Brain Physiology, Cognition and Consciousness: topic
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The ethics of using brain-boosting drugs
Corie Lok
Wednesday, 19 December 2007 18:46 UTC
There’s a new forum discussion topic here on Nature Network you might be interested in.
It’s about whether healthy and sick individuals should take drugs to enhance cognition, memory, etc. The discussion stems from a commentary published in this week’s Nature by two Cambridge University researchers.
Have a look and post your comments there.
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Thank you for the links.
I ´ve been particularly interested in the discussion about ADHD and its treatment. But I´m a little disappointed because essential factors were neglected and the following two points are not quite correct:
1.Quote: „Both methylphenidate and atomoxetine increase the levels of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline“
Atomoxetine regulates the availableness of noradrenaline; methylphenidate reduces the density of the dapomine transporter gene (see: Cook et al. 1995. „Association of attention-deficit disorder and the dopamine transporter gene“. In: American Journal of Human Genetics. /Krause et al. 2000. „Neurobiologie der Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit –Hyperaktivitätstörung“. In: Psycho)
2.Qote: „ADHD is (...) characterized by core cognitive and behavioral symptoms of impulsivity, hyperactivity and / or inattention“
The main kriterion is inattention! ADHD therefore is characterized by inattention, impulsivity and / or hyperactivity. A smaller group of persons labeled „ADHD“ suffer from ADD without hyperactivity .The last twenty years I ´ve been working with families whose children suffer from ADHD. And children prescribed Ritalin (methylphenidate) wouldn´t survive the school without medication, because their main problem is the lack of understanding – but not due to inattention.
People with ADHD - children and adults – do not really suffer from a disorder but rather from the lacking acceptance and the sometimes humbling reactions of their social environment.Moreover I cast into doubt, that ADHD is about a disease or even an illness. Another interpretation of this behavior seems to be more plausible:
The German psychologist Dietrich Dörner dietrich.doerner@ppp.uni-bamberg.de
had become well-known by his studies concerning complex problem solving. He found out that the decisions of the participiants led to devastating and disastrous long term consequences. He concluded that the cause of the unability of decision making in complex situations originates in the way in which the human brain works: present-orientated, reducing complex data to a central variable and its core traits, and unable to consider or rather foresee the long-term consequences arising from actions in a current situation. I pointed out to Mr. Dörner that this statement may not generally fit and that there exists a minority of people being predestined to solve complex problems – people supposed to „suffer“ from ADHD.
Mr. Dörner told me about the of the German math scientist Inge Schwank – the predicative vs. functional kind of thinking – because I had achieved the same result like Schwank – albeit by other means and however, thirteen years later. Schwank wrote: „There exist two cognitive structures in which the thinking processes are expressed. One structure is built up by predicates (relations) and the other one is built up by functions (operations)”. ( s. Schwank, I. 1986.Cognitive Structures of Algorithmic Thinking“. In: “Proceedings of the 10th Conference for Psychology of Mathematics Education, University of London, p.199) schwank@mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de
In 2003 we started a little project to prove whether ADHD-people belong to the functional thinking group – and our last study corroborates our hypothesis.Now the question is: How does the human brain work to create either predicative or functional structures (electrophysical patterns?), in which our thinking processes and (un-)conscious experiences are expressed (and probably stored)? I assume that the answer of this question contents the explanation, too, of the deviant behavior of ADHD labelled people.
many regards Elisabeth Daegling
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Dear Elisabeth:
Many thanks for your detailed message and new ideas on the subject. Please check the comments posted at the NN Forum, specially the contribution of Steven Rose.
I am unable to find a parallel for the distinction of predicative and functional kinds of thinking in the context of Epistemology. Formal Logics seems to be both predicative (when studying the structure of sentences) and functional (when studying argumentation). In Mathematics, a function is just a kind of univocal relation.
Could you review this distinction with a bit more of detail? If it is not clear-cut it will be harder to find different modes of brain activity underlying each kind of thinking.Best Regards,
Alfredo
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As for ADHD please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7GmeSAxXo What do you say about that?
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Dear Avi:
Dr. Szasz’s rethoric is convincing, but possibly there are “objective” brain correlates for many cases of ADHD.
Calling it a disorder or a disease is an ethical issue, and I agree with him that “disease” is not good. The criticism that I make to his speech (partially reproduced in the YouTube address you indicated) is that in some cases there is effectively a disorder, the child is suffering from it, the proper use of drugs is beneficial to her, and she, parents and school teachers report that the use of the drug was beneficial. If the drug does not have bad collateral effects and is not additicve, who – and why – will tell that it is wrong?
My ethical concern about these drugs is that the scientific community still does not know deeply how they affect the complexity of brain functions. It is the same kind of criticism that can be made to broad commercialization and consumption of transgenic food.Best Regards,
Alfredo
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Thanks for your response, my interest in the problems of psychaitric diagnosis come from my personal attempt to contribute to a more brain-related diagnostic system please see my link about DSM:http://neuroanalysis.googlepages.com/Whydoweneedanewdiagnosticsystemforps.ppt see the proposed CBP:http://neuroanalysis.googlepages.com/WhatisClinicalBrainProfilingCBPandho.pps
Thanks for the interest
Avi -
sorry – the linkes again DSM:http://neuroanalysis.googlepages.com/Whydoweneedanewdiagnosticsystemforps.ppt
and CBP:http://neuroanalysis.googlepages.com/WhatisClinicalBrainProfilingCBPandho.pps -
Dear Alfredo,
Thank you for your reply and your questions.
Alfredo: I am unable to find a parallel for the distinction of predicative and functional kinds of thinking in the context of Epistemology.
Elisabeth: In fact there do not exist any parallels for this distinction.
It´s a very new idea.Alfredo: Could you review this distinction with a bit more of detail?
Elisabeth:I´ll like to try and I apologize for the deficiency due to the lack of terms to describe an idea which has been never thought before.
If it is not clear-cut it will be harder to find different modes of brain activity underlying each kind of thinking.
The terms predicative and functional in this context stem from Mrs Schwank and she explained it in the following way: she was teaching a deaf boy but the action- orientated approach to logical concept formation which has been developped for these pupils was not successful. Schwank found out that this boy preferred a cognitive structure in which the relationsbetween different mathematical objects and their symbolic description form the basic of his thinking.Such a thinking in relations is normally by the use of predicates and this means by the use of language. Thus, she named it predicative kind of thinking. And by teaching another pupil, a very bright boy Schwank found out that this boy always tried to arrange certain relations between the start situation and the goal. This kind of thinking she named „functional kinnd of thinking.“ The preference for one of these modesmeans that a persons is translating an external given problem into his personal internal conceptual representation.
As mentioned above I achieved the same results with my test persons. I showed them a graphic of Kanizsa`s triangle and asked them to name what they spontaneously would see. The larger (normal) group of persons saw one or two triangle(s), a star, a mickymouse…; the smaller (ADHD) group either asked for the goal /function of this experiment (what´s the matter with it?) or described a process: balls which are impressed by the angles of a triangle; people who speak into emptiness.. I found out that the persons of the larger group concentrated their attention on single details of the graphic – lines, angles, circles – relating them to 3D-objects – triangle, star, etc. The persons of the ADHD group concentrate their attention on a process and its effects. These are two very different kinds of perception, because the people have answered immediately without reflecting their answers. Now I wanted to experience about the reason which constitutes two different kinds of perception:
I remembered that Mr. Dörner once made mention of two rules – and the correlation between the rules and the behavior of the test persons strikes to me imediately. The rules were the „Aktionsschema“, a condition-action-effect-rule – and a variance called „production-rule“ – the condition-effect-action-rule (If, then..). There is an evidence that the condition-action-effect rule applies to the behavior of the normal people and that the second variance applies to the behavoir of „ADHD“-people. Hence I hypothesize that information processing must run based upon either the first (predicative) or the second (functional)variance of the rule. Or in other words: the „behavior“ of the neurons must be „ rule-describing“.
I suppose that the difficulties of ADHD pupils result from teaching methods which do not match with the rule which their brain uses for concept learning and to construct the reality.@ Ari: I agree to Dr. Szasz´s statement. But there exists a deviance in the behavior of ADHD people which we may not deny. And we need a plausible explanation why they behave in this way.
Best regards
Elisabeth -
Elizabeth – do you have any idea for a plausible explanation? Do you believe the answer can be apparent at the (neural) network level even if underling multiple sub-threshold pathology exists at lower levels (genes molecules)?
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Dear Ari,
please let me first distinguish between predicative and functional thinking on the one hand (which I hypothesize to be caused upon a rule and its variances, and I hypothesize that this difference must be apparent at the neural network level) and functional persons without AD(H)D and functional AD(H)D people.
I´m sorry, but at present we do not have any explanations what may cause the difference between persons within and those without AD(H)D.
But it seems to me to be supposable that there will be pathological causes for AD(H)D, maybe the higher density of the dopamine transporter or a smaller volume of several structures in the right hemisphere (see f.e.: Semrud-Clikeman et al. 1994; Castellanos et al. 1996; Berquin et al. 1998).Best regards,
Elisabeth
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