Week Eleven: Interaction with a dog

My brother and Winnie

Winnie! That's the name of my golden labrador, my love. She's the most loving, compassionate dog I've ever met.

She's one of those dogs that, when she sees you approaching the house, she barks up a storm and sprints over towards you (scaring the living daylights out of a lot of strangers), but then when she reaches your feet, she rolls over and then goofily asks for a belly rub.

She's the kind of dog that will watch football and basketball games with the family. When everyone gets up and start cheering, so does she. She wags her tail furiously, barks at the TV screen, and smiles at everyone around - it's like she's celebrating with us! Most likely, she doesn't understand what exactly is going on in the game, but she understands that whatever is happening is make us happy, and she mirrors that. It's very evident in my Winnie has an ability to understand human emotions at at least a superficial level, which is the evidence of dogs co-evolving with humans.

She's the best dog ever, and although she's not the sharpest tool in the shed (she chases her tail after all)... She definitely feels human to me.

Week Ten: My favorite philosopher

My favorite philosopher would have to be Rene Descartes, the "Father of Modern Philosophy." I mean, obviously his most famous (some would say cliche) contribution is "I think therefore I am." But what truly makes him the most intriguing to me personally, is the often forgotten, beginning of that quote, "I doubt, therefore I think." Basically stating that all that each of us have access to is what's in our mind, which introduces the question: what exactly is the external world? Reality really only exists in the subjective experience, so what should we doubt as being truly real? Do our senses deceive us? Is there an evil deceiver that is manipulating what we perceive as our world? It's an interesting question, because I remember once talking to a friend about whether we all see colors the same. Is my "red" the same as her "red"?

Something that's interesting about Descartes, is that he's actually also extremely renowned for his mathematical prowess - he introduced the Cartesian coordinate system, which was basically fathering analytical geometry. He also was a key contributor to the Scientific Revolution. Which kind of plays into his philosophical beliefs that are grounded in a questioning attitude, which characterizes scientists and mathematicians. Which also explains his wise quote, "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." And use it well, Descartes did.

Helen Mayberg, “Rethinking Depression and its Treatment: Insights from Studies of Deep Brain Stimulation”

I really enjoyed Dr. Mayberg's talk about depression and her work on DBS (deep brain stimulation) as a potential treatment for the future. Something she really emphasized was how we think about/how we define depression. Some key phrases that she quoted were:

• "storm of murk"
• "trance of supreme discomfort"
• "positive and active anguish"

This made it differentiated depression as, not an off state, but an on state. Unfortunately for this disease that causes state of despair is lacking a consistent, effective treatment. More than 40% of treated patients go into remission, and approximately 10% of treated patients become resistant to treatment over time. Some of the limitations of depression treatment that cause this is that there is no real pathology model, and there are no clear biomarkers of depression  Furthermore  it's hard to study the underlying basis or test the treatments due to no definitive animal models - animals have no trackable psychic pain.

Dr. Mayberg's work has been on a potential alternative to the classic depression treatment options (ECT, VNS, TMS, etc.): neuromodulation via deep brain stimulation targeting the brain region: subcollosal cingulate 25 (we talked about this region today when we discussed the reward system), whose overactivity is implicated in depression. DBS implants an electrode that then blocks aberrant cingulate 25 activity. It first only target cingulate 25, and that had pretty good success, but many times the effect wore off after some time. Then, they employed tractography to figure out the network affected, and target this circuitry - this had even better results. Patients were quoted to say that DBS "doesn't make it easy, but it makes it doable." DBS doesn't necessarily promote positivity, but just turns off negativity (negative bias).

One thing that I found kind of surprising about her methods, is that they're able to do shams, deplete the batteries, etc. I would think that this kind of research with real human patients would not allow something like controls that deprive certain patients of the treatment. Is that ethically sound?

One last thought: Dr. Mayberg emphasized at the end that recovery from depression takes more than just DBS/ECT/TMS... Depression is a feeling of helplessness, and without a complete overhaul of life with depression, life after treatment is still difficult due to depression-inducing habits. Therefore, treatment needs to encompass lifestyle changes and new motivations!

Week Nine: Favorite Economic Game

Only true altruistic human being - St. Theresa?

One of the most interesting economic games to me is the dictator game with the third participant. It's very interesting to see that the third participant, given the ability to punish unfair behavior, will do so, even at his own expense. This to me shows perhaps an altruistic (albeit a vengeful kind of altruism) side to human behavior. This third participant neither gains nor loses from the interaction between the dictator and the recipient, yet still feels compelled to punish unfair divisions of the money endowment. This kind of behavior may seem to be in opposition to my general belief in humans being naturally selfish beings, incapable of altruism. The concept of altruism is a difficult one for me to have faith in, because even when we do good deeds, even if it has no tangible benefit to us, it still makes us feel better about ourselves - so wouldn't this still be considered acting just to improve our own personal life by improving out self-image? This punishment of unfair behavior may just be putting ourselves in the shoes of the recipient or just making ourselves feel better about ourselves by helping out the gypped recipient. Call me a cynic here, but I don't think altruism really exists, not even in the dictator game.