Biology 202

This semester, I designed and participated in a praxis class entitled Abuse and Relocation in Shelter Environments. My field work takes place at PACCA, the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association. After working with dogs in a poorly funded shelter in Mérida, Mexico last year, I thought that I would be mentally prepared to launch myself into work in the U.S. However, what I discovered in Philadelphia is that cruelty towards animals in this country parallels the cruelty I found in Mexico. Every week, I see new evidence of abuse and neglect: starvation, scars, open wounds and overwhelming fear. I have learned about mange, pit-bull fighting, animal branding and pressure sores, which are abscesses that appear when a bone begins to protrude from the skin of an emaciated animal. As I conduct research about animal abuse and the people who commit it, I wonder where cruelty originates. Is there a template for cruelty laid down in the human brain? Is it something that is unique to our species? Why do human beings find pleasure in deliberately inflicting pain on other living things?

The United States (and much of the rest of the world) times work and school days in relation to the 24 hour solar day. In order to be awake at socially acceptable times for work and school, then, a person's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, must also conform to the 24-hour day. Common thinking holds that cycles may vary considerably within that 24 hour framework- hence "night owls" and "morning people"- but no one can completely diverge from the 24 hour pattern.

How many times have you been in class or at a meeting when the moderator or professor sets a deadline for a presentation and everyone moans about how early that deadline is, yet on the day of the presentations there is a line to go first?  It seems as even though these individuals did not feel that they had enough time to finish the presentation, but everyone cannot wait to get it done and present at the first possible moment!  Why is it this way?  I always want to go first and not simply because I think I will get a better grade or be on the professors’ good graces, it is because I want to get it done and over with!  If presenting, or other things of this nature, is painful and traumatic to us physically and mentally, why do we continue to want to face these challenges head on instead of trying to avoid and run from them?  What is this supernatural force that causes us to have superhuman will power and attack these painful threats head on?  Dread.  The dictionary describes dread as a noun and a verb: (v) to fear greatly; be in extreme apprehension of, to be reluctant to do, meet, or experience, (n) terror or apprehension as to something in the future; great fear (1).

Many of my drug using, sex crazed friends have said at least once that having an orgasm and doing a line of cocaine create the same feelings within the brain. I am able to understand why there is a chemical change when participating in a sexual act, but I cannot comprehend how people can be addicted to pornography, which has virtually no interaction with the viewer. Sexual acts that one partakes in, like all activities that one partakes in, changes the chemical reactions and firing rates in the brain; so why is it that viewing pornography, which is a mainly optical activity, can change the brain, and even more than that, create an addiction? Simply put, pornography addiction is the “abuse and overuse” (1) of various types of pornography; however, on a deeper level it is a very complicated subject. It raises both medical and social questions, and it is uncertain if the answers to these questions will ever be agreed upon. It is one of the few addictions that are just considered to be a psychological addiction; possibly because of that, most doctors do not consider it an actual addiction, but instead as a sub-condition of obsessive compulsive disorder (1).

Far from his monastery in Dharamsala, India, the Tibetan monk "His Holiness" the Dalai Lama delivered a speech just last year in Washington D.C. entitled "The Neuroscience of Meditation" at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting (1). One may naturally ask, what do the Dalai Lama and his ancient practice of meditation have to do with the current, developing field of neuroscience?

The answer: quite a lot.

However unlikely a pairing, the Dalai Lama has recently drawn attention to how meditation and spirituality positively affect the brain, in terms of both short- and long-term results. The Dalai Lama's involvement with this project all started with the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscience researcher Richard Davidson, who, since the early nineties, has contributed much to the understanding of the interrelation between meditation and brain activity, as well as the potential consequences and applications of such developments. Primarily concerned with the brain's ability to change over time, otherwise known as neuroplasticity, Davidson has broken new ground in the field of mind-body medicine through his research (2).

The Dalai Lama himself has provided Davidson with Tibetan Buddhist monks to serve as test subjects in Davidson's studies. When asked to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion", the brain of the monk in question produced marked gamma activity, which is typically too weak to notice (1). In the following research that ensued, monks generated gamma waves up to 30 times stronger than ordinary college students (1). In the vein of Davidson's interest in neuroplasticity, it seems possible to train one's mind to think meditatively over an extended period of time. And perhaps through the strong effects of positive meditative thought, one could counter—within oneself and within one's mind—certain emotional and psychological disorders.

Furthermore, University of Pennsylvania radiology professor Andrew Newberg, author of the book Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, has conducted similar research on the subject of meditation and the brain activity of Tibetan monks (3). Newberg's investigation consisted of the monks meditating for about an hour, then when their meditation peaked at a transcendental high, each monk was to pull a string, releasing an injection of radioactive tracer into their bloodstream. Through the injection of this tracer, Newberg and his team of researchers were able to detect how the marker moved to certain active parts of the brain. According to the subsequent findings, gleaned from scans of each monk's brain during meditation, an increase in activity was found around the frontal region of the brain, in which attention on specific tasks are processed; on the other hand, a decrease in activity was found around the area at the back of the brain, where one's processing of orientation and spatial awareness occur (4).

Regarding the results of his study, Newberg found that "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw." He concluded, "When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our everyday sense of reality. Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality" (3).

The very notion that, even after the brain fully develops and one reaches adulthood, the brain continues to evolve or, as the case may have it, regress (i.e. Alzheimer's disease) is a remarkable one. The average person is constantly forming new connections, associations, and links within the brain. The Tibetan monk is doing the same, just with increased efficacy and power. Moreover, the possibility that one has the fundamental ability to possess greater agency over one's own brain capacity through mediation and deep contemplation is striking.

This begs the question: what other sorts of activities or actions significantly and directly affect the brain and that which the brain produces? Now that we know meditation affects more than mere body and bodily health, could this kind of reflection also have even more to do with the brain than the scientific literature suggests? If so, will we ever be capable of knowing this and how? Davidson, Newberg, and the Dalai Lama, among others, have certainly left the door open with regard to these questions. After all, perhaps science cannot explain everything of the spiritual.

Biologically, the anatomy of a male and female are very different; from sexual and physical characteristics, such as genitalia and reproductive organs, to the differences in brain organization. Sexual dimorphism, or the difference between the male and female anatomy, is an essential component to maintaining genetic diversity in a population such as the human species. The variation between males and females promotes sexual reproduction and keeps the population constant. A transgender individual’s gender identity does not match one’s ‘assigned gender’ as a male or female. A transgenderist is a person who lives as gender opposite to anatomical sex, for example a person with male genitalia living as a woman (1). More recently, the term transgender has expanded to encompass a much greater range of different types of people, such as cross-dressers, drag queens, androgynies, transsexuals, and many more.

            Pain has been a topic of discussion in lecture on many occasions, perhaps because pain is something that most experience, but want to avoid. Though most experience some form of pain, incidents vary in intensity and people’s reactions are of different extremes, as well. Why? What causes these differences in pain tolerance? It was determined in class that pain is the result of certain pattern generators in the nervous system, so it is only natural that one looks to the brain to get to the root of pain tolerance. Research has been done that claims the source is genetic, psychological, or even gender-based. But in fact, this student believes that pain tolerance is the result of a combination of at least these three conditions.

What makes one human being attractive to another human being: A deceptively simple question that was posed in various incarnations by that annoying Sarah Jessica Parker voice-over at the start of Sex and the City episodes. But can this unconventional neurobiology and behavior student even attempt to find the answer? (Hint: she can attempt it and perhaps make informed opinions but even bona fide scientists in the field can't even begin to make conclusive statements.) I stumbled across a BBC article in the science and nature section dealing with navigating online and print personal ads. Robin Dunbar, a researcher out of Liverpool University studied the British "Lonely Hearts" column in the 1990's, forming generalized conclusions about what traits men and women ranked highest in the opposite sex. Dunbar narrowed his findings down to "commitment, social skills, resources, attractiveness, and sexiness." (1)

Not surprisingly, the findings were mixed between male and female responses, some might even say divided into polar opposites. Women tended to rank "commitment" as the most desired trait they seek in men, while men ranked "attractiveness" as their top pick. I thought about these implications from an evolutionary standpoint. Back when we were covered with a thick layer of hair and our brains were half their modern homo sapien size, attractiveness was irrelevant. So was one of the other criteria, "sexiness." Really, all we were left with (and by we, I mean women) was a strong man who could provide us with the healthiest possible offspring. That would be "resources" according to the BBC study. But what to make of commitment? Dunbar's findings suggest the answer lies in something that ignited my interest, something called The Scheherazade Effect.

Color vision is an evolutionary adaptation that has assisted the survival of vertebrates in many ways. From choosing a fit mate to heeding warning signs to finding food, color vision is a neurological property that has many benefits. In considering specifically humans, the question arises as to how color blind individuals view the world around them, and how their condition affects their perception of reality. From our discussions in class, we have discovered that the notion of reality, when it comes to sight, is very subjective. Our brains see a very different picture from that which is taken in through our retinas. One of the most astounding differences is that the world does not have color until the light that it gives off comes through our retinas and is processed within our photoreceptors. With such a difference between the image of the world outside of the brain and inside of the brain, there can be no question that there is at least some variation between individuals when it comes to color. With that said, I find it difficult to classify anyone as color blind. There are so many degrees of color deficiencies added to the inevitable variation between those with “normal” color vision, that too classify color blindness as a disability seems rather ambiguous.

As someone who went to Catholic schools for the majority of my life, I have never understood God. I can rationalize why people may want to believe in a higher power, it’s the actual believing that has always been beyond my grasp. For this reason, I wanted to look at why humans believe in a higher being. What is it that compels us to find an ultimate cause for everything? I had never heard a scientific answer for this question; I wanted to find out what parts of the brain are suspected to be the cause of humankind’s belief in a higher power.

The first thing I looked into was why humans feel compelled to find a specific cause for things and for the organization of the universe. It has been suggested that this perhaps occurs because the human brain desperately tries to search for order and patterns in a world where these things are not readily observable. Experiments on people who have had their corpus callosum cut have revealed that at our core we are organisms who search for patterns and meaning. These people are shown two different pictures that register in two different sides of their brains. However, only the left side of the brain is able to verbally communicate what they chose and why. When they see the choice of the right side of the brain, the person instantly searches for meaning and finds a way to connect the two pictures (1).