Foolproof method for succeeding in modern neurochemistry

Neurochemistry Post-Docs! Looking to publish interesting and important papers on the neurochemistry of reward but don't know what to study? Then Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method is for you!

For centuries, western philosophers have thought carefully about the nature and kinds of pleasure.* You too can benefit from their efforts!

Here's the key to Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method: These philosophers have been studying mental phenomena. You study neural phenomena. And mental phenomena are ultimately neural phenomena!

Other inferior neuropsychological research programs have tried using philosophical claims to select topics. But they would have you try to prove or disprove philosophical claims with neuroscience. That may win you friends amongst philosophers. But you don't want philosopher friends!** You want prestigious publications and lucrative grants!

That's where Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method can help! You needn't worry about proving or disproving philosophical claims. With Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method, you will use writers ranging from the ancient Greeks to the modern utilitarians to help you design experimental paradigms that are the key to scientific fame.

Here's just one taste of what the system has to offer. Philosophers have, in various guises, debated whether some pleasures are better than others by virtue of being more refined and intellectually infused.

Now a lesser program might have you consider whether opera or pop music produces greater activity in dopaminergic pathways in subjects with past exposure to both. But that will impress only philosophers.

With Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method you will instead find in these disputes some promising leads for experimentation. You may, for example, design your experiments to investigate connections between the reward pathway activity, memories, and higher order processes. You don't care whether the refined music elicits more apparent reward. You care about whether pop music and opera elicit systematically different connections throughout the brain.***

Now, it is true that Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method can't promise experimental results that will woo philosophers.**** But Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method can help you select topics which will uncover processes which underlie our complex mental lives. And that's what you want.

And lucrative grants!

Act now and Dr. Swenson's Revolutionary Topic Selection Method can be yours for a pathetically small amount of money. First 10 callers get a free T-shirt and Shamwow.


*Yes, this comes dangerously close to 'since the dawn of time'. I cringe too.

**I'm serious.

***I know, music isn't the best example. But it's easy to set out. Thanks a lotOliver Sacks.

****Philosophers will nonetheless distort your results and woo themselves.

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This post was inspired by

Heterogenerity of Reward Mechanisms

SpringerLink - Neurochemical Research, Volume 35, Number 6: "The finding that many drugs that have abuse potential and other natural stimuli such as food or sexual activity cause similar chemical changes in the brain, an increase in extracellular dopamine (DA) in the shell of the nucleus accumbens (NAccS), indicated some time ago that the reward mechanism is at least very similar for all stimuli and that the mechanism is relatively simple. The presently available information shows that the mechanisms involved are more complex and have multiple elements. Multiple brain regions, multiple receptors, multiple distinct neurons, multiple transmitters, multiple transporters, circuits, peptides, proteins, metabolism of transmitters, and phosphorylation, all participate in reward mechanisms. The system is variable, is changed during development, is sex-dependent, and is influenced by genetic differences. Not all of the elements participate in the reward of all stimuli. Different set of mechanisms are involved in the reward of different drugs of abuse, yet different mechanisms in the reward of natural stimuli such as food or sexual activity; thus there are different systems that distinguish different stimuli. Separate functions of the reward system such as anticipation, evaluation, consummation and identification; all contain function-specific elements. The level of the stimulus also influences the participation of the elements of the reward system, there are possible reactions to even below threshold stimuli, and excessive stimuli can change reward to aversion involving parts of the system. Learning and memory of past reward is an important integral element of reward and addictive behavior. Many of the reward elements are altered by repeated or chronic stimuli, and chronic exposure to one drug is likely to alter the response to another stimulus. To evaluate and identify the reward stimulus thus requires heterogeneity of the reward components in the brain. "

(Via http://mindhacks.com/.)

Review of David Biro's The Language of Pain

Short story: David Biro's The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion and Relief is very good.
Go buy it.

Longer story: The publisher sent me an advance copy of Biro's The Language of Pain a few months ago. I've read it several times and been working on a review to share with y'all. But the review is getting too long and though I think I agree with most of his conclusions, I'm still not entirely sure what I think about about several of his arguments. Nonetheless, I've certainly profited from engaging with them.

Thus in the interest of posting something while the book is still (somewhat) fresh, I've pasted some of the early parts of the review below. I may post the rest later, or I may work it into something for a more formal venue. I'm omitting the philosophical discussion of the arguments. Though I will list a couple of the topics that concern me. I'm sure the list won't make sense until you've read the book. But perhaps they'll serve as discussion-starters

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Those interested in learning about pain can profit from David Biro’s The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion and Relief. It will probably be the most useful to people with chronic pain and those close to them. At the very least, the vast array of nuanced metaphors and literary sources he canvases can serve as raw material for their attempts to communicate and understand the experience of pain. But I expect that his lucid exploration of the structure of these metaphors will provide important conceptual tools for crafting more systematic and effective narratives. Though the applicability of some of his particular insights may be limited by culture and language.

Clinicians and scientists should be impressed by the conceptual structure that Biro uncovers in the language many sufferer's use to describe their pains. He succeeds in showing that this metaphorical talk, while necessarily imprecise and often obscure, must be taken seriously. In his wake, the same cannot be said for those who dismiss or deride these ways of talking about pain.

At a minimum, researchers interested in developing pain measurement tools and many philosophers will find in it a rich repository of examples and ideas to use in their work.

Philosophers should also find much to be intrigued by in Biro’s arguments. Here are a few of points that I think are worth engaging with:

• Chapter 2 is occupied with a theoretical response to the charge that pain is completely resistant to language. This is unnecessary. The main thrust of the book is an empirical argument that, in several important ways, pain is in fact amenable to language.
• The Wittgensteinian argument of chapter 2 can at best show that we must be able to communicate that we are in pain. But his project is to show that we can communicate what it is like to be in pain. He's not confusing the two in chapter 2. He wants to use the former as a wedge to open the door for the latter. But later on they sometimes seem to get run together in significant ways.
• His discussion of the language/metaphors of agency does a lot to support and build on Elaine Scarry's articulation of the concept (I profited a great deal from this part since the pain-agency connection is important in my own work). The discussions of the x-ray and mirror metaphors/language are much weaker. Indeed, I'm not convinced that these can't be folded into the agency metaphor. [Unlike the others, this concern has significant philosophical consequences for our understanding of pain]
• I'm probably being overly picky --but, hey, that's what analytic philosophers are for-- but his project is about language (hence the title and the claim to be constructing a 'rhetoric'). I usually think of language as propositional. His discussions using art to express pain thus seem incongruous. This is probably innocuous. At most it's a concern about whether the thesis should be framed in terms of language or more broadly in terms of our ability to meaningfully communicate. Though I sometimes think that there may be something lurking here that's related to the more substantive questions about whether the x-ray and mirror metaphors are really separate from the agency metaphors.
• I'm betting that analytic philosophers of language who work on metaphor will find a great deal to disagree with in some of his arguments. Though I myself don't know enough about these issues to have more than hazy suspicions at various points.
  

Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what I think about these and other points. But I've certainly profited from thinking about them. And in any event, none of them undermine the practical import of the book or the philosophical suggestiveness of the overall picture. Indeed, his subtle discussions of pain language’s structure do not require the conceptually strong thesis that the experience of pain is necessarily expressible. By weaving together art, literature, personal experience, and patient testimony, he has demonstrated that many aspects of many pain experiences can, to a practically useful degree, be meaningfully shared.

Art

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