COGNITION IGNITION

The third Domain of Brain Systems is about cognition, which is not the usual five senses plus “rationality” or “emotion.”  Instead there are very specific ways the brain acts on sensory information to filter, transform, and record it.  A brain is not the conscious directing of attention to the world, a pool of light like that in front of a miner’s helmet, though one function, the working memory, is like that.  It’s a sort of desktop, a dashboard.  They say most people can only consider five to seven things at once, interacting, but that something like a threat signal (gun going off or door slamming that sounds like a gun going off) will wipe everything off the "surface" and even a simple distraction like someone laughing somewhere, can throw part of the task off the "surface".

The brain is complex, doing an assortment of little stuff all the time with each part specializing the way a carburetor does one thing in an engine and the crankshaft does another.  Thinking is driving a car without knowing what each part is doing or even that they exist.  No need for that because all conscious attention needs to be focused on the road.  The "under the hood" stuff is left to the "unconscious."

When I “talk” online about intelligence, cognition, rationality, as being the smallest part of the work of being human (esp. when one is considering the whole body to be a source and destination of neural information: the little bit that tells you you’re standing upright, the gut signals of wariness), I sometimes get hooted down by a certain kind of person.  Usually it’s a youngish, male, grad-school degree-holder who has a rather prestigious job which he assumes is his because of superior learning and rational thought.  He’s unaware of social patterns and has an unhappy wife, unless she’s in the same system.  He KNOWS that humans are better than animals only because of language and KNOWS he is better than other humans because he has a Ph.D.  In some places we haven’t progressed much beyond Victorian Vienna, except to cast sexier actors in their stories.  They run Wikipedia.

So these new NIMH/RDoC categories arrived at by the “best and brightest” of the academic and institutional psych world, by going to the basic level and working up, are threatening some of the standing order.  I think they’ll agree with that.  We’ve sort of backed into taking into account the evidence from neurology research because of realizing that our thinking strategies leave big holes in reality, sometimes blanks that far more “primitive” people can fill in with no trouble.  This work is entirely and dangerously like the astronomical rethinking by Copernicus and Galileo.  Reconciling psychotherapy with neuroresearch is scary.  Even worse is the idea that perhaps our very cultures are making people psychotic by imposing damage to child brains from poverty or misguided child-raising methods.  Not quite as vicious as lobotomies, but just as chilling.

The Copernican Heliocentric System

Interesting that this RDoC list is not so hard to read as the last one.  I won’t paraphrase.

Cognitive Systems: The category of systems responsible for various cognitive processes.

Attention: Attention refers to a range of processes that regulate access to capacity-limited systems, such as awareness, higher perceptual processes, and motor action. The concepts of capacity limitation and competition are inherent to the concepts of selective and divided attention.

Perception: Perception refers to the process(es) that perform computations on sensory data to construct and transform representations of the external environment, acquire information from, and make predictions about, the external world, and guide action.

Declarative Memory: Declarative memory is the acquisition or encoding, storage and consolidation, and retrieval of representations of facts and events. Declarative memory provides the critical substrate for relational representations—i.e., for spatial, temporal, and other contextual relations among items, contributing to representations of events (episodic memory) and the integration and organization of factual knowledge (semantic memory). These representations facilitate the inferential and flexible extraction of new information from these relationships.

Language: Language is a system of shared symbolic representations of the world, the self and abstract concepts that supports thought and communication.

Cognitive Control: A system that modulates the operation of other cognitive and emotional systems, in the service of goal-directed behavior, when prepotent modes of responding are not adequate to meet the demands of the current context. 

Additionally, control processes are engaged in the case of novel contexts, where appropriate responses need to be selected from among competing alternatives.

Working Memory: Working Memory is the active maintenance and flexible updating of goal/task relevant information (items, goals, strategies, etc.) in a form that has limited capacity and resists interference. These representations: may involve flexible binding of representations; may be characterized by the absence of external support for the internally maintained representations; and are frequently temporary, though this may be due to ongoing interference. It involves active maintenance, flexible updating, limited capacity, and interference control. 

For further details, see Working Memory: Workshop Proceedings (July 11-13, 2010) at: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-funding/rdoc/working-memory-workshop-proceedings.shtml

Go for it, kid!

Grad school is where a person learns to manage these things.  It has a lot to do with success in life.   If you don’t experience this huge shift in seeing the world, then it’s either not a proper grad school or your brain has not finished the final stage of maturation that happens in the early twenties.  Some people never let this stage develop -- it coincides with starting families and work, so demand is high.  But it doesn’t exclude “emotion”, which is a cultural prejudice.  The brain needs emotion, is a-slosh with emotion.  Maybe emotion is the gasoline that powers the velocity forwards.  What’s the use of knowing how to survive if you don’t want to?

COGNITIVE SYSTEMS  (Longer list of possible subjects for study, also taken from the NIMH/DRoC materials)

Attention

Perception

Visual Perception

Auditory Perceptions

Olfactory Somatosensory Multimodal Perception

Declarative Memory

Language Behavior

Cognitive (Effortful) Control

Goal Selection

Updating

Representation and Maintenance

Response Selection, Inhibition and Suppression

Performance Monitoring

Active Maintenance

Flexible Updating

Limited Capacity

Interference Control

AK coaching students

Since parallel to writing these blog posts, I’m also working on materials from Alvina Krause acting classes with emphasis on the “Method” which is managing memory and emotion through sensory triggers, it’s easy to see that this RDoC list in particular is what we were working on without knowing it.  Stanislavski was coming from the same Russian science-respecting tradition as Pavlov and his dog, but moving beyond Stimulus/Response to explore the contents of the “black box” between S and R, where the brain and body did the mysterious things that produced theatre.  We worked as much on focus, self-awareness, motivating movement, finding realizations -- as we did learning lines and remembering blocking of a scene.  In many ways, the instrument (the actor) controls what is available to the mind.

I was not a good actor, but I was beginning to be a good writer.  I vividly remember the contempt of the writing instructor when I showed up as an undergrad, the only woman in the class.  I also remember that he gave me an A+ on my last story.  There was very little actual teaching in the class, but I was learning what I needed from acting class.  Also, I was taking psych -- it was rat psych and unsophisticated, as were the students.  The prof had to lecture us about not laughing at the poor tortured rats as they tried to escape foot-shocks.  It has turned out that empathy is crucial for being human, for a rat in a tube, or even for being a professor of psych.  Undergrads just aren't there yet, which is perfectly clear when we look at the news.

http://brighterbrains.org

IF YOU GOT "HAPPY" WOULD YOU KNOW IT?

The Satisfaction with Life Index. 

Blue through red represent most to least happy respectively; grey areas have no reliable data available.

The second of these “domains” that the psych people are trying to think their way through organizing is “Positive Valence Systems.”  There are a number of problems, some of which are listed in the NIHS minutes of discussion and some of which are not really considered.  http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/development-and-definitions-of-the-rdoc-domains-and-constructs.shtml

Notoriously, it is far more difficult to define mental health positives than negatives, though people since Maslow have been working at it.  “Negative Valence Systems”, the first one tackled by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in terms of reconciling and consolidating it with the new neurology science was easier in part because of decades of research by Joe LeDoux and his colleagues, specifically about fear and anxiety pathways.  Anyway, people who are maladjusted, hurting, or a pain-in-the-butt to others tend to seek out researchers in hope of relief.  Happy people are fine until there is some sweeping change to the world (climate change, political grid lock, economic hardships) that interferes with them.  These forces have been at hand recently.

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/

Here’s what NIMH has so far.  It’s packed with jargon which I’ll try to paraphrase, but remember that I’m not a psych professional and might get their Latinate multisyllabics all wrong.  The acronym they’re using for this project is “RDoC” in case you’re trying to use search engines.

Approach Motivation Systems: 

Rather than asking, as Maslow did, what are the characteristics of a happy and healthy person, this category is more about how people go towards behavior that works in favor of growth and health.  It's a subtle difference.  “This is a multi-faceted Construct involving mechanisms/processes that regulate the direction and maintenance of approach behavior influenced by pre-existing tendencies, learning, memory, stimulus characteristics, and deprivation states.”  So these are the conclusions one’s brain has come to and stored to guide the management of what one does. 

“Approach behavior can be directed toward innate or acquired cues (i.e., unconditioned vs. learned stimuli), implicit or explicit goals; it can consist of goal-directed or Pavlovian conditioned responses.” Below are eight sub-categories, proposed so far.

"Eat your Wheaties, kid!"

Reward valuation. Processes by which the probability and benefits of a prospective outcome are computed and calibrated by reference to external information, social context (e.g., group input, counterfactual comparisons), and/or prior experience. This calibration is influenced by pre-existing biases, learning, memory, stimulus characteristics, and deprivation states. [Whatever makes you think this is a good thing to do.]

Effort valuation/Willingness to work. Processes by which the cost(s) of obtaining an outcome is computed; tendency to overcome response costs to obtain a reinforcer.  [Why get up in the morning? How much effort will you put in?  Will you accept the cost of an education?]

Expectancy/Reward prediction error. A state triggered by exposure to internal or external stimuli, experiences or contexts that predict the possibility of reward. Reward expectation can alter the experience of an outcome and can influence the use of resources (e.g., cognitive resources). [If things get tough, how much frustration can you tolerate?  What if the reward you expect just doesn’t materialize?]

Action selection/Preference-based decision making. Processes involving an evaluation of costs/benefits and occurring in the context of multiple potential choices being available for decision-making. [Making a career choice.  Choosing one of three doors.]

Initial responsiveness to reward attainment: Mechanisms/processes associated with hedonic responses—as reflected in subjective experiences, behavioral responses, and/or engagement of the neural systems to a positive reinforcer—and culmination of reward seeking.  [Why do they insist on using the word “hedonic”? What’s wrong with “pleasure?”  Having said that, we get pleasure from different things that may not be frivolous or obvious.] 

http://www.slideshare.net/bright9977/10-leadership-lessons-from-genghis-khan

Sustained/Longer-term responsiveness to reward attainment: Mechanisms/processes associated with the termination of reward seeking, e.g., satisfaction, satiation, regulation of consummatory behavior.  [ How much is enough? The opposite of addiction.]

Reward Learning: A process by which organisms acquire information about stimuli, actions, and contexts that predict positive outcomes, and by which behavior is modified when a novel reward occurs or outcomes are better than expected.   [When good things happen and rewards appear, do they register with you?  A lot of people can’t handle good times, praise, or security.  It feels stuck, boring.]

Habit: Sequential, repetitive, motor, or cognitive behaviors elicited by external or internal triggers that, once initiated, can go to completion without constant conscious oversight. Habits can be adaptive by virtue of freeing up cognitive resources.  Related behaviors could be pathological expression of a process that under normal circumstances subserves adaptive goals. [So -- you learned to do something so well that you barely know you are doing it, but now it doesn’t fit the situation.  It's a drag and a drain.  Can you get it up to consciousness and extinguish it?]

I’ll make my own list of comments:

1.  The main thing about positive rewards is distinguishing between those that address simple existence, like food or shelter, and those that are only rewards to some people.  Is opera a reward or a punishment?

"Then I thought: Why not me? I hemmed and hawed. 

I wanted to go, but debated. The cost of BART. Lunch out. 

But mostly it was the word: OPERA."

2.  This group of people doing the thinking has a particular set of experiences and therefore assumptions.  A high-end shrink with a proper couch and high fees is going to see a population that is VERY different from those of a prison chaplain or a Medecins sans Frontieres fighting ebola.  Beyond that, to achieve the level of education that qualifies people to be on these sorts of committees means that they have been socialized to accept a very specific set of beliefs about what to do and how to do it.  The existence of this boundary (frontieres?) means that they are excluding many -- maybe infinite -- points of view and sources of information.

3.  It is surprising that often the neurology structures that light up on fMRI's and so on for negatives are the same ones that light up for positives!  (S/M folks are not surprised.)  It's the SYSTEM.  This is the sort of thing that has to build up considerable credibility before it can have impact on what’s always been accepted as truth.  Organic neurology research has reached that point and the NIMH is forced to take it into account.

4.  Keeping track of the interaction between culture and pleasure is much more difficult because culture is constantly affecting what is success, why it’s success, and the consequences of success, which might be rewarding and punishing at once.  (Consider a top ballerina who is admired but who suffers physically in order to achieve.)  This is complicated again by overlapping cultures which contradict each other, like a ghetto kid whose peers think success in school is a marker of weakness while the kid’s mother is determined that success is only possible through education.  And what if the kid is dyslexic?  

ballerina feet

“Success” beyond simple survival is a slippery concept.  We tend to measure it with money, security, status, authority over others, admiration from those we care about.  What about contributions to society, cultural insight, or simply being virtuous -- except "virtue" takes us back to the same slippery ground as success.  Both are defined by participating in a culture, but cultures are incredibly various and contradictory.  In fact, the “standing order” of mental health systems may try to destroy this RDoC enterprise .  My guess is that there’s enough of a sub-culture -- humanistic, progressive, clinical -- to keep the project alive.  But not easily.  We should support this enormous re-framing.