From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 18:46:10 MDT
Rafal,
I would like to respond in detail to your last message. However I am
busy at the moment and may not have time to do so, at least for another
day or two. For now let me say that there is no question in my mind that
the mesolimbic system, especially the nucleus accumbens (NAC), is the
"seat" of the reward experience. The NAC is to the brain's reward system
what the hub is to a wheel.
The mesolimbic system (and lower systems) is sometimes referred to as
the "reptilian brain." Do you deny that reptiles experience a sense of
reward when they, for example, capture and devour their prey? If so then
why do you suppose they bother to hunt and eat? And if not then where do
you suppose that reward experience arises? Reptiles have no cortex to
speak of.
I agree that in humans, rewarding experiences can be triggered by many
types of perceptions and conceptions (including abstract thoughts about
scientific matters, as you pointed out) but I maintain that the
mesolimbic system is the area of the brain from which the experience of
reward or satisfaction about those thoughts arises.
It is one thing to understand an abstract scientific advancement. It is
quite another thing to experience *satisfaction* about that
understanding. Considered alone, the cortex is essentially in
emotionless information processing machine. Our experience of pleasure
from thought is possible only via the cortex's connections to the more
primitive and emotional limbic system.
I submit that the satisfaction that comes from understanding an abstract
scientific concept is qualitatively no different than that which a mouse
feels upon learning how to negotiate a maze to find a bit of cheese. I
have no doubt that the mouse who first learns the maze feels at least as
happy as the human who first grasps Einstein's relativity theory.
I will if I find time write a more detailed explanation. However for now
I thought I would like to bring something rather amusing to your
attention:
On the evening after I sent my last to you, I happened to watch a
television program on ABC, narrated by John Stossel, titled something
like "Lookism." Here is an excerpt from the corresponding web article at
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_lookism_020823.html
"In studies conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical
School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers Itzhak
Aharon, Nancy Etcoff, Dan Ariely, Christopher F. Chabris, Ethan
O'Connor, and Hans C. Breiter have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
technology to look at the activity in men's brains when they were shown
pictures of beautiful women's faces. Breiter and his colleagues found
that the same part of the brain lights up as when a hungry person sees
food, or a gambler eyes cash, or a drug addict sees a fix. Essentially,
beauty and addiction trigger the same areas in the brain."
The part of the brain referred to above is none other than the nucleus
accumbens.
With respect to basic drives that serve to perpetuate our genetic
material, including the drive to act cooperatively with other members of
our species, all signs point to the NAC/mesolimbic system as the place
at which the organism experiences the validating experience of reward.
"Thank you," says the mesolimbic system to the cerebral cortex, "for
thinking or behaving in this way that will perpetuate these genes that
we each seek to serve."
I disagree also, by the way, with your objections to my tendency to
anthropomorphize as I just did in the sentence above. On the one hand I
use such language only as a matter of convenience, (something I had
assumed that you would understand implicitly). On another level I can
justify my anthropomorphic language without any appeal to pragmatism.
(And I find myself in good company with Richard Dawkins who after all
titled one of his books "The Selfish Gene.")
There exists in my view a false distinction between our basic drives and
the genes that encode for them. A gene is best considered to be a parcel
of information (as opposed to a bit of biological material). Each gene
is a "statement" of sorts. It is therefore not inappropriate to speak
anthropomorphically about a gene or group of genes that encodes a
statement about a basic human instinct or drive. Our thoughts,
personalities and behaviors do not exist separately from our genetic
material. To think otherwise is to think egocentrically rather than
scientifically.
For example it is the height of vanity and self-deception to pat one's
own back and think of oneself as an "altruist" when in fact one in
merely acting according to the genes that encode for socially
constructive behavior. It is more accurate and less vain to speak
anthropomorphically about the genes that give us this strange urge to
help others at our own expense.
More later. Feel free to respond in the meantime.
-gts
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