Biology 202

“The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”[1] Galileo’s trope is characteristic of the mutual hands-off policy between science and religion—until very recently. Evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists have joined anthropologists and psychologists to make the belief in God the study of scientific inquiry. A recent suggestion exists which states there are three attributes in humans which may result in a belief in God: agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind. [2] These three traits may have had an evolutionary advantage and have been selected for via natural selection. The adaptive advantage of these traits is illuminated by examining human conditions where these traits are absent. Despite the strong evidence that points in favor of this contemporary theory, many questions remain about why these three are so determinate toward religious belief and furthermore to what degree consciousness is involved. The correlation between the evolutionary benefits of these traits and a belief in God demands further inquiry in order to understand how these traits have been advantageous and why these three traits in particular have come together to shape belief.

Neuroscience and Biology

Manic Depression Beautiful?

There is a Chinese saying that before you can conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful. Is it possible to make the ugliness of depression beautiful? Yes. It’s a word we hear so often that most of the time; we just let it pass over our heads, thinking of it as just another statistic. The scientific definition for depression is: a syndrome that reflects a sad mood exceeding normal sadness or grief. More specifically, the sadness of depression is characterized by a greater intensity and duration and by more severe symptoms and functional disabilities than is normal.[i] Like a vacuum cleaner, depression sucks even the most normal and conscientious person into a space of bewildered darkness. How do I know this? May it is because I have been around people who are manic -depressive and am possibly plagued by this unrelenting disease as well. Scientific definitions such as the one above will never thoroughly explain what depression is; no clear or concise way. It is like an abstract painting, leaving the viewers to interpret it whichever way they deem fit; and like that painting, some might see it as beautiful while others only see a mess of colors splattered on the wall.

Many people are said to suffer from learning disabilities such as dyslexia or, very commonly, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Characteristic symptoms displayed by individuals with ADHD are impulsivity, hyperactivity, and lack of inhibition. Some people consider these types of conditions to be learning differences rather than learning disabilities. This paper argues that ADHD, in particular, is only a disability because society has been created in a way that caters to those who possess brain and social behavior that is closer to the average or the accepted norm. To do this I will start with an overview of the neurobiology of ADHD followed by a discussion of how the neurobiological differences contribute to the social construction of the idea of it being a disability. ADHD is more of a difference than a disability because disabilities are only socially constructed based on conditions that deviate from the norm. Individuals with ADHD have brains that function in different ways and at different speeds and intensities. As a result, they receive and process input differently than the average person but that does not necessarily have to qualify them as disabled.

With vast amounts of research and testing going on all over the world it is important to incorporate some method of control comparison. A placebo, a pharmacologically inert substance distributed in order to observe a medical effect or non at all.[1] A response to the placebo is known as the placebo effect. If a placebo is considered a blank, why are they used? In order to answer this question one must consider the amounts of various tests and experiments currently in progress. There are psychological, neural, social, physical and philosophical tests performed throughout the world. Not only do the types of tests make an impact on the experiment but the subjects themselves; they vary in environmental conditions, financial situation, personality, time and age. [5].With a placebo one can somehow attempt to group the variables because they are already being combined in the experimental group.

Attention deficit hyperactive disorder is a neurologically based behavioral disorder that afflicts children and adults alike (1). Characterized by inability to pay attention, hyperactivity, and impulsive actions, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, or ADHD for short, this disorder has become a popular diagnosis for students who claim that they are unable to concentrate or focus on their studies (2). Much research has been done in recent years regarding ADHD, its neurological basis in the brain, and how to treat it effectively (1). Many prescription drugs have been released onto the market that effectively target the levels of certain hormones which in turn enable one to counteract the symptoms of ADHD (3).

The relationship between the subjective and the objective is something that superimposes on every aspect of life, whether realized or not. No two individuals are identical, and the simple fact that we are isolated non-identical beings implies that we must lead non-identical lives. That may sound like an obvious statement but the pervasiveness of this “different-ness” is not so obvious. It exists on many levels, some more tangible than others. It is one thing to say that person A and person B see different things when looking at a Picasso, it is another to say that reality as person A experiences it, and reality as person B experiences it are fundamentally different things. If this question is to be approached, if we are to attempt to understand the relationship between the subjective and the objective, the relationship between ourselves, others, and the world, it is valuable to look at the various levels at which this relationship is defined.

Alex Hansen

Prof. Paul Grobstein

Neurobiology and Behavior

April 14, 2007

The Color of Vision

Five essential senses of perception, classified by ancient peoples, exist for the human race. The defining terms include touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight. Despite the lack of consensus that these five senses are the sole physiological methods that exist, generally, each is eternally exhibited throughout the universe. However, there is no guarantee that every individual will possess all five senses, or that every individual will maintain senses that function with perfect accuracy and without deficiencies. Vision is a primal example of one of the five senses that does not remain homogenous across humans, or across all living organisms. Upon looking at a single image, what one sees may or may not be what another is envisioning. Moreover, the individual may be blind and may be thought to not be able to see at all, yet that person may still appear to retain some internal form of vision that may be unknown to those not diagnosed which such blindness. Such differences in vision arise from a variety of causes including genetics, specific life events, as well as evolution. It is through the development of organisms and evolution that the current classifications of vision have been established. While some types of vision are advantageous for particular animals, such might create detrimental effects for a different species. Thus, although sight is a universal term used for one of the five physiological senses, vision is often specific to varying organisms. With such, according to evolution there often exist biological similarities across different species, and thus there must also exist similarities in the vision of these comparable species as well. Through using these evolutionary differences and similarities as a basis, one can examine this physiological classification of sight across different animals. One particular aspect of vision which appears to demonstrate the heterogeneous quality across species, as well as connect the genetic resemblances within such organisms to possible evolutionary explanations, is color. To the eyes of different animals, color has the ability to vary and change, or could even be lacking due to an abnormality in the animals color vision, or due to a type of development specific to that animal. The developed color vision will often provide advantages to that species, as evolution is a process which occurs to allow for the survival of what is considered favorable. As evolution continues forward to the future, current types of vision will be able to change as certain attributes may develop to become more conducive to success.

It is one thing to be told that much of behavior reflects unconscious processing -it is another to actually have that message proven with an actual experience. The breadth and power of the unconscious eluded me until I saw how this level of processing relates to my life. It was demonstration in class involving a checkerboard where differing levels of gray created the illusion of different colors (1) that convinced me unconscious processing affects the way we process the world.
    We had been discussing visual processing for more than a week in the class and thought I understood. I knew that the brain could only interpret certain signals and filled in the rest, I was conscious of it. However during that demonstration, my Unconscious finally kicked in as well and I really understood. The conscious (me knowing what was going on ‘up there’ was working without the unconscious (me actually seeing the effect of the way visual processing works). In my case it took the activation of my unconscious to complete my experience. Although I was not fully convinced of this phenomenon until recently, others have been exploiting it for years, whether consciously or not.

Our understanding of memory is one of the things that make us intrinsically human. Many organisms have memory processes, they learn, they adapt o their surroundings, but humans have the ability to change those functions, to control them. We can choose what we learn and what we don't, we can memorize information and in certain cases force ourselves to omit things from our memory. Our lives are completely based around this function - adults work in a job doing things they have learned to do, children learn in school about things from our past, stories of our past are passed down from generation to generation by memories. Even the basic processes of our bodies utilize systems that have their own type of memory - our bodies, even down to the smallest molecules, "know" what their purpose is (2). This stasis enables us to function at the high level that we do - all parts of the body working together to produce a living, breathing, functioning, and above all remembering organism. Our memory grounds each and every one of us, makes us unique. Every person has different experiences that make their self. It seems that in this sense our selves are dictated by what surrounds us, what inputs come in and how those inputs are automatically dealt with. The problem, it seems, is when the reality of memory can be altered, when memory seems to have a mind of its own.

      In his autobiography, Speak Memory, Vladimir Nabokov describes a rather curious experience: “I present a fine case of colored hearing” he writes. “Perhaps ‘hearing’ is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline” [1] (Nabokov, 381) The  synesthetic experience described by the famed novelist, although unusual, is by no means unique. The phenomena was once thought to be quite rare and was often brushed aside by the scientific community who attributed it to hallucinations and drug use. Recently however, synesthesia has become the subject of much research among neurobiologists. Recent studies have shown that far from being a freak occurrence,  approximately one in twenty people have experienced one of the many different kinds of synesthesia [2][5] .