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Does feeling come before reason?
Suppose you are reading an article, and suddenly you hit a sentence that bothers you. For instance, let suppose you are a psychologist who reads a finding that genetics affects behavior, and since you are very anti-eugenics, a feeling of dismay arises in you. (This could happen if you felt that the implication of this […]
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Are emotions just meaning plus feelings?
In her book, “How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain” Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that emotions are concepts applied to feelings. Emotions are constructed, not just felt. She says word concepts from language are essential to emotion. This does not square with our common sense, but here is her argument: First, her […]
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Brains that get bigger after drug addiction, and the dual nature of pleasure.
In “Unbroken Brain”, Maia Szalavitz talks about her addiction to heroin and cocaine, and how “By July of 1988 my life had narrowed to the point of a needle.” The book is interesting from various points of view, including the neuroscience insights she talks about. For instance, the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, […]
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What drug side-effects might tell us about the Brain…
Some clues to brain and behavior are found not only in how medications are supposed to work, but in their undesired side effects. If a drug works (more or less) in most people, but has the exact opposite effect in others, then this may tell us that the minority has a biochemistry that differs in some important […]
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New hope for Mis-wired minds
Almost no new drugs have been developed for psychiatric conditions in over sixty years, because the causes of those conditions are mostly unknown. That is about to change because gene mutations have been found that correspond to subsets of schizophrenia, depression, and autism. These mutations sometimes affect a single gene. Other times they duplicate a […]
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