Colloquy on Evolution and Culture: HUMAN/NATURE

1. Colloquy on Evolution and Culture:HUMAN/NATURE The New Neurobiology and Concepts of Self and Identity Neil Greenberg

2. What is the SELF? “That which in a person is really and intrinsically he (in contradistinction to what is adventitious); the ego (often identified with the soul or mind as opposed to the body); a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness.” --OED online

3. What is the SELF? What is the SELF? “What one is at a particular time or in a particular aspect or relation; one's nature, character, or (sometimes) physical constitution or appearance, considered as different at different times. (as in (one's) “old,” or “former,” self) . . . --OED online

4. What is the SELF? What is the SELF? “An assemblage of characteristics and dispositions which may be conceived as constituting one of various conflicting personalities within a human being (as in one’s “better” self, the better part of one's nature.)” --OED online

5. What is the SELF? What is the SELF? In other words, there are multiple attributes of SELF –including competing attributes any one of which can dominate. These ordinarily converge in varying proportion on we recognize as who we are. As in other aspects of behavior, each of these has a distinctive evolutionary history and mechanism of expression. Each may have its own proximate mechanism of expression, often involving a shared ensemble of causes The natural history of the self begins with the mechanisms of mind that underlie these converging, sometimes conflicting attributes, converging on their final expression.

6. SELVES • CONSISTENT SELF • personality is consistent across the lifespan - Kagan • THE AUTOMATIC SELF • most of our functions are autonomic –even our insights • TENTATIVE SELF • neural activity precedes and prepares voluntary action –Libet • TASTEFUL SELF • Right frontotemporal dementia can involve a dramatic change in taste: religious, political, even food and clothing. –Lee et al. 2001 • NARRATIVE SELF • a left hemisphere “interpreter” integrates past and current experiences into a sense that we have control over ourselves --Gazzaniga

7. SELVES • ACTIVE SELF • You are what you do, then conduct post hoc rationalizations to minimize cognitive dissonance • SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED SELF • My cortices mirror yours –about 15% • CREATIVE / EXTRASOMATORY SELF • Corporealization of the psyche; reafference; art • RESONANT SELF • Consciousness arises from coordination different parts of the brain –Crick & Koch, Llinas • CURIOUS SELF • Novelty is pleasurable, it makes my synapses tingle

8. THE PROTEAN SELF My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive object, instinctively determined, of my egoistic interests. Other objects may become interesting derivatively through association with any of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants; and so in a thousand ways the primitive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change its boundaries.(William James 1890: 324).

9. THE SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED SELF The epigenesis of the self involves the coordination of intrinsic developmental processes of the brain and neural growth that is stimulated or facilitated by experience. About 15% of the neurons in the premotor cortex of your brain become active when you watch someone else perform that action –”Mirror neurons”

10. THE CREATIVE SELF • involves the expression of unprecedented or novel perceptions, thoughts, or actions . . . • by which an organism or group of organisms copes . . . • with present or potential changes in the composition and structure of the environment.

11. THE CREATIVE SELF • reflects a spontaneous or evoked increase in the intensity of cognitive processing . . . • that enables the relating and integrating of variables . . . • not ordinarily associated with each other.

12. Stress and Coping • The neuroendocrinology of stress is known to affect cognitive, affective, and motivational systems in ways that can help the organism cope --to restore harmony, homeostasis • Specific neurobehavioral functions are selectively inhibited or facilitated, and receptive or active fields of neurons is enlarged, effectively increasing the possibility of new connections. • Among the most effective mechanisms for restoring proportionate responses between systems is creativity, most strikingly manifest in works of art.

13. THE CREATIVE SELFinspiration theory • Joan: . . . you must not talk to me about my voices. • Robert: How do you mean? Voices? • Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God. • Robert: They come from your imagination. • Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.

14. THE CREATIVE SELFperspiration theory PERSPIRATION THEORY Thomas Alva Edison Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

15. INSPIRATION and PERSPIRATIONIntegrating subsystems • Primary and Secondary Process Cognition • “ . . . primary process cognition of dreaming, reverie, psychosis and secondary process cognition involving the abstract, logical, reality-oriented thought of waking consciousness” (Fromm 1978) • creative individuals can more easily shift gears from primary process, unfocused attention (associated with low levels of cortical arousal), to more focused secondary process(higher levels of cortical arousal) for the expression or implementation of creative insights (Kris 1952).

16. NOVELTY and INNOVATION • “the ventral striatum is responsive to novel information, and the right prefrontal area is associated with the maintenance of contextual information, and both processes can occur without awareness.” (Berns et al. 1997)

17. STRESS and the AUTOMATIC SELF • Under stress, the prefrontal cortex can be switched off • Allowing the brain to default to much more rapid “instinctive” or “automatized” patterns of behavior • The “Conscious” self may have evolved because of its VETO power over habit

18. STRESS and the AUTOMATIC SELF • “. . . not been aware of the beauty of some thought or expression until after I had composed and written it down” –Keats • "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say,"–Flannery O’Conner • “You're in control, but you're not. The characters are coming through you.” –Robin Williams

19. STRESS and the SELF "some individuals terrorized by explosions, falls, and other violent events, have reported hearing repeated screams, and only later realize that the cries were their own...."

20. STRESS and the SELF STRESSORS are real or perceived Challenges to an organism’s ability to meet its real or perceived needs. THE STRESS RESPONSE is an ensemble of physiological systems and behavior that helps us cope

21. STRESS and the SELF Among the consequences of the STRESS RESPONSE is an over-ride of cognitive functions essential to planning . . . A “default” to instincts. Is THIS what it means to be HUMAN – to be competent to over-ride our instincts, our habits, our automatisms?

22. STRESS and the SELF The SELF/STRESS connection: Most stress responses are reflexes of the nervous system termed autonomic because its everyday functions are apparently autonomous. Although we may be able to consciously alter them, they ordinarily function without our conscious awareness WHEN our breath quickens, we sweat, our hearts thump, our hair stand on end, or we shake uncontrollably . . . who’s in control?

23. The POST-HOC SELF Even when we think we are in control . . . We are generally acting several hundred milliseconds after we act (a lifetime in terms of survival of the quickest –as in catching prey or evading predators) "cognitions" are frequently after-the-fact rationalizations of phenomena which take place in non-verbal parts of the brain. The frontal and temporal "interpreter," then confabulates an "explanation." –Gazzaniga in Nature’s Mind

25. THE EXTRASOMATORY SELF • Communications between hemispheres of the split-brain patient (Gazzaniga 1985) • “ . . . the literary creation of the self has assumed enough life of its own to instruct and educate its creator.” (Illich and Sanders 1988) • “. . . The corporealization of the psyche.” (Franz Alexander)

26. THE SPIRITUAL SELF “ . . . rites manage to tap into the precise brain mechanisms that tend to make believers interpret perceptions and feelings as evidence of God or, at least, transcendence. “As long as our brain is wired as it is God will not go away.” Left: the brain of an experienced Tibetan meditator shows decreased activity in the parietal lobe (on the right side) when he meditates. Right: the same person's brain during normal activity

27. Laterality, Personality

28. Affect & Moral Judgment BA9/10 (medial frontal gyrus),BA31 (posterior cingulate gyrus), and BA39 (angular gyrus, bilateral)were significantly more active in the moral-personal conditionthan in the moral-impersonal and the non-moral conditions. Greene et al 2001

29. You ARE what you DO Consider for a moment the case of the 90 year-old man on his deathbed, joyous and relieved over the success of his deception. For 90 years he has shielded his evil nature from public observation. For 90 years he has affected courtesy, kindness, and generosity --suppressing all the malice he knew was within him while he calculatedly and artificially substituted grace and charity. All his life he had been fooling the world into believing he was a good man.