Archive for April, 2008
Nature via Nurture : aggressiveness in Dorsophilia
4 years ago
by sandygautam
in genetics
As per a recent PNAS article , Dorsophilia have a gene called Cyp6a20 which is expressed more in the head when the flies are not socially isolated but have social experience. This increase in gene expression is correlated with a decrease in aggression. Thus, this gene codes for not only the genetic component of the inheritableness of aggressiveness in the Dorsophilia, but also the environmental effect of social stimulus on aggressiveness and how that environmental influence is itself dependent on genes. To make it clear, Dorsophilia that had this gene mutated showed a change in aggressiveness only for flies that were reared in social groups and had no effect when they were reared as socially isolated.
To me, this seems another case where nature and nurture do not necessarily have to work exclusively, but work in concord to give observable phenotypes. It is interesting to note that this same gene is also expressed in olfactory sensilla and this suggest that aggressiveness – socialization effect may be mediated by pheromone effects.
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Psychology Today blogs
4 years ago
by sandygautam
in 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!
Genocide and Mortality Saliance
4 years ago
by sandygautam
in culture
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?
4 years ago
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.
A Schizophrenia quiz
4 years ago
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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