Month: July 2018

It’s been a confusing week in which we’ve (predictably) seen the President of the United States take an aggressive and confrontational stance towards America’s traditional allies, and treat a Russian Dictator as a trusted friend. What, you may ask, is going on?

Exploring this principle has been the life-long work of Linguist and Cognitive Scientist George Lakoff (Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkely). He developed “The Strict Father Model” as a unifying view of the many seemingly contradictory values exhibited by factions within American politics. According to Lakoff, as we are first governed in our families we grow up understanding the governing systems of society in terms of the family dynamic. There are two poles to this – the strict father and the nurturing parent. The strict father is seen as the ultimate source of moral authority in the family and their governing influence is asserted under the threat of painful punishment. The threat of pain is used to force the child to obey – or do what is right – rather than what feels good. The logical outcome of this line of reasoning is expressed by Lakoff as follows:

Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.

The most blatant expression I’ve seen of this mindset was in an opinion given during a 2016 presidential campaign interview. The interviewee asked the question “why should my taxes be used to fund the 911 (emergency response line) service? People need to learn to deal with their own problems”! Seemingly, to that individual, the action required immediately after a heart attack, car accident or shooting would require calling a cab for a ride to the hospital’s emergency department. That approach has DOA (dead on arrival) written all over it. The alternative to this – the Nurturant Parent Model – is described in Wikipedia as follows:

The nurturant parent model is a parenting style which envisions a family…where children are expected to explore their surroundings, while being protected by their parents. This model believes that children inherently know what they need and should be allowed to explore their environment. The parents are responsible for protecting their child during this exploration, including protecting their child from serious mistakes, by offering guidance. A child will be picked up if the child cries because the parent wants the child to feel safe and nurtured. If a child grows up believing that its needs will be met, it will be more confident when facing challenges.

An article published in the journal PLOS Genetics entitled “Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans” sought to determine the neurophysiological activities/structures underpinning political orientation during risk taking activity. What they found was that the brains of liberals and conservatives were structurally different, with liberals having increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex (a brain region associated with impulse control), and conservatives having increased grey matter volume in the amygdala (known colloquially as – the guard dog). When brain activity was measured using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (as part of the study), liberals showed significantly greater activity in the left insula (part of the pre-frontal cortex associate with internal bodily cues crucial for subjective feeling states) and conservatives showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala.

The nature-versus-nurture argument has a strong application to this study, as well as other studies on political affiliation. Earlier studies identified parental political leaning as a major determinant in a child’s own political inclination. This was believed to indicate that political affiliation was genetic in nature, as parental leaning could be used to determine the views of their children with an accuracy of 69.5%. This, however, ignores the principle of neuro-plasticity where the structure of the brain adapts based on experience and learning, something that may happen to anyone as their life unfolds. An example cited in the PLOS paper is the study performed on London cab driver applicants who had learned the map of London in preparation for their new job role. These drivers demonstrated significant growth in their hippocampus, a brain region related to memory formation. The main takeaway for me is illustrated in this quote from the paper:

A classifier model based upon differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with 71.6% accuracy. Yet, a simple two-parameter model of partisanship using activations in the amygdala and the insular cortex during the risk task significantly out-performs the longstanding parental [genetic parent rather than the strict parent] model, correctly predicting 82.9% of the observed choices of party.

Lakoff acknowledges that the breakdown between strict and nurturing behaviour is by no means black and white as people tend to exhibit both tendencies depending on the context. There is, however, always one approach that is dominant. It would be naïve to assume that politics and the family are the only arenas in which this distinction manifests itself. We can probably identify people at work and in our religious communities, any community really, who exhibit a strong tendency in one direction or another. In an email exchange I had with a director at Oracle corporation, who is also involved in the Non-Violent Communication community, he described his work environment as follows:

For the last few years, I have not attended [NVC] training sessions, workshops, or empathy groups. I do however, use vernacular NVC many times a day in my job as a manager and with my family. At Oracle, specifically, I am alone. In Lakoff’s terms (see Moral Politics), Oracle works through a strict father model and [Larry] Ellison is the supreme strict father. I’m not about to attempt to change it. So, I respond upward in ways that work in the strict father model and downward with an NVC approach.

What he identifies here is the wisdom of accommodation. Although we may have a preferred (even imperative) perspective on life, there is little point communicating with someone’s right amygdala using our left insula, or vice-versa. The language and logic of both diverge so radically as to render such communication fruitless.

This need to speak the same language was brought into stark relief by the recent conflict between David Hogg (a survivor of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida) and Laura Ingraham (Fox News host). When she bullied him by diminishing the relevance of his anti-gun-violence fight by calling him a whiner he organized a protest against her show that resulted in the withdrawal of several high-profile advertisers (including AT&T, Bayer and Nestle) and netted her a week-long break from hosting the show. In an opinion piece on this story entitled “The anti-Trump resistance should stop bringing knives to a gunfight” CBC Journalist Neil McDonald makes the point:

America needs a real resistance, not slacktivists who talk about it. The left (and moderate right) needs to ape the Tea Partiers, who understood how to take over and use power.

What he describes here is the importance, when communicating with conservatives, of using language and strategies that the amygdala understands. During the 1930’s Albert Einstein was also forced by necessity to change his pacifist agenda to accommodate the realities of the third Reich. In his biography “Albert Einstein – Life of a Genius” Walter Isaacson describes Einstein’s eventual assent to the need for armed resistance against Germany. This realization followed his eviction from his home and the confiscation of all his property by the German Government due to his Jewish ancestry. This didn’t mean that Einstein had changed his point of view on pacifism, but rather that he had embraced the necessity for the protective use of force (an integral principle of Non-Violent Communication).

I raise these issues, not to promote a particular socio-political perspective, but to illustrate that in any communication one has to use language that the other party can relate to. As we will see, in chapter ?’s consideration of spiral dynamic theory, the contrast between pre-frontal and limbic function explains the primary distinction between Old Testament and New testament theology. In the Old Testament God played the strict father role, because that was the only power relationship that was understood on a societal level four thousand years ago.

Donald Trump is not the first US president to experience this kind of connection with Vladimir Putin. Another conservative President, George H. Bush, had this to say following their 2001 meeting:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.

Bush’s assessment is consistent with a connection between two similar brains. We will trust someone who has the same view of the world we do. We will see “eye to eye”. Our world view is determined by those neural circuits that, through genetics, upbringing and life experience, prove dominant. Bearing in mind that the European mindset is built on the activity of the pre-frontal cortex (logic, reason, compassion), it’s hardly surprising Trump sees Europe as a Foe. He can’t see eye to eye because what European leaders think and do makes no sense to him. It’s based on a different definition of “smart”. At the same time, Trumps actions have baffled, even horrified, European leaders for the same reason.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners, like CT and MRI scanners, produce cross-section images of the human body. PET scanners are the stuff of science fiction in that they employ the same process that powers the warp-drive of the Star Ship Enterprise (matter/anti-matter anihilation). They are commonly used in the study of dopamine mediated function, and can produce images in concert with a radioactive dopamine Antagonist such as Carbon-11 Raclopride. Raclopride is commonly used in medical practice as an antipsychotic. It can, however, be adapted for the PET scanning process by replacing the naturally occurring carbon atoms within the Raclopride molecule with those created in a cyclotron. These atoms have a mass number of 11 and are mildly radioactive. Carbon-11 has a half-life of 20 minutes, and when each atom decays to boron-11 it releases a positron (the anti-matter equivalent of an electron). After release (usually within five millimetres of the source) the positron will interact with an electron. At this point matter/anti-matter annihilation takes place releasing two gamma rays that travel in opposite directions.

The detector of the PET scanner forms a ring around the patient’s body. If a gamma ray passes through the detector it creates a flash of light. The detector senses this flash and takes note of the time it occurred. If two flashes happen at approximately the same time, and on opposite sides of the detector, the software assumes that these are the result of a single Carbon-11 decay. From the precise locations of the two flashes it can deduce where in the body this decay occurred, and from that it can infer that a molecule of Raclopride was at that location. The amount of radiation measured at a particular locale indicates how many Raclopride molecules have bound with dopamine receptors at that point in space. These receptors were unoccupied prior to the arrival of the Raclopride molecule. Raclopride is not able to bind with a receptor that already has a dopamine molecule attached, so if a lower number of Raclopride molecules are detected this indicates that a higher number of dopamine receptors are currently bound with dopamine, or one of its agonists.

Let’s use an analogy here. Imagine you have a black piece of construction paper with ten spots of glue on it. The glue spots represent the dopamine receptors. The glue is clear so the black colour from the paper shows through. This is what the limbic system looks like to the PET scanner prior to introducing the Raclopride into the blood stream; it’s all dark. Now use a fan to blow hundreds of white feathers over the surface of the construction paper. This represents the arrival of the Raclopride molecules as they are carried past in the blood stream. If a feather meets a glue spot it will stick. After that no other feathers can stick to that location because that glue spot is occupied. We could now determine how many glue spots there were by counting the number of white feathers on the card. This is the equivalent of the dopamine receptor density.

A more realistic example would take into account that some of the dopamine receptors are already bound to dopamine molecules, or a dopamine agonist drug, prior to our experiment. To reflect this, we’ll make a new card with another ten glue spots and stick black feathers to half of the glue spots on the card. The next time we blow the white feathers over the card they will only stick to at most five spots. Knowing that each card contained ten glue spots and by comparing the first card with the second card we can calculate how many dopamine receptors were already bound at the start of the experiment.

The PET image below illustrates how cocaine addiction and obesity are related in terms of dopamine receptor occupancy. The normal image exhibits high density Raclopride occupancy, signified here by the reds and yellows, showing that a large number of dopamine receptors were available for binding at the time of the test. In both other cases dopamine receptor availability is greatly reduced. This situation calls for a much larger stimulus to produce a normal response (or signal gain) and will affect the subject’s ability to experience satiation. This naturally drives sensation seeking behaviour and over-consumption. In light of the Rolling Stones’ drug-fuelled lifestyle in the 1960’s this may well be the state of mind described in the song “I can’t get no satisfaction”.

Other drugs have the opposite effect in that they produce an over-satiated state. This factor is desirable when employing stimulant drugs as appetite suppressors, but is a serious impediment to the long-term use of Serotonin based antidepressants which tend to extinguish an active libedo.

We can also use Alcohol and other drugs to illustrate the compounding effect of mixing external and internal dopamine stimuli. One of the most powerfully rewarding dopamine responses is that of aesthetic appreciation. Colour, form, art, music and the wonders of nature all stimulate a pleasure response. When I was first prescribed Ritalin for ADD I visited a friend’s house where a song was playing on the radio. Half way through listening to the song, and enjoying it immensely, I had a realization – “I hate this song, so why am I enjoying it now?” The Ritalin up-regulated dopamine function causing the small amount of dopamine released into the synapses by the song to create a pleasing buzz.

Alcohol can enhance our perception of beauty in the same way. While the following graphic is a joke, and some might consider it to be in poor taste, it does illustrate the principle rather well.

Turning back to the subjective experience of limbic stimulation we find that dopamine does not work alone. Other signalling chemicals also bind with receptors in the nucleus accumbens and affect its firing patterns. Two drugs that follow this course of action (both of which are created naturally within the body) are Oxytocin and beta-endorphin (an analogue of Morphine). Oxytocin modulates dopamine function directly, and Morphine influences dopamine signalling through its action on interneurons. On the subjective level the Oxytocin experience is very similar to that of a dopamine inducer, a response that is exhibited in both sexes. It’s responsible (in conjunction with the Opioids) for the bliss of a warm hug and the coziness of a cuddle with the one you love. Oxytocin also engenders feelings of trust (as revealed by research conducted on Poker playing) and pair bonding (as studied in the lives of monogamous Prairie Voles).

What research reveals is that Oxytocin, Morphine and by extension dopamine, express most aspects of relationship. We are hard-wired for relationship with others. Whether we find someone physically attractive or love them as a friend or family member, dopamine is at the root of each. While the sense of smell is a vitally important component of attraction in animals, human allure relies primarily on vision. The sight of a beautiful face or figure is guaranteed to bring with it a dopamine (attraction) response. It’s also often accompanied by verbal superlatives with religious connotations such as “she was a vision in that dress”, “what an angel” or “she looked simply divine”. Here we begin to see the intersection of dopamine response with spiritual experience.