Thirty years of brain imaging research has converged to define the brain’s default network—a novel and only recently appreciated brain system that participates in internal modes of cognition Here we synthesize past observations to provide strong evidence that the default network is a specific, anatomically defined brain system preferentially active when individuals are not focused on the external environment Analysis of connectional anatomy in the monkey supports the presence of an interconnected brain system Providing insight into function, the default network is active when individuals are engaged in internally focused tasks including autobiographical memory retrieval, envisioning the future, and conceiving the perspectives of others Probing the functional anatomy of the network in detail reveals that it is best understood as multiple interacting subsystems The medial temporal lobe subsystem provides information from prior experiences in the form of memories and associations that are the building blocks of mental simulation The medial prefrontal subsystem facilitates the flexible use of this information during the construction of self-relevant mental simulations These two subsystems converge on important nodes of integration including the posterior cingulate cortex The implications of these functional and anatomical observations are discussed in relation to possible adaptive roles of the default network for using past experiences to plan for the future, navigate social interactions, and maximize the utility of moments when we are not otherwise engaged by the external world We conclude by discussing the relevance of the default network for understanding mental disorders including autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease

/pdf/the-brain-s-default-network-anatomy-function-and-relevance-3sxu9umxjl.pdf

The Brain's Default Network Anatomy, Function, and Relevance to Disease

As GDP is a measure of market capacity and not economic well-being, this report has been commissioned to more accurately understand the social progress indicators of any given state. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used measure of economic activity. There are international standards for its calculation, and much thought has gone into its statistical and conceptual bases. But GDP mainly measures market production, though it has often been treated as if it were a measure of economic well-being. Conflating the two can lead to misleading indications about how well-off people are and entail the wrong policy decisions. One reason why money measures of economic performance and living standards have come to play such an important role in our societies is that the monetary valuation of goods and services makes it easy to add up quantities of a very different nature. When we know the prices of apple juice and DVD players, we can add up their values and make statements about production and consumption in a single figure. But market prices are more than an accounting device. Economic theory tells us that when markets are functioning properly, the ratio of one market price to another is reflective of the relative appreciation of the two products by those who purchase them. Moreover, GDP captures all final goods in the economy, whether they are consumed by households, firms or government. Valuing them with their prices would thus seem to be a good way of capturing, in a single number, how well-off society is at a particular moment. Furthermore, keeping prices unchanged while observing how quantities of goods and services that enter GDP move over time would seem like a reasonable way of making a statement about how society’s living standards are evolving in real terms. As it turns out, things are more complicated. First, prices may not exist for some goods and services (if for instance government provides free health insurance or if households are engaged in child care), raising the question of how these services should be valued. Second, even where there are market prices, they may deviate from society’s underlying valuation. In particular, when the consumption or production of particular products affects society as a whole, the price that individuals pay for those products will differ from their value to society at large. Environmental damage caused by production or consumption activities that is not reflected in market prices is a well-known example.

https://andrewoswald.com/docs/stiglitz20report_commission20final20200920sept.pdf

Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress

A rapidly growing number of recent studies show that imagining the future depends on much of the same neural machinery that is needed for remembering the past. These findings have led to the concept of the prospective brain; an idea that a crucial function of the brain is to use stored information to imagine, simulate and predict possible future events. We suggest that processes such as memory can be productively re-conceptualized in light of this idea.

Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain

Remembering the past and imagining the future: common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Pantheon Books, 2012One has likely heard that, for the sake of decorum, religion and politics should never be topics of conversation with strangers. Even amongst friends or even when it is known that others hold opposing political or religious views, why is it that discussion of religion and politics leads to visceral-level acrimony and that one's views are right and the other's views are wrong? Professor Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia examines the psychological basis of our "righteous minds" without resorting to any of the pejorative labeling that is usually found in a book on politics and religion and eschews a purely comparative approach. Haidt proposes the intriguing hypothesis that our visceral reaction to competing ideologies is a subconscious, rather than leaned, reaction that evolved over human evolution to innate senses of suffering, fairness, cheating and disease, and that moral foundations facilitated intra-group cooperation which in turn conferred survival advantages over other groups. These psychological mechanisms are genetic in origin and not necessarily amenable to rational and voluntary control - this is in part the reason debating one's ideological opposite more often leads to frustration rather than understanding. Haidt also suggests that morality is based on six "psychological systems" or foundations (Moral Foundations Theory), similar to the hypothesized adaptive mental modules which evolved to solve specific problems of survival in the human ancestral environment.While decorum pleads for more civility, it would be better, as Haidt suggests, dragging the issue of partisan politics out into the open in order to understand it and work around our righteous minds. Haidt suggests a few methods by which the level of rhetoric in American politics can be reduced, such that the political parties can at least be cordial as they have been in the past and work together to solve truly pressing social problems.There are a number of fascinating points raised in the current book, but most intriguing is the one that morality, ideology and religion are products of group selection, as adaptations that increased individual cooperation and suppressed selfishness, thereby increasing individual loyalty to the group. That morality, political ideology and religion buttress group survival is probably highly intuitive. However, given the contemporary focus on the individual as the source of adaptations, to the exclusion of all else, to suggest that adaptations such as religion and political ideology arose to enhance survival of groups is heresy or, as Haidt recounts, "foolishness". While previous rejection of group selection itself was due in part to conceptual issues, one could also point out the prevailing individualist social sentiment, "selfish gene" mentality and unrelenting hostility against those who supported the view that group selection did indeed apply to humans and not just to insects. Haidt gives a lengthy and convincing defense of group selection, his main point being that humans can pursue self- interest at the same time they promote self-interest within a group setting - humans are "90 percent chimp, 10 percent bees". One can readily observe in the news and entertainment mediate that religion is a frequent target of derision, even within the scientific community - Haidt points to the strident contempt that the "New Atheists" hold for religion. They claim that religion is purely a by-product of an adaptive psychological trait and as a mere by-product religion serves no useful purpose. However, the religious "sense" has somehow managed to persist in the human psyche. One explanation by the New Atheists of how religion propagated itself is that it is a "parasite" or "virus" which latches onto a susceptible host and induces the host to "infect" others. As a "virus" or "parasite" that is merely interested in its own survival, religion causes people to perform behaviors that do not increase their own reproductive fitness and may even be detrimental to survival, but religion spreads nonetheless. …

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED. Steven Pinker, Penguin, New York, NY 2011. ISBN 978-0-670-02295-3.There's been a shooting in a Sikh Temple this morning. A lone gunman entered a Colorado theater and opened fire. Syrians are now engaged in civil war. Faced with daily news stories of death and destruction, it is easy to believe that things are getting worse. Not so, explains Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker in his new work, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.Pinker combines in-depth historical research with rigorous psychological research to argue the case for a decline in global violence. As Pinker aptly points out, many people look at our age as one of unprecedented violence and terror to be viewed with pessimism. Drawing on historical analysis, psychological research and findings from related sciences such as anthropology, sociology, and economics Pinker argues that the data paint a very different picture. In the first chapter, Pinker takes the reader on a quick journey through the history of the world pointing out that the ancient and medieval worlds were very different than the world we live in today. Numerous prehistoric skeletons bear evidence of very violent deaths. Ancient people destroyed entire tribes. Romans carried out violent executions. Medieval Knights led lies of violence and other Europeans meted out horrendous punishments for acts which might not even be judged worthy of condemnation in today's democracies. Finally, the early 20th century saw two World Wars before the long peace ensued. In light of that history, Pinker argues that perhaps we should reconsider our assumptions about our own world.In the first section of the book, Pinker identifies six historical trends which could have led to declines in violence. The first trend he calls the Pacification Process by which people gave up nomadic hunting and gathering lives for lives of agriculture in cities. Competition and anarchy in the prehistoric world made violence necessary for survival. The development of agriculture called for greater cooperation between individuals and the formation of governments to impose order created a world where violence was not always in one's best interest. Statistical analysis supports the idea that the emergence of states lead to a decline in violence. The second trend, the Civilizing Process, is an idea he developed from the work of Norbert Elias. In the late medieval and early modern periods, etiquette and social norms began to be important in social interactions, economics and technology began to advance, and governments began to become more centralized. This trend was also accompanied by a decline in violence. The third trend is the Humanitarian Revolution during which people began to increasingly find practices, such as torture, capital punishment, war and slavery, morally questionable. Empathy, compassion, and peace became important characteristics. The fourth trend is the Long Peace, which stems from the realization that since World War II no two major world powers have gone to war and, in spite of predictions to the contrary, nuclear weapons have never been used. …

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths

STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS. Daniel Gilbert, 2007. NY: Vintage Books. Pp. 311. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University/Springfield, MO). Harvard psychology professor, Daniel Gilbert, will make you laugh as he weaves witticisms and humorous anecdotes into a stimulating account of scientific research on happiness. Essentially, Gilbert argues in chapter one, that we spend much of our time planning and executing unsuccessful strategies to attain an elusive state of happiness. In sex sections, readers learn why such a quest often proves beyond our grasp. In part one, Gilbert provides a brief overview of the philosophical foundations for the problem of subjective appraisals of happiness. Eventually, he leads the reader to an operational definition by illustrating how common human experiences can lead to shared feelings of happiness. However, he illustrates how the elusive and subjective aspect of happiness can lead to self-deception by demonstrating how the human brain misperceives visual phenomena and similarly misperceives the imagined happiness value of a future event. Next (part two), Gilbert builds on the results of cognitive science to show how people mistakenly recall their previously recorded feelings and struggle to make affective comparisons between experiences. He concludes the section with an appropriately humble appreciation of the problems in measuring happiness. Nevertheless, he urges us to forge ahead with the indexes we have because of the dominant role feelings play in our lives. Caveats aside, Gilbert has set the foundation for the next three parts that address the attitudes of realism, presentism, and rationalization to an understanding of happiness. Realism is the focus for part three. Gilbert argues from research data that imagination provides the illusion of foresight and a sense of realism that is in fact unreal because we routinely fail to realize how many event-related details are filled in by our brains. He summarizes memory research to demonstrate how the brain forms imprecise memories of past events in such a subtle manner that people do not realize the inaccuracies. Thus, he expertly explains how our perceptual processes not only miss important details but also fill in nonexistent information based on previous experience and environmental cues. He also reviews the important dynamics of memory reconstruction especially as related to the accuracy of memories. Although many of these studies will be familiar to undergraduate psychology students, Gilbert shows how these findings are relevant to an accurate appraisal of experiences that we may or may not construe as a basis for happy feelings. In part four, readers learn about the problems people have in accurately predicting their future feelings, which are largely based on the present (hence the name Presentism for this section). Beginning with illustrations of failed predictions and humorous past images of what the future (now past) would be like, Gilbert guides readers into an appreciation for the problems of using present experience to extrapolate to the future. …

Stumbling on Happiness

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING. Christopher Hitchens. 2007. Twelve: NY. Pp. 307. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University/Springfield, MO). Hitchens begins his pungent polemic against religion by explaining how he came to question religious teaching as a child (chapter 1). Following an experience we might label deconversion, associated with a teacher's simplistic description of reality covered with a simple religious gloss, Hitchens reflects upon perceived oddities in scripture and child-abus ing clergy. Next, Hitchens adumbrates his thesis as: four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that is ultimately grounded on with-thinking. (p. 4) A recurrent motif is an appeal to Ockham's razor as a device to strip the unnecessary explanations of faith from a rational worldview. Hitchens covers the gamut of common objections to religious faith in the five chapters that follow the introduction. These deal with the violence and mayhem visited upon one religious group by another in the name of their particular faith (chapter 2). He inserts an odd essay on the religious denigration of pigs (chapter 3), attacks faith for a history of antihealth policies (chapter 4), and challenges metaphysical claims (chapter 5) along with arguments about intelligent design (chapter 6). A close reading of the antihealth policies of various faiths can be a useful challenge for those concerned with medical ethics, and concerns for psychological well-being, which are not addressed by the author. What seems to be the center point of his book is a trinity of chapters assailing the tenets of Judaism (chapter 7), Christianity (chapter 8), and Islam (chapter 9). Religious scholars know these arguments but the review serves to summarize (or perhaps, bowdlerize) the salient antireligious sentiments that might appeal to a middlebrow audience. Next, we encounter five essays (chapters 10-10) on related matters interrupted by an attack on the failures of Asian faiths (chapter 14). Among other things, Hitchens minimizes miracles, harrumphs on hell, and opines on the onerous doctrines of religion (primarily Christianity). Hitchens concludes with three chapters that offer the reader hope for a better worldview. He responds to anticipated attacks against secularism (chapter 17), supports The Resistance of the Rational (chapter 18), and concludes with a call for a New Enlightenment (chapter 19). The references are a bit too sparse to substantiate many of his attacks. It is evident that he has relied more on appeals to authority, persuasive rhetoric, and logical argument based on selective secular assumptions about reality to support his various positions, rather than address more substantive matters such as textual criticism, subtleties in hermeneutics, genuine disagreements about ethical matters, and nuanced positions articulated by contemporary theologians and scientists. …

Geoffrey W. Sutton

Papers

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths

Stumbling on Happiness

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything