Archive for February, 2007
Praise: how to hand it and when to hand it
5 years ago
The traditional press seems to be catching up. The New York Magazine has an article on how praising children for their innate intelligence can backfire, but praising them for their efforts can be redeeming. We, at the Mouse Trap, have already covered the studies of Prof Carol Dwecke here, here and here and had come to the same conclusion that giving positive, specific and outcome based praise is better than giving general and innate/ trait/ talent based praises.
Much of the literature on praise that the New York Magazine author discounts and dismisses, needs to be reviewed with the praise-is-specific vs praise-was-for-talent variable taken into account. Throwing praise out with the ‘talent’ myth would be throwing the baby out with the bathtub. So the only quibble I have with the article is the leaning towards the elimination of all praise for children, a quibble in common with Mind Hacks through which I discovered this article.
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Encephalon #16 is online now!
5 years ago
Well, the sweet sixteens are all over us on this valentine’s day. The sixteenth installment of encephalon was published recently by Mind Hacks and has interesting articles ranging from how the aggression and stress cortisol levels may be inversely linked (BTW, this new blog Do you Mind seems very promising) to how we make decisions. Also While I was on Hiatus, the 15 th edition of encephalon was published at the very good SharpBrains blog.
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Love, actually
5 years ago
There is a fasinating article in The Independent summarizing much of Dr Helen Fisher’s work related to Love and its neural basis as well as many other aspects of Love. As per Dr. fisher Love comprises of three systems: Lust, Romance and Attachment.
Lust is a craving for sexual gratification, which you can feel for a whole range of people.
Those caught up in romantic love focus all their attention on the object of their affection. Not only do they crave them, but they are highly motivated to win them, they obsessively think about them and become extremely sexually possessive.During this state the brain is driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter central to the reward system.
The third brain system is attachment – that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner. It is associated with the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin, which are probably responsible for the sense of peacefulness and unity felt after having sex. Holding hands also drives up oxytocin levels, as does looking deeply into your loved one’s eyes, massage, and simply sitting next to them.
As I am prone to using analogical thinking to extremes, this seems to me like the 3 memory systems that have recently been discovered- one for novelty detection, the other for familiarity detection and the third for recollection. Lust to me mirrors the novelty drive: craving for new partners or new and unusual sexual experiences with the same partner. Romantic love is all about feeling a special bond with one (or more) person and being in special resonance with them to the exclusion of everything else. It leads to much more lasting recollections that do behaviors triggered by Lust or Attachment. The Attachment love is actually the long-term commitment and trust triggered by being vulnerable to a familiar person and involves the generational of feelings of familiarity/trust etc amongst long-term couples.
While the evolutionary rationale for Lust -having sex with as many new individuals as possible- is clear in that it distally takes care of the need to procreate and spread one’s genes around; and the evolutionary rationale for Attachment is also clear – the long-term pair bonding ensures that the need of children’s would be taken care of and both parents would do the parental investment- the evolutionary rationale for Romantic love is not that clear. If one looks at the costs associated with this, then the mystery appears to be more depended. Dr fishes offers a very plausible explanation- that romantic love is to ensure we are monogamous and our mating choice is restricted in the crucial young ages to one person.
Scientists have discovered that certain parts of the brain become deactivated when we’re in love, including areas linked with negative emotions, planning, critical social assessment, the evaluation of trustworthiness and fear.
Biological studies have found that this phase of reduced cognitive function, during which faults are ignored, can last from one to two and a half years. This temporary state of delusion has a vital human function. If we immediately saw all our partner’s faults, we would be less likely to form a stable relationship in which to produce children.
And it is just as well that it is short-lived: romantic love is has an enormous metabolic cost. “I think romantic love evolved to enable people to focus their mating energy onto just one person at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy,” says Dr Fisher. “It’s not conducive to real life to live in this state for 20 years because you’re distracted by it, you can’t think of other things, you forget what you are doing, you probably don’t eat properly, you certainly don’t sleep well and you go through highs and lows.”
To me the dopamine connection of romantic love seems very intriguing and hard to swallow!!
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- The Quest for the Holy Glial
- Love and bond
- Cognitive Development: The different perceptual systems while undertaking point-of-view tasks
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Scientific Blogging redefined!
5 years ago
I have recently discovered a new community of great scientists and science bloggers (world’s best as the tag line goes) at the Scientific Blogging portal. I would also be writing a column there called The Undercover Psychologist , though this column would be different from my blog posts on The Mouse Trap. There I would try to write more full-length articles. For some time though the content may be same.
I know that many of you readers are good science bloggers yourself, and those who have not joined the Science Blogs at the SEED, now have another very promising option in the form of Scientific Blogging. Do have a look at that and let me know how you like the other authors there.
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- Mouse Trap’s First Blogiversary
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Depression and Mania: The Bipolar thinking style
5 years ago
PsyBlog has recently posted an article on Cognitive Therapy (CBT) and how it is useful in Depression treatment. this therapy has been shown to be equally effective in Depression as is medication, though this woks in a top-down fashion in the brain (revealed by brain scans), while anti-depressants work in a bottom-up fashion.
PsyBlog quotes the following irrational beliefs , as outlined by Beck, that are prominent in Depression.
* Over-generalization. Drawing general conclusions from a single (usually negative) event. E.g. thinking that failing to be promoted at work means a promotion will never come.
* Minimalization and Maximization. Getting things out of perspective: e.g. either grossly underestimating own performance or overestimating the importance of a negative event.
* Dichotomous thinking – Thinking that everything is either very good or very bad so that there are no gray areas. In reality, of course, life is one big gray area.
To me all of these beliefs are equally relevant for Manic thinking, although in the Manic case these beliefs would be about positive events and have a different spin.
- Over-generalization: a single instance of success at some endeavor disposing one to think that one can achieve anything in unrelated fileds. Also more co-incidence detection and more correlation-is-causation type of thinking that may ultimately lead to the Magical Thinking of full-blown Psychosis.
- Minimalizations and Maximizations: Here, again, things go out of perspective: Overestimating one’s own performance and underestimating the importance of external happenstances that might have led to success.
- Dichotomous thinking: thinking that things are mostly good/bad and unfounded optimism/faith/trust – the opposite of the depressive feeling. Although the reverse thinking that things are mostly bad (external environment is bad, I am good) can also kick in. The point is seeing the world in Black/white but not in shades of gray.
PsyBlog also has an earlier post on depressive thinking style in which it elaborates on the internal-locus-of-control predisposition in depressive probands. Thus, the depressive style is marked by the following internal, global and stable attributions: :
* It is my fault that I didn’t get the job. Here I have made an internal attribution.
* I think I am worthless: a thought that is likely to affect all areas of my life. Now I am making this attribution global.
* I see no reason for the fact that I am worthless to ever change. Now the attribution is stable
It is clear that the Manic person too makes the similar attributions: His success (maybe a single, lucky success) is due to his genius(internal attribution). His genius is not limited to one field- he is generally the most valuable, productive and creative genius and is an all-rounder(global attribution). His genius is not a short-lived entity- he will continue to remain a productive genius no matter what external circumstances / reality (stable attribution). He may thus have no drive to learn about external reality as he suspects that the external reality is not relevant and he can predict outcomes (which are bound to be good) based on his skills, expertise, grandiosity alone. An extreme form of this thinking may lead to the loss of reality characteristic of a full blown Psychotic episode.
While the minimalisations and maximizations are explained by the internal locus of control, the over-generalization is explicable by a propensity of jumping-to-conclusions sort of thinking that leads to global, stable over-regularizations. Another feature important in my view would be the mixing of contexts, where things from one context are referenced in another, dissimilar context. One could call this mixing up of metaphorical thinking where wrong analogies are applied and thus wrong (positive or negative) conclusions are arrived at. The third factor of dichotomous thinking is also very important though hard to pin down. Why should everything appear black and white in depressive or manic thinking and why in one case(depressive ), black is the color of self, while in Manic white is the color of self, remains a mystery. Answering how and when the switch from a grayish-world to a black-me-world(I’m a piece of shit) or white-me-world(I’m the next Einstein) happens would go a long way in making the bipolar patient control his moods and if he has to be sick then enable him to go for a manic episode (where the price may be insanity- a psychotic episode) instead of a depressive one (where there is a real risk of life).
Although the other wrong attributions and thinking styles also need to be addressed, the mechanism of the switching of mood/ black-white world view would help the most and should be the first one targeted in CBT/ medications.
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