Elena's Legacy. Texts written by Elena, excerpts from texts she liked, her artworks.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

The Justin Bieber Phenomenon

Surely most people today have heard about Justin Bieber, aside perhaps from Ozzy Osbourne (rock legend and formerly acting as lead vocals for Black Sabbath, who famously commented not knowing the young star in an interview). Perhaps to the dismay of teenagers everywhere, this article is not about Justin Bieber; it is, however, about the popularity phenomenon. Just as some videos remain unknown for years, while others gain viral status, what makes some people or subjects popular, while their counterparts are destined to remain in oblivion forever?

Social psychology theorists have often noticed that IQ scores tend to correlate inversely with popularity. Needless to say, ‘nerds’ have rarely been at the top of social acceptance and approval. As featured on the Big Bang Theory, brilliant physicists, engineers and neurobiologists have seldom a well developed social life by societal standards, even though, of course in the television series, the ‘geeky’ group has indeed formed long-lasting friendship bonds.

Cognition. In European folklore, the Kikimora is an estranged mythical creature living alone in swamps and wetlands. The above depiction represents a beautified, and kinder, version of such a magical being in a psychedelic fantasy art scenario. As can be seen from the picture, image: Copyright © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

To get back to viral videos, the first name that comes to mind is Ray William Johnson. The renown comedian has initially made a name for himself reviewing entries that got record numbers of views in a matter of days (later, he also expanded into cartoons and music videos, somewhat reminiscent of the Gorillaz music videos style). Interestingly, the comedian in question was a law student at Columbia University (an Ivy League institution), which pretty much guarantees a certain level of intelligence, at least academically. The point here is that if one watches the videos, a transformation can be seen. Of course they do become more entertaining, but the actor also becomes less serious and seemingly, how to put this, less brainy? One could argue that the entertainer simply became better at his craft in time (which is highly likely), but similarly, perhaps to gain popularity one must appear somewhat less, let’s say sophisticated and complex.

What pleases the masses? On a reality television show I love New York, New York is the name (nickname) of the host who has bachelors compete for her attention. The series could be seen as a sort of female version of The Bachelor. While debating the ethics of such premises is beyond the scope of the present short essay, in one episode New York dismisses a handsome, successful candidate for being, according to her, too boring. The fault that got the jilted lover the unflattering label? He told her during a date about his education and other intellectual accomplishments and goals.

Some of the latest Internet crazes (planking, owling and batmanning), which gained surprising popularity despite being, well, pretty dangerous. A very short animation:

Further, psychologists have questioned if smart children are not popular, let’s say because less talented peers are preferred by others, then why would not the smarties just pretend to be stupid to gain acceptance? One answer given is that other people are good at picking up sincerity signals; another is that the smart children and adolescents simply do not want to, preferring the company of books and video games to that of their peers. People are often judged if they remain alone for long periods of time, especially in public. For example, very often a person who is believed to be a loner may be dubbed as unpopular. Rarely do others actually understand that some people prefer to be alone. Clearly, there may always be a mental health issue component, as social withdrawal is a symptom of many psychological illnesses. Conversely, social psychologists make a distinction between loneliness and solitude, stressing that loneliness implies a dissatisfaction with one’s state, while solitude does not.

However, some songs deplore that Hollywood destroys careers as well. Image: photo.grandquebec.com

But to get back to the initial discussion of celebrity gossip, why are people so interested in the lives of the rich and famous? Why do celebrity gossip bloggers and Websites attract such unprecedented attention, while millions of educational, informational resources enjoy less traffic than a Website that provides little to no pertinent information and simply gossips about people’s lives? Perhaps the reasons lie in the psychological realm. Analyzed from a psychological perspective, persons tend to somehow internalize what they see, hear or read about their famous celebrity. Perhaps, they even come to believe that by keeping up with the celebrity’s lifestyle and whereabouts, at least in the informational sense, they themselves somehow become closer to him or her and thus become cooler and more popular. Hey, as long as they are not stalking the celebrity or doing anything else that is wrong, why not stay informed as to the latests trend of lipstick in Hollywood?

Psychologists have looked extensively at associations between academic success and social status in schools. Further, researchers have raised the question: if smart children fail to be popular, let’s say because less talented peers are preferred by others, then why do the ‘smarties’ refrain from just pretending to be less capable in order to gain acceptance? One answer given is that other people are good at picking up sincerity signals; another is that they simply prefer the status quo. What do you think?

The Brain

As mentioned elsewhere, neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, the nervous system likewise encompassing the brain. Since the other components are discussed at length in other entries, the present text will omit those details.

Therefore, the brain is located in the cranium, covered by three layers of meninges: the pia mater, arachnoid and dura mater. The brain is further protected by the blood brain barrier (BBB), which may result in occasional problems in medical treatment, since medications must cross the BBB, which can sometimes be tricky.

Brain. Image source: www.wpclipart.com

As can be seen in the picture above, the brain contains four lobes. The frontal lobe (being indeed at the front of the head) is mainly responsible for executive function, or planning, organizing, decision making, impulse inhibition, working memory and so on. The temporal lobe is the seat of memory and hearing, while the parietal lobe is usually credited with most thinking and movement. Finally, the occipital lobe’s main responsibility is vision. Naturally, since extreme modularity in the form of phrenology has been discarded, the explanations of cortical activity patterns are not to be understood simplistically, since most of the cortex is active at any one particular time.

Brain structure. Image source: www.wpclipart.com

Along these lines, brain cells are called neurons and the cell clusters activated by specific kinds of stimuli (e.g. audition of a melody) are called neural correlates or neuronal substrates. Conversely, some structures are directly associated with certain mental processes, such as the hippocampus with memory, the amygdala with emotion and the fusiform gyrus with face recognition (not shown in the diagram above).

Neuroscience & Emotion

The purpose of the present essay is to shed light on neural correlates of emotions. Emotions are real physically as much as psychologically. How does the brain produce or process emotion? One may want to turn to academic, or scholarly, articles for an answer. Likewise, in choosing sources, the rule stands that the more recent the work – the better; unless, of course, it’s a classic. Most place the time limit around 10-20 years.} Thus, the present draft briefly discusses neural correlates of emotion. Cerebral mapping, enabling localization of function, can discover these clusters. However, the brain is very active, so the baseline activity must be deducted from the activation during exposure to particular stimuli. The mechanism is called the subtraction method. For the purpose of establishing cerebral correlates of human emotion, the most common stimulus type used is facial expressions.

Popular neuroimaging techniques include [PET, CAT, MRI and fMRI]*. Other methods supplying neuroscientific insight include electrophysiology, lesion studies and TMS. By the way, gyri (gyrus) represent brain ridges, whereas sulci (sulcus) correspond to grooves. In a contemporary contribution to science, Vytal & Hamann (2010) combine two research methods to compose their work: a literature review and a statistical technique (meta-analysis). The authors explore basic emotion theory (fear, anger, sadness, happiness, and disgust) and corresponding consistent findings of reliable neural correlates. Nonetheless, some doubt remains in the community.

Bigh Fish. Do the Big Fish Have Any Emotions? Illustration - Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

In their meta-analysis, Kober & Wager (2010) insist that the amygdala, [usually regarded as fundamental in feeling, and reacting to, fear] is not critical for the experience of emotion, but for its perception. The authors maintain that the subcortical structure gets involved when visual stimuli may convey consequential information through emotional display. Li et al. (2010) confirm that the parahippocampal gyrus/amygdala becomes activated bilaterally during emotion perception. In their publication, the fusiform gyrus (known for facial recognition) is also active because subjects are trying to process facial expressions of affective states. Further, the relationship extends to the area, together with the right superior frontal gyrus and lentiform nucleus.

According to their meta-analytic review of a compilation of neuroimaging studies, patients with schizophrenia appear to have difficulty with the task. The researchers suggest that perhaps this structural dysfunction causes the impaired affect understanding associated with the illness.

On a final note, all three sources mentioned agree to at times disagree. Thus, in assessing limitations of scientific reports, one must realize that findings are seldom perfectly consistent. Still, validity, replicability and generalizability of effects are conditions for a theory to be supported and accepted. Hopefully, the present essay has fulfilled its purpose, which was to describe the main neural substrates of emotion known today, connecting neuroscience to psychology.

*Some ABBREVIATIONS commonly used in the field:

ALE – Activation Likelihood Estimation

CAT – Computerized Axial Tomography

CIM –Contrast Indicator Map

CM – Contrast Map

FDR – False Discovery Rate

(f)MRI – (functional) Magnetic Resonance Imaging

FWER – FamilyWise Error Rate

FWHM – Full-Width Half-Maximum

(M)KDA – (Multilevel) Kernel Density Analysis

PET – Positron Emission Tomography

TMS – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Confidence & Business

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the concepts of confidence and self-esteem, both in relation to psychological theory, as well as business. While belonging to an entirely different faculty, the two areas of study – psychology and commerce – do come together in such core disciplines to management students as organizational behaviour and industrial psychology. Thus, some of the scientific findings are discussed, as well as, their implication for success in today’s business world.

Leadership and business communication classes often emphasize the importance of confidence and belief in one’s abilities, or self-confidence. Indeed, in sales and marketing, people who tend to be more confident may have an easier time selling their products and closing deals than their more modest counterparts. Indeed, the human factor and perception are such, that at times, during job interviews, more qualified candidates are overlooked in favour of less qualified ones, simply because of self-presentation skills and confidence. However, overconfidence is at the other extreme, leading some financial traders to invest in losing venues.

Relatedly, self-esteem represents somewhat of an umbrella term for psychologists across psychology branches. For industrial psychology specialists and psychologists focusing on organizational behaviour, self-esteem is a defining feature in many aspects related to employment paths and choices. For instance, studies have shown that individuals with higher self-esteem tended to chose higher paying and more fulfilling careers than their peers with lower self-esteem levels. Further, psychologists state that self-esteem is relatively stable across the lifespan, but fluctuates with depression. Depression and self-esteem are positively correlated; in other words depression tends to lower self-esteem, and high-esteem in turn protects from depression, even though correlation does not imply causality.

Just look at the face... Photo by Elena

Furthermore, in another study, a group of subjects were asked to look at an array of faces, some of which were neutral, some frowned and some smiled. Interestingly, subjects with high-self esteem tended to notice more smiling faces than participants with low self-esteem, who predominantly paid attention to frowning (perhaps perceived as judgemental) faces. Thus, the finding lends credence to another psychological theory stating that depression is characterized by selective attention, when an individual seems to block out all positive information, and amplifies the negative impressions.

Further, according to personality psychology, self-esteem also has to do with attribution patterns. For example, after failing on an English literature test, one may attribute the failure to internal and rigid traits, such as “I’m a bad student”. Such an attribution is likely to result in less motivation and be hurtful to self-esteem. In sharp contrast, an external and malleable attribution, such as “I could not study because I had to take my poodle to the vet and it was also a hard test. I’ll just apply myself more next time” is likely to protect self-esteem in addition to motivating the arts major to study for the next exam.

On a related note, business students often hear that they must be able to present themselves in a very short period of time, also known as ‘the elevator speech’. Such endeavours, as well as, public speaking and commercial presentations are rendered easier and less stressful with higher self-esteem and confidence. Still, public speaking ranks as one of the major fears reported by humans, together with fear of flying and arachnids. Finally, the present paper aims at covering some of the theoretical constructs involved in the discussion of self-confidence and esteem in relation to sales, marketing and as applied to psychology, as scope and space in such a short draft permit.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Decision Making – Neural Correlates

The Neuronal Substrates of Decision Making Processes

Anyone who ever had at least one eye exam, knows that making decisions, even trivial simple decisions can be quite hard. For those lucky enough to have perfect vision, there comes a time during an exam at the ophthalmologist when the doctor asks you to chose between options one and two. The two options appear very similar and it can be quite hard to differentiate which of the two allows for clearer vision. Also, some people are just better than others at making decisions. But I digress, as the purpose of the present essay is to discuss the neural correlates of the process of making decisions. In other words, to examine which parts of the brain are most active during the activity.

Neuroscience is an amazing field and relies mainly on neuroimaging data.

Philiastides and colleagues (2011) used rTMS* to study how the brain processes perceptual decision making. Thus, according to their report, the left DLPFC accumulates evidence up to a certain point when a choice is made.

Haegens et al. (2011) recorded LFPs (allow to target neuronal populations, while spikes isolate single neurons) across the monkey brain, while the animal was completing a vibrotactile discrimination task.The neural correlates of somatosensory decision making in monkeys turned out to be S1, S2, DPC, MPC, and M1, where oscillations in beta band reflect the dynamics of the event. Of course, in such experiments, cortical activity is recorded contralaterally.

Furthermore, apparently the brain would act on economic utility theory, by assigning value to alternatives, computing and comparing before making a decision. Hence, Jenison and coauthors (2011) were interested in the organizational and mechanical aspects of this computation. They suggest that amygdala neurons contained in the basolateral nucleus react to preferential worth assignment to comestible items.Likewise, the BLA subnucleus would participate intensely in the calculations. Alternatively, the OFC, which interconnects heavily with the amygdala, has been consistently cited as the one active during “the encoding of stimulus value at the time of choice” (Ibid, 331).Moreover, the authors draw impressively on Pavlovian and classical conditioning in explaining the importance thatbasolateral amygdala represents for this function.

Rilling & Sanfey (2011) further confirm the PFC’s role in decision making, particularly in stable environments. As previously mentioned, neuroscientific experiments can incorporate elements from economics. For example, game theory and bidding behavior act as stimuli chosen for studying social decision making in the laboratory. Finally, the work underscores that different regions of the PFC are involved in dissimilar types of moral, ethical and interpersonal decisions. Inter alia, the anterior insula, as well as serotonin (neurotransmitter), testosterone (hormone) and oxytocin (neuropeptide) also mediate decisions.