FoxP2 in the News

I wrote on Monday last week about Svante Pääbo's work with hominin lineage, and his recent findings with FoxP2 transgenic mice.  This morning, this article was printed in Nature News on FoxP2's spotlight moment.  The author highlights the work presented at SfN last week by Christiane Schreiweis, a colleague of Dr. Pääbo.

in vitro meat and the de-evolution of homo sapiens

Homo sapiens is Latin for wise or knowing man.  I would like to strike "sapiens" from our evolutionary title and replace it with "homo follis", which is Latin for windbag or foolish man.  Can I do that?

Normally, I love technology and am all for its advancement as long as there is an antidote should it prove to be physically or ethically harmful.  There is a line, however, over which technological advancement frequently crosses into the world of promulgating sheer gluttonous sloth.  The antedote in the case of modern animal farming is to change human behavior.  If we consume less meat, farmers aren't pressured to over-produce massive qunatities in order to stay economically competitive.  Less pressure to over-produce means less incentive to abuse farmed animals with antibiotics, hormones, extremely unhealthy food and other revolting living conditions.

But is the American populous ready to make that sacrifice for the sake of being humane?  You bet your ass we're not.  Instead, commercial science has discovered a much more attractive antidote to modern animal farming -- one that requires significantly less effort on the part of the consumer than reducing meat consumption.  For the last decade or so, scientists have been learning how to culture "meat" in a petri dish (Datar & Betti 2009; Edelman et al 2005).  We (the people) are so lazy and so addicted to meat that scientists and economists have fleshed out an analysis of the viability of in vitro meat culturing as a "replacement" for meat farming (In Vitro Meat Consortium 2008).

Is it less of a personal burden to adjust to the taste of stem cell meat than to eat less meat and/or eat more local/grassfed/humanely farmed meat?  The In Vitro Meat Consortium seems to think so, as does PETA:

"As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection." 

Really?  Because I'm pretty sure that teaching humanity survival through relying on technology to save us from having to make proactive changes in our behavior has negative ethical implications.  For instance, the backward evolution of our species. 

"Lab-grown meat isn't an easy sell, but there could be benefits. Designer meat would theoretically be free of hormones, antibiotics, and the threat of mad cow disease or bird flu. Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins could be blasted into the mixture ", says Ian Christe in his article in Popular Mechanics on the subject.

Yes, Ian, you are absolutely correct.  However, HUMANELY FARMED ANIMALS WOULD ALSO BE THEORETICALLY FREE OF HORMONES, ANTIBIOTICS AND THE THREAT OF MAD COW DISEASE OR BIRD FLU.  Additionally, OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS AND VITAMINS ARE PRESENT IN FREE-ROAMING UNGULATES WHO ARE NOT PUMPED FULL OF GRAIN-BASED SLOP TO FATTEN THEM UP ALL YEAR ROUND.  And further, WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER SUBSTANCES THAT ARE USED IN THE CULTURING OF THE MEAT; MUST WE ASSUME (like idiots) THEY WILL BE TOTALLY HARMLESS?

So, I must pose the final question: will humanity prefer the financial burden of commercial in vitro meat production, or the burden of changing their consumptive behavior in order to promote humane animal farming?  Unfortunately, I fear the former may win out. 

Lastly, a warm thank you to PETA for supporting the de-evolution of humanity (not that I'm surprised), as well as an alternative to industrially farmed meat that wont actually stop anyone who wants to taste real meat from doing so (tofu dogs have already made this attempt).

empty thoughts X

I perceive evolution of knowledge not as continually growing and expanding, but as serially destroyed and recreated.

Expansion is a popular chimera of growth. We think of the universe in terms of ever-orbiting away from those centers that we have identified. We think of political change as manifestation of new direction. We think of steps forward in technology as bursting revelations. But are all of these things not brought about by reconfiguring previous conceptions?

Matter is never either created or destroyed, but recycled. On a quantum level, that's almost always true. On a grossly observable level - the level of content - it is created and destroyed all the time. Not a thing has been brought to my attention that would suggest the growth of knowledge proceeding any differently.

why neuroscience?

In preparation for meeting with the future of my academic career next week, I set about answering some silly interview questions. The first of these was, naturally, "why do you want to do research in neuroscience?" So I thought I'd share it, as this is the first time I think I've even put it coherently to myself...

Behavioral evolution. The field of neuroscience contains the tools that most interest me in terms of searching for patterns in the evolution of behavior. The nervous system – central and peripheral – guides all the other systems of the body through interaction with the world. From the primitive neural web of the cnidarian to the ganglia of the higher animal, it is interaction with the world that makes us what we are. I love neuroscience for attempting to associate corporeal and ethereal phenomena. I love seeking out the physiological correlates of consciousness, and the pathological correlates of behavioral dysfunction. I crave the abstraction of physiology into a medium for mind and consciousness. My own autonomic system excites when connections are made between the evolution of that medium and the evolution of the intelligence it propagates.

something has to skew nature to choose the ones that work

the argument from Intelligent Design is that the perfection that is life on Earth cannot have possibly arisen from undirected material causes. there has to be an information source. okay, so there's an information source. DNA is an information source. the modern theory of particle physics is an information source. what's the problem?

why is this information source obviously the intelligence of an omniscient version of what has become the human mind? of course there is a directive force behind the interaction of particles that fosters their becoming something more complex which can harness its own energy fields -- even chaos behaves in an orderly fashion -- but it is silly to default to the idea that that force must be a god-like (human-like) intelligence that wished to put a bunch of tiny blocks together and make the organic lego organism that is the Cosmos. this is the problem with calling it "Intelligent Design"; of course it's intelligent design, but there is a surfeit of different kinds of intelligence.

biological intelligence, for one, refers to the ability of organic matter to recognize and interact with other matter: an amoeba, for instance, learning by trial and error to escape the terminal of a capillary tube.

chemical intelligence; the particular bonding interactions of atomic and molecular electron orbitals that result in spike or mechanistic function.

quantum intelligence; the collective formation of fields which become either rays of concentrated energy or building blocks of matter.

lower-animal intelligence; communication by means that humans are barely beginning to understand, and for reasons about which we have know way to assert an concrete understanding.

human intelligence is an evolved speculative tool like any other tool which arose from any other type of intelligence. there is absolutely no reason to think that Darwinian evolution is made null by the possibility of a god-like directive in the form of a human-like intellect. come on. of course Darwin's was a harrowingly rudimentary explanation - it was the first to make the suggestions that it did, what do you want from a less-than-omniscient creator?

Newtonianism was replaced by Relativity was replaced by Quantum Mechanics to explain increasing levels of what we are now accepting might be indefinite complexity innate to existence. God was pseudo-replaced by Linneaus/Lamarck were pseudo-replaced by Darwinism is being replaced by so many other theories of complex evolution. the ID controversy is no different than any other; it's not entirely devoid of merit, but like any other theory, if interpreted and marketed by extremists it loses what logic there is to the basic idea... which is that "nature" (defined as the gross systems perception of life) behaves more like an pallet, and something has to skew it to choose which particles or atoms or bacterial colonies or animals to drive into interaction.

i would be more swayed were it called Intelligent Particle Design... or Intelligent Boson Design... or fuck "intelligence" which is the component that is giving the argument its extremist ammunition and call it Boson Design. or Field Intelligence...

even in chaos, collision begets evolution.

of course... i'm still invested in the omnipotent command of DNA and microtubules, anyway.

REM and memory consolidation

consolidation of memories - being the enhancement and stabilization following encoding of information - primarily occurs during sleep. there are, as to be expected, several propositions as to the manner in which this takes place.

the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampal system, is said to mediate consolidation through enhancing innervation to the neocortex. it is proposed that this occurs in several possible mechanisms:

1) the MTL system consolidates by signaling the neocortex to form a new representation of information, and the neocortex subsequently imprints and stores

2) the MTL is the rehearsal mechanism, strengthening connections with the particular cortical regions so they are all activated when the experience responsible for the information input repeats in the future

3) the MTL encodes AND imprints memories into the neocortex. this final option suggests that once enhanced, the neocortex is the final repository for memories. long-term memory is then distributed by coactivation through the higher neocortices specialized for analysis, each contributing differently to the storage of the complete memory. in this way, the neocortex is primed to reconstruct the representation of the information from partial cues.

regardless of which of these mechanisms is more correct than the other, their common function depends on adequate sleep cycles. it has been shown that not only does consolidation occur primarily during slow-wave and REM sleep (Kandel 2001, Sei et al 2000), but also that MTL activity during the information encoding process decreases dramatically in sleep deprived subjects (Drummond et al 2000). both of these observations correlate with decreased cortical metabolism and reproducible memory deficit.

disruption of encoding and deficit of retention in sleep-deprived subjects map onto particular physiological correlates that pronounce REM sleep as crucial for the memory consolidation process. REM deprivation reduces excitability of hippocampal neurons responsible for imprinting information into the neocortex (Kandel). this, as you might imagine, directly impairs long-term potentiation (LTP), or decays any LTP that does occur [ aka, early-LTP is vulnerable to decay within 90 min if not pushed into late-LTP by excited hippocampal neurons which facilitate the genetic transcription of proteins which are biochemically responsible for the actual "long term"]. in addition to LTP, acetylcholine (ACh) accompanying slow-wave sleep just prior to REM mediates consolidation (Power 2004, see neato pic).

the other important gesture sustained by REM sleep is the production of several nerve growth factors, primarily NGF and BDNF. these are both key regulators of LTP (again referring to the strengthening of neural circuit connections in learning and memory formation). this means that their reduction in REM sleep-deprived subjects probably causes the impairment in memory consolidation - supported by the most drastic deficits occurring in the hippocampus.

apparently, episodic memory is most profoundly affected by REM sleep-deprivation... but we don't know why (Rauchs et al 2004). although it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it had something to do with consolidation involving the prefrontal cortex (which has been suggested by almost everyone in the field to be the primary region of activation and most distinguishable candidate during episodic memory retrieval, and also during MTL mediated consolidation (see entry on "episodic memory and autonoetic awareness")). both the hippocampus and pfc are main players in episodic memory encoding and retrieval (id est, emotional memory depicting information in the context which it was learned). the other half of declarative memory, semantic, seems to involve a much different array of hippocampal efferent circuits. and although i don't actually know what the profiles of ACh, NGF or BDNF are in those circuits... i would imagine that they're also different from the activity seen in the circuits associated with episodic consolidation.

ergo, REM sleep: fighting amnesia since the evolution of the higher limbic system.

P.S.

do dreams arise from the stochastic hippocampal inputs to the neocortex?

did dreams evolve from the prolonged quiescent state in reptiles to promote calcium-dependent memory consolidation?

o.O

physical component of social pain

on the potentially incapacitating noxious pain of social exclusion, rejection or loss.

leave it to life to knock me upside the head for meandering through a thought like yesterday's...

when Nicole and Anne's moms were lost to breast cancer, when Robin's father was lost to metastatic brain tumors and her mother Diane was then taken by breast cancer a few years later, yesterday when John didn't come in to work because his dad was waiting on the results of a cancer diagnosis (on Friday i had initiated a conversation with him about health and predisposition, self and family, brilliant timing natalie). and then tonight when Cookie went through the ordeal of diagnosing her three-month old kitten with a neural bacterial infection and had to put him down... i suppose i recall the weight that comes down on my heart when people i love suffer.

"it is conceivable that brain circuits for separation distress represent an evolutionary elaboration of an endorphin-based pain network" -Panksepp

sure, it is sensible to propose that noxious pain accompanying an emotional event would serve to focus attention to that event to promote correction and future avoidance. such an adaptation would promote inclusive fitness: death of genetic kin, sexual jealousy, rap and childlessness as noxiously painful stimuli, recognized as aversive would be avoided.

social and physical pain have been shown to share the opioid and oxytocin neuroendocrine systems that work through the cingulate gyrus and periaquaductal gray [as a side note, the PAG is also a sexually dimorphic region specializing in aggressive behavior... larger and more active in males...].

social integration used to mean survival to us. now, we're so hell-bent on independence and establishing self sufficiency that we seemingly strive to eliminate this integration - this is just one example of modern social exclusion, but the first that comes to mind. if we look at our closest cousins, they form strong relationships within their social network because connections to certain individuals mean connectedness to tools of protection, reproduction and food. the most strongly integrated animals are the most likely to survive... this is because we are one of many many species who learn through imitation.

okay. so connectedness is important, and social exclusion can be equivalent to death. therefore, social animals needed physiological mechanisms to help them react to threats of social exclusion, and avoid them. interdependence.

evolutionary theory would suggest something like... as more complex social networks arose, complex response systems within physiological correlates of behaviour probably became associated with already existing mechanisms of threat defense... drumroll... the nociceptive system. [as another side note i loooooove this system. mm.]

if you throw a lobster into a pot of boiling water, it will flap its tail and appear to be trying to climb out. this is actually a nociceptive reflex wherein pain nerves are activated by the heat and recruit a network of other nerves to move the tail in such a way as to quickly escape the threat. this is the same system on which social pain would supervene... but lobsters don't have an emotional correlate to pain [i've written about this before... don't remember when...].

noxious pain gives information about tissue damage to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and the periaquaductal gray (PAG). the affective experience of pain depicted by activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus that signals an aversive state and motivates behaviour to escape the noxious stimulus. and it is this affective component whose circuit social pain might directly utilize. hot.

these two circuits - physical and social pain circuits - could become associated through very early-on sensory experiences... with physical pain and separation. for instance, when an infant experiences physical discomfort, it is alleviated by physical contact with the maternal figure - what Bowlby calls the attachment figure (1970's). however, this simultaneously teaches the infant that isolation and physical pain go together.

on a more physiological level, it has been demonstrated that the opiates released in infants when physical pain is alleviated during attachment are stimulated to do so by the PAG. this same pain inhibition in the dorsal horn by opiate stimulation from the PAG occurs when adults experiencing social exclusion related pain - death, sexual jealousy, etc. - are able to alleviate it through social attachment. and when they are isolated or cannot otherwise inhibit the affective component of pain, endogenous opioid production does not occur.

freaking cool that social pain to promote survival in social animals may have developed by mapping onto the more primitive mechanism of noxious pain.

so in other words, fuck you, modern independence epidemic. every social or affective pain i have ever experience - death, social exclusion, medical or financial crisis - has been ameliorated by a hug.

selective attention vs psychokinesis

do we see red coats worn everywhere because, coincidentally, an epidemic of red coats was brought to explicit consciousness by selective attention? or do we see them everywhere, psychokinetically, to prove to our inner thinker that they are truly everywhere?

and what's more, which is evolutionarily beneficial?

reproduction used to be the name of the game; now, those of us who have developed higher intelligence are interrupting the expression of our survival traits with a panoply of stimuli over which to ruminate. numerous strains of fly - mayfly, cattle grub, Bembix - have only one objective upon maturity: propagation. they have no mouth. when you live for sex alone you do not need to be attentive to anything else, and, as such, there is no call for your mind to be selective. this works for such creatures, evolutionarily speaking. they fertilize, lay parasitic nests and call it good. there's no hierarchical categorization of voluntary or involuntary attention, and there's certainly no psychokenesis... right?

here's what i think is interesting about the concept of mind over matter: there is no trace of the more basic mechanism from which it evolved that is given any regard in evolutionary biology. whyyy?! because it doesn't appeal to congenital impulses? that's complete crap. psychokenesis is just as relevant to survival as inhibition of return (a cohort of attention which keeps a creature from re-attending to an object), it's just shoved into the corner there is no observable suggestive behavior in lower animals. personally (and also, reluctantly), i think it's a concept just as observable in the morphogenetic fields of an amoeba as in the wannabe-telekinetic demonstrations of humans who think that bending a spoon by exerting more force than you convince yourself to be necessary is proof of internal electromagnetic command (no, not Sheldrake's concept of MF, the Gurwitsch original).

selective attention. psychokenesis.

i'm chewing.

speech, autism and collective consciousness

“…a creature cannot have thoughts unless it is the interpreter of the speech of another.” -Donald Davidson (1975, p. 9)

Initial response: ...what?!

Secondary response:

The man is suggesting that communication through speech is the only means by which a creature is able to generate thought, implying that language is the primary vehicle of thought, rather than vice versa. I think that's dumb. The primary vehicle of thought need not be speech; it could more than conceivably be entirely driven by behaviour.

Follow me for a minute here.

A thought can be a belief. A belief is based on the way things are in the actual world. The way things are in the actual world can be interpreted through the behaviour of creatures in the world. Even if it were true that belief emerged only in those organisms capable of interpreting the behaviour of others, it doesn’t follow that that interpretation need be of speech. Thought could be generated merely on the basis of interpretation of behaviour for which speech is not necessary.

[note: the necessity of internal language is an entirely separate issue...]

Translating this into an example - as my philosophy professors would demand is crucial to my train of thought - say two primitive children witness an avalanche of boulders cascading down a nearby mountain. They may be standing close enough to the avalanche to feel the ground shake, and that a small stone may ricochet from it’s main course and hit one child in the arm. The child, having felt the sting of the stone, generates a thought correlating bounding stones with pain, and that if such a small stone inflicts pain then standing beneath the whole cascade will deliver far worse. The child can then infer that it is a good idea to avoid being in close proximity to avalanches. And... run. The second child, having witnessed the discomfort expressed by and the fleeing of the first, may infer from his behaviour that it is wise to avoid avalanches. The first child generated a thought about avalanches based on the behaviour of the cascading boulders, and the second child generated the same thought based on the behaviour of the first child... with speech being a component of neither scenario.

Yes, it can also be provoked by speech alone if a creature were to be told by another that an approaching avalanche was potentially very harmful. However, provocation of thought about the avalanche through the latter scenario would require that the creature, in order to recognize the implication of an avalanche from only the speech of another creature, must have seen it inflict harm before in the content of the phrase “approaching avalanche” could have any meaning. This doesn't make it less likely that the creature could have a belief about the avalanche as solely regarded through speech. Rather, it suggests that witnessing an avalanche harming someone does not require speech to communicate that one might want to avoid cascading boulders...

The other confound of the "no thought without speech" theory is that it can be used to argue against thought in higher animal organisms, as people actually do make the argument that non-human animals can't communicate through speech [this is another assumption with which I have extensive arguments]. And while I'm a proponent of learning and memory being entirely biochemically and anatomically structured in some processes, there is also a component of consciousness that becomes necessary to explain the acquisition of the kind of behaviour learned in higher animals. There's a communication that occurs between human and animal in instances of learning that are not classical conditioning, which suggests thought in the mind of the animal as it interprets the behaviour of its trainer or owner, or what have you.

And then we have the instance of Davidson's awkward collision with cases of Autism. Since he purports that to be a thinker you must be a speaker interpreting other speakers, it then follows that Davidson must believe that Autistic people - who have monstrous trouble interpreting the minds of others but who can put together their own coherent thoughts (Baron-Cohen 1995; Harris 1991)- are not capable of thought. Which, as you might imagine, perplexes me. Thought, as I categorize its nature, can exist irrespective of lingual communication, and as such, does exist in the minds of autistic beings despite their inability to interpret the mental states of others through their speech. Since Davidson's original argument was way back in 1975, it's a struggle to get my hands on - but am still trying to locate - his response to this more recent confound to speech being the primary vehicle of thought, and thought being nonexistent without interpretation of speech. I imagine him saying something to the like of, "autistic beings do indeed interpret speech, they simply do so incorrectly and so they are able to have thought, but only based on fallacious interpretation." [and yes, he would use the word, fallacious]. Then again, responding as such negates Davidson's other stipulation which is that to be translated into a thought, the speech of another person must be interpreted as the speaker intended.

What I maintain is that when Davidson originally proposed this theory, it was meant to be applied to a confined arena of communication and interpretation... in that one might not be able to have correctly designed thought unless in response to the speech of others.

Here is where I skid off the rail, but where my train gets interesting.

In terms of collective consciousness... it would seem that interpretation of speech were completely devoid of purpose, and that Davidson's theory would be completely null. If we are all linked by consciousness (and that includes non-human animals on the level at which they exhibit it) then interpretation of speech is a useless tool except to distance us from being aware that collective consciousness might exist. So there we have the collective conscious arguing against the utility of speech. Then again, if collective consciousness were a fully functional medium, we would never misinterpret one another's speech... or letters... or online chatter... would we. But by the same token, would autistic beings - under the condition that they might even be able to participate in collective consciousness - cease to have this symptom of not quite being able to grasp the mental states of others as portrayed by their speech or any other means?

So perhaps, if we were, as a species - or as a kingdom of organisms, for that matter - to become aware of our collective conscious, would our interpretation of one another improve? Would we disable the function of war? Wouldn't we have a more comprehensive understanding of the international economic dynamics such that "globalization" and recession could be side-stepped entirely? Would sociology even be necessary?

And there you have it. Thought as independent of interpreting speech. Davidson, I like you. Don't say dumb shit.

evolution

what is encoded within DNA is the same for every cell in your body; every cell is encoded to have the same molecular and biochemical capacity. and yet, cells differentiate to express this coding in particular ways. dopamine cells express different segments of the genetic code than do spleen cells, for instance. chemically, these different cells are very similar, but from them emerge larger cytological shapes (organs) with entirely different gross function.

the architectural differences between organisms are not in the building materials, nor the energy involved in their design, but in the underlying blueprint. geneticists and embryologists once called these morphogenic fields: a cluster of cells able to respond to local biochemical signals so as to differentiate as a group. this original morphogenetic field hypothesis of Alexander Gurwitsch's means that a region of cells could be directed to become partiular tissues, organs and forms, and it explained how an embryo could be cut in half, and still the whole final form would develop. the modern appreciation of morphogenetic fields, though, has been modified by botanist Rupert Sheldrake, who has redefined the morphogenetic field to encompass an energy field surrounding these cellular clusters. Sheldrake's fields, then, contain virtual future forms which attract the developing organism toward them.

...

the principle of superposition states that the world can exist in any of many possible configurations of wave-particles and fields. what David Bohm, then, calls the explicate world is the result of the observer "choosing" between various patterns of constructive and destructive wave interference. from this "choice" emerges an individual field from the many possible fields contained in the implicate world. when an observation is made the wave function derived from Schrodinger's equation, which represents one of the possibilities, collapses and then corresponds to one said possible outcome.

superposition is also the basis for Fourier's laws suggesting infinite complexity in th universe. this infinite complexity is complementary to the implicate order in that it defines it as infinite potential from which the finite explicate order is derived.

this infinite complexity provided by superposition of wave-particles gives substance to the idea of an ever-expanding universe, as, with time, more and more of the infinite possibilities are "chosen" to emerge as explicate fields. said expansion, in turn, supports evolution as more potential complexity is incorporated from implicate to explicate. it also supports regression of some complexities as explicate forms both feed back and revert to implicate forms. and the notion of the implicate order fits in quite nicely here, i think, because it is at the plane where possibility crosses over into actuality that quantum mechanics fails, and it does so because quantum physical equations don't describe anything actual, but merely probability of the collapse distinguished by the observer... "chooser."

[my opinion for the moment is that the observer does indeed have complete control over the actuality of things on a quantum level. however, i don't believe that observation of more gross physicalities (animate and inanimate) has an effect on their overall condition. put more clearly, i don't believe in the power of modern humans to harness telekinesis, or change the final form of rocks with their eyes... i merely acknowledge that the activity of individual or clusters of smaller particles (electrons, fluid behavior, chemical interaction) may be subject to manipulation. and i think Sheldrake is a little obtuse in his rationale of morphogenetic fields explaining telepathy.]

so who is this "chooser?" whose observation directs evolution at the level of the wave-particle by collapsing infinite possibility into finite actuality? is it in the hands of the mind, or the zpf?

i'm intrigued by the idea of answering addressing these thoughts using the morphogenetic field hypothesis... as a combination of Gurwitsch and Sheldrake's notions (because Sheldrake takes the abstraction a bit too far and Gurwitsch not far enough). Gurwitsch goes no further than explaining that a whole embryo, when cut in half, continues to generate as a whole due to communication between cell clusters (biological MF's). why? because as in the case of magnets, the whole field is contained in every part such that if you chop a magnet in half, each chunk still has a full magnetic field with north and south poles complete with field lines. it is this phenomenon through which Sheldrake later jumps to evolution of the universe being directed by morphogenetic fields as magnetic fields as opposed to clusters of cells responding in like to biochemical signals. Sheldrake's MF's (physical MF's), then, would be the directors of those biochemical signals.

where i am skeptical is concerning the point at which DNA and G-S morphogenetic fields would interact. certainly it's possible that transcription and translation of DNA into differentiated final forms could be guided by an electromagnetic field; if a field is holographic and can differentiate potential complexities into finite actualities, why not, right? but what is it that would make this interaction a necessary explanation of evolution?

[to clarify, Sheldrake is somewhat of a leech hippie who is overstepping the smaller inconsistencies of morphogenetic fields in order to explain telepathy. what he's suggesting is cool; the idea that the mere existence of a form is sufficiently helpful to allow the same form to come into existence somewhere else. and yes, evolution could be based on an idea like this. HOWEVER. Gurwitsch's morphogenetic fields were proposed in the 1930's, long before Rupert the fagele...]

...

genes. genes code for proteins. but they don't explain the final destination of cells, tissues, etc.; they're necessary but not sufficient for the final form of an organism, as such. so morphogenetic fields would supposedly direct the hierarchical organization, and the evolution of genes and the products of their encoding.

neat. how?

they have memory, says hippie Sheldrake. morphic resonance. that's right. morphic resonance refers to the communiction between individual morphogenetic fields. MF's which contain only information - no energy or architectural materials - hold memory of forms which they have directed in the past. which actually reminds me of Jaques Benveniste's studies that demonstrated water retaining memory of IgE antibodies that weren't actually in solution any longer (via antigen immunoreactivity). the MF explanation of his findings would be that water retained memory of the antibody because the morphogenetic resonance of fields in the liquid retained the memory. but this was years and years ago and i'm getting off track...

...morphogenetic fields. evolution. memory contained within morphic resonance. and while i approach this theory with scalpel in hand, i will remind, too, that there was a time at which DNA was no less abstract and metaphysical an idea than morphogenetic fields are currently. okay, back...

Sheldrake suggests that the blueprint memory in morphic resonance is supervened on the inference patterns of waveform activity. lovely. how does this resonance among MF's direct alterations in gene expression so as to dictate evolution? it ends up being very similar to the idea of acquired characteristics... a phrase which makes biologists cringe. grossly, acquired characteristics refers to Lamarck's principle that adaptations of individual organisms could be passed to the next generation. based on Mendelian genetics and observations of inheritance, Lamarck's theory was abandoned. now, with morphogenetic resonance, it is somewhat resurfacing, if only at a quantum level. a change in the environment of a population of an organismic species can supposedly trigger a tuning-in to new ranges of the possible outcomes described by superposition, resulting in a new sequence of genetic changes. which is to say, the MF would respond to changes in the environment, morphic resonance would retain memory of said MF adaptation, and the field would then alter transcription of DNA within the cluster of cells under dictation of that particular MF.

while this is a badass theory and a neato explanation of evolution as controlled by magnetism... it gets a little too magical for me here. i like the idea of electromagnetic fields creating condensed and localized fields from which matter and mind emerge, but i'm also hugely skeptical of the degree of realism that... seems to be missing. the realism, then, returns to my original question: as "choosers" of actuality from infinite possibility, how would morphogenetic fields interact with DNA to direct trascription?

it is because there is no algorithmic explanation for why genes are translated in the manner that they are that morphic resonance and morphogenic fields are so appealing. they allow for responsibility to be supervened on a substance (or physical force, as it were), which is more attractive than responsibility arising out of nowhere. however, without algorithmic definition or non-circular logic, MFs also seem to arise out of nowhere...

it seems like the cluster of cells under the dictation of a given morphogenetic field would be aggregated by said field. then again, it's a question of who came first, the chicken or the egg.

but.

were it the case that morphogenetic fields arose... out of some essence described by a combination of quantum mechanics and relativity... that they could effectively gather un-programmed cells, and direct the biochemical pathways which determine the genetic sequences that are transcribed for that particular group. magic.

then again, there's the issue of the role of consciousness as the observer. how can these collapses of genetic possibility into actuality occur when a meaningful combination of genes already exists to be translated? does the collapse occur before the genes are in place? but this gets into concepts of spontaneous DNA formation which i'm not ready to flush out.

my brain has no idea where to go from here.

...

when think about evolution, i do so in the context of evolution of the universe... none of this "earthly organisms evolve but the universe is quintessential and eternal" crap.

the big bang... from the percept of morphogenetic fields... would go something like... the emergence of form being made possible by a progressive cooling process that began with the sun spitting out electrons at 2500 degrees C, which cooled enough to coagulate into atoms which cooled enough to aggregate into molecules, etc. and this progression occurred as novelty with endurance such that persistent novelty didn't result in complete chaos. i like it. i'll develop it later...

ADHD

[disclaimer: incoherent thoughts brought on by benadryl and prednisone.. may or may not be refined at a later date]

this is my biff with amphetamines.

if the role of the 7R variation in the DRD4 allele is significant enough to be the primary candidate for insatiable novelty-seeking behavior characteristic of ADHD... why was Ritalin a good idea?

the idea is this. 7R variation in this particular dopamine receptor changes the metabotropic receptor's ability to control intracellular cAMP levels (cyclic adenosine monophosphate, which activates the membrane protein PKC (protein kinase C) releasing it from the membrane and allowing it to open potassium channels which then alter the electric potential of the cell which is what allows for DA release....for those who care). this means that cAMP is turned on constitutively, and as a result its cascade which eventually leads to the release of the cell's neurotransmitter (DA, in this case) is also kept running. so we've got the 7R mutation which is mostly responsible for overload of DA in several reward pathways. okay, so this addresses hyperactivity and abrupt and aberrant mood changes. why are we controlling this by introducing more amphetamine? this is not a neurotransmitter that is known to have a strong compensatory mechanism! introducing a consistent exogenous dose of amphetamine to try to control the amount of DA pumped into synapses does not work the same way as it does with steroids. your body takes longer to respond (namely, by reducing the amount of DA it is producing itself thereby reducing signal frequency)... and while it's trying to do so, the side effects of amphetamine take their toll. if the problem is the metabotropic DRD4 receptor, and the incessant activity of cAMP and its subsequent protein kinase cascade, altering DA levels exogenously is not going to cut it. right?

but here's my other objection. why do we need to cut it? why can't we accept it as a mutation and change our behavior to accommodate? step outside of the meme of conventional education and manipulate the outcome of this condition from the outside. this was, once upon a time, a beneficial characteristic, this insatiable novelty-seeking. can we look over our culture (particularly multi-nationally) and observe what its evolution has done to the minds of children and their capacity to explore? what were we meant to do if not explore? how does growth of any kind occur without exploration? how do we survive? okay enough with the annihilation of what are otherwise perfectly decent thoughts...

cosmological natural selection

so i have a question.

if universes are created by the collapse, matter compression and explosion into a new layer of universe, where are the replicators? the black holes themselves, yes, but where on the microcosmic scale of creating the sentient characteristics of the new universe? why, oh mighty hawking (and everyone else who has addressed this theory including lee smolin for whom i have a great deal of respect), do you not address the necessity of replicators in the atomic binding and splitting that gives birth to stars, black holes and life as we understand it? you can't just spill matter into a gravitational vacuum and watch it go, something has to be introduced to use the matter to make its copies.

and aligning with the heavily reliable proposition that matter is neither created nor destroyed but recycled and re-synthesized, why do particular minds who recall living past lives never recall living those lives in past universes? as a chemist, it seems a little obscure that the first thing my brain averts to with regard to the big bang as a child of black hole implosion is christine korsgaard and the continuity and connectedness of minds. nonetheless, that's where i go.

my romantic side wants to believe that if matter is neither created nor destroyed in the recycling of universes (so to speak; and yes, i regard replication of life on earth as biochemical recycling), then the minds that accompany and/or exist in association with that matter are of no less substance and should be recycled as well. so i feel as though if you've got access to your past selves, that has to include the self of a past universe. right? why does nobody recollect their alien or other creaturely self? maybe it's an artifact of universe replication via the black hole replicator. no copying process is perfect, errors are wont to crop up. maybe the lost connectedness of selves and minds was lost in the spitting out of our universe. a macromutation, if you will.

science

i’ve never understood the whole “the science has been settled on this issue” argument. it kind of gives science a bad name. it’s statements like this that make conservatives hate science and deem its arguments meaningless or frivolous.

the real deal is that science never settles on anything. anything. that is why i love it so ardently. scientific research doesn’t prove things, or provide succinct answers… rather, it makes the questions more invigorating, and answers more mysterious.

[note: the question of the earth being flat and other such self withstanding phenomena are outside of the realm i am addressing because they are not correlational with other phenomena. likewise, we may someday discover that earth really isn't round after all, but is part of a ten dimensional schema which gives us the perception of its being round.]

how do i place any weight in the arguments made by science if i believe this to be the case? well first of all, you have to make the distinction between basic science and pseudoscience (or the politically preferred, applied science). the former being research for the sake of making connections between cause and effect, and discovering interaction between phenomena with the understanding that what the discovery reveals may or may not be the answer to an important question… like the cure for cancer (which for the record, i believe is RNAi). the latter, then, is science for the purpose of moving money: find this cure, find that technology, we will fund you if you provide us with an answer, we will fund you if you side with us on this policy issue. i fucking hate money.

that being said, in believing that scientific answers lead to heightened mystery, i avoid discrediting the substance science provides by referring only to basic science, and excluding pseudoscience. pseudoscience takes the hints and suggestions of scientific findings and exaggerates and tweaks them to make a pronounced argument (lead levels in kids causes this behavior, tobacco causes cancer, etc.). basic science takes the same hints and suggestions and throws them into society as just that – possibility. this has been shown to work under a set of conditions which are all we have to rely on at this point in time to mimic the conditions of the public. let’s throw the information (or drug) out into society and see if those conditions were accurately mimicked and if our discovery has enduring merit. i astutely believe that the answers provided by basic science - if properly interpreted by the public in the way i’ve just described – can provide answers to questions while at the same time be subject to contradiction by progression of scientific inquiry. that is the nature of science. all answers are subject to being proven wrong, or to one of several possible answers.

so yes, the science is settled in pseudoscience to the end that it settles where the money tells it to, and does not respond well to criticism or contradiction. basic science, on the other hand, is never settled. and yet, i believe the latter is the genre that lends greater value to expanding our understanding of the world and our implementation of technology and healing processes.

empty thoughts VI

6. Hare and Tomasello (1998) speak to the differences between the way wolves and dogs respond to human gaze cues. Previous studies suggest that the ability of dogs to respond to the gaze of humans is a derivative of their ancestral skill of reading behavior of fellow hunters. Contrarily, wolves, even when reared by humans don’t exhibit such skill. The domesticated dog line has been evolving for thousands of years. It is, of yet, not conclusive as to when dog domestication began. Mitochondrial DNA says the wolf and dog lines split around 100,000 years ago. It is my perspective on this issue that for the wolf and dog genetic lines to split, there had to have been a large era of domestication that occurred first. Historical perspective entices me to infer that dogs are more evolutionarily equipped to respond to a human gaze cue than a wolf, who is more equipped to respond to peer gaze cues or hunting posture. I suppose my reaction, then, to H & T’s reference is that I don’t feel that it portrays anything novel to contribute to their article. Of course wolves don’t respond as well as dogs to the gaze cues of humans; being reared by humans does not replace thousands of years of species domestication and divergence. During their process of domestication, the skill of recognizing peer behavioral cues must have evolved to respond more directly to human (master) cues. I'm bored with their thoughts...

empty thoughts V

as i sit here in class wishing that Miller would become as awesome a professor as he is a person, but accepting that, tragically, this will never be...

5. Oh Steven Pinker, how I treasure you...

Pinker thinks grammar development is a support for non-selectionist theories of language development. He says that grammar is more complicated than it need be for the purposes of hunter gatherer lifestyle, with which I agree. However, I also think that when grammar/language was in initial stages of evolutionary development, it was probably exactly as complicated as it need be for that purpose. I like to think of the late H. s. sapiens as still being hunter-gatherers, and that as our hunting skills evolved to become more complicated, so did our language. This being said, I don’t think that the present complexity of language is an argument against the contribution of natural selection to language development. It’s just as conceivable an idea to me that just as our hunting skills suffer from a severe deficit inflicted by our obsession with making our lives easier and our physical selves more lazy, so has language diverged from being purely a survival tool into… well, Sheharazade on steroids. Then again, some of us have become so exotically lackadaisical with language that it's also become somewhat useless as a tool of any sort.