In this class section, Professor Sapolsky wraps up the discussion on language and then moves on to one of the more complex psychological disorders, schizophrenia.
Foxp2 is a transcription factor that impacts language development, influencing both the thought patterns and the ability to express them. Foxp2 is a common genes among many different animals, with large differences between the expression in humans and other animals. When knockout mice are created, their language occurs less frequently and is less complex. It's estimated that humans experienced massive mutation about 200,000 years ago and the gene was massively selected for.
When you take the knockout mice and introduce the human version, the mouse becomes more vocal and demonstrates much more complex expressions.
Pigeon (pidgin) languages emerge when people from different cultures come together (willingly or not) and have to develop an effective means of communication. The initial pidgin language will show little to no complexity but over the next 1-2 generations it will evolve the characteristics of real language (syntax, grammar, etc.) and become a Creole language. And all of the Creoles have a similar grammatical structure. This suggests - as Chomsky would argue - that there's a default linguistic structure that humans use to create language which reflects hard wiring for language within the human brain. And of all the 6,000 languages in the world, only about 14 different syntaxes are employed and the vast majority fit within 4 styles, again supporting Chomsky's views.
Sapolsky goes on to note that linguistic diversity is disappearing and we're moving toward a time when only a few languages will remain. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you consider the Sapir-Whorff hypothesis which argues that our view of the world is heavily influenced/determined by our language. Lose a language and you lose an entire worldview. Furthermore, if we consider this from the viewpoint of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, we're also losing a worldview that contributed to a successful style of human life that lasted for thousands of years (or longer). This is not good news.
Click languages may have been the initial form of human communication.
Language evolution is about sequence, with ever greater complexity emerging.
At its core, Sapolsky suggests that schizophrenia is a disease of abnormal cognitive associations, of "loose associations." A normal person can tell a story in a logical sequence that makes sense to others. This sequential association is lacking in the schizophrenic thought arrangement, leading to loose, or ostensibly confused, associations that make sense to the schizophrenic but which are often puzzling to the listener. A key element is the manner in which dual associations to a single word (boxer, caddy, jaguar) will send the speaker off in a seemingly unrelated manner. In some ways this suggests an overly unique perception of the world, whereas normal folks share a more normal set of conversational cues (this may relate to the earlier discussion on default linguistic constructions within the brain.)
The next trouble is with abstraction - is this literal? A parable? A rumor? Schizophrenics are terrible at this; they tend to take things more concretely than they should. For example, if you ask for commonality among an apple, a watermelon and a banana, a schizophrenic might respond that they are all polysyllabic or use letters with closed loops instead of saying they are fruits. They are focused on the concrete elements of the words and sounds instead of seeing what is to the other observer the simple answer of them being similar types of foods. The normal listener knows to disregard the structure or pronunciation of the words because they are irrelevant to the question, just as a normal listener can correctly interpret the meaning of "Yes, John resigned." from the context of the rest of the conversation despite completely contradictory meanings. These types of abstract linguistic leaps are very easy for most speakers but are lost on schizophrenics, resulting in an entirely different, and disorganized, communication style.
One effective test for schizophrenia is the proverb test. Proverbs like "birds of a feather flock together" or "a rolling stone gathers no moss" will be explained in a literal fashion by a schizophrenic (i.e. a stone that is rolling can't get moss on it because it's moving.)
Delusions are another hallmark of schizophrenia. This can include believing one was there or came up with certain ideas of historical importance. Paranoia is also common. Sapolsky points out that if the world makes very little sense to you (and it would if you were schizophrenic), then the world would be very threatening. It's not that crazy to become afraid of listening devices in bananas if your entire world is filled with people treating you like you're crazy and trying to give you pills so you'll behave differently. In a world like that, there's really no reason why the bananas aren't also out to get you. Lastly hallucinations are another calling card. The vast majority of hallucinations are auditory. Sapolsky notes this isn't fully understood, but if we tie together the concreteness of language, the delusions and the fact that everyone hears voices, we can hypothesize that what a normal person calls their conscience or their thinking process is taken by a schizophrenic to be an actual voice (bear in mind also that people have different learning styles - some people learn best from visual sources, some by doing and some by hearing. Get yourself a person that learns best by hearing, factor in that hearing is a neuronal process of conversion in the brain and then add in some concreteness in thinking that the "voice" you hear is real and you have yourself a hallucination.)
The shout-out to his student was nice, but the notion is off. If there are more fragmented visual images then the proportion of visual hallucinations would be higher since the opportunity is higher. For it to be lower in the presence of more stimuli is backward since it requires the schizophrenic mind to actively and correctly interpret vast amounts of fragmented stimuli and only occasionally get it wrong. Psychiatric disorders aren't characterized by getting things right nearly all the time and then occasionally goofing up. That is unless the reader never thought they saw something they didn't. It's more about not being able to distinguish abstractions from realities. Stare in a mirror long enough and you'll see something that isn't really there. Be a schizophrenic doing that and you're going to crap your pants because you'll take what you see as something real.
Social withdrawal is also typical. Sadly the majority of the psychiatric drugs given to schizophrenics aim to eliminate the hallucinations but do little to alleviate the social isolation. And, of course, the more socially isolated you are, the more estranged your thoughts and beliefs will become. He points out that while stories of schizophrenics gone mad and bloody make for good news, the actual rate of violence is low, lower than with normal folks, with the exception of self-injury. Half of schizophrenics attempt suicide and suicide attempts are more common among those that have more periods of remission/clarity that permit them to assess how awful the experience truly is.
He notes that schizophrenia typically begins in the late teen years and into the early 20's. The typical victim is someone who was always a little odd, a little isolated and who had lots of imaginary friends at an age when others had let their imaginary friends go. This person then encounters a massive stressor and on comes the problem. This is around the same time that the frontal cortex gets its last big burst of growth. A line of thinking is that whatever prompts the schizophrenia has to do with this section basically getting kicked one too many times, creating a cascade of other problems. Schizophrenia is rooted in the cortex (the cortex being responsible for coordination of thoughts, self control, reasoning, etc.)
Socially it's also been used as a diagnosis to deal with those who think differently than what the majority chooses to believe. For example, an author has written a book claiming that the media is essentially a money driven machine that prints what the government and big business wants them to. Furthermore, this author claims that the President of the United States consistently misled the public about the Vietnam War, its motivation, goals and meaning. The author also suggests that the government allies itself with the worst criminals in the world when it's profitable and resists democracy abroad if it will impact the bottom line of business in the US. Furthermore, the author claims that the US military occupied Vietnam and conducted military raids into Cambodia when the Vietnamese crossed the border and attempted to stop Pol Pot's regime from murdering thousands of civilians. The author also claims that the media is complicit in these things but chooses not to report them because they worry more about ad revenue than truth. In short, the author is into all kinds of wacky conspiracy theories and has the mental stability of a flightly, hallucinating schizophrenic, right?
And anyone who's read the book knows the title is Manufacturing Consent and the author is Chomsky, noted linguist and professor emeritus at MIT. Flip the timeline though and have the conspiracy theories predate the massive, towering achievements in linguistics and you end up with a political nut. The point being that psychiatry has a long history of using labels to help those in power preserve the current economic system. As Foucault noted numerous times in his later studies on power, this is still a very common purpose of psychiatry as a science of the normal.
The chemical pathway for schizophrenia likely includes excessive levels of dopamine ending up in the brain. This is measured by checking out things like the breakdown markers of dopamine in the cerebrospinal fluid. And the drugs such as Halidol or Thorazine that help with schizophrenia block dopamine receptors in the brain. (One downside here is that dopamine deficiency is implicated in depression; it's not out of the question that this ties in with the point made earlier that schizophrenics with more "remissions" attempt suicide more often.) Postmortem autopsies show elevated dopamine receptors in the frontal cortex.
18 counties over we find the substantia nigra. Get a little bit of damage there and you get the tremors of old age. Get a lot and you've got yourself Parkinson's. In Parkinson's 90% or so of the neurons have died. These are dopamanergic neurons. Parkinson's is a disease of losing all of the dopamine signalling in this part of the brain. This led to the introduction in the 1960's of L-dopa which is converted into dopamine in the brain. People with Parkinson's who got too much L-dopa would begin exhibiting symptoms similar to those of a schizophrenic. This is also what amphetamines do. And if you overmedicate a schizophrenic, you'll get something that looks like Parkinson's disease because you've blocked dopamine signalling to the extent that the substantia nigra is also affected. This is called tardive dyskinesia.
Of course there's also a drug for schizophrenia that increases dopamine, but that's life in the big city. Never simple. At the same time, as Sapolsky covers in depth in the Zebras book, the body will downregulate in response to excessive levels of a neurotransmitter, so increasing the amount can actually lead to it being less effective (think Type II diabetes and insulin resistance).
Serotonin is also implicated. Look at the structure of serotonin and compare it to LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and you'll see they are all structurally similar. They are all hallucinogens. And they all fit into serotonin receptors. The theory follows that there are abnormalities in serotonin in schizophrenics that led to the hallucinations.
Glutamate has also been implicated. PCP wildly activates the glutamate receptors and stimulates psychotic actions. This leads to the suggestion that glutamate is also part of the cascade. However, this doesn't fit overwhelmingly well with the earlier argument that schizophrenics are typically not violent. If it's involved, it's likely through the increased sensitivity of serotonin receptors.
The brain's ventricles are enlarged and they exert pressure on the frontal cortex. They also have fewer hippocampal neurons and neurons pointing in the wrong direction. Some studies have shown fewer neurons and less glia in the frontal cortex.
Sapolsky next examines the genetics, noting that if you have an identical twin with schizophrenia, you've got a 50% chance of getting it yourself, full sibling 25%, half sibling 12%, random 1-2%.
Genes in the MHC, major histocompatability complex, have been shown to be significantly different in schizophrenics in 3 studies. This relates to the immune system and markers on the body's own cells to identify them as part of the body's team or outsiders.
Sapolsky notes that there are numerous contributing factors and points out that it isn't a disease. This isn't cholera - it's a whole complex of interrelated systems being off to a greater or lesser extent.
Toxoplasmosis may be implicated. Schizophrenics report a significantly higher medical history of it and blood tests show a significantly higher level of antibodies for it. Sapolsky notes that some of their current studies suggest that toxo can actually make a rat like the smell of cats and go toward them, thus providing a chance for it to spread.
As for the question of how this maladaptive behavior hangs around, he closes the class by saying more to come, hinting that it may be beneficial in some instances in the relatives that have the mild versions that make them quirky and maybe provide them an adaptive advantage....
When you take the knockout mice and introduce the human version, the mouse becomes more vocal and demonstrates much more complex expressions.
Pigeon (pidgin) languages emerge when people from different cultures come together (willingly or not) and have to develop an effective means of communication. The initial pidgin language will show little to no complexity but over the next 1-2 generations it will evolve the characteristics of real language (syntax, grammar, etc.) and become a Creole language. And all of the Creoles have a similar grammatical structure. This suggests - as Chomsky would argue - that there's a default linguistic structure that humans use to create language which reflects hard wiring for language within the human brain. And of all the 6,000 languages in the world, only about 14 different syntaxes are employed and the vast majority fit within 4 styles, again supporting Chomsky's views.
Sapolsky goes on to note that linguistic diversity is disappearing and we're moving toward a time when only a few languages will remain. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you consider the Sapir-Whorff hypothesis which argues that our view of the world is heavily influenced/determined by our language. Lose a language and you lose an entire worldview. Furthermore, if we consider this from the viewpoint of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, we're also losing a worldview that contributed to a successful style of human life that lasted for thousands of years (or longer). This is not good news.
Click languages may have been the initial form of human communication.
Language evolution is about sequence, with ever greater complexity emerging.
At its core, Sapolsky suggests that schizophrenia is a disease of abnormal cognitive associations, of "loose associations." A normal person can tell a story in a logical sequence that makes sense to others. This sequential association is lacking in the schizophrenic thought arrangement, leading to loose, or ostensibly confused, associations that make sense to the schizophrenic but which are often puzzling to the listener. A key element is the manner in which dual associations to a single word (boxer, caddy, jaguar) will send the speaker off in a seemingly unrelated manner. In some ways this suggests an overly unique perception of the world, whereas normal folks share a more normal set of conversational cues (this may relate to the earlier discussion on default linguistic constructions within the brain.)
The next trouble is with abstraction - is this literal? A parable? A rumor? Schizophrenics are terrible at this; they tend to take things more concretely than they should. For example, if you ask for commonality among an apple, a watermelon and a banana, a schizophrenic might respond that they are all polysyllabic or use letters with closed loops instead of saying they are fruits. They are focused on the concrete elements of the words and sounds instead of seeing what is to the other observer the simple answer of them being similar types of foods. The normal listener knows to disregard the structure or pronunciation of the words because they are irrelevant to the question, just as a normal listener can correctly interpret the meaning of "Yes, John resigned." from the context of the rest of the conversation despite completely contradictory meanings. These types of abstract linguistic leaps are very easy for most speakers but are lost on schizophrenics, resulting in an entirely different, and disorganized, communication style.
One effective test for schizophrenia is the proverb test. Proverbs like "birds of a feather flock together" or "a rolling stone gathers no moss" will be explained in a literal fashion by a schizophrenic (i.e. a stone that is rolling can't get moss on it because it's moving.)
Delusions are another hallmark of schizophrenia. This can include believing one was there or came up with certain ideas of historical importance. Paranoia is also common. Sapolsky points out that if the world makes very little sense to you (and it would if you were schizophrenic), then the world would be very threatening. It's not that crazy to become afraid of listening devices in bananas if your entire world is filled with people treating you like you're crazy and trying to give you pills so you'll behave differently. In a world like that, there's really no reason why the bananas aren't also out to get you. Lastly hallucinations are another calling card. The vast majority of hallucinations are auditory. Sapolsky notes this isn't fully understood, but if we tie together the concreteness of language, the delusions and the fact that everyone hears voices, we can hypothesize that what a normal person calls their conscience or their thinking process is taken by a schizophrenic to be an actual voice (bear in mind also that people have different learning styles - some people learn best from visual sources, some by doing and some by hearing. Get yourself a person that learns best by hearing, factor in that hearing is a neuronal process of conversion in the brain and then add in some concreteness in thinking that the "voice" you hear is real and you have yourself a hallucination.)
The shout-out to his student was nice, but the notion is off. If there are more fragmented visual images then the proportion of visual hallucinations would be higher since the opportunity is higher. For it to be lower in the presence of more stimuli is backward since it requires the schizophrenic mind to actively and correctly interpret vast amounts of fragmented stimuli and only occasionally get it wrong. Psychiatric disorders aren't characterized by getting things right nearly all the time and then occasionally goofing up. That is unless the reader never thought they saw something they didn't. It's more about not being able to distinguish abstractions from realities. Stare in a mirror long enough and you'll see something that isn't really there. Be a schizophrenic doing that and you're going to crap your pants because you'll take what you see as something real.
Social withdrawal is also typical. Sadly the majority of the psychiatric drugs given to schizophrenics aim to eliminate the hallucinations but do little to alleviate the social isolation. And, of course, the more socially isolated you are, the more estranged your thoughts and beliefs will become. He points out that while stories of schizophrenics gone mad and bloody make for good news, the actual rate of violence is low, lower than with normal folks, with the exception of self-injury. Half of schizophrenics attempt suicide and suicide attempts are more common among those that have more periods of remission/clarity that permit them to assess how awful the experience truly is.
He notes that schizophrenia typically begins in the late teen years and into the early 20's. The typical victim is someone who was always a little odd, a little isolated and who had lots of imaginary friends at an age when others had let their imaginary friends go. This person then encounters a massive stressor and on comes the problem. This is around the same time that the frontal cortex gets its last big burst of growth. A line of thinking is that whatever prompts the schizophrenia has to do with this section basically getting kicked one too many times, creating a cascade of other problems. Schizophrenia is rooted in the cortex (the cortex being responsible for coordination of thoughts, self control, reasoning, etc.)
Socially it's also been used as a diagnosis to deal with those who think differently than what the majority chooses to believe. For example, an author has written a book claiming that the media is essentially a money driven machine that prints what the government and big business wants them to. Furthermore, this author claims that the President of the United States consistently misled the public about the Vietnam War, its motivation, goals and meaning. The author also suggests that the government allies itself with the worst criminals in the world when it's profitable and resists democracy abroad if it will impact the bottom line of business in the US. Furthermore, the author claims that the US military occupied Vietnam and conducted military raids into Cambodia when the Vietnamese crossed the border and attempted to stop Pol Pot's regime from murdering thousands of civilians. The author also claims that the media is complicit in these things but chooses not to report them because they worry more about ad revenue than truth. In short, the author is into all kinds of wacky conspiracy theories and has the mental stability of a flightly, hallucinating schizophrenic, right?
And anyone who's read the book knows the title is Manufacturing Consent and the author is Chomsky, noted linguist and professor emeritus at MIT. Flip the timeline though and have the conspiracy theories predate the massive, towering achievements in linguistics and you end up with a political nut. The point being that psychiatry has a long history of using labels to help those in power preserve the current economic system. As Foucault noted numerous times in his later studies on power, this is still a very common purpose of psychiatry as a science of the normal.
The chemical pathway for schizophrenia likely includes excessive levels of dopamine ending up in the brain. This is measured by checking out things like the breakdown markers of dopamine in the cerebrospinal fluid. And the drugs such as Halidol or Thorazine that help with schizophrenia block dopamine receptors in the brain. (One downside here is that dopamine deficiency is implicated in depression; it's not out of the question that this ties in with the point made earlier that schizophrenics with more "remissions" attempt suicide more often.) Postmortem autopsies show elevated dopamine receptors in the frontal cortex.
18 counties over we find the substantia nigra. Get a little bit of damage there and you get the tremors of old age. Get a lot and you've got yourself Parkinson's. In Parkinson's 90% or so of the neurons have died. These are dopamanergic neurons. Parkinson's is a disease of losing all of the dopamine signalling in this part of the brain. This led to the introduction in the 1960's of L-dopa which is converted into dopamine in the brain. People with Parkinson's who got too much L-dopa would begin exhibiting symptoms similar to those of a schizophrenic. This is also what amphetamines do. And if you overmedicate a schizophrenic, you'll get something that looks like Parkinson's disease because you've blocked dopamine signalling to the extent that the substantia nigra is also affected. This is called tardive dyskinesia.
Of course there's also a drug for schizophrenia that increases dopamine, but that's life in the big city. Never simple. At the same time, as Sapolsky covers in depth in the Zebras book, the body will downregulate in response to excessive levels of a neurotransmitter, so increasing the amount can actually lead to it being less effective (think Type II diabetes and insulin resistance).
Serotonin is also implicated. Look at the structure of serotonin and compare it to LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and you'll see they are all structurally similar. They are all hallucinogens. And they all fit into serotonin receptors. The theory follows that there are abnormalities in serotonin in schizophrenics that led to the hallucinations.
Glutamate has also been implicated. PCP wildly activates the glutamate receptors and stimulates psychotic actions. This leads to the suggestion that glutamate is also part of the cascade. However, this doesn't fit overwhelmingly well with the earlier argument that schizophrenics are typically not violent. If it's involved, it's likely through the increased sensitivity of serotonin receptors.
The brain's ventricles are enlarged and they exert pressure on the frontal cortex. They also have fewer hippocampal neurons and neurons pointing in the wrong direction. Some studies have shown fewer neurons and less glia in the frontal cortex.
Sapolsky next examines the genetics, noting that if you have an identical twin with schizophrenia, you've got a 50% chance of getting it yourself, full sibling 25%, half sibling 12%, random 1-2%.
Genes in the MHC, major histocompatability complex, have been shown to be significantly different in schizophrenics in 3 studies. This relates to the immune system and markers on the body's own cells to identify them as part of the body's team or outsiders.
Sapolsky notes that there are numerous contributing factors and points out that it isn't a disease. This isn't cholera - it's a whole complex of interrelated systems being off to a greater or lesser extent.
Toxoplasmosis may be implicated. Schizophrenics report a significantly higher medical history of it and blood tests show a significantly higher level of antibodies for it. Sapolsky notes that some of their current studies suggest that toxo can actually make a rat like the smell of cats and go toward them, thus providing a chance for it to spread.
As for the question of how this maladaptive behavior hangs around, he closes the class by saying more to come, hinting that it may be beneficial in some instances in the relatives that have the mild versions that make them quirky and maybe provide them an adaptive advantage....
