Biology 202

Introduction

Bernard Baars’ book “In the theater of consciousness: The workspace of the mind” was an overall excellent and stimulating read. Baars takes the reader on a scientific journey through consciousness starting with methods of studying consciousness, moving to exploring consciousness in great detail from many different perspectives devised from empirical data, and ending with the uses of consciousness. At few points throughout the book, it is difficult to remain focused such as when Baars continually analyzes many of William James’ writing. However, Baars methods of studying consciousness emphasize the involvement of subjective experience. He provides many different exercises which can be performed by the reader that validate his ideas, making the book highly interactive, and the didactic manner, fun. Learning about Baars' ideas through these interactive tasks was similar to sitting in on a Neurobiology class when Paul teaches vision and asks us to “close one eye”. There was substantial overlap in material between the book and the class and furthermore the book extended on ideas we went over in class as well as contributed new relevant material. This book added tremendous value to the Neurobiology and Behavior class experience.

        Blurred vision, impaired motor coordination and memory, and slurred speech are characteristics that clearly demonstrate that alcohol affects the brain. Adolescence is a time when people begin to use alcohol much more frequently. A survey of 70,000 people by the Center for Science in Public Interest has shown that 41.7% of people ages 12-17 have used alcohol in their lifetimes, and that the prevalence of binge drinking (five or more drinks in the same occasion) gradually increases from 3% at age 13, to 38% at age 20 (CSPI, 2000). Extreme intensities of alcohol consumption among adolescents is especially perturbing because a great deal of structural and function brain development occurs during this period. (Spears, 2002). Furthermore, evidence is increasingly suggesting that alcohol affects brain function and behavior of adolescents differently from adults, and that adolescents are extremely vulnerable to the long-term deleterious effects alcohol has on brain function and behavior.     

Pierluigi Gambetti, one of the discoverers of the condition known as fatal familial insomnia (FFI), claims that it is "the worst disease you can get." (5) Given the vast number of diseases in the world, Gambetti's claim seems farfetched at first glance, maybe even selfish; who wouldn't want to take credit for discovering one of the worst diseases in the world? But a quick overview of the disease presents solid evidence in favor of the claim- and some interesting insights about the many tasks of the I-function.

FFI has been discovered in only 28 families worldwide; it is an autosomal dominant gene mutation, meaning that a parent with the disease has a fifty percent chance of passing it on to his or her child (2). That much is predictable. But every other aspect of the disease is wildly unpredictable, forcing family members to make difficult decisions. If parents have such a high chance of passing on the disease, one might ask, why don't they simply choose not to have children? The answer: FFI , unlike many other fatal genetic conditions, doesn't appear until the victim is middle-aged, and tests to see whether parents carry the FFI mutation only recently became available (1). Here the first questions of the I-function, and the first paradoxes of the disease, appear. If this disease occurred in childhood, natural selection would have long ago done away with it. Because it does not strike until middle age, however, parents who may be carriers must make difficult decisions about childbirth. Paradoxically, it is in the parents' best interest to have more children, in order to ensure that at least some live FFI free into old age. More children, however, also means more potential FFI cases- a tough paradox for the I-function to work through.

The bond between mother and child is one that develops almost instantly after birth, basically as soon as the mother and child get in close enough contact to smell one another. That's right, smell. The sense of smell is one that goes underrated in our human society based primarily on sight and sound, but it is one that has great influence over a lot of our behaviors. That mother and child never would have had that chance to bond if it weren't for smell because the mother wouldn't have been pregnant in the first place; smell is one of the necessary senses in finding a mate. Smell plays a roll from initial attraction of possible mates, through pregnancy, up to birth and development of the baby.
Our olfactory systems can respond to chemicals that we either are aware of as odors, or the chemicals can go unnoticed by our I-functions. Those chemicals that we are aware of as scents start on receptors on the sensory cells in the nose, which pass the signal on to the olfactory bulb, located under the frontal lobe in the brain. Only then does the signal get passed on to the cortex (1). The unconscious response to certain chemicals is most likely processed through the vomeronasal organ (VNO), which is located on either side of the nasal septum. Pheromones are odorless chemicals, processed through the olfactory system, that influence sexual behavior and attractiveness (2). So these colorless, odorless molecules are released in everyone's natural body odors, hoping that the right mate will process them, fueling attraction.
A man and a woman sit next to each other on a couch at a house party. They chat, all the while unconsciously absorbing one another's pheromones. The woman spent the afternoon with her nursing sister and niece. Exposure to the compounds released by the mother and infant, caused an unconscious increase in sexual desire for the woman (3). The couple discovers a mutual attraction. One thing lead to another, some time passes, and the woman finds out that she is pregnant. This theoretical situation might not have gone anywhere had this couple not found attraction in smell. Finding attraction through someone else's pheromones is evolutionarily beneficial, because humans usually smell best and appeal most to others who have certain genetic immunities to diseases that is most different from the others' own genetic make-up (4). Therefore, this resulting pregnancy has a higher chance to have stronger genetic resistance to disease.
The theoretical woman is now in the midst of her first trimester, and is miserable. She feels sick all the time; basically any smell makes her nauseated. She is at the height of morning sickness, and her brain circuits in the olfactory system have become rewired (5). Her olfactory sensory neurons are extremely sensitive to strong odors, so she is brutally aware of the presence of any sort of pungent smell (6). Although she may feel absolutely miserable, her morning sickness is a good sign for the health of her fetus. The sensitivity to odor stems from the fact that early on in development the fetus is very sensitive to anything that the mother puts in her body, so when the mother has a strong aversion to pungent smells she is less likely to consume whatever the source of the smell is. This sort of unconscious protection actually works: nausea and vomiting during pregnancy is associated with better pregnancy outcome (7). Sensitivity to smell early on in pregnancy is actually beneficial for the fetus in the long run.
Six more months pass, and the baby is born at last. Within minutes after birth, the baby is placed on her mother. The close physical contact starts the bonding between mother and infant. The baby can smell her mother's olfactory cues emitting from her nipples, which draws her in to breastfeed. If an infant is exposed right away to his mother's breast, he will be able to recognize his mother's milk over other lactating woman, and will breastfeed for longer stretches of time (8). This initial skin-to-skin contact imprints the olfactory cues of the mother onto the infant, making him able to recognize his own mother over other mothers, and receive more nutrients through longer periods of breastfeeding. A child shows preference for his mother's smell over that of other mothers up until about age 5 (9). The infant also gets imprinted onto the mother. After only a 10-minute to 1-hour exposure to her baby, 90% of mothers can correctly identify her infant through smell alone (10). The role of smell in bonding between mother and child makes evolutionary sense. As a mother, being able to recognize your infant among other babies is important if you want to raise your child, not your neighbor's, into adulthood to successfully pass on your genes. As an infant, you want to be able to recognize the mother that is responsible for you, will take care of you, and most importantly, feed you, so you need to know what that breast smells like.
Smell plays an extremely strong evolutionary role. Unconscious olfactory mechanisms control for the attraction of genetically different mates, while more conscious mechanisms make sure a pregnant mother doesn't consume anything to harm her developing fetus. After birth, the smells exchanged between mother and infant make sure their bond remains strong, leading to longer breastfeeding times which leads to a stronger infant. Also, this makes sure a mother and infant can find each other out of the sea of mothers and infants there are. All of these traits make sure that offspring is as genetically and physically strong as possible.
In our culture where we deny natural body smell, covering it up and washing it away constantly, it turns out that we are fighting against nature. The smells and pheromones that we release and that ultimately get processed by other people's nervous systems transmit fairly complex information. Although we try our best to suppress our own natural scent, the chemicals get released anyway, communicating with those around us. The brains of our neighbors take in and process this information, all without influence from the I-function. Our brains know what's good for us even though we're not aware of it-helping us choose mates to conceive and raise successful offspring. In conclusion, the sense of smell, probably the most unappreciated sense, plays a strong hand in the perpetuation of the human race. It helps make sure offspring are viable even from before the act of conception on through early postnatal development. So appreciate the olfactory system, it helped you get here.

Sources Cited
1. The Vivid World of Odors

Men and women are different from one another. This fact isn't exactly the breakthrough of the millennium, but when you look at some of the current work being done to define and elaborate on these differences, especially within the brain, that first sentence takes on new meaning. The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine goes through each stage of life from birth to puberty to post-menopause explaining how the female brain develops and differs from its male counterpart. As the founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic, Dr. Brizendine draws on a lot of her experiences with patients and their families to explain what is happening in the brain and its effects on mood and behavior.

We concluded the semester with the idea that the I-function, our self-consciousness, is a story-teller, which makes a best attempt to contextualize, temporalize and generally make “sense” of input to the nervous system. With this notion in mind, I was curious if we should therefore assume that language, an innate aspect of “story telling,” is necessary for self-consciousness. Or can we create a “story” of our environment and our place in it without language? In order to approach this question, we should examine the development of both language and self-consciousness. Through examining these developmental processes, can we find and correlative relationship between language and self-consciousness? Even before we analyze the relationship between the two, we must first define what is meant by self-consciousness. There are many concepts of what self-consciousness is, including the “I-function” storyteller, and which concept one believes to be true has implications on the prerequisite of language.

When most of us think about hypnotism or hypnotists we might think back to a high school assembly or carnival show in which we’ve watched volunteers get up on stage and made to act like chickens. For most people, the idea of hypnotism may be more of a magic show than means for psychotherapy or forensic investigation. These two fields, however, have been relying recently on hypnotism to get answers. Therapists may use hypnotism to uncover childhood abuse that can lead to other problems in adult patients, or to rid a patient of a phobia or bad habit. Hypnotism has also been used by the judicial system to enhance the memories of witnesses or victims of crimes. In both fields, however, the use of hypnotism to get to the bottom of things is a controversial subject. Hypnotism can often lead to pseudomemories in the hypnotized subject, which can be very misleading or simply false. With the information that follows, I hope to make readers familiar with the risks of using hypnotism both inside and outside the therapeutic context as well as with when hypnotism can be of real psychological help.

By the time we’d reached about age five, we had all come to the realization that the sing-song echo of kids on the pre-school playground, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” was complete and utter bullshit. And once we were old enough to listen to the radio, we realized that the grown-up world had known this all along. No where else beyond the fence of that playground will anyone challenge the concept that feelings can be “hurt”, hearts can be “broken”, spirits can be “bruised”. If you ask our dear Miss Dickinson, she’ll claim it’s everywhere: