Brain centers for wanting a liking

From The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting. - By Emily Yoffe - Slate Magazine.

It is the liking system that Berridge believes is the brain's reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated. This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines. Wanting and liking are complimentary. The former catalyzes us to action; the later brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop. When we get the object of our desire (be it a Twinkie or a sexual partner), we engage in consummatory acts that Panksepp says reduce arousal in the brain and temporarily, at least, inhibit our urge to seek.

Read the whole thing. See also Wanting and Liking.

The right to rent

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has been promoting this idea for a while. I like it, but so far it doesn't seem to have developed a substantial following.

Congress would give families that took out mortgages at the peak of the boom and are facing foreclosure the option to remain in their homes as renters for a substantial period of time -- five to 10 years -- while paying the market-rate rent. Earlier this year, Freddie Mac launched a similar policy, giving former homeowners the option to lease their recently foreclosed properties, but on a month-to-month basis. That was a positive step, but it does not give families the housing security they need.

In the markets affected most by the housing bubble bursting, the current rents would be 30% to 50% less than the monthly mortgage payments for homes purchased near the peak of the bubble. This means that many families that cannot afford their mortgage payments would likely be able to afford the market rent.

Although they would lose ownership of their homes under "right to rent," the residents would be able to stay in their homes, neighborhoods and schools. This would provide families facing foreclosure with needed stability and housing security.

Further, "right to rent" would enable more families to stay in their homes as owners, by giving banks an extra incentive to pursue mortgage modifications. Currently, in spite of the various government programs, most banks have little incentive to pursue modifications. In fact, the Treasury Department reported that as of July, Home Loan Services Inc., with more than 30,000 delinquent loans, was among those that had yet to initiate a single modification under the government's "Making Home Affordable Program." While a bank would still be able to sell a home after a foreclosure, the "right to rent" would attach to the home, so that a new owner would have to honor it. This could deter the sale of a home, because a home is much less marketable if it comes with a long-term tenant. If lenders know that they could get stuck with a tenant for five to 10 years, foreclosure would be a much less attractive option.

Click the image to the right for CEPR's study of projected changes in housing prices in various US markets. Circle sizes and colors (red: decline; grey: increase) show the projected changes in $1,000s. Numbers represent population size.

Unique. Sort of

From American Scientist. Melvin Konner's of Michael Gazzanger's book.

The human brain has tripled in size over the 6 or 7 million years that have passed since humans diverged from chimpanzees. A certain amount of reorganizing went along with that increase in size, increased lateralization being a prime example. Many genes and noncoding RNAs are expressed only in human brains, and many of those have to do with wiring up the brain during development. Bipedal walking freed our hands and allowed us to develop our unusually opposable thumbs for making tools. Our brains uniquely evolved for language and for an exceptional ability to think about the mental states of others.

We are the only species that can gossip, an important means of social control, and only a human will expend energy punishing a cheater who has cheated someone else. We are the only creatures that show disgust (hence our peculiar concern with purity), blush in embarrassment or shed tears of emotion. We display levels of empathy attained by no other species. We mentally imagine and simulate the actions and experiences (pain, shame) of others to a remarkable extent. Our lives are pervaded by aesthetic choices and preferences unknown to other species. We create art, religion and narrative, and we are self-aware to the nth degree. Only we can autocue, deliberately remembering and reminding ourselves of things. …

[But] countless unique human qualities were used by cultured Germans to murder millions. And only a human would advertise on the Internet to try to make a profit by bringing men seeking sex to an entrapped 13-year-old girl. In the core of our uniquely human brain is a set of structures brought down from our evolutionary past, and it is far from clear that they are really controlled by the newer structures. Too often, our unique human qualities seem to end up in the service of baser motives that we share with many other species. …

And although I myself may spend more time contemplating the dark side, I completely agree with Gazzaniga when he says,

No other species aspires to be more than it is. Perhaps we can be. Sure, we may be only slightly different, but then, some ice is only one degree colder than liquid water.

But then crows can think also

From Times Online

Crows are capable of using multiple tools in complex sequences, the first time such behaviour has been observed in non-humans, scientists have found. …

Seven New Caledonian crows were given the task of using three different lengths of stick to retrieve a reward — a small piece of pig’s heart. This was placed out of reach at the end of a transparent tube such that it could only be reeled in with a long stick.

Starting with a short stick, the crows had to first pull a medium stick towards them, and then in turn use that one to obtain the longest stick. [Emphasis added]

Five of the crows completed the task successfully and four of them did this on their first attempt.

The full original report is available here.

Socialized health care?

From America, Say NO To Socialism!

This is floating around the internet:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it’s valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how socialism in medicine is bad because the government can’t do anything right.

Here are my own thoughts on this important matter:

WAKE UP AMERICA !! You are about to be plunged into socialized medicine - otherwise known as universal health care. This Marxist/Lennonist/Maoist ideology has ruined countless countries. For example, here’s a list of countries in which its citizens do not go bankrupt if they or their loved ones get sick:

Canada, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Panama, Uruguay, Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Germany, England, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Australia, and New Zealand.

That list reads like a horrific nightmare!

Who would ever imagine even visiting those hellish places? Never mind actually living there full time?

The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. So let’s keep it that way! The US spends the highest per capita for health care costs and has the worst coverage and results. Obviously, you can not argue with success. And the best way to maintain the status quo is to allow the debate to be framed and owned by the insurance companies and HMO’s which obviously only have your best interest in mind and have by some mysterious method been able to suppress the profit seeking motive which would cause them to have a conflict of interest between next month’s quarterly earnings and your grandmother’s hip replacement operation.

Just like your tenacity in saying no to the evil, soul sucking (albeit scientifically advanced and intuitive) metric system and sticking by the imperial system - along with the other two holdouts: Liberia & Myanmar - you will continue to be at the vanguard of human achievement by saying no to socialized health care.

Stressed brains rely on habit

From The Scientist [30th July 2009]

In the first set of tests, rats were trained to press a lever to receive a reward (either food pellets or sucrose). After two weeks of training, they were given full access to the reward and allowed to consume as much as they desired. When presented with the lever again, control animals stopped pressing the lever, but stressed animals didn't. If you get the dessert for free, Costa said, there's no need to work for it. 'That's what control animals do,' but stressed animals work anyway.

In a second set of experiments, rats were trained to press one lever for pellets and the other for sucrose. Then, one of these two rewards was provided for free -- i.e., without a lever press. When the rats were given a choice of levers, control animals rightly pressed the lever that still required pressing to receive the reward, while stressed animals showed no preference between the two options.

'It's not that they are stupid and don't understand that there is a difference,' Costa said. 'It's just that when given a choice, they will do the automatic thing.' In fact, he said, these stress-induced changes seem almost adaptive. ' When we are under chronic stress, it could be advantageous to use habitual strategies because [it reduces] the amount of cognitive resources that you need.' Of course, when circumstances change, such a strategy can backfire.

We are still evolving

From Evolving heart :The Scientist [2009-08-01].

Analysis of data gathered by the 6 decade old Framingham Heart Study shows that

women with lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and women who conceive earlier in life and reached menopause at a later age, all had more offspring.

Pick 2/3 of the average number picked

From John Mauldin's http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/pdf/mwo080709.pdf.

"Pick a number between 0 and 100. … The winner will be the person who picks the number closest to two-thirds [of] the average number picked. The chart below shows the results from the largest incidence of the game that I have played - in fact the third largest game ever played, and the only one played purely among professional investors.

The highest possible correct answer is 67. To go for 67 you have to believe that every other muppet in the known universe has just gone for 100. The fact we got a whole raft of responses above 67 is more than slightly alarming.

You can see spikes which represent various levels of thinking. The spike at fifty reflects what we (somewhat rudely) call level zero thinkers. They are the investment equivalent of Homer Simpson, 0, 100, duh 50! Not a vast amount of cognitive effort expended here!

There is a spike at 33 - of those who expect everyone else in the world to be Homer. There's a spike at 22, again those who obviously think everyone else is at 33. As you can see there is also a spike at zero. Here we find all the economists, game theorists and mathematicians of the world. They are the only people trained to solve these problems backwards. And indeed the only stable Nash equilibrium is zero (two-thirds of zero is still zero). However, it is only the 'correct' answer when everyone chooses zero.

The final noticeable spike is at one. These are economists who have (mistakenly...) been invited to one dinner party (economists only ever get invited to one dinner party). They have gone out into the world and realised the rest of the world doesn't think like them. So they try to estimate the scale of irrationality. However, they end up suffering the curse of knowledge (once you know the true answer, you tend to anchor to it). In this game, which is fairly typical, the average number picked was 26, giving a two-thirds average of 17. Just three people out of more than 1000 picked the number 17."

NeoEarth

I'm switchng back to Blogger because I want to use the neat NeoWorx NeoEarth gadget to the left. Click it to find yourself as well as recent and current visitors. For some reason WordPress doesn't support gadgets that they don't explicitly list—and this is one of those.

New blog site

I know I haven't said anything for a month. I'm trying a new blog site. One reason for the delay is that I've been putting off actually trying it out. There is always the fear that learning how to use it will take more time than I want to spend.

But I'm not going to say where the new blog is. I want it to be more anonymous. Let me know if you find it.