In the last lecture of the series, Sapolsky touches on the history of psychology, highlighting the way that our understanding and compassion toward others has improved with many diseases as our knowledge of their underpinnings has evolved. Simultaneously, he reminds everyone that our understanding and compassion toward other diseases is lacking, with a penchant for viewing the world as "them and their diseases" instead of "us and our individual differences." Remembering that there was a time when seizures could get you burned at the stake helps us remain humble when we express our opinions about someone with depression, schizophrenia or any other psychiatric disease that we don't fully comprehend. The more we learn about neurobiology, the more we come to see that those diseases are influenced and even controlled by biological factors and that the difference between them and us is often very small and can, and possibly even should, be viewed in the same way that we view differences among normal people in their personalities, discipline, inhibition, courage, intelligence and more. In the end we are all a mixed bag of biology, psychology and neurology. Subtle differences cut both ways. Characteristics go both ways. A controlled, disciplined mindset makes you more likely to cram for the big exam but it also makes you more inhibited about taking risks. You get praised for one and criticized for the other and all along it's the same trait.
The more we understand this, the more we feel and express compassion toward ourselves and others. The more we understand this, the less we criticize ourselves and others for the day to day failures, disappointments and frustrations. When you understand that the very things you like best about yourself can also be linked to the things you like least, you begin to understand that sometimes the things you like least are linked to what you like best. In yourself. And in others. Understand these little nuances and you start to see how the world might not be them and their diseases but rather us and our individual differences, quirks and idiosyncracies. So let's get started.
So, a behavior occurs...
Whose fault is it? Now we're talking about volition, culpability, free will. Personally I walk away from the lecture series both more and less of a believer in free will. On the one hand we have all this biology and clear ways it can compel behavior. On the other we have endless evidence of ways in which we can free ourselves from our own genes and DNA and how the environment changes everything.
500 years ago if you had an epileptic seizure, it was clear where it was coming from - demonic possession. So if you struck someone in the process, you were to blame. These days the notion is ludicrous because somewhere around 1900 we learned a new concept; it's not him, it's his disease.
We are spectacular at doing something like that with epilepsy. We are lousy at doing it in all other sorts of domains.
Learning disabilities - lazy, stupid.
A lot of people struggle to see the difference between the essence of who a person is and the biological constraints that go on top of it.
It isn't a psychiatric disease to consult astrologers. It isn't a psychiatric disease to go to Star Trek conventions.
So schizotypalism, schizotypal personality and schizophrenia are there along a continuum. The difference isn't us and them. The difference is us and our individual differences. One person dresses up like Spock and attends Comic-Con, another wears a crown and ends up in a psych ward. And a third person does neither. Instead he wears a Patriots sweatshirt and watches the football game, pretending that his support has any kind of meaningful impact on the team.
The frontal lobe - we heard about the easy examples when it gets blown out of the water. No cortex, no control. This is simple. But what about the minor differences? What about the question of who studies more? Who is mortified by attention?
How many neurons? Synapses? The genes?
At some point we leave the realm of pathology and move into day to day behavior and the whole time the biology is right there, having its say.
Huntington's and the mid-life crisis. A single gene malfunction or a jerk?
Tourette's - this is not the expression of secret desires and thoughts. Rather there are these weird hiccups of the id. At the minor level it's not a disease; it's individual differences.
PANDAS - 3 year old kid gets a strep infection. A couple of weeks later you get Tourette's like behavior with the tics and expressions. Someone gives the kid immunosuppressant drugs and the behaviors stop. Then there's another fever. Two weeks later the problem happens again. What's happening? The blood-brain barrier opens the immune system gets to where it should not be. Antibodies form against constituents of the nervous system and the brain itself. Take bloodwork from someone with Tourette's or OCD and you find these antibodies.
In the 1600's we knew that a girl shouting out obscenities and sexual innuendo was possessed and needed burning. Today she would take the MCAT in a different room and have extended time.
In OCD the basal ganglia (which is involved in movement) is more active than in others. Treat 'em with SSRI's and the metabolic rate in the basal ganglia goes down.
Jerusalem Syndrome. Here's the description - highly religious Southern Baptist from the US making their first trip to the Holy Land, alone at the end of the day and suffering from jet lag. Mix these elements together and you end up with someone using the white bed sheet as a toga down on the corner yelling out prophecies to the masses. Often.
One way to appreciate these off the wall disorders is that we didn't even have names for them 50 years ago. So what else is out there?
At some point all of us will have some of these labels. It's the same biology on the same continuum. We go from full blown schizophrenia with hallucinations and delusions all the way down to simply day dreaming and it's all on the same line. The difference is degrees, not substance, which is how we ended up with these disorders in the first place.
So what happens as we get more and more of these diseases and they start describing us instead of them?
Fear. Both of what this means for us and our individuality as well as a sense that science is digging too deep and explaining too much. He mentions an example, the story "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke. The story is about a Buddhist belief that God has 9 billion names and in the tale they team up with some computer scientists and begin printing them out. As each one prints, a star in the sky goes out until we're left in the dark. Such is the concern that each new discovery threatens the underpinning of what it means to be a human in this complicated world with its mix of our genes and environment and experience.
But science is never going to go and explain everything.
As the labels expand, there are possible social repercussions. Be poor and get another label and there goes your house, or job, or any of a number of things. Or maybe it goes the other way and people begin to see a continuum instead of a disease. If you were to go back 500 years ago and told the most compassionate, learned person that epilepsy was a disease and not possession, it would make no sense at all. These things go from being diseases and things to be punished to people who need assistance and protection.
The more we understand this, the more we feel and express compassion toward ourselves and others. The more we understand this, the less we criticize ourselves and others for the day to day failures, disappointments and frustrations. When you understand that the very things you like best about yourself can also be linked to the things you like least, you begin to understand that sometimes the things you like least are linked to what you like best. In yourself. And in others. Understand these little nuances and you start to see how the world might not be them and their diseases but rather us and our individual differences, quirks and idiosyncracies. So let's get started.
So, a behavior occurs...
Whose fault is it? Now we're talking about volition, culpability, free will. Personally I walk away from the lecture series both more and less of a believer in free will. On the one hand we have all this biology and clear ways it can compel behavior. On the other we have endless evidence of ways in which we can free ourselves from our own genes and DNA and how the environment changes everything.
500 years ago if you had an epileptic seizure, it was clear where it was coming from - demonic possession. So if you struck someone in the process, you were to blame. These days the notion is ludicrous because somewhere around 1900 we learned a new concept; it's not him, it's his disease.
We are spectacular at doing something like that with epilepsy. We are lousy at doing it in all other sorts of domains.
Learning disabilities - lazy, stupid.
A lot of people struggle to see the difference between the essence of who a person is and the biological constraints that go on top of it.
It isn't a psychiatric disease to consult astrologers. It isn't a psychiatric disease to go to Star Trek conventions.
So schizotypalism, schizotypal personality and schizophrenia are there along a continuum. The difference isn't us and them. The difference is us and our individual differences. One person dresses up like Spock and attends Comic-Con, another wears a crown and ends up in a psych ward. And a third person does neither. Instead he wears a Patriots sweatshirt and watches the football game, pretending that his support has any kind of meaningful impact on the team.
The frontal lobe - we heard about the easy examples when it gets blown out of the water. No cortex, no control. This is simple. But what about the minor differences? What about the question of who studies more? Who is mortified by attention?
How many neurons? Synapses? The genes?
At some point we leave the realm of pathology and move into day to day behavior and the whole time the biology is right there, having its say.
Huntington's and the mid-life crisis. A single gene malfunction or a jerk?
Tourette's - this is not the expression of secret desires and thoughts. Rather there are these weird hiccups of the id. At the minor level it's not a disease; it's individual differences.
PANDAS - 3 year old kid gets a strep infection. A couple of weeks later you get Tourette's like behavior with the tics and expressions. Someone gives the kid immunosuppressant drugs and the behaviors stop. Then there's another fever. Two weeks later the problem happens again. What's happening? The blood-brain barrier opens the immune system gets to where it should not be. Antibodies form against constituents of the nervous system and the brain itself. Take bloodwork from someone with Tourette's or OCD and you find these antibodies.
In the 1600's we knew that a girl shouting out obscenities and sexual innuendo was possessed and needed burning. Today she would take the MCAT in a different room and have extended time.
In OCD the basal ganglia (which is involved in movement) is more active than in others. Treat 'em with SSRI's and the metabolic rate in the basal ganglia goes down.
Jerusalem Syndrome. Here's the description - highly religious Southern Baptist from the US making their first trip to the Holy Land, alone at the end of the day and suffering from jet lag. Mix these elements together and you end up with someone using the white bed sheet as a toga down on the corner yelling out prophecies to the masses. Often.
One way to appreciate these off the wall disorders is that we didn't even have names for them 50 years ago. So what else is out there?
At some point all of us will have some of these labels. It's the same biology on the same continuum. We go from full blown schizophrenia with hallucinations and delusions all the way down to simply day dreaming and it's all on the same line. The difference is degrees, not substance, which is how we ended up with these disorders in the first place.
So what happens as we get more and more of these diseases and they start describing us instead of them?
Fear. Both of what this means for us and our individuality as well as a sense that science is digging too deep and explaining too much. He mentions an example, the story "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke. The story is about a Buddhist belief that God has 9 billion names and in the tale they team up with some computer scientists and begin printing them out. As each one prints, a star in the sky goes out until we're left in the dark. Such is the concern that each new discovery threatens the underpinning of what it means to be a human in this complicated world with its mix of our genes and environment and experience.
But science is never going to go and explain everything.
As the labels expand, there are possible social repercussions. Be poor and get another label and there goes your house, or job, or any of a number of things. Or maybe it goes the other way and people begin to see a continuum instead of a disease. If you were to go back 500 years ago and told the most compassionate, learned person that epilepsy was a disease and not possession, it would make no sense at all. These things go from being diseases and things to be punished to people who need assistance and protection.
