Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and the ABCD of Personality

I've blogged many times about the human brain, taking time to discuss the various brain regions and what behaviors and processes they control. Your brain is an amazing demonstration of evolution in action, even in terms of its structure.

The lowest parts of the brain (the hindbrain - the cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata) control the basics of life: breathing, heartbeat, sleep, swallowing, bladder control, movement, etc. The midbrain/forebrain* controls processes that rank a little higher on the continuum, but still not what we'd consider high-level processing: emotion, sleep-wake cycle and arousal, temperature regulation, and the transfer of short-term to long-term memory (the very basics of learning), among other things.

Finally, the cerebral cortex, the outer-most part of the brain that developed last evolutionarily speaking; it is responsible for what we call consciousness, and this part of the brain in particular is responsible for many of the traits that differentiate humans from other animals - memory, attention, language, and perception. Other animals have a cerebral cortex as well but not nearly as developed as our own.

These various brain structures work together, and sometimes a lower part of the brain will take over for the higher parts of the brain, especially when there is some kind of disorder of higher brain function. Sandeep Gautam over at The Mouse Trap discusses the work of Paul McClean, and refers to activity coming from the lower brain areas as "bottom-up" and activity from the higher brain areas as "top-down." In his post, he discusses the ABCDs - affect (emotion), behavior, cognition (thought), and desire - and links these bottom-up/top-down processes to different personality traits, offering an eight-part structure of personality: a bottom-up and top-down trait for each of the ABCDs:

• Affective
• Bottom-Up: How we respond to stimuli, specifically Introversion/Extroversion
• Top-Down: Analyzing the situation for things that require increased vigilance and potentially anxiety, a trait called Neuroticism (aka: Emotionality)
• Behavioral
• Bottom-Up: Basic response to stimuli, Impulsivity or Impulsive Sensation Seeking
• Top-Down: A more thoughtful response to stimuli, including considering how that response might impact oneself and others, which could lead to inhibition. This trait is known as Conscientiousness
• Cognition
• Bottom-Up: Degree of distractibility or focus when encountering new things, which manifests as the trait Openness to Experience
• Top-Down: Making connections between concepts, a trait known as Imagination
• Desire/Drives
• Bottom-Up: Degree of aggression in one's reactions, a trait known as Agreeableness
• Top-Down: A process driven by expectation, which impacts one's desire to help or hurt others. He refers to this trait as the Honesty-Humility dimension

This structure is a departure from the Big Five personality traits. Obviously, it includes those 5 (Extroversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and Agreeableness), but adds 3 more (Impulsivity, Imagination, and Honesty-Humility). As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of the Big Five (more on that here), so I find this new structure interesting but a little strange. Probably what is strangest to me is that 3 of the Big Five are considered bottom-up processes, rather than the more thoughtful, controlled top-down. I would have thought Agreeableness and Openness to Experience were the result of higher-level processing.

It's a somewhat artificial divide of course. Except in the case of injury to a higher-level part of the brain, even bottom-up processes are going to be shaped by higher-level thinking. Your degree of Introversion/Extroversion, for instance, may influence your most basic response to social stimuli, but it's going to take higher-level processing to understand how best to handle that reaction and also determine what you need in that situation (that is, I'm feeling X, so do I need alone time or time with others?).

What do you think about this new taxonomy?



*These two areas tend to be differentiated from each other, but I was always taught about them in combination, under the title "midbrain." The forebrain includes structures like the amygdala, hippocampus, and so on. They rank higher up than the hindbrain, but are still considered "subcortical."

Lying Liars Who Lie

In the words of one of my favorite characters, Gregory House:

One lie can easily turn into two, and small lies can easily become big lies. And today I encountered some recent research that suggests why.

Whenever you tell a lie, you experience a little twinge of emotion - usually guilt. That guilt may not be enough to keep you from lying, especially if the lie benefits you and does not necessarily hurt someone else. And past research has shown that increased exposure decreases our emotional response over time. So just like your first break-up is likely to hurt a lot more than your fifth break-up (cue "The First Cut is the Deepest"), the guilt you feel from your first lie is going to be much greater than the guilt you feel after lie #793.

To test this hypothesis, and get at the specific brain response to lies, researchers had people participate in a game while undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI):

Specifically, we adapted a two-party task used previously to elicit and measure dishonesty. Participants advised a second participant, played by a confederate, about the amount of money in a glass jar filled with pennies. We changed the incentive structure over the course of two experiments such that dishonesty about the amount of money in the jar would either benefit the participant at the expense of their partner (Self-serving–Other-harming, Experiment 1), benefit both (Self-serving–Other-serving, Experiment 1), benefit the partner at the expense of the participant (Self-harming–Other-serving, Experiment 1), benefit the participant only without affecting the partner (Self-serving, Experiment 2) or benefit the partner only without affecting the participant (Other-serving, Experiment 2). Importantly, the participants believed that their partner was not aware of this incentive structure but thought that they were working together at all times to provide the most accurate estimate, which would benefit them both equally. A baseline condition enabled us to infer the amount of dishonesty on each trial without the participant being instructed to act dishonestly or required to admit to dishonesty.

The researchers observed dishonesty escalation - that people became more dishonest over time - when it was self-serving. This was the case even when the lie hurt the other person, though people were more likely to be dishonest when served the other as well. (So they still lied if it hurt the other, but not as much as if it helped the other.) Results from the brain scan showed reduced amygdala activity over time. As I've blogged about previously, the amygdala, part of the mid-brain, is involved in emotional response.

So, to answer Liz Phair's question, "Why I Lie?" the answer is: it just keeps getting easier.

The Five-Year Legal Battle Against Bad Science

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), is a neuroimmune disease that affects 1-2.5 million Americans (17 million worldwide). The symptoms are widespread, ranging from memory issues and poor sleep to pain and swollen lymph nodes. The main symptom, of course, is severe fatigue that results from any kind of exertion, which is caused by an abnormal immune response to exertion that makes it difficult for people with CFS/ME to recover. Though the cause of CFS/ME is unknown, some research suggests it can occur after a bacterial or viral infection.

The best treatment for CFS/ME? According to one study (the so-called PACE trial) published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal, it's cognitive behavioral therapy and exercise. But wait, wouldn't exercise be a really bad idea for people whose immune systems freak out at any kind of exertion (leaving some sufferers bedbound)? That's what a lot of people with CFS/ME said after the article came out and especially after the article influenced treatment recommendations from such places as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser. And it turns out, those skeptical patients were right:

If your doctor diagnoses you with chronic fatigue syndrome, you’ll probably get two pieces of advice: Go to a psychotherapist and get some exercise. Your doctor might tell you that either of those treatments will give you a 60 percent chance of getting better and a 20 percent chance of recovering outright. After all, that’s what researchers concluded in a 2011 study published in the prestigious medical journal the Lancet, along with later analyses.

Problem is, the study was bad science. And we’re now finding out exactly how bad.

Under court order, the study’s authors for the first time released their raw data earlier this month. Patients and independent scientists collaborated to analyze it and posted their findings Wednesday on Virology Blog, a site hosted by Columbia microbiology professor Vincent Racaniello. The analysis shows that if you’re already getting standard medical care, your chances of being helped by the treatments are, at best, 10 percent. And your chances of recovery? Nearly nil.

In fact, that 10 percent number is based on a reanalysis by the original authors. The analysis by independent scientists found far worse results: 4.4 percent of exercise patients and 6.8 percent of cognitive therapy patients met the criteria for "recovered," compared to 3.1 percent of people who received neither treatment. None of these differences were statistically significant.

The issues with the study are widespread, ranging from lack of proper blinding, shifting definitions of recovery and improvement between the original protocol and the final analysis, and potentially invalid thresholds for physical functioning. Some critics even suggest the the inclusion criteria are so poorly written, there may be participants in the study who don't even have CFS/ME. As Jonathan Edwards, a professor emeritus of medicine quoted in the article, put it, "They’ve set this trial up to give the strongest possible chance of there being a placebo effect that you can imagine."

And yet, this article passed a rigorous peer review process and was published, in one of the top medical journals. The question that Lancet should be asking at the moment is "How?" Once they figure that out, they need to fix whatever problem they uncover with their system, because this seriously damages their credibility.

This is an interesting counterpoint to the arguments around Susan Fiske's attack on "methodological terrorists," which some (but not all) perceived as being an attack on anyone who dares to criticize published research. In fact, the researchers in the PACE trial claimed they had received death threats - claims that appear to have been false - and the naysayers were referred to as a "vocal minority." However, I see no issue with what the lawsuit set out to do: get the researchers to release their deidentified raw data so that independent statisticians could reanalyze them. This is what good science is all about - replicability, not only in replicating a study but replicating results from the same dataset. And when the analysis approached might be invalid, this includes using different approaches, to see how sensitive the results are to, say, the cut-offs the researchers adopted. (In fact, we refer to this as "sensitivity analysis" - does a different approach make a difference in the results?) Julie Rehmeyer, the author of the article linked above, agrees:

Watching the PACE trial saga has left me both more wary of science and more in love with it. Its misuse has inflicted damage on millions of ME/CFS patients around the world, by promoting ineffectual and possibly harmful treatments and by feeding the idea that the illness is largely psychological. At the same time, science has been the essential tool to repair the problem.

His Name May Ring a Bell

I talk a lot about behavior and conditioning on this blog, so it's surprising that this is the first time I've recognized this big day in the history of psychology:

Happy birthday, Ivan Pavlov!

Pavlov was born on this day in 1849. Though Pavlov's research on classical conditioning has had a tremendous influence on the field of psychology, he was actually a physiologist, interested in studying digestion. His research is a great example of the importance of serendipity - fortunate accidents - in the advancement of science.

In honor of Pavlov's big day, I'm going to do something I don't do very often - share a video of myself. Several years ago, when I was still a grad student and adjunct faculty member at Loyola, I was invited by a colleague to submit an educational video for his YouTube series (which, sadly, didn't take off), in which I spoke about classical conditioning. Enjoy!

The Blind Spot

This morning, on my way to work, I was reminded of a fun piece of human physiology. The guy in front of me had two Apple stickers on the back of his car, one on each side of the license plate. (You know, those free stickers that come with any new Apple device that I end up either throwing away or throwing in a drawer.) I glanced at my rearview mirror and realized one of the Apple stickers had disappeared.

Don't worry, that's not an alarming experience. You have a literal blind spot - a part of your retina with no photoreceptors - because this is where the optic nerve connects.

Your brain fills in missing information with the surrounding pattern (this is why you generally don't notice the blind spot). So small items that break up that pattern can seemingly disappear if you look in the right place.

Here's a demonstration of the blind spot, as well as some other "eye tricks":

The Eyes Have It

I talk a lot on this blog about the human brain, and what various parts are responsible for in terms of behavior and sensation/perception. But I don't really delve much into other body parts. However, I learned Monday about a third set of receptors in the eye that I started looking into.

You may have learned in your biology and/or psychology class about the receptors in the retina - the rods (detecting light and dark) and cones (detecting color). But Monday I learned there is a third set of receptors: the intrisincally photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. Like rods, these receptors react to light, but are so much more sensitive, they can respond even when responses of the rods and cones are blocked (or when rods and cones are missing, as in some rare eye diseases). Their response is also much slower, and relate to light conditions over the long-term. But they have some really important roles:

• Circadian rhythms - They help to regulate our day/night cycles, by sending signals to the hypothalamus. Our bodies use light to regulate when we should be awake and when we should be asleep.
• Melatonin regulation - Relatedly, they contribute to our body's regulation of melatonin, which also relates to metabolism and sleep-wake cycles.
• Pupil response - They also play a role in our pupil response to light. These cells are why people who are blind may still show a pupil response to light and dark.

These receptors help explain why people who are blind can experience sleep disturbance. If these receptors aren't functioning properly, a person's sleep-wake cycle could be affected.

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells were accidentally discovered in the 1920s, when geneticist Clyde E. Keeler bred mice without rods and cones (yes, they were in fact blind mice), but found they still responded to light. However, no one did anything in this line of research until the 1990s, and these specific cells weren't discovered until the early 2000s.

These cells respond mostly to blue light. It's probably no coincidence, then, that light therapy to treat sleep disturbance (as well as seasonal affect disorder) often uses blue light.

A Guided Tour of the Human Brain

I talk a lot about the brain on this blog. I've posted many times about different parts of the brain. But have never really given an overview. But someone shared a great video that does just that.

Luck, Serendipity, and Locus of Control

My friend over at The Daily Parker shared this story with me a couple of days ago: Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think. In the article, the author talks about people who see themselves as self-made, even though luck (and by luck, I mean random happenings that are beneficial, as opposed to some systematic force like karma) is a strong influence - perhaps even stronger than individual action:

In the process, I have discovered that chance plays a far larger role in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.

That’s troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and lucky—leads us to be less generous and public-spirited. It may even make the lucky less likely to support the conditions (such as high-quality public infrastructure and education) that made their own success possible.

Some of the greatest scientific achievements happened through luck - or serendipity, the more frequently applied term, which refers to fortunate accidents. In the field of psychology, one great example is Pavlov's concept of classical conditioning. Pavlov was a physiologist studying digestion. In his famous study, he was examining salivation - the first step in digestion - in dogs, when he noticed something interesting. The dogs actually began to salivate before they had food in their mouths.

This prompted him to make observations, and he found that the dogs would begin salivating in response to cues that meant food was on its way: the sound of the lab door opening, the sight of white lab coats, and so on. In his famous experiment, he decided to test whether he could associate a neutral stimulus (the sound of a metronome - not a bell, as some state) with food (called the unconditioned stimulus - something that elicits a response without having to be learned), to elicit salivation (called the unconditioned response). His study worked, and at the sound of the metronome (the conditioned stimulus), the dogs began salivating (now called the conditioned response).

Social psychologists ascribe strong influence to external factors on our behavior. You could reword that to state that luck determines a lot of what happens to you. Some social psychologists believe in these outside influences so strongly that they deny the existence of personality altogether, and instead explain all behaviors as externally influenced. Not all social psychologists take that radical view, and of course, different subfields of psychology have different degrees of belief in luck versus internally motivated behavior.

Of course, not only do psychologists have systematic views on the roles of luck versus internal motivation, people do in general. This concept is referred to (by psychologists) as locus of control. A person who believes they are responsible for their own behavior and destiny (self-made) would have a strong internal locus of control. On the other hand, a person who believes everything that happens to them is the result of luck and external factors would have a strong external locus of control. This belief falls on a continuum, so you can fall anywhere between those two extremes. BTW, locus of control is also sometimes known as "attributional style." Once again, what we're talking about here is attribution - what caused something to happen.

Curious to know more about your own locus of control? You can take a measure of locus of control here.

Your Brain on Stress

Speaking of brain activity and responses, a friend shared this video with me - how stress affects your brain:



This video gives a nice overview of many important brain systems and what they do, while talking about the effect of stress. The video also talks briefly about the epigenetics, the ways in which the environment can trigger certain genes to express. This means that, even if you have a genetic predisposition to stress and anxiety, a nurturing environment can keep that gene from expressing.

An important extension of this concept is the biopsychosocial model, which states that biology, psychology, and social environment combine to determine health across one's lifespan.

Experience can change the brain, though your brain becomes less plastic (changeable) as you age. This is why a small child may recover from a head injury that would be fatal to an adult. The brain is able to rewire itself, especially prior to the age of 6. And while the brain changes discussed in the video are real, they represent a worst-case scenario of stress response. If you experience normal amounts of stress or only occasional instances of high stress, you'll probably be fine. But if you experience high chronic stress, you'll want to do something to cope with that - whether it be talk therapy, lifestyle changes to minimize stress, and/or medications for anxiety.

The Language of Music

I come from a very musical family. Both of my parents were in choirs in school, my brother writes and performs music, and music was almost always playing at home or in the car. So it's unsurprising that I developed a love of music very early in life - my mom would argue from infancy - and kept making music continuously up to now, on the piano or my flute, or with my voice. Even after I changed my major from theatre to psychology, I kept performing in my college choir.

Most of my friends are also musicians, or musically inclined, and I married a fellow musician. So music is, and probably always will be, an important part of my life. As a psychologist, though, I'm always fascinated by the experience of music and the brain activity involved with listening to or producing music. This is especially true because I notice that my husband and my experiences of music seem to differ from each other, and I think it comes down to brain activity.

Just to note some of the social differences between us: my husband minored in music, plays piano and organ incredibly well, and is at ease with many styles, including jazz, classical (choral and orchestral), showtunes, and church music/hymnity. My exposure growing up was mainly to classic rock and showtunes, my (minimal) vocal training is in musical theatre, and I played the flute in my school band (so lots of pep band/marching band music).

My husband loves listening to music when he's working or reading. I listen to a lot of music during the day, but if I'm reading or writing and need to do some heavy cognitive processing, I find the music can be distracting. But I also notice that this occurs, regardless of whether I'm listening to music with words or without. That is, it seems that my language center in my brain is processing the music, even when it's instrumental.

I'm not the first to notice this connection. Brown, Martinez, and Parsons (2006) examined the similarities of music and language in the brain. Their participants were amateur musicians, who heard snippets of melody and spoken phrases, and were asked to improvise melodies or phrases based on those snippets. Positron emission tomography (PET scan) was used to look at brain activity during these activities.

Direct comparisons of the two tasks revealed activations in nearly identical functional brain areas, including the primary motor cortex, supplementary motor area, Broca’s area, anterior insula, primary and secondary auditory cortices, temporal pole, basal ganglia, ventral thalamus, and posterior cerebellum. Most of the differences between melodic and sentential generation were seen in lateralization tendencies, with the language task favouring the left hemisphere. However, many of the activations for each modality were bilateral, and so there was significant overlap.

To put this in more common language, they found overlap in many major brain areas - including Broca's area, the so-called language center of the brain - and also found that, while language tasks tended to involve the left hemisphere of the brain, which is where the language center is located, more heavily than music tasks, they both showed activities in both sides of the brain. In fact, while I was looking into the specific brain areas involved, I found this article, which references this handy graphic:

So one possibility is that music activates my language center more heavily, which makes it difficult to complete another linguistic task at the same time. Another potential factor is choice in music. At home, if I'm reading or writing, I'm usually at my desk or on the couch with a book or laptop, while my husband is at the "main" computer, where we store our music files. So in this scenario, he's in charge of what music we listen to. It's possible that the distraction factor is because I didn't select the music. We may react differently to music we are "forced" to listen to and music we select. This could be one reason why Christmas music is so annoying.

In any case, research shows that music is a linguistic task. Not only that, it activates many areas of the brain, including the motor cortex (we tap our feet or dance), the amygdala (we feel emotions in response to the music), and the hippocampus (we associate memories with the music). There are so many positive impacts of music on brain and skills development. Even in those few instances where I find music distracting, I know it has made me a better person.

Tonight, my choir, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, is performing the first of two concerts featuring music of Broadway. If you're in the Chicago area, be sure to check it out!

On Head Songs, Ear Worms, and Air Guitar

For quite a while, I've been posting on Facebook many mornings what I like to call "head songs", songs I wake up with in my head. I started wondering about what might cause these head songs, and did a bit of research.

You may have heard the term "ear worm", which seems very similar to what I describe above. A somewhat recent TedEd talk describes just this phenomenon. According to this video, ear worms are bits of a melody, often just a small part of a melody, as opposed to the complete song that get "stuck" in your head. Usually, the ear worm is only the melody, without any harmony lines. Though many believe modern technology, and the ease with which we can hear music as a result, is to blame for ear worms, the video states that this concept has been around since before the invention of the phonograph.

But what actually causes ear worms? Or more specifically, what causes a particular ear worm - why do we suddenly get a certain song stuck in our head? The video linked above, as well as an older story on NPR, shares that, though we don't completely understand the causes, psychologists believe memory triggers, emotional states, and anxiety may be to blame.

As I've blogged before, memory and emotions are strongly linked in the brain, due in part to the close proximity of the amygdala (involved in emotion) and the hippocampus (involved in transferring memories from short-term to long-term). In that previous post, I talked specifically about the connections of memory and emotions to scents. But what about auditory experiences?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the auditory cortex is close by to the systems above. In fact, the auditory cortex is basically the olfactory cortex's next-door neighbor.

"Howdy, neighbor, mind turning that music down?" "Only if you stop burning that disgusting incense."

All of these systems connect to the higher parts of the brain (the systems that evolved last and differentiate humans from other animals) through a path known as the somatosensory cortex. This is where higher reasoning skills come in. Rather than simply being flooded with random sights, sounds, smells, etc., we can think rationally about these occurrences, understand connections between them, and even expand on them.

And not to get too heavy into brain systems, but running alongside the somatosensory cortex is the somatomotor cortex. So if you're listening to a song played by guitar, and you know how to play the guitar, you may have to resist the urge to "play" along, even if a guitar is nowhere near your hands. The connections are strong.

Next up, an epic air guitar solo

Have I, as usual, gotten away from the original point? Maybe, but isn't brain physiology fun?!

Okay, seriously, head songs.  While I definitely fall prey to a repeated (usually annoying) melody, often of a song I don't like, my head songs are a bit different. They usually are the whole song - even if the head song begins at some point within the song, I usually hear the song as a gestalt (complete with accompaniment, percussion, harmony lines, and so on). So at least my auditory hallucinations are multi-faceted, right? That's got to count for something. In either case, this seems qualitatively different from ear worms.

As far as I can tell, the explanations for my head songs usually come from my dreams (e.g., I once had a dream about an androgynous person, and woke up with David Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel" in my head - "because she's not sure if you're a boy or a girl"), or some random thought I had upon waking (e.g., it's Monday and I get Foreigner's "Blue Monday" stuck).

Why is it usually the whole arrangement, not just melody/vocals? I probably should blame this on modern technology. Though we can't fully blame radio, iPods, and Spotify for ear worms, we can blame it for giving us a full - and usually consistent - experience of a song. And my head songs, though quite variable in genre, range, and instruments used, are most often songs I've heard more than once.

Do head songs happen to you or someone you love?  Don't worry, you're not alone. And there are worse things to have in your head when you wake up each morning. Unless that head song is [redacted to save your sanity].

Musically yours,
~Sara

Your Brain on Smells: Memory, Emotion, and Scent

In my approximately 30 years on Earth, I have developed many allergies. Some I've had since the beginning (e.g., lactose intolerance), others I discovered much later (e.g., aspartame, the chemical name of Nutrasweet). While I would love to explore what the heck is up with all these crazy allergies, I'm instead writing about what happened as a result of my latest allergy discovery. I recently learned that I'm allergic to an ingredient in a product I use pretty regularly (for the sake of brevity, I won't go into detail); this ingredient is so commonly used in this product that to get a product free of this stuff, I had to go to Whole Foods.

First of all, never go grocery shopping hungry. I've been told this before, but had to break my rule this time because of scheduling constraints. Second - and this rule is even more important than the first - never go to Whole Foods hungry - ever! Going to my regular grocery store hungry is bad enough; everything looks so appealing and tasty. Whole Foods is something else. Not only is the store very visually appealing, it smells how I think Heaven will smell. When you walk through produce, you smell the vegetables. The fish smells like fish (the good, fresh kind - the way fish is supposed to smell). The cheese section... need I go on?

Not only did I want to eat everything in sight, I savored the smells so much that I think I fell in love. Yes, I might have fallen in love with Whole Foods.

This, of course, got me thinking about psychology. But then, everything makes me think of psychology, so perhaps we should be more concerned if I walked out of Whole Foods thinking nothing more than, "I'm in love."

Our brains are fascinating. I really mean it. Our brains are just about the coolest invention ever. Not only are they highly efficient, processing machines (that definitely make important, but predictable, errors), so many of the systems are interconnected in really amazing ways. The connection among smells, memory, and emotions is one example.

To really briefly summarize, the lowest parts of our brains are the parts that developed (evolutionarily) first. They handle the basic functions: breathing, sleeping/waking, etc. These very basic functions are handled by parts of the brains directly connected to our brain stems. As you get farther up in the brain and away from the brain stem, you get to the higher functioning systems that developed last. Our olfactory bulb, which is involved in perception of smells, is on the under part of our brain, close to our nose. So one of the first systems to develop, but slightly higher up the chain than breathing.

The olfactory bulb is the yellow structure above the nasal cavity.

Because of the location of the olfactory bulb, it is closely tied into the limbic system, a region in the middle of your brain that contains (among other structures) the hippocampus (involved in storage of memories) and the amygdala (involved in emotion) - the reward pathway I discussed in my very first blog post resides in this region.

It should come as no surprise then that emotions, memory, and smells are closely related, and that stimulation of one of these systems (such as the one for memory) can activate another system (such as emotion). Certainly, memories elicit emotions (you remember an event that made you happy, and you feel happy again), and emotions can elicit memories.

But what about smells? Ever smell something and suddenly find yourself thinking of an event from childhood? Pumpkin pie, turkey, certain candies - these all remind me of holidays at home and feeling happy. Certain flowers, particularly those in my bridal bouquet, remind me of my wedding day.

Which is probably why I felt this strong feeling of love. As I was entering Whole Foods, I smelled the exact flowers from my bouquet. And of course, being a foodie, the other fantastic food smells certainly gave me something to savor. In the words of Jim Gaffigan, "I like food... a lot." All of these wonderful emotions, memories, and smells combined to make me think I love Whole Foods.

Wait, you mean I'm not actually in love with Whole Foods? What am I going to do with all these love poems?!

Thoughtfully yours,
Sara

On Amy Winehouse, Addiction, and Behavior

By this time, you've probably heard of the death of Amy Winehouse. Though as of this writing the cause of death is unknown, most speculate (probably accurately) that her drug addiction was the cause or at least played a major part, and many say that they are "not all that surprised" or that they "saw this coming". There are a whole host of psychological theories this makes me think of, but that's not really what I want to speculate about at the moment.

Many find it difficult to understand how addiction can take over one's life as it did Amy Winehouse's life. There are a lot of people who argue that some have a genetic predisposition to develop addictions. It's true that there is some evidence that certain people have a predisposition to depression or anxiety that may relate to propensity to develop addictions. I think we're attracted to these explanations, not just because there is some evidence to support them, but because they give us a reason to believe "That would never happen to me."

As a social psychologist, though, I hesitate to depend too much on these explanations, because I know how powerful the situation can be. And as a (semi-recovered) behaviorist, I often think of how nearly anyone could be shaped and rewarded into developing an addiction. True, I don't want to go so far as some behaviorists, who firmly believed they could take any person and shape him or her to be anything (beggar, thief, etc.) regardless of their inherent talents (there's a good reason they made some of these arguments but that's a post for another day). At the same time, people respond to rewards and punishments, and some actions may feel so rewarding that we continue to engage in them, even if they are slowly killing us.

To put things simply, there is evidence that we have in our brains a "reward pathway" - connections within the brain that cause certain areas to "light up" when we experience something pleasurable; the areas that light up are associated with feelings of pleasure as well as with goal-directed behavior and motivation. (Learn more about it here.) That pathway not only allows us to say, at a neuronal level, "That feels good", but also, "I want to get more of that." We feel motivated to obtain more of that good feeling. Provided something pleasurable isn't (either accidentally or on purpose) combined with something unpleasurable, we're likely to try to obtain that good feeling again. For example, say you tried a really tasty food for the first time - such as chocolate cake (one of my favorites). If you tried the food, found it tasty, and didn't get sick afterward, you'd be really likely to eat that food again. If, on the other hand, you tried chocolate cake for the first time and got horribly ill afterward, whether it be "on purpose" (you discover you're allergic to chocolate) or "by accident" (you become ill from an unrelated sickness), you'd be motivated to avoid chocolate cake after that (and perhaps even avoid chocolate completely). Pretty much everyone has some experience like this - where you tried a new food and got sick afterward, so you avoid that food completely. We call this a "conditioned taste aversion".

Now, how does this relate to drug addiction? Let's say you tried a drug for the first time. If it felt really good and you didn't have any awful side effects occur soon after, you'd probably be motivated to try it out again. Over time, your positive associations with the drug become stronger and stronger, as do the connections to parts of the brain responsible for goal-driven behavior. A lot of people argue that drug addicts are lazy - actually, they're quite motivated, but their motivation is directed at getting their next fix. Humans in general are quite motivated to obtain things that feel good (which explains a lot of our maladaptive behaviors). Factor in the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms (that essentially punish the person for trying to quit using the drug), and you can see why someone would keep using.

Sadly, not everyone suffering from drug addiction has a family who wants to help them, but even people who have social support may not be able to beat the addiction. Amy Winehouse's father has been especially vocal about how much he wanted to help his daughter beat her addiction. For some people, a loving supportive family can, thankfully, get them out of the downward spiral. Unfortunately, depending on the drug of choice and many variables (too numerous to name here), the motivation to get more of that drug-enhanced happy feeling may be stronger than the motivation to please their family.

By no means am I excusing or condoning this behavior. The best way to avoid these problems is obviously to never start, and we need to keep working to find ways to keep people from trying drugs to begin with (if only programs like 'Just Say No' and 'DARE' actually worked, but a lot of research evidence says they don't). But if someone does begin using drugs, we have to keep in mind the powerful physical and psychological forces at work that make it difficult to quit, and we have to design detoxification and rehabilitation that take into account these forces.

As a celebrity, Amy Winehouse certainly had other forces at work and influences in her life that probably contributed to her addiction. Even so, the forces I've discussed above were definitely operating as well. Hopefully I've given you some food for thought; feel free to share in the comments below.

Thoughtfully yours,
Sara