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Fear and the brain

Imagine you’re alone in the business district of a big city. The day is over; the sun has set. The people who work here are all home by now, safe and warm, reading or having conversations or watching a bit of television before turning in for the night. Your footsteps echo back and forth between the office buildings lining the street.

At the corner, you stop to wait for the light. Suddenly, you notice a large man emerging from the darkness of a nearby doorway while reaching to pull something from his jacket pocket. Something metallic, that glints in the light from the streetlamps.

Instantly, you freeze in your tracks. Everything else drops out of your consciousness – your thoughts about a conversation you had earlier in the day, your plans for the weekend – and you study the man emerging from the doorway out of the corner of your eye. Is that a knife he’s holding? A gun? Automatically, your breathing quickens and your muscles tense. Without your even being aware of it, your brain has sensed danger, triggering the fight-or-flight response.

This response exists in all vertebrates, and a variety of other animals as well. And for good reason, from an evolutionary standpoint.

Picture a field mouse, for instance. When it first notices the outline of what might be a bird of prey high overhead, it freezes, making it far less likely to become the predator’s next meal, then decides whether the threat to its well-being is real, and if so, what to do next – flee for safety, or turn and fight. A mouse that doesn’t exhibit the fight-or-flight response is a mouse that’s unlikely to stick around to pass on its genes.

Thanks to recent neurological research, we now know what happens in the brain to cause this automatic response. First, information from your senses is sent to the amygdala, a tiny, almond-shaped region deep in the center one of the more primitive areas the brain – and the linchpin of the brain’s fear circuitry – which conducts a quick-and-dirty assessment of the threat implicit in that information.

In the case of our thought experiment, the amygdala makes the snap decision that, yes, the figure emerging from the shadowy doorway may well pose a threat. Almost immediately, it sounds a neurological “red alert” that activates your sympathetic nervous system, flooding your body with chemicals including the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. This is the jolt you experience when faced with a potential threat to your well-being, from the car that cuts you off unexpectedly to the deranged guy on the sidewalk who starts yelling at you suddenly and for no reason.

A variety of physical responses results. To ensure the big muscles of your legs, arms, and torso have the extra oxygen they need to fight or flee, your breathing quickens, your heart rate spikes, and blood flow is redirected from your skin, hands, feet, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract. To prevent your body from overheating, you begin sweating. To improve your vision, your pupils dilate. Your sense of pain dulls, your reflexes sharpen, and to prevent hemorrhaging should you be injured, your blood becomes more readily coagulated. All this begins before you even realize what you’re reacting to – in the case of our thought experiment, before you’re consciously aware that you’ve seen that figure emerge from that shadowy doorway.

At the same time as your brain is sending sensory information to your amygdala, it’s also sending that information to your prefrontal cortex, the home of advanced cognitive functions like judging and planning, and a much more recent evolutionary development in the brain. The prefrontal cortex conducts a much more careful, rational analysis of the sensory information. If it decides that the amygdala was wrong and there’s no rational cause for alarm, it issues a “stand down” order, telling the amygdala to quiet and triggering the parasympathetic nervous system to calm the excitement stirred up by the fight-or-flight response. But because of the way the brain is wired – because information from your senses is transmitted to your prefrontal cortex much more slowly than to the amygdala – this takes place only after the amygdala has sounded the red alert.

*****

Back to our thought experiment: What if, after the adrenaline starts pumping through your system, you realize that the man emerging from the shadowy doorway is not in fact a threat? What if you see that the scary-looking metallic thing he’s got in his hand is in fact an iPhone? What if you watch him put the phone to his ear, hear him begin to speak: “Right, a dozen eggs and a half-gallon of two-percent milk. Don’t worry, dear, I’ll stop by the grocer’s on the way home”?

For most people, the result is a sigh of relief. They’ll still feel the adrenaline coursing through their system for a minute or two. But because their prefrontal cortex has analyzed the situation and concluded that there’s no real danger, they’ll stop feeling fear. Within a couple of blocks, they may forget the episode altogether.

Unfortunately, people with panic disorder display less prefrontal-cortex activity of the kind needed to switch off the amygdala than do others. In other words, the panic sufferer’s stand-down signal is a mere whisper, when what’s needed is a signal more along the lines of a shout. The result? The amygdala continues to sound the red alert, making it exceedingly difficult to exit the fight-or-flight response. And a situation like an evening encounter with a guy on a cell phone can become a confrontation with the most base, primal kind of fear. You'll get back to calm, eventually, but the jolt to your system will almost certainly be more severe than it would be to one with a less-reactive amygdala and/or a prefrontal cortex capable of giving a more forceful "stand down" message.

Lucky you!

Can you fill in this incident form please oh and this one

I am never Never NEVER going to stand with a group of boys again. They are boisterous twats that hurt girls. Today was the day that I came to this conclusion *leans back, puts feet up, daydream bubble appears above head*

"JORDAN seriously stay away from me! You're going to bump into me at any moment." Me and Kiera were standing with the boys at lunch like usual cos we were bored inside, chatting away with them having a laugh. But boys being idiotic boys decided they'd had enough of talking and laughing and proceeded to fight each other. As you do. Grabbing hold of each other in sumo wrestler fashion and pushing each other into walls, pulling other boys along to way. Because that's obviously fun. *stares*

Kiera backed away from the riot and I followed her to get out of their bashing path and continued to talk and laugh COS THAT'S WHAT YOU DO. After about 3 near misses of me being battered by the boys I said (shouted) quite clearly 'STAY AWAY FROM ME I'm scared you're gonna hit me!' Which obviously meant nothing to them, as what happened next was possibly the worst and most humiliating moment of my school life...

After a few minutes we were oblivious to the continuing rabble and had a good conversation going, when suddenly my eyes met a boy's...whose were coming rapidly closer to my face, accompanied by about 5 ratherly tall bodies. BAM! I was bashed onto the ground, a VERY MUDDY field to be exact, my head ever so close to the concrete. After a split second of silence, everyone realised what had happened. Most laughed, some screamed, some murmured in shock, I burst into tears. I sat up, my hands were grazed and my right thigh hurt a lot, but that didn't bother me at the time as I had fallen into the muddiest of places therefore my WHOLE uniform and bag was caked in wet sticky mud. It felt like ages me sitting there sobbing and looking at my now shit (literally) looking appearance, but I felt two hands on mine pulling me up and dragging me away fast to the toilets. Those hands belonged to Kiera obviously, who I now declare as one of the best best friends I've ever had. If it wasn't for her being there I would still be rocking in the mud in uncontrollable sobs. She grabbed my bag and instantly just said "Don't look down, just think, you can write an amazing blog on this!" Which I admit, through my sobs, made me go "Yeah..*sniff*...yeah that's right, good blog..." I was thrust into the toilets where girls gawped at me in shock and little Year 7s pegged it out not wanting to be involved. I daren't glance at myself in the mirror to see what I actually looked like, I could paint that picture myself from everyone's reaction. Kiera took control of getting as much mud off my bag and blazer as she could, while I shoved my stinging hands under a tap and feebly attempted to wipe myself down, which evidently failed.

By now I had stopped crying and the slow emotion of anger seeped through my body as I recalled what had happened. I was effing and blinding all the way to the Medical Room about how I am (apparently) going to "POUR ACID OVER HIS EFFING HEAD AND CUT HIS FUGLY FACE OFF!!!!!!" That's still on my mind, although could have some interesting consequences. Perhaps not.

The look on the lady in the Medical Room's face said it all really as I walked in, I was ushered to a chair where I was doused in wet tissues and asked a number of questions. My Mum was phoned and she rushed down to see the sorry sight for herself. Have to say she wasn't best pleased. She turned up just as I was filling out another incident form explaining what had happened and was being told that this was going to be taken VERY seriously and I would have to be taken out of class a number of times tomorrow to explain to the Head of Year and other important sounding teachers about what had happened. Fabulous. I quick changed into clean uniform Mum had brought down and took a chance to look at my phone, to the sight of 5 new messages. Oh people had found out then.


Now lunch was well and truly over and Mum made me go to Biology, even though there was only 45mins of school left, thanks Mum. I shuffled into class where all eyes snapped onto me, and even though I kept my head down and slid into the seat next to Nadia, I could feel eyes boring into my head, don't blame them, who doesn't like a bit of gossip? So rather than just tell Nadia what had happened, I ended up giving some sort of speech to the whole class...even the teacher...who now I'm sure realises that if she wants a class to listen, create a dramatic empathetic story about the subject, people WILL listen. Have to say I felt a lot better after people had said "They should pay for a new uniform!" "I'm gonna abuse his Facebook tonight saying what a dick he is" So yeah now I'm back at home, feeling sorry for myself and not making things easier for my hands while I'm typing. Ouch. *type* ouch *type* My uniform and bag is ruined and all that's on my mind are the meeting's I'm going to have to have tomorrow *sigh* plus I feel bad as some of the boys are my friends and I know for a fact they didn't do it intentionally. Woe me woe me.


And that was the most humiliating day of my life. Sympathy welcome. *picks mud out of hair* X



What I would have looked like...if I was Asian...

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On rumination depression and anxiety

Most of those with panic, anxiety, or depression know exactly what obsessive thinking is like. "Something's wrong with my heart. My heart's not beating right. It's skipping beats. Didn't that basketball player collapse on the court and die because his heart was skipping beats? What if I get to the supermarket, and collapse right their in the frozen foods aisle? I'll be so far from home! And what if nobody helps me? I know that's not really going to happen. But my heart's skipping beats -- what if it does? What if I have a heart attack, and collapse, and die?"

That kind of thing.

This blog post, which discusses the correlation between depression and obsessive thinking (a correlation that is, of course, just as strong between obsessive thinking and panic and anxiety), opens with a wonderful description by Sylvia Plath of depressive rumination: "I am terrified by this dark thing/That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity." It goes on to say:

One theory is that ruminators have a particular cognitive style, a neuronal inflexibility that distorts the normal executive functioning of the brain. Two psychologists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, decided to explore this idea in the laboratory, to see if they could identify the specific deficit underlying such perseveration. Anson Whitmer and Marie Banich gave several hundred young adults a widely used test to measure their ruminative tendencies. The ones who scored high were not clinically depressed, but they did display this signature cognitive style.

Then the psychologists gave both the ruminators and those who scored very low on this trait a complicated mental test in which they were required to pay attention to certain stimuli, switch their attention elsewhere, suppress thoughts and replace them with new ones, and so forth. The idea was to sort out two ways that normal attention can malfunction. Sometimes we simply can’t shake an unwanted thought, hard as we try. At other times we cannot switch from one way of thinking to a newer, fresher way. These sound similar, but to the brain’s executive neurons they are distinct. The subjects were required to respond as rapidly as they could, in order to tap into these fundamental, unconscious processes.

The results, as reported in the June issue of Psychological Science, were plain. The ruminators, when compared to normal thinkers, had much more difficulty suppressing unwanted thoughts. Imagine trying as hard as you can not to think of the death of a loved one or a failed relationship--or trying to expel the embodiment of your melancholy--and failing; that’s the clinical equivalent of these lab results.

But Whitmer and Banich went one step further. They studied the same two cognitive processes in two other kinds of rumination, namely angry rumination and intellectual reflection. Angry rumination is, well, think of the rude guy who just cut you off in traffic—and the visceral feelings you still have, hours later. Reflection, as the word conveys, is good rumination; it’s peaceful and creative focus on an idea.

It turns out that, as different as they are emotionally, angry rumination and intellectual reflection are cognitively similar—and cognitively distinct from the distorted thinking of depression. Both involve difficulty switching to a new topic, rather than difficulty inhibiting a negative thought. In a sense, depressive rumination is an avoidance problem, while angry rumination and reflection are characterized by uncommon persistence in a way of thinking.

Fascinating stuff. Many thanks to the We're Only Human blog.

Anxiety panic and inflammation

About seven years ago, I started experiencing bouts of mystery swelling in my feet and knees. A couple of days of swelling, in the minor cases. A couple of weeks, in the more major ones. Sometimes the swelling would come after a long hike or the likes. Sometimes, though, there was no real cause that I could point to; the swelling simply came from out of the blue.

This is real pain I'm talking about. In my time I've suffered more than my share of cuts, scrapes, bumps, bruises, burns, dislocations, sprains, muscle pulls, and whatnot. I've broken my neck (5th C.V., playing rugby in college), gone under the knife, been bloodied in fights. The pain I'm talking about is right up there with all of that, typically. Indeed, one bout of mystery swelling was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. (As in, the weight of a mere bedsheet on my foot caused me to cry agonized tears.)

I attributed the mystery swelling bouts to aging and wear and tear, basically. In my lifetime I've played probably 10,000 hours of basketball, a sport that may well be harder on the feet, knees, and back than any other. (Can't play hoops any more, since this swelling business started. Only time I get to feel that hoops feeling these days is in the occasional dream.) I blew out my knee skiing 12 years ago, and had surgery to repair my ACL. So as far as I was concerned, my problems with swelling was just a symptom of worn-out joints -- and maybe some arthritis, which runs in my family.

Then I came across this, about a study positing a link between inflammation and panic:

Background: Proinflammatory cytokines have been reported to be elevated in individuals experiencing chronic stress as well as in those with major depressive disorder. Much less is known about cytokines in anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and panic disorder (PD). We hypothesized that PD and PTSD would be associated with a generalized proinflammatory cytokine signature...

Results: Individuals with primary PTSD or PD had significantly elevated median peripheral cytokine levels for 18 of 20 different cytokines compared to age- and gender-matched healthy controls...For men and women, 87% of anxiety patients had six or more detectable levels of these proinflammatory cytokines, compared with only 25% of controls...

Conclusions: These findings suggest that a generalized inflammatory state may be present in individuals with PD or PTSD.

Now I wonder: Could there be some link between panic and the inflammation I experience? Might panic, or my genetic predisposition to it, have some role in my bouts of mystery swelling?

How about you other panic sufferers: Have you experienced inflammation you can't readily explain?

Depression and being Thankful

Depression can swamp us with such an overwhelming array of disturbing physical, mental, emotional and spiritual symptoms that it is only natural for us to focus obsessively on all the negative aspects of our life. Trivial annoyances become major irritations while more major inconveniences can cause our temper to explode out of control.

Here is an excerpt from my diary, where I lamented over the seemingly never ending suffering of depression.

14th June 1990 –
What is suffering?
It must be the human inheritance,
It never ends.
It just goes on and on and on.
And I’ve had enough, but whom do I tell?
How do I get off this merry-go-round?
…
I keep asking myself, why am I still here?
Why am I still even trying?
Why don’t I just give up and end it?
I mean, is this all there is to human life?
Suffering?
Is this it?

Recognising my tendency to dwell on the negative while severely depressed, I took steps to counter it. One such step was to pause before each meal and think of ten things to thank God for. Another was to sing praise songs to God, even if I did not feel like it. Doing so changed my focus ever so slightly, adding a touch of colour to my bleak, hopeless day, by reminding me that although my life was an absolute mess, there were still plenty of things to be thankful for should I but search for them.

Here’s another excerpt from my diary, written only five days after the above diary entry.

19th June 1990 –
My life at the moment is not much of a life,
But I guess I should still be thankful,
So I still praise Him for all He has given me.

In her diary, One Liter of Tears, young Aya Kito, who was suffering from incurable spinocerebellar degeneration disease, wrote this: (1)

I put my hand on my chest.
I can feel my heart beating.
My heart is working.
I’m pleased. I’m still alive!

Thanking God for His blessings while in the midst of chronic suffering also reminds us that He is our provider, that He knows what we need, and that we have nothing to fear.

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. Psalm 28:7

In time, I thanked God for all the things He was doing in and through my life because of depression, and much later, I also thanked Him for allowing me to go through depression itself.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18


If you’re reading this post, please join me in thanking God for ten things today. I’ll start the ball rolling, with the first comment:

(1) Page 107. One Liter of Tears, A Young Girl’s Fight for Life, Ayo Kito, FA Publishing, 1986.

Quantitative literacy and mathematics disorder

Let us consider first the distinctions and relations between mathematics, arithmetic, and numeracy.

Mathematics and arithmetic

The related sciences that collectively fall under the term mathematics are concerned with the study of number, quantity, shape and space, and their interrelationships. Mathematics includes algebra, calculus, arithmetic geometry, analytical geometry, chaos theory, number theory and set theory. Arithmetic is based on numerical calculations and quantitative number theory. Arithmetic requires an understanding of basic numerical law and the rules that govern the four basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Arithmetic also does decoding and manipulating symbols. The basic skills of arithmetic are an essential foundation to the learning of more complex mathematics.

Numeracy

Numeracy or quantitative literacy is the ability to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts. A numerically literate person can apply different aspects of mathematics to understand, predict, and control routine events in daily life. Aspects of numeracy include number sense, operation sense, computation, measurement, geometry, probability and statistics. The Combination of words “numeracy literacy” was coined in 1959 by the UK committee on Education, presided over by British economist Sir Geoffrey Crowther. Innumeracy is a lack of numeracy.

Number sense

In simple terms the number sense is an intuitive understanding of numbers.  A person with number sense would understand the magnitude, relationships of numbers. He/she would know how the numbers are affected by operations like addition, subtraction and multiplication. Development of number sense helps a child learn to solve problems conceptually rather than procedurally. Specific skills and topics related to number sense include place value, mental arithmetic, and estimation.

Number sense is a biologically based nonverbal system. It is genetically determined and biologically conserved across species. Many animal species as well as human infants are able to discriminate smaller from larger quantity, order a series of relative quantities (e.g. 3, 1, 4, 2 à 1, 2, 3, 4), and manifest a rudimentary nonverbal system for counting. There is a language-based secondary system capable of representing numbers exactly. This system is developed later just like the development of language.

Place value: In our decimal number system, the value of a digit depends on its place, or position, in the number. Each place has a value of 10 times the place to its right. A number in standard form is separated into groups of three digits using commas. Each of these groups is called a period.

Mental arithmetic or mental calculation comprises arithmetical calculations using only the human brain, with no help from calculators, computers, or pen and paper. People use mental calculation when computing tools are not available, when it is faster than other means of calculation (for example, conventional methods as taught in educational institutions), or in a competition context. Mental calculation often involves the use of specific techniques devised for specific types of problems.

Estimation: When checking the mental calculation, it is useful to think of it in terms of scaling. For example, when dealing with large numbers, say 1531 × 19625, estimation instructs you to be aware of the number of digits expected for the final value. A useful way of checking is to estimate. 1531 is around 1500, and 19625 is around 20000, so a result of around 20000 × 1500 (30000000) would be a good estimate for the actual answer (30045875). So if the answer has too many digits, you know you've made a mistake.

Mathematics disorder or dyscalculia

Mathematics disorder refers to impairment in the development of arithmetic skills, including computational procedures used to solve arithmetic problems. It involves retrieval of basic arithmetic facts from long-term memory. Mathematics difficulties, mathematics disorder, specific disorder of arithmetic skill, math anxiety, and developmental dyscalculia are different terms used to denote mathematics disorder. These terms are not synonyms; but they are similar terms with subtle differences in their meanings. The difficulty is classed as disorder only when the individual’s performance in arithmetic is substantially below that expected for age, measured intellectual abilities, and education. Also, the impairment must be sufficiently serious to interfere with academic achievement or daily living.

Math learning difficulties occur in children with low IQ. But dyscalculia occurs in people across the whole IQ range.  Sufferers often, but not always, also have difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning.

When compared to the reading disability mathematics disorder is less prevalent. Studies in developed countries have established prevalence ranging from 3 to 11 percent of the school children.

Causes: Psychological factors causing mathematics disorder

The causes of mathematics disorder are unknown, but multiple causative factors have been proposed including psychological, neurological, genetic, and social factors. The social factors include poor teaching and math anxiety. Cognitive psychologist Mark H. Ashcraft, Ph.D. defines math anxiety as a feeling of tension, apprehension, or fear that interferes with math performance.

Math anxiety

According to Ashcraft, because math anxiety can cause math avoidance, a dilemma arises. For instance, when a highly math-anxious student performs disappointingly on a math question, it could be due to math anxiety, or the lack of competency in math because of math avoidance. In order to distinguish between real math anxiety and lack of competency specially devised psychological tests have to be applied. (Ashcraft, M. H., & Kirk, E. “The relationships among working memory, math anxiety, and performance.” Journalof Experimental Psychology: General  2001, Vol. 130, No. 2, 224-237) 

Defects in development

Number sense discussed earlier is primary factor. Basic quantitative capacities develop further through formal education and require additional cognitive capacities, including short-term working memory and symbolization of number in the language. The child also develops a mental number line.

The mental number line

Mental number line

Close your eyes and imagine the numbers 1 through 9 on a line. What does the image that appears in your mind look like? Most people will say that they imagine a horizontal line, with 1 on the left, and an orderly progression to 9 on the right. Naturally, this finding could be an effect of cultural convention in societies that use Arabic numerals, but research indicates that there may be more to it than that. As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right.

E.g. 1     2     3     4   5   6  7  8 9 10 11 12 13.  

Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart.

E.g. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16.  

The mental number line is a product of schooling and experience. If the number sense is not inherited the child may lean numbers and acquire a mental number line but the numbers will remain void of the meaning of numerical magnitude. They will have gross mathematics disorder.

Neurological causes of dyscalculia 

Brain area playing major role in number processing 

Neuro-imaging studies have established that lower part of the parietal lobe of the brain plays a dominant role in numerical processing. Developmental lag of or injury to this part of the brain may cause gross dyscalculia.

How to identify dyscalculia?

The commonest feature of mathematics disorder is deficit in calculation fluency. In kindergarten and early elementary school the children shows deficit in counting skill. They fail to understand concepts such as more, less, and equivalence. They fail to recognize numerical values of numerals. They are unable to determine which of a pair of numerals is greater or smaller. They cannot copy numbers or write numbers to dictation. They usually count object more than once or out of order.

In older children i.e. third grade and above, major impairments are evident in rapid retrieval of number facts (e. g. 6 x 7 = 42), and in completing procedures necessary to solve more complex arithmetic problems in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Treatment

Psycho education about the disorder and its longer-term implecation is an essential first step. Treatment of mathematics disorder is typically conducted within educational settings, by professionals trained in special education or educational psychology. 

Anecdotal Evidence and Inductive Conclusions in Psychiatry Part I

“Can a valid diagnosis be arrived at if laboratory tests are not available? Of course it can. Total reliance on on lab tests to the exclusion of other factors when seeking validity is not science but scientism” ~ Hannah Decker, Ph.D

In my post of April 1, 2010, Is “Data” the Plural of “Anecdote?” I pointed out that in most hard sciences, stories about a scientist or practitioner’s personal experience can be contrasted with “empirical” data from studies, and that the latter usually has more validity that the former.  

As I also pointed out, however, “…many of the randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind drug studies can be every bit as biased as the worst anecdotal evidence. We are now living in an age of 'marketing-based medicine,' as opposed to evidence–based medicine" (randomized = the use of chance alone to assign the participants in an experiment or trial to different groups; placebo = inert sugar pill; double-blind = neither the person evaluating the research subject nor the subject knows during the experiment if the subject received the placebo or the active medication).

In psychiatry, the situation is even more complex, since there are almost no objective lab tests and we can't read minds, so we must rely on the experimenter's personal observations, or answers by subjects to psychological tests in which we do not know how honest subjects are being or even if they really understand the questions, or patient self reports. All of these sources of data, while important, are highly subjective and can hardly be considered "empirical" in the same sense as, say, a chemical reaction.

Another big point about anecdotes is that they are not worthless in science. Some of the most important discoveries in all of medicine were based initially on anecdotal evidence. In Part II of this post, I will describe how to determine the validity and generalizability of conclusions generated from a group of “anecdotal” clinical observations. That is, how can we tell if the anecdotes are the typical situation seen with a particular combination of clinical variables and which therefore can lead to a conclusion that will probably apply to most patients with a given disorder? Are the conclusions probably true, or probably false? 

In this post, however, I want to contrast conclusions based on a “clinical anecdote” with inductive reasoning. Remember, the first step in the scientific method is observation.

According to Wikipedia, inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for, but not absolute proof of, the truth of the conclusion. It is usually based on seeing the same phenomena over and over again without any exceptions.

The truth of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given. The same phenomena involving two variables are observed repeatedly, and other variables which correlate with the phenomena are shown to be not necessarily connected it, and a tentative conclusion or assumption is drawn regarding the relationship between the two variables.

Deductive reasoning, whose conclusions are more certain, is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. Deductive reasoning links premises with conclusions. If all premises are true, if the terms are clear, and if the rules of deductive logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true.

To anyone familiar with formal logic, deductive reasoning takes the form of a syllogism:

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore, Socrates in mortal

If the first two statements are true, then the third statement must be true. Deductive reasoning is considered the entire basis of science by some scientifically illiterate individuals. 

The problem is that both premises in the above examples are inductive conclusions! Just because all observed men have turned out to be mortal does not in any way prove that the next man you come across cannot be immortal!

The first thing you should have learned from your Geometry 1 class in high school is that there is absolutely no way to prove that the shortest distance between two points on a flat two-dimensional surface is a straight line. It is just that every time you measure it, it is. You just have to assume it.

I have a pen in my hand which I am holding about three feet off the ground. Every time I have dropped it under controlled conditions, it fell to the ground. I can never prove that the next time I let it go, it will fall. So let’s see. Well, I’ll be darned. It did it again!

In other words, ALL scientific deductions are based on premises which are unprovable inductive conclusions. Therefore, presto change-o, if no inductive conclusions are scientific, then no deductive conclusions are either. Or in other words, science would not really exist.

Syllogistically:

              All scientific conclusions are based on inductive reasoning

              Inductive reasoning never proves anything

      Therefore, no scientific conclusions are proven.

Bullcrap.

Be careful mixing Xanax and booze

If you deal with panic or anxiety, you may very well take Xanax, whether regularly or only on occasion. According to this, if you do, you should be careful about drinking alcohol at the same time. According to the article:

Hillsborough sheriff's Deputy Larry Morrell pulled over the 26-year-old woman after she crashed into an apartment gate on Brandon's Regency Avenue.

He shined a light in her eyes and asked her to track its movement. She couldn't.

"It looked like a pingpong game going on her with her eyes," Morrell said.

Typically, only an extremely inebriated driver would fail the test so badly, he said.

But the woman's breath test showed a blood alcohol content of just 0.09 percent, slightly above the 0.08 level at which the state presumes impairment.

So while processing her arrest, Morrell asked her whether she had taken any drugs.

Yes, she admitted. She'd...taken some Xanax, a prescription antianxiety pill.

Law enforcement officers increasingly encounter drivers impaired by dangerous combinations of alcohol and Xanax.

Panic fear and society

Ours is a culture steeped in anxiety and fear. Real or imagined, danger lurks around every corner. Terrorists fly airplanes into buildings, blow up subway stations, send suspicious white powders by mail. Violent, armed gangs roam the streets of our cities – and, increasingly, our suburbs and small towns. Perverts stroll our parks and schoolyards, hoping to lure children to their fall from innocence. Global warming threatens to disrupt weather patterns, redraw coastlines, and displace millions. The worldwide financial crash has revealed the shaky foundation underpinning our sense of security and prosperity. Carjackers and road rage make driving a risky proposition. The depletion of oil supplies threatens to make it prohibitively expensive to travel, heat and cool our homes, and manufacture and ship goods. Online, scammers chip away at our defenses, trying to con us out of our hard-earned cash; hackers surreptitiously assault our computer systems with viruses, worms, and Trojan horses; and pornographers threaten to expose our children to unspeakable depravities. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis – natural disasters of Biblical proportions threaten to decimate entire cities. Thieves intercept our Internet activity and rummage through our trash, looking for information they can use to assume our identity. Because of AIDS, we consider sex as dangerous as Russian roulette. Tow-headed kids go to school armed to the teeth, ready to take out as many classmates as possible before being shot dead in a hail of bullets. Thanks to would-be plagues like SARS, bird flu, and swine flu, just breathing the wrong air can be a death sentence. And so on.

No small amount of fear flowed through American society when I was a kid. There was plenty to worry about back then – drug pushers, muggers, sharks (thank you, Mr. Spielberg), inflation, nuclear proliferation, poisoned Tylenol, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Son of Sam. But the situation is different today; what was a steady stream of threats to our well-being has become a torrent of potential terror, and we’re more scared than ever as a result.

Why is this the case? What’s changed? For one thing, the world is smaller than it used to be. In the 1970s, the major television networks were often the only game in town, and they aired only an hour or two of news each day; today, multiple cable channels make the news available to viewers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Globalization has made it increasingly more likely that people do business with – and quite possibly, travel to meet – people in far-flung locations. And with the internet, it’s far easier for people to consume news from a variety of sources, and communicate with a variety of other people, around the globe. A generation ago, it was possible to hear so little about disasters in remote places that they barely registered on our consciousness. Today, if there’s a disaster anywhere in the world, we’re almost certain to hear about it – on TV, online, or from people we know with a direct connection to the situation.

For another, there’s the trend toward “bowling alone” in our culture; we’re much more mobile than we used to be, geographically – much more likely to pick up and move across the country or around the globe, far from friends and family – and as a result there’s been a breakdown in social cohesion. Without traditional support networks – the extended family, the tight-knit community – we’re left naked and alone to deal with our bogeymen.

The scares follow one upon the next, much more rapidly than ever, amplified by journalists, politicians, and PR hacks in turn. Nothing gets our attention like a good jolt of fear, after all, as Dick Cheney and Nancy Grace alike know full well. Meanwhile, we’re increasingly isolated from friends, neighbors, and family – increasingly likely to have to cope alone.

Quite understandably, fear blossoms.

Unfortunately, society tends to react to fear in ways that are or border on the dysfunctional. For instance, we attempt to assert control over our those aspects of our environment that are controllable; whether or not our efforts make us less vulnerable to harm, this at least gives us the sense that we’re taking charge of the situation. And so we move to gated communities, avoid making our kids PB&J sandwiches when there are reports of tainted peanut butter, and stand in long lines to have our shoes x-rayed before we can board our plane. We prescribe our children Ritalin; drive them to play dates rather than saying, “Just be home for dinner”; and accompany them trick-or-treating. We spend $x billion per year on private security services, and another $y billion on vitamins and supplements. We issue air-quality alerts, sunburn indexes, and color-coded guesses as to the current likelihood of terrorist attack. Or we move even more aggressively to control our environment, for example, by arresting protesters, conducting political witch hunts, or joining the modern-day Minuteman movement, arming ourselves to the teeth, and heading to the Mexican border to protect the homeland. These efforts range from being only marginally effective at keeping us safe to being pointless, wrongly directed, or even dangerous.

On the other hand, there are those aspects of our environment that remain outside our control. In these cases, denial tends to be the response of choice for American society. Yes, smoking is deadly – but there’s no reason for me to quit. Yes, obesity is killing more and more Americans every year – but there’s no reason for me to stop going to McDonald’s. Yes, odds are good that a massive earthquake will hit California in my lifetime, or a monster hurricane will blow across southern Florida – but that’s no reason I shouldn’t build a house atop the San Andreas Fault or on the beach in Key West.

From my experience with panic, it’s clear to me that these responses don’t work. Not in the long term. Asserting control and denying there’s anything wrong may help ease our fears for the moment, but neither is at effective in identifying and eliminating the real threats to our wellbeing.

When I first started having panic attacks, I exerted control wherever possible in my life. Fearing there was something wrong with my heart, I stopped drinking coffee and eating red meat and underwent a variety of elaborate cardiac tests. Fearing that panic was a harbinger of death, I avoided places where I tended to panic (the office, the subway…). Meanwhile, of course, I was in serious denial about what was really going on – convincing myself that my fear was caused by the places I went and the substances I ingested, and not by something wrong with the way my brain worked or the way I thought about the world. It was only when I turned to face it head on that I started to understand panic and begin the work of creating a life less haunted by fear. Only then could I stop living alternately in the past and the future – in wistful memories of who I was before panic, in yearnings for a suddenly panic-free future – and get on with life in the here and now.

My guess is that society would be smart to take the same approach in dealing with its fears.

Interview at Get Lost in a Story High school fall back plans and love

Today I'm being interviewed by Maureen McGowan (whose fabulous book DEVIANTS will be featured here next Monday) at Get Lost in a Story, where I talk about what I was like in high school, what I'd do if I couldn't write anymore, and what it means to love someone. There will be a giveaway of a signed hardcover of Sanctum there as well, so please enter if you're interested!

BUT BEFORE YOU GO:

Congratulations to Ruby97, who won the $20 gift card from last week's "What I used to believe/What I know now" giveaway!

Happy Monday, everyone!

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Hate List Living with the Consequences of Action and Inaction

Hate List, by Jennifer Brown, starts when you might expect it to end. Seventeen-year-old Valerie is alive. Her boyfriend, Nick, is not. Angry as hell and sick to death of being bullied, Nick went on a shooting rampage at school one morning, killing six and injuring several others--including Val--and then turned the gun on himself.

In the aftermath, police discovered a notebook of Val's that contained a "hate list", in which Val and Nick listed all the people and things they despised. Some of the people on the list are dead. People are trying to figure out if Val's a hero for stopping the shooting, a villain who helped plan it, or just a girl who didn't realize her boyfriend was on a path of violent destruction.

Isolated from her friends, unsure of whether the kids who survived the shooting will target or fear her, and under the anxious eyes of her warring parents, Val makes the difficult decision to return to school for her senior year. As she does, her therapist, Dr. Heiler, encourages her to try to "see what's real."

And that's what Hate List is about. A girl who's trying to see what's real. What I loved about this book was that NO ONE was simple. Not Nick, not Val, not the kids who bullied them. By starting the story as the dust has settled and "real life" must re-commence, the author allows the reader to see what's changed--and what hasn't. She shows us the differences between what characters always believed and what was actually happening. The differences between the picture the media paints and how things actually are. Hate List is not so much about a school shooting or bullying as it is about ALL the people involved living with the consequences of their actions ... and inaction.

I won't go into much more detail, but if you're interested in a pretty realistic psychological journey, check out this book. About a year ago, I read Dave Cullen's utterly amazing Columbine, and Hate List reminded me a little of some of the themes in that book, particularly about the public's need to have a neat, linear story because reality is just too darn complicated.

Obviously, not every kid who is bullied lashes out violently. Not every kid who is bullied tries to harm him/herself, either. Those are the stories that get our attention. They are the ones that spur lawmakers in the a$$ and get people talking. Just yesterday, President and Mrs. Obama held a conference at the White House on prevention of bullying. And check out this brand new website that was unveiled: StopBullying.gov.

I'm so happy to see this type of attention being devoted to this topic. I'm so sad that it's too late to help the young people like Phoebe Prince, Justin Aaberg, Hope Whitsell, Megan Meier, Ryan Halligan, Eric Mohat, Carl Walker-Hoover and so many others who didn't live to see it.

It wasn't possible to type those names without crying. But if we remember them, and remember how tragic and unfair it is that they're not with us anymore, then maybe we'll take action when we see even subtle signs of bullying or victimization, and maybe we can protect other kids--both those getting bullied as well as the bullies themselves.

Mitral valve prolapse and panic disorder

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is a condition in which the heart's mitral valve doesn't function properly, causing a usually sporadic and benign heart murmur. Medical types have long suggested a link between the condition and panic disorder. Which makes sense to me, since MVP-caused palpitations may well have triggered my first-ever panic attack.

But a new meta-study (i.e. a study of other studies) calls the connection between MVP and panic into question:

Published results are insufficient to definitely establish or to exclude an association between MVP and panic disorder. If any relationship does actually exist, it could be said to be infrequent and mainly occur in subjects with minor variants of MVP.

At this point, 20 years later, I'm much less concerned with what caused my panic attacks, because I realize that question is a distraction from what should be my focus vis-a-vis panic: namely, how to accept and cope with its presence in my life. Does mitral valve prolapse cause panic? Or, rather, do panic attacks cause mitral valve prolapse? Those are chicken-and-egg-type questions: unanswerable and ultimately meaningless.

The article does include a paragraph that is closer to what I believe in my gut is the actual relationship between MVP and panic: MVP causes heart palpitations. When it does so in a person biologically predisposed for panic disorder, that person will be more likely to consider his palpitations to be mortally dangerous:

An alternative to a direct causal relation could be that MVP contributes other factors to the triggering of panic crises in individuals with greater biological vulnerability. A cognitive model suggests that patients with panic disorder tend to interpret different stimuli or bodily sensations in a catastrophic manner.81 These stimuli may include, for example, a cardiologic diagnosis communicated to the patient in an abrupt manner or the perception of a tachycardia with no major clinical significance, situations that can be encountered among patients with MVP. These stimuli may be interpreted as a risk to life and may lead to more anxiety, with autonomic symptoms triggering panic crises in predisposed persons.46

So panic isn't caused by MVP. Rather, the stress resulting from misinterpreting MVP as a threat to life can trigger panic, in much the same way as other stressors (losing a job, a relationship break-up, financial troubles, health troubles, violent accidents...) can trigger panic. Bad wiring in that thumping, pulsing thing in your chest, in other words, can be seen as akin to the roadside improvised explosive device that sends the soldier home from Iraq with nascent post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Cognitive psychology and architecture of mind

Cognitive psychology perceives human mind as a biological information processing system developed by evolution, whereas computer is man-made information processor.  Aaron Sloman, philosopher and researcher on artificial intelligence and cognitive science wrote in the article titled, TheArchitecture of Brain and Mind:  “Biological information processing systems produced by evolution still far outstrip both our understanding and our practical achievements: there are deep gaps in our theories and in our engineering capabilities.”

Computational theory of mind and cognitive architecture

The computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. This view is common in modern cognitive psychology and is presumed by theorists of evolutionary psychology. The design on mind’s information processing components and systems is called cognitive architecture. According to this concept the distinction between short-term memory system and long-term memory system is architectural distinction just like the distinction between a house and a church.   

Some theorists argue that mind is built from independent processing modules. Each module is specialized for a particular function such as recognizing human faces or speech. An alternative point of view is that the building blocks of the mind are flexible, general-purpose mechanisms that perform many diverse functions.  Long-term memory system is one such general purpose mechanism in that it stores mental representations of both faces and speech sounds from the past to enable recognition in the present and future.

Symbolic models of mind

Symbolic model of mind

There are two models for the architecture of mind, symbolic and connectionist. The symbolic models assume that the mind is built like a digital computer. Pioneering works on computers by von Neumann in the late 1950s provided the foundation for such models. The data in a computer are processed according the rules of a program. The symbolic models of cognitive processes assume that mental representations are symbols that are serially processed by a set of rules, just as the computers do. Herbert A Simon, father of artificial intelligence and Nobel Prize winner wrote: “ The Physical  Symbol System Hypothesis states  that  a system will  be capable of  intelligent  behaviour if  and only if  it  is a physical symbol system. A physical symbol system is a system capable of inputting, outputting, storing, and modifying symbol structures, and of carrying out some of these actions in response to the symbols themselves.” (Page 3 Invariants of Human Behaviour) This class of architecture posits a centralized control system over the information process of the mind. The sensory input is received in the sensory memory store and immediately transferred to the short-term working memory store. The short-term working memory store is the central controlling system of the information processing. From the short-term working memory store some are selected for output as behaviour and others are transferred to long-term memory store. From the long-term memory store some are retrieved to the short-term working memory system for processing.

Connectionist model of mind

Connectionist model of mind

Instead of looking to the digital computer, connectionist models try to use the structure of the brain itself as a model of the mind’s structure. Connectionist models are based on associations among the numerous simple units of brain cells called neurons. The central nervous system comprising of brain and spinal cord is composed of one trillion (10¹²) neurons. Every neurons is connected to other neurons through dendrites and axons which are the connecting organs extending from the cell body. The dendrites of a single neuron may receive as many as 10,000 connections from other neurons. The connection junctions are called synapses.

Neural networks and connectionism

Through synaptic connections the neurons in the brain form neural networks. A neural network is composed of a group or groups of functionally associated neurons. The knowledge of neural networks in the brain has inspired the cognitive scientists to evolve the theory of connectionism.

Connectionism is a set of approaches in the field of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, which models mental or behavioural phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units. There are many forms of connectionism, but the most common forms use neural network models.