations as vestiges of our
evolutionary past rather than the governing facts of our present
society.

I believe this is only a dormant potential, the class structure of almost all societies provide extra benefit to those who profit from such hierarchies, however individuals are capable to tap into this 'new knowledge' and in the process of reflection and 'atonement' become better people.

I believe in an egalitarian society, this potential becomes 'activated', since the foundation of economic hierarchy  would no longer exist;  new social experiences shall emerge which would further enrich the OFC both functionally and physiologically ( stronger connections among neurons of this 'part' of the brain).

Ari: It won't happen in our life time; I think as long as profit motive exists it will not happen. Profit motive has not caused the 'cognitive dichotomy' in terms of our own self perception and negative view of others. but it prepetuates it in the larger society...

P.S. A healthy brain does not have cognitive limitation per se, what appears as cognitive limitation, in my opinion, is just acceptance of certain  social norms that emerge from class divisions. Neuroscientists can only theorize, make discoveries, and educate; the real change requires a different mechanism.

Well, of course :-)

Thank you, Paykar, for clarifying things for me. Of course, I'm familiar with the reptilian brain and other vestiges of our past, such as the pineal gland (that interests me a lot) as a serpentine energy centre (the third eye) that is connected to spiritual experiences. For some reason, my mind didn't go where it was supposed to go :-). So, I read the article one more time and understood the author much better. 

However, I still wish it had been written in the spirit of the questions Ari is posing, which is specifying the interactions between self-perceptions and changing social values. The reason is that without having an in-depth understanding of these cognitive changes that follow cultural transformations, we cannot move past the “Us vs. Them” mentality that the author rightfully wishes. Maybe this could be done in a future article by the author? :-)

I find this work quite interesting; it has stimulated my curiosity for further reading on the subject. So, thank you, Rana Rabei, for writing this.

Cheers,

Azadeh

...

How could this study, which is on people of our day and age, aim at demonstrating the effects of vestiges of an evolutionary trait of our ancient brain structure?

Dear Azadeh: Because the modern brain has those 'vestiges' intact to this day. To explain it, I will borrow from the concept of Triune Brain: a model presented by Paul Maclean back in the 70's. It underlines  the conservation of  primitive evolutionary  brain structures within the  human brain. Think of a larger brain which houses a reptilian brain and a lower mammal type brain inside itself..

Brain evolution is not a tidy progress, nature has 'worked' with what it had and literally built upon old structures. That is how modern neuroscientists view the brain: as functionally (and structurally) interlinked systems...

As you well now even Carl Jung believed in the unconscious biological aspect of Archetypes. Eric Kandel views all functions of mind as reflection of functions of brain.

Brain indeed is a biological organ whose very development depends upon  Social Experience.

Paykar

How could this study, which is on people of our day and age, aim at demonstrating the effects of vestiges of an evolutionary trait of our ancient brain structure?

Also, in this article, it seems that neurobiology views the brain as an evolutionary (but not social) organ that both builds hierarchies and  perceptions of those hierarchies. An approach that, if I have understood it correctly, is problematic.

Cheers,

Azadeh 

....

"Social hierarchy is basically about class and gender and ethnic
inequalities. What is the evolutionary advantage of these inequalities?"

Azadeh: I think the study aims to demonstrate the affect of vestiges of an evolutionary trait signifying the  relevance of our ancient brain structure that emerged a long time ago( even in an evolutionary timeline) before social construction of class or gender inequality. We are still a 'prisoner' of our evolutionary past , namely old and deep neural networks.

Ari: Theory of interpersonal neurobiology attempts to answer the question you raised as it views the brain as a social organ built through experience. As there are synaptic space between neurons there are also social synapses among members of a group/society, affecting one another by employing mirror neurons and the inherent characteristic of a shared neurobiological phenomenon, namely, neural plasticity.

Very interesting article, but ...

“human societies, independent of their form of governance and economical structure, tend to organize as group-based social hierarchies”

Today’s societies are based on all kinds of dominations and hierarchies. However, this is not in any way a “tendency” of human societies. Studying ethnographic works on hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists would be helpful.

“research on self-perception has revealed that unlike all other traits, individuals do not favorably exaggerate their place within the social hierarchy, demonstrating the evolutionary advantage quality of this trait.”

Social hierarchy is basically about class and gender and ethnic inequalities. What is the evolutionary advantage of these inequalities?

 “Social dominance hierarchy is a fundamental organizing principle across a variety of species in the animal kingdom such as ants, bees, birds, and other primates. Due to ubiquitous presence of systems of social hierarchy across species and cultures, neuroscientists find it plausible that the human ability to successfully navigate hierarchical social interaction arises from adaptive neuronal mechanisms.”  

This is a completely flawed argument and position. Human societies cannot, and should not, be compared to ants and bees and birds that function purely instinctively. Neuroscientists could, in some instances, compare humans with the Big Apes, but they cannot draw conclusions about the bases of human social organizations as, unlike the Big Apes, humans create their own social organizations, social relationships and cultures.

Considering social classes, male dominance,  and economic dominance of one nation over another to be “a fundamental organizing principle” is totally flawed. Hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists did not have a “social dominance hierarchy.”   

Cheers,

Azadeh

Fascinating half of the story!

Great blog! 

The other half:

To what extent is the individual's "congitive destiny" mutually interactive with the values of the sociey we are immersed in? For example has the self image of women changed--both in overestimation of the self and underestimation of hierarchical position--since the feminist movement? How about the cognitive impact of going from a secular to a religious order in Iran? For example, could it be that short life expectancies in the past would have made religious values more adaptive for a people who lived most of their lives in the first three decades of brain development?

Third "half:"

Can neuroscience at one point define the perfect society, where individal-society interactions are optimized within the cognitive limits of the brain?