Friam

subjectivity and brain scans

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Roger Critchlow-2

subjectivity and brain scans

In today's issue of Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1074

Goal-directed human behaviors are driven by motives. Motives are, however, purely mental constructs that are not directly observable. Here, we show that the brain’s functional network architecture captures information that predicts different motives behind the same altruistic act with high accuracy. In contrast, mere activity in these regions contains no information about motives. Empathy-based altruism is primarily characterized by a positive connectivity from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the anterior insula (AI), whereas reciprocity-based altruism additionally invokes strong positive connectivity from the AI to the ACC and even stronger positive connectivity from the AI to the ventral striatum. Moreover, predominantly selfish individuals show distinct functional architectures compared to altruists, and they only increase altruistic behavior in response to empathy inductions, but not reciprocity inductions.

Evidently based on subject self reporting "with high accuracy".

-- rec --

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

I’d like to see a contrast between, say, bleeding heart liberals, and the more cunning or hawkish ones. How does Bernie compare to Hillary? Do they both have the same motive indicators / emotional response, and then modulate it in different ways as actions are taken or not?

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 7:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] subjectivity and brain scans

In today's issue of Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1074

Evidently based on subject self reporting "with high accuracy".

-- rec --

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Roger,

Do you have access to the PDF? Can you send it to me? Thanks.

Merle

On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

In today's issue of Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1074

Goal-directed human behaviors are driven by motives. Motives are, however, purely mental constructs that are not directly observable. Here, we show that the brain’s functional network architecture captures information that predicts different motives behind the same altruistic act with high accuracy. In contrast, mere activity in these regions contains no information about motives. Empathy-based altruism is primarily characterized by a positive connectivity from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the anterior insula (AI), whereas reciprocity-based altruism additionally invokes strong positive connectivity from the AI to the ACC and even stronger positive connectivity from the AI to the ventral striatum. Moreover, predominantly selfish individuals show distinct functional architectures compared to altruists, and they only increase altruistic behavior in response to empathy inductions, but not reciprocity inductions.

Evidently based on subject self reporting "with high accuracy".

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

Here’s an older one from one of the authors that is free. The new paper gets at directionality – the beginnings of starting to infer the `state machine’.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312004874

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 10:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] subjectivity and brain scans

Roger,

Do you have access to the PDF? Can you send it to me? Thanks.

Merle

On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

In today's issue of Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1074

Goal-directed human behaviors are driven by motives. Motives are, however, purely mental constructs that are not directly observable. Here, we show that the brain’s functional network architecture captures information that predicts different motives behind the same altruistic act with high accuracy. In contrast, mere activity in these regions contains no information about motives. Empathy-based altruism is primarily characterized by a positive connectivity from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the anterior insula (AI), whereas reciprocity-based altruism additionally invokes strong positive connectivity from the AI to the ACC and even stronger positive connectivity from the AI to the ventral striatum. Moreover, predominantly selfish individuals show distinct functional architectures compared to altruists, and they only increase altruistic behavior in response to empathy inductions, but not reciprocity inductions.

Evidently based on subject self reporting "with high accuracy".

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Nick Thompson

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Roger,

Thanks for sending along the Science quote, which is an absolutely perfect target for a couple of my pet rages. See larding:

Goal-directed human behaviors are driven by motives.

[NST==>That sentence is all higgledy-piggledy. Notice that we could flip the words “goal-directed” “drive” and “motives” around without loss of meaning. Which means, alas, that the sentence has very little meaning whatsoever. <==nst]

Motives are, however, purely mental constructs that are not directly observable.

[NST==>Another knee-slapper. Granting to the author the notion that the word “drive” is equivalent to some notion of “cause”, we learn that behaviors are caused by purely mental constructs. How could anything be “purely” mental if it has behavioral consequences. <==nst]

Here, we show that the brain’s functional network architecture captures information that predicts different motives behind the same altruistic act with high accuracy. In contrast, mere activity in these regions contains no information about motives. Empathy-based altruism is primarily characterized by a positive connectivity from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the anterior insula (AI), whereas reciprocity-based altruism additionally invokes strong positive connectivity from the AI to the ACC and even stronger positive connectivity from the AI to the ventral striatum. Moreover, predominantly selfish individuals show distinct functional architectures compared to altruists, and they only increase altruistic behavior in response to empathy inductions, but not reciprocity inductions.

[NST==>I persist in not seeing the relevance of the physiological information to the question of the nature of consciousness or, if one prefers, the question of how it makes sense to talk about consciousness. I assume [from my vast store of ignorance] that computer folks would all agree that there is no necessary isomorphism between the function that a computer performs and the organization of the machine on which the performance is accomplished. I shouldn’t expect that Google Maps uses millions of teensy maps to compute my shortest distance to my goal. Why does telling me that this and that part of the brain lights up when we do this or that kind of thing tell us anything except what we already know – that the brain is intimately involved in behavior. What could possibly be the alternative? The disembodied soul? If these studies are to show that, “Yes, indeedy, the brain is deeply involved in co-ordinating relations between behavior and the environment (like goal-direction, for instance, then, I would have thought that that train had left the station long ago. <==nst]

Evidently based on subject self reporting "with high accuracy".

[NST==>I assume that if these logical errors are just an example of poor abstract writing, some FRIAM member will call me out for not reading the entire paper. I am ready with my mea-culpa’s. <==nst]

-- rec –

[NST==>Did you know that GE is coming to Boston Harbor. You will be ideally positioned, there in your boat. <==nst]

[NST==>Nick<==nst]

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

Progressively larger and more complex programs can run on 16, 32, bit and 64 address space machines. Games can get by on single precision floating point math, but scientific calculations usually require double precision (or more). Scalability can be limited by the dimensionality of the network fabric, or by the speed of latency or bandwidth of memory. Some kind of combinatorics problems can be done on serial processors, others can be done on massively parallel graphics processors, some on custom integrated chips, and others may require exploiting quantum entanglement and tunneling.

The hardware tells you about what is possible to feasibly compute given constraints like power, heat dissipation, available operating temperatures. and time.

Once the hardware is understood, then one can start to rationalize the low-level software. How are errors in signaling handled? How does the system adapt when operating conditions are not ideal? How can multiple activities be coordinated without one risking the other?

Once those low-level software is understood, then higher level behaviors can be modeled. Suppose the computing platform was a robot: How are objects in the vicinity converted from light signals (or radar, etc.) into geometric objects? Layer on that, how are geometry objects named? Layer on that, how do named objects relate to one another logically? Keep going, you’ll eventually get to semantics, philosophy, and so on. All of these things could be described by mathematical models, and that model _is_ the best available story of that level of the cognitive entity. Extending the metaphor to biology, the design decisions aren’t really design of course, they are just circumstance of evolutionary pressures. They may have mathematical regularities across species that are interesting, but it is not clear they must.

In this view, it’s not clear it is even worth talking about until the lower levels of processing are understood to be the same or different. I mean, I’ll continue to talk to my dog, because I like to.

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: subjectivity and brain scans

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Motives are, however, purely mental constructs that are not directly observable.

Well, I can feel bad about something but nonetheless inhibit my behavior based on an analysis of the selfish costs and benefits of intervening, or from fear. The point is that patterns of activity could be categorized by type across subjects, passively and quantitatively. Whether those distinct types have any one-to-one relationship to words we use in casual philosophical conversation is unimportant. It is interesting only to the extent that there is enough scientific consensus about which symbol to assign to which type and that the symbols get used in a consistent way.

Marcus