Brain Mind and Society

2009-03-01T17:47:00.002-05:00

This Blog has moved to a new Adress.

2009-02-18T16:07:00.010-05:00

On Ethics and Freedom.

This is a video of a conference presented by French philosopher Alain Badiou at Princeton. The conference was conceived as a dialogue with US scholar Cornel West and his thought.

On Ethics:
There are three major forms of Ethics; theological (ehtics of submission to the law), natural (ehtics of sensibility anchored in the concept of victimhood), and formal (Kantian. What is important in Kantian Ethics or the formal ethics is the form of action and the form is the subjective intention of action. If we act taking in consideration our interest, we are wrong and if we act taking in consideration our duty, we are right. This is the ehtics of a purely subjective liberty).

None of these ethics, according to Badiou who cites the example of september eleven, answers the question of the ethics that permit us to reach to the real world, the ethics of the real world and the real people.
Because there exist great differences in human actions in concrete situations. Badiou thinks that there is no general abstract law for ethics determining what is good and evil. 'Neither law, nor pity, nor pure intention can be foundation for ethics', he affirms.
The difficulty is to determine a general orientation for action. We always have to find in the situation itself the new rule for action. He advances the idea of an ehtics for singularity, not singularity of persons, but singularity of situations. This kind of ethics require from us to believe in the real world, and to believe in the world , according to Deleuze, is to believe in the concrete lives of people.

On Freedom:
'Freedom is always a production, and not an expression, in the context of an affirmative and intimate struggle against the desire of an harmony between personal and intimate orientation and social expression'.
'For freedom we are always to make a choice, the real choice is always a choice also against ourselves and not the direct and spontaneous expression of something intimate.
'To be free is to participate to the process of a Truth, to be incorporated to the Truth body, to be able to do something which is impossible, to be free is our experience of something impossible'.

2009-01-22T12:24:00.014-05:00

A Paradigm Shift In Evolutionnary Theory ?

The modern interpretation of evolutionnary theory, known as Neodarwinsim, has put too much emphasis on some aspects of the theory: Competition, Adaptation, and Genes. Those themes became popular among evolutionnary scientists and eclipsed many others. The great evolutionnary biologist Ernst Mayr stated that there are four major components to the theory:

Common origin
Evolution by Random variations
Selection
Adaptation

The last two processes are thought to result in the survival of the fittiest.

Only the common origin stands outside scientific scrutiny today. And while random variations are not disputed, their role in evolution has been questioned by, among others, Lynn Margulis who advocated symbiogenesis, instead of random genetic variations, as the main factor in evolution. Selection and Adaptation, which are interdependant in Neodarwinism, leading to the survival of the fittiest, were seen by the late evolutionnary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as anthropomorphic concepts borrowed by Darwin from the social sciences of his time. Gould used to stress at the beginning of many of his talks that selection by adaptation and survival of the fittiest didn't work well for Adam Smith but worked for Darwin. As a matter of fact, Darwin, in a first draft of the theory, didn't mention fitness and adaptation. For a very long time, Darwin was reluctant to publish his book 'The origin of species by means of natural selection', he needed to fill some gaps in the explanation, and these gaps came from the social sciences at a time when Darwin was pressed by his friends to go ahead and publish his theory unless Wallace, who had the same intuition about evolution, was going to publish before him.
Gould found that the modern interpretation of two apsects of the theory of evolution, selection and adaptation, by emphasising the role of random variation of the gene to suit the environment, and later to suit the gene itself, according to Dawkins' 'selfish gene', has a teleological feature. This is a negative statement since science and nature have no goals, no intention. Only humans, and God, have purpose. For Gould, there is no goal in Nature, not even adaptation, there are only chance, accident, and contingency.

At the heart of this modern interpretation of Darwin's theory there is an old definition to a concept not well understood, the concept of Species. For a very long time, the concept of Species was understood from the standpoint of interbreeding: animals fronm the same Species are those who can interbreed. There were some recognised minor exceptions, but they were still exceptions. However, a new study is going to shake this definition and with it probably the edifice of the modern interpretation. This new study is not the only one to question the old definition of Species. Lynn Margulis, who studied bacteria, showed that small organisms, like bacteria, swap their genes very frequently. This process is the last step in symbiotic life, when symbiosis between two Species is long enough to change the phenotype of both organisms when they are not in symbiosis,and when it leads to some mix of genes in the new organism. Indeed, says Margulis, because of frequent gene swap in bacteria, one can affirm that there are no Species in bacteria. Margulis was one of the few evolutionnary biologists working at the margins of the Neodarwinist paradigm, claiming that Neodarwinism neglected data from small organisms and from symbiotic life, in the interpretation, and concerned itself only with big animals and competition. For her, small organisms, and symbiogenesis tell us a different story on Evolution. A story of cooperation instead of competition.

Indeed, the new study suggests that:

As more and more genes were sequenced, it became clear that the patterns of relatedness could only be explained if bacteria and archaea were routinely swapping genetic material with other species - often across huge taxonomic distances - in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT)...As it became clear that HGT was a major factor, biologists started to realise the implications for the tree concept. As early as 1993, some were proposing that for bacteria and archaea the tree of life was more like a web. In 1999, Doolittle made the provocative claim that "the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree" (Science, vol 284, p 2124). "The tree of life is not something that exists in nature, it's a way that humans classify nature," he says

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) is opposed to the classical vision of Gene Transfer, which is the vertical one in the Tree of life of Darwin, the vertical descent of Species.
Interbreeding is swapping genes. And swapping genes between unicellular animals, even unicellular eukaryotes, when it happens in multicellular and big animals is called hybridisation. Most scientists concerned with big animals think that hybridisation is an exception. But that's not the fact. The fact is that hybridisation concerns more than 10% of multicellular eukaryotes (i.e. organisms). And genetic studies of big animals are revealing that HGT is happening in big animals also as ''ever more incongruous bits of DNA are turning up in multicellular genomes''.

Last year, for example, a team at the University of Texas at Arlington found a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals - the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog - but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish. This patchy distribution suggests that the sequence must have entered each genome independently by horizontal transfer (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 17023).

And what exactly does this mean for the tree of life of Darwin and for the Theory of Evolution ?

...downgrading the tree of life doesn't mean that the theory of evolution is wrong - just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not.

That's one reassuring point of view.

And the one that is not reassuring:

"Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure. We're clearly going to see evolution as much more about mergers and collaboration than change within isolated lineages."
Rose goes even further. "The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that," he says. "What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change." Biology is vastly more complex than we thought, he says, and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century.

If we reconsider Mayr's components for Darwin's theory (listed above), we may end up with a completely different picture:

Common origin
Evolution, not so much by random variations, but by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), or interspecies breeding, or symbiogenesis
Selection and adaptation by survival of the fittiest are replaced by cooperation.

Exit Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Jean-Pierre Changeux, and all those ultradarwinists that stressed vertical descent and competition. Enter Stephen Jay Gould, Lynn Margulis, and a new era of cooperative and messy Biology, a solidary world. The change of paradigm is certain. However, one might ask at the beginning of this economic and ecological crises if the new paradigm is not, yet again, influenced by what is going on in our human world...

New Scientist, 21 January, 2009. 'Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life'

UPDATE 1: February, 10th, 09: Darwinism must die so that Evolution may live.
UPDATE 2: February, 10th, 09: The old paradigm is resisting.

2009-01-09T10:12:00.015-05:00

The Milgram obediance experiment reenacted.

Researchers at Santa Clara university led by Jerry Burger reenacted Milgram's experiment and found that the percentage of people ready to inflict harm on others in order to follow orders from authority is still the same, more than 40 years later, although the funding and the new ethics rules for the experiment have drastically changed. It was privately funded and the upper limit for the number of volts received by the 'learner' were limited, not for the sake of the 'learner' (who actually did not receive any shock) but for the sake of the psychological welfare of the 'teacher-torturer'.

Below you will find five videos showing the most important parts of the original Milgram experiment.

PART I.

PART II

PART III

PART IV The 'Teacher' here was very obediant, even though he had doubts.

PART V.Here the attitudes of the subjects are analysed. The importance of the group in the interpretation is stressed. But this was the conceptual frame for the interpretation after the horrors of WWII. However, I think we should move beyond this frame of interpretation and examine the importance of one on one interindividual relationships in shaping people's ethical decisions, factors such as loyalty to an individual, friendship, personal reward, and the image of the self the other contributes to shape in our mind. Clearly, the Abu Ghraib horrors, and especially the example of Lyndie England's involvement in them, encompassed both the group and the interindividual relationship aspects in wanting to harm others for the sake of following orders from an authority figure.

2008-12-16T10:04:00.003-05:00

The mechanism of a 2000-year-old computer to decode the heavens, finally explained.

2008-12-12T12:35:00.004-05:00

Dignitas Personae: Vatican document on bioethics.

Part 1. Don't let the first page, which is scanned upside down, stop you. The rest is easily accessible.

Part 2.

2008-12-05T12:15:00.002-05:00

The Ethics of psychotropes consumption: An Overview

Psychotropes are taken by people in two different situations. On one hand, some psychiatric conditions clearly differ from usual life. The prevalence of schizophrenia is the same throughout the world and is readily identified through symptoms that are rarely seen in normal life. The treatment for this disorder produces relief only in the people diagnosed with this illness, and not in others. Neuroleptics for example are powerful psychotropes, but they cannot be used as enhancement and comfort drugs. On the other hand, some psychiatric disorders constitute the extreme of a continuum of behaviors that are seen in normal people. Who has never been depressed or anxious? Which child has never been inattentive? The medications used to treat these conditions are providing new opportunities for normal people to benefit from them. This adresses the problem of the limits between normality and disorder. Within this category, psychotropes can broadly be ranged into two groups depending on whether they are taken to treat mood or behavioral disorders, but their effects are very often observed on both with a primary effect lodged in one group and a secondary in another. Antidepressants act on mood but they create modifications in behavior including agitation and impulsiveness, especially during the initial phase of the intake. Psychostimulants like Ritalin, which is prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Attention deficit Disorder, can have effects on mood. The most often cited are apathy and emotional detachment. Recently, with the increase in consumption and the controversy surrounding the potential role some antidepressants may have in suicidal behavior in children and adolescents, a debate emerged in Psychiatry about the prescription of psychotropes, specifically antidepressants, for children and adolescents.

The most vocal critic of the over-prescritption and the over-consumption of psychotropes in Psychiatry is Dr. David Healy. In a November 15, 2005, in a portrait of him published in the Science section of the New York Times, Dr. Healy, a psychiatrist, is described as being ''internationally known as both a scholar and a pariah who established himself as a leading historian of modern psychiatry with the book, The Antidepressant Era." His cri d'alarme about the potential dangers of antidepressants earned him a strong animosity in the academic world. ''Because of his controversial views, Dr. Healy has lost at least one job opportunity, at the University of Toronto in 2001. In some circles, his name has become so radioactive that it shuts down discussion altogether." One of his colleagues said that "If you even raise the same issues he does, you're classified as being with David Healy and that makes people very reluctant to talk. He has become very isolated."

However extremes, clinical and academic anti-psychotropes positions never advocate the pure and simple interdiction of psychotropes. Critics of psychotropes consumption are only asking for more regulation from governments and more transparency from the pharmaceutical industry about the results of the drugs trials. But there seems to be a resistance to such an approach from the pharmaceutical industry, a resistance enhanced by an increase in demand for these drugs in our society. On one hand, psychotropes are among the best sellers, more regulation and more transparency mean less business. On the other hand, the pressures of everyday life in our society are pushing normal people, with no mood or behavioral problems, to seek comfort and performance enhancement with these drugs. In a November 16, 2005 New York Times article, Amy Harmon reports on the trivialization of psychotropes' consumption among college students in the US. Students take these drugs in order to calm their anxiety induced by college life and to enhance their performances before the exams. This more broader demand for psychotropes can backfire on the regulation of their consumption in a clinical setting and in pathological conditions by hindering the efforts to regulate their prescription.

The trend will probably persist and even increase. French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg contends that this is no different from taking prohibited drugs like ecstasy or marijuana and labels the attitude of governments toward prohibited drugs, as compared to psychotropes, as hypocritical. Ehrenberg analyses, in his book La fatigue d'être Soi, the need for psychotropes as enhancement and comfort drugs from a sociological point of view. For Ehrenberg, our entrepreneurial and modern western society (wild wild world) leaves the individual to construct his Self alone with his only internal resources, away from the help of social institutions. In France and in Europe, institutions were historically conceived to provide citizens with help and support to achieve a successful social and individual life, therefore participating actively in the construction of the Self.

Michael Gazzaniga, director of the center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Darthmouth College (NH) and author of The Ethical Brain (Dana Press, 2005) has another perspective on the means to achieve a successful life. He has no problem with the increase of the consumption of psychotropes for comfort and enhancement purposes. His perspective is a counterpoint to Ehrenberg's in the sense that, in the view he defends, drugs might replace institutions. From a social Darwinian perspective, Gazzaniga thinks that for those of us who have a less performing brain, it is only a matter of fairness to be able to compensate for this disadvantage with psychotropes.

Both views can be valid, one defends a social change in order to help the individual achieve a successful and happy life while the other defends a chemical change in the brain for those of us who are ill equipped, indvidually andsocially, to confront the challenges of life. Both views have also limitations. However, we have a real problem with Gazzaniga's view since Gazzaniga does not take his argument to its logical conclusion. One can argue that, according to the current consumption of psychotropes in our society, they seem to be pretty well available for everybody to use, and not only for the people who need them. College students buy them on the black market, like evry other drug. It is impossible then to view these drugs, as Gazzaniga argues, as factors for some kind of social egalitarianism giving everybody the chance to lead a successful and happy life. As our standards for success and happiness lie mainly in the imitation of others in a social context, considering drug intake as an option to compensate for some biological or social disadvantage can only worsen the situation because these drugs can also be taken by those who are not in need of them and who are already successful, in order to maintain their advantage on others in a social darwinian context. Contrary to Gazzaniga’s thinking, the consumption of psychotropes is thus not allowing those of us who have a less performing brain to compensate for a disadvantage. For as long as people who don't need the drugs can take them, the disadvantage will persist.

More than hundred years ago, instruction was not systematic and obligatory everywhere, classes were not crowded, knowledge required to achieve a diploma was not quantitatively loaded as today, women didn't use to work when having to care for their children at home and the standards of politeness and deference in school were tighter. Once these criteria changed, the new ones required different cognitive and behavioural abilities. By having different requirements with regard to the array of potential human abilities, society has progressively changed the human phenotype through socially constructed behavioural modifications. We do have a genetic endowment that can produce a vast range of phenotypes. By a constant exchange between each individual and different social environments, new phenotypes are progressively emerging. As a consequence, we are different from what our parents were and our children will be different from us. These trends in behavioural changes between generations have progressively tapped some cognitive functions that are extremely sensitive to various genetic and environmental influences. A sizeable fraction of the population has more difficulty to meet the expectations of society. On the other hand, today's society, due to current constraints, allows less variations to occur with regard to the social norms. Individuals who deviate from this wide normality become more easily excluded. This is probably the first reason for the increase in psychotrope use. As the risk for exclusion increases, psychotropes are being used either to decrease the feeling of isolation or rejection, or to improve the fitness within the social template.

It falls upon us, as a society, to judge if we are going to allow psychotropes to become an active factor in the construction of the social Self and, consequently, to participate in the elaboration of the social norms of tomorrow’s societies. Advantage in social status is a relative matter. If psychotropes are allowed for those with a disadvantage as a matter of fairness, it would not be fair then to refuse them to someone with a relative advantage compared to others but a relative disadvantage compared to different others, so he can reach a higher functioning stage and benefit from it in the competition. In a social darwinian perspective, competition and selection work throughout the range of behaviors, and not only between those who have an advantage and those who are disadvantaged. It is hypocritical to say that the over–consumption of medication is a kind of compensation for the disadvantaged members of our society. Theoretically and in current real situations, people who are taking psychotropes for enhancement are not disadvantaged per se, they are only relatively disadvantaged as compred to others. Moreover, as always, it is only the more advantaged people who are using better the ressources available to promote themselves socially. An unregulated use of psychotropes will not create social egalitarianism in chances to lead a successful and happy life, but will only render our social standards for success and happiness more out of reach of ordinary people. It will bring the distribution of our capacity closer to our genetic limits on the positive side of the distribution, and because the distribution of these critical capacities will become more and more asymmetrical, more and more people will end up in the negative side of this distribution. The approach is then to allow only those with a real cognitive or behavioral disorder, as assessed by professionals who will detect a real disadvantage, to have access to treatment with the objective of accessing a decent life. Because on the negative side of the distribution, psychotropes may change the life of those who are clearly in need of them and it would be unethical to refuse these people an access to psychotropes.

Following Ehrenberg’s critique of the consumption of psychotropes and conceiving a social solution to our discontent and mal-être is a valuable project but it needs the agreement of the majority on all levels of intranational social entities and international organisations and institutions concerned by the well being of their societies. Our recent twentieth century history shows that this is not an easy matter to achieve. Our cognitive and social realities are complex. They are intertwined in a web of biological factors, personal beliefs, social norms and local and global politics. None of the above positions, taken alone, can reasonably be considered as a solution to the problems of individual uneasiness with life. As social individuals and responsible citizens, we should probably work from both sides to alleviate the lives of the disadvantaged. Social interventions should be considered whenever possible. But everybody knows that social change, even wanted and planned, is slow in normal conditions. It takes sometimes more than one generation to harvest the fruits of a social reform and it requires great commitment from all levels of society. In the meantime, drugs should be considered, but only as a transient solution whose only purpose is to help disadvantaged people, who are below the equilibrium line, cope temporarily while developing new strategies in life and overcoming a difficult situation. During this time, the society and its institutions must do their part in developing a better environment for individuals.

As a society we face the same problem in the domain of physical health. To eradicate rachitism, we allowed the industry to add vitamin D in all kinds of food for everybody’s use. Are we going to follow the same path with some psychotropes for mental health? What kind of humanity are we willing to socially construct ? We are taller, healthier, smarter, etc…than our parents and grand parents. Pharmaceutical companies who are selling psychotropes have clearly interest in opening the market as widely as possible. In doing so, they do not behave differently from any other commercial entity. In a deregulated world, this may be the leading force of the make-up of our future. Therefore, we might be willing to gain some control on the world that we are building collectively by setting rules and ethical limits that will contribute to our cognitive and behavioral evolution. This is being implemented on the evolutionnary level by the way of interactions and transactions between our social norms and our biological heritage and by the way of biological mechanisms mediating behavior.

An inside/outside regulation of cognition and the Self addresses directly the problem of pathological norms in diagnostic and treatment in Psychiatry. Where are we to search for these norms? Inside or outside the individual? In the intimate or in the social domains? And when are we to label a state of mind or a behavior as abnormal? New research in neurocognitive development tells us that the inside/outside regulation takes place actually very early in development where it affects gene expression. The question is then much more complex and so are the answers.

Mood and behavior disorders can then be considered as being at the extremes of a range of self assigned and socially accepted norms and in continuity within this range. Psychotropes can be taken by individuals either because they need to attain an equilibrium point within this range or because they need to achieve a better well being. Because psychotropes have sometimes worrying secondary effects and because as a society and as individuals we need to feel in control of our destiny with our own individual and collective will, strict regulation is needed in this market. This regulation must include complete transparency from the pharmaceutical industry on their drug trials, a strict follow up by physicians, and a collective commitment to develop research for understanding better these disorders as well as creating alternative approaches for helping people to achieve a satisfactory equilibrium in the building of their intimate and social Self.

Dr. Philippe Robaey, child psychiatrist and psychophysiologist, contributed to this post by providing useful information about psychotropes consumption. However, the opinions expressed in this post are entirely mine.

2008-12-02T10:11:00.003-05:00

Ethical aspects of cognitive enhancements

The British Medical Association (BMA) published in November 2007 a discussion paper on the use of mind enhancement drugs covering the medical, scientific, social, and ethical aspects of the subject.
In April 2008, the British journal Nature published the resutls of a poll in which they surveyed 1400 persons from a wide range of age categories on the use of mind enhancement drugs.

The use of prespription drugs like psychostimulants as mind enhancers is spreading in college campuses in the US. The US government has been monitoring the problem since 2003.

I have discussed the issue on this blog a while ago but under a different perspective. In a future post, I will revisit this perspective at the light of the BMA discussion paper.

2008-10-26T01:01:00.005-04:00

Is Human Evolution Over ?

That's what British geneticist asserts. I have heard Steve Jones arguing his point before and although he has an interesting argument here, I am still puzzled by his assertion.
Jones assumption is based on the fact that evolution is driven by unequalities existing in individuals' genes facing the same environment and competing for resources in this environment. And he rightly argues that technology, mostly health technology, is a great equalizer of our unequal biological predispositions. Take eye glasses for example, to cite a simple case, eye glasses allow those who have sight deficits to occupy social positions tied to a certain privilege that they would have not occupied otherwise.

However, Jones overlooks two main factors in evolution:
Evolution by collaboration and cooperation, a case well argued by Lynn Margulis and termed as symbiogenesis;
Evolution by selection of genes which are detrimental in one way but beneficial in another. For example, a gene known to be the cause of a blood disease protects against Malaria. In countries where the Malaria epidemic is high, individuals with this disease have an evolutionary advantage over others who don't have this blood disease.

2008-10-05T14:24:00.008-04:00

The Turing Test Revisited

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.
...The test will be carried out by human 'interrogators', each sitting at a computer with a split screen: one half will be operated by an unseen human, the other by a program. The interrogators will then begin separate, simultaneous text-based conversations with both of them on any subjects they choose. After five minutes they will be asked to judge which is which. If they get it wrong, or are not sure, the program will have fooled them. According to Warwick, a program needs only to make 30 per cent or more of the interrogators unsure of its identity to be deemed as having passed the test, based on Turing's own criteria.

Three items catch my attention in these passages:
Thinking
Consciousness
Right to switch it off

Although we know a great deal about the first two, I think it is safe to say that we don't know enough about them in order to attribute them to a machine, even when we are fooled by this machine. Thinking and consciousness are things we feel and attribute to other human beings on the basis of their similarity with us, despite the fact that in most communications between human beings we can be fooled about whether the other person thinks or behaves in a conscious way like us. Indeed, thinking and consciousness have so many layers that even communication between humans is sometimes impossible or deceptive.

As for the third item we touch here on the ethics of human machine interaction. Every right for ourselves is accompanied by a duty toward someone else. Morally speaking, a duty emerges when at least two individuated persons, two individuals, or creatures, interact in an asymetrical way in which one is responsible for the other who is vulnerable. Because a computer program still depends on our will to switch it, it is we who are responsible for the computer program. However, we might ask ourselves such questions as; Is an intelligent computer program an individual, a singularity in the world ? Is it vulnerable ? Do we feel indignation when it is not respected or when it does not have the same rights as us ? Do we have duties and rights when it comes to machines as towards animals ? These are some of the questions to answer before answering the question of the 'right to switch it off'.

2008-08-12T20:56:00.005-04:00

Brain and Mind: from medecine to society

In these two videos you can listen to a conference given by the great neurologist, scientist, thinker, Antonio Damasio, in Barcelona in 2005, on the revolution of emotions in medecine and society. Damasio played a major part in this revolution. Usually, philosophers and scientists use the term 'revolution' to designate a change of paradigm in Science. The Emotions revolution changed our perception of rationality and rational decision making as well as our perception of the roots of moral deliberation. The Neurobiology of Emotions proved that Emotions play a major role in decision making and moral evaluation.
Part 1

Part 2

2008-08-12T20:39:00.003-04:00

Torture and the Psychological Sciences: The perversion of the scientific enterprise

What angers Soldz and hundreds of other professional psychologists and psychoanalysts is that their organization, the American Psychological Association, has taken an official position that the presence of psychologists makes detainees safer at interrogations. That view, Soldz declares every chance he gets, is ludicrous. In fact, the policy enables the torturers.

Read here my first post on the subject.

Read here on learned helplessness, a bacground theory for torture 'experiments' at Guantanamo.

2008-07-31T07:33:00.005-04:00

Stem cell research: The Islamic world forges ahead

Is a bundle of cells a feotus? Is the original single zygote, the fertilised egg, a human being ? These are the central questions at the heart of the Ethics of Stem Cell research. Little mention is being made in the western press about the Islamic view on this question. We, of course, know about the opposition of the Catholic church to this kind of research. And we, of course, know very much about all these denounced Islamic cultural memes which are different from ours.

Physicist Jim Al-Khalili compares Catholic and Islamic views on Stem Cell research in this article.

The embryo-is-a-human argument is based on the idea that the fertilised egg contains everything that is needed to replicate and that this is sufficient. But is this "potential" of becoming a human being really enough?
...According to Islamic teaching, I discovered, the foetus becomes a full human being only when it is "ensouled" at 120 days from the moment of conception, and so the research at Royan on human embryonic stem cells is not seen as playing God, as it takes place at a much earlier stage. Thus, while there is much that the west finds unpalatable about life under Islamic rule, when it comes to genetics they are not held back by their religious doctrine.

Reading this article, aside from thinking about the double standards applied in the western world when it comes to Islam as compared to other religions, I find it interesting that we can only rely on religion up to now to define what is a human being. Science, and neuroscience in particular, have part of the answer but the definition cannot come from the natural sciences alone. It should come from all the sciences related to the human being including Ethics. However, Ethics is still very much the playground of religion and law. We absolutely need a new science of Ethics independant but informed by the other sciences and domains of human beliefs including religion, and only this new science of Ethics can account for what is a human being.

2008-03-04T23:30:00.015-05:00

Heated hobbit debate takes new turn.

In October 2005, I commented on a scientific dispute pertaining to the discovery of a 'new species' of Hominids in Indonesia known as the Hobbits for their small size, known also as the Flores people, Homo Floresiensis.

At the time, mainstream publications and mainstream science were refuting a dissident voice from an Indonesian researcher contesting the Characterisation of the Flores people as a new species. There were two arguments that rallied me to the dissident researcher voice.

The first one was epistemological and methodological, the Ockham razor hypothesis: he said that research into the new species should first eliminate any doubt about whether the Flores people had a pathological condition.

The second one was more theoretical. If we look at the evolutionary tree below, we realise that for Homo Floresiensis to become a new species, evolution should have taken a bizarre departure from both Gradualism, and Punctuated Equilibrium which states that species change little over time and that evolution occurs in rare rapid events of branching speciation. The H. Floresiensis species not only appears in one giant leap but reaches the phenotypic status of other species situated far away on the evolutionary tree.

This figure, taken from the Prehistoric Cultures web page of the University of Minnesota Duluth, shows the improbable descent of Homo floresiensis.

And then there was this troubling fact that the number of specimen studied was ridiculously low. Good science cannot be made without numbers...

So it was rather an agreable surprise to read today that a new research from an Australian group shows that the Flores people might not be a new species and that they were probably afflicted by a congenital disorder known as Dwarf Cretinism. Of course this doesn't seem enough to close the debate for now but the irony of the finding is that for the refutation to get the approval of the mainstream press, it had to come from an Australian group. The group who are defending the new species hypothesis is also an Australian group and while the early dissident voice of the veteran Indonesian researcher was dismissed by them as Hubris, they might be forced to listen this time to fellow scientists from their country. From what it appears, this case is paradigmatic about how scientific consensus can be race sensitive.

Although I am glad that I was correct in my appreciation of the debate, I am sad for the new species that probably wasn't.

UPDATE: Small bodied humans from Palau.

2007-12-20T18:39:00.000-05:00

Researchers in Switzerland have just succeeded in simulating a small Neo-Cortical column in silicon.

Computer model of a single neocortical column from a rat's brain (Photo: IBM)

Beside the fact that such news are impressive, I liked what the scientist had to say to the reporter and what the reporter extracted from this complex information. One can appreciate the accuracy and the honesty of this article when it is compared to another article on Blue Brain I read in Spiegel a while ago (leave the Spiegel article for the end and you will see what I mean, you will be able to read it with a more critical eye thanks to the present Guardian article). There is nothing sensationalist about Clint Witchalls' article, and in addition he asks the right questions. Still, the title is catchy and I bet it is the editor's touch on the article.

Blue Brain is not about Artificial Intelligence taken in its direct sense, it is about adopting a smart approach to a very complex issue, namely modelisation. Experimental scientists who are hard empiricists abhorre modelisation. You can tell from Steven Rose's comment at the end of this article and I think he is quite right, for the moment. But I think we cannot understand everything from scratch, from trial and error. We have to figure out some way to anticipate what we are trying to understand and modelisation does just that. And nothing can stop us from testing our anticipations. Models, artificial models in experimental science, are just practical material hypotheses. We don't have to be afraid of them or suspicious. And as other hypotheses, they may end up wrong. It is not because we were able to construct a model, a material thing, out of a hypothesis, that the hypothesis becomes instantly true, embodied in a certain way in our own material creation. Sailors before Copernicus used to navigate with totally false charts of the sky, and still, some of them I suppose managed to find their way in the sea. That does not mean that theoretical hypotheses about the stars and the sky for these charts were true. Similarly, the modelisation of a Rat Neo-cortical column, even though it may seem small in scale in modeling the brain, and unfaithful to the original biological model, is a major breakthrough in Neuroscience, both at the practical, conceptual and epistemological levels. The model may turn out to be wrong, and nothing like the real brain. However, along the way we would have learned and amassed a tremendous amount of data otherwise unaccessible to scientists.

In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein.

In June 2005, Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project, announced his intention to build a human brain using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. "The critics were unbelievable," recalls Markram. "Everybody thought we were crazy. Even the most eminent computational neuroscientists and theoreticians said the project would fail."

Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know."

Markram was not dissuaded by the negative reaction to his announcement. Two years on, he has already developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column - the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains - of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful when you watch it pulse on the giant 3D screens the researchers have constructed.

The neocortical column is the most recently evolved part of our brain and is responsible for such things as reasoning and self-awareness. It was a quantum leap in evolution. The human brain contains a thousand times more neocortical columns than a rat's brain, but there is very little difference, biologically speaking, between a rat's brain and our own. Build one column, and you can effectively build the entire neocortex - if you have the computational power.

Although a neocortical column is only 2 millimetres long and half a millimetre in diameter, it contains 10,000 neurons and 30m synapses. The machine that simulates this column is an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer is capable of speeds of 18.7 trillion calculations per second. It has 8,000 processors and is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex, which is the next phase of the Blue Brain project, due to begin next year. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain.

Markram is banking on Moore's law holding steady, as a computer with the power of the human brain, using today's technology, would take up several football pitches and run up an electricity bill of $3bn a year. But by the time Markram gets around to mimicking a full human brain, computing will have moved on.

Modelling the future

Modelling seems to be the way forward for neuroscience. Each year, there are about 35,000 neuroscience papers published - and the number of papers being published is increasing at a rate of between 20% and 30% a year. Most neuroscientists only get to read about 100 of these papers a year, if they're lucky. Pouring all of this knowledge into Blue Brain seems an obvious way to use and preserve it.

Markram, a 44-year-old South African, first became interested in recording the electrophysiology of neurons when he was at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He was recording two neurons and he saw them communicate. "I thought, my God, this is incredible, you can actually capture neurons communicating," he says. "Then I wanted to find out how they all communicated, so I started to map the whole circuit. It took 15 years." Markram describes the data he has collected over the past decade and a half as "too boring to be published".

The model is there to unify the data and test that it works. A neurobiologist who wants to test a certain theory of how a specific brain function, such as memory retention and retrieval, works can use Blue Brain to do so. The model will be open to the entire world's research community.

Simulation-based research becomes possible when you have a critical power of computation. Today, every commercial aircraft that is built started life as a simulation. Even cameras are simulated before they're built. In physics, we don't let off nuclear weapons any more, we just use simulations.

"We don't use simulation in life sciences because biology requires the most powerful computers," says Markram. "We do experiments on animals, but that is going to change in the near future and this project will drive that change."

One thing Markram is keen to stress is that this isn't another artificial intelligence (AI) system. "We're not looking for the brain of a robot," he says. "You can get an engineer to do that. They are much better at it and they can do it really quickly. But in the end, it [Blue Brain] will probably be much better. If we build it right, it should speak."

Decoding dysfunction

However, Markram is not holding his breath, waiting for some emergent consciousness to arise from the silicon brain. What he is after is something more prosaic, but also a lot more useful than a talking machine. By understanding the function of the brain, we can also begin to understand its dysfunction.

Disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and dementia are the price we pay for having complicated brains. "We don't understand what goes wrong inside those circuits," says Markram. "We're still in empirical medicine. If a drug compound works: good. If not, we try another one." Blue Brain could accelerate experimentation tremendously. It will be much more efficient than wet-lab experiments and it will reduce animal experimentation.

However, Steven Rose, emeritus professor of biology at the Open University, is sceptical that a biologically accurate model of the entire human brain can be built, given our current state of knowledge and technology. The integration between the different regions of the brain is just too complex to recreate on a computer simulation. "I'm not against people playing with models," says Rose, "but the idea that you can use it for anything very sophisticated as opposed to looking at real animals with real behaviour at the moment seems to me to be pie in the sky."

Rose warns against underestimating the difficulties that still remain. Then, rather grudgingly, he admits that the Blue Brain project is impressive. "Impressive but modest," he adds. Clearly, Markram still has some doubters to win over.

2007-09-26T18:10:00.000-04:00

Philosopher Ernst Tugendhat on unfounded speculations in brain research

This is part of an interview German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat gave to Die Tageszeitung on July 28, 2007. The present translation was published by signandsight.com on August 20th.

"What function does philosophy have now? Is it becoming superfluous – because of the behavioural sciences, brain research and evolutionary biology?

I am very careful about that. As far as the behavioural sciences are concerned, I think that people are too rash in looking for analogies – for example between human morals and animal altruism. That is what Konrad Lorenz, among others, did. As for brain research, I think it's rather crazy what's going on today.

Why?

They can only find out what types of processes are going on in which parts of the brain. But then those professors of brain physiology appear and present theories about the nonexistence of human freedom. And those theories are only based on the fact that they see themselves as scientists and believe in determinism. They are not even aware of the philosophical literature of the last decades, which tries to not see determinism and free will in opposition. I consider that to be completely untenable speculation.

But brain research is still in its infancy.

Brain research may become interesting for philosophy in a hundred years, but it hasn't been until now. I admittedly am a naturalist; I see human beings as part of a biological development. But what the biological sciences do in relation to human beings hardly makes sense.

If brain research has so little to offer – does sure philosophical knowledge exist?

No. And we don't need it. The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind. It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods."

2007-04-05T08:08:00.000-04:00

Sarkozy and the popular science of Genes

There is popular science as there is popular culture. However, popular science is different from popular culture in many aspects including the fact that it is not, like popular culture, a different perspective on things, and the fact that it has to rely on criteria of real science; test, truth, verification, refutation. It cannot hide itself from real science for a long time. Popular science is defined here as what stays in public awareness and consciousness from scientific knowledge once this knowledge has been made available to the public. Take for example the Nature/Nurture debate. Popular science of Nature/Nurture is actually some 50 years back regarding the advances made in the current scientific inquiry in this field. Popular science is fixated on the big discoveries in Genetics (but not on the current science of Genetics), thanks notably to books like the 'Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins which had a huge impact, not only on the layman, but also on academics outside the field of Biology like Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, and thanks to the early sociobiology of Edward Wilson.

In the meantime, the field of Epigenetics, which is the current field of Genetics, was taking on slowly in the scientific debate of Nature versus Nature. Epigenetics tell us that Genes for simple or complexe features are expressed (or not expressed) in a Context, the environnement of the gene first, which is the cell, than the larger environments; the body and the outside environment. Epigenetics tell us that our features and complexe behaviour are the results of a long history of transactions between genes and their environments during development, which is a long process in humans, and that these transactions have influence across generations. Today's Epigenetic is reactualising the concept of the transmission of some acquired features across generations. Scientists are studying the medium of this transmission and it seems that modulations of internal states, stress reactions, and emotions, by early family and social interactions, are key factors in this transmission.

Popular science can be harmful when it enters the political sphere and inspires policies. That's exactly what French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy hints about in an interview he gave to philosopher Michel Onfray when he implies that our complexe behaviour is already fixed at birth, determined by our genes.

« J’inclinerais pour ma part à penser qu’on naît pédophile, et c’est d’ailleurs un problème que nous ne sachions soigner cette pathologie-là. Il y a 1200 ou 1300 jeunes qui se suicident en France chaque année, ce n’est pas parce que leurs parents s’en sont mal occupés ! Mais parce que génétiquement ils avaient une fragilité, une douleur préalable. Prenez les fumeurs : certains développent un cancer, d’autres non. Les premiers ont une faiblesse physiologique héréditaire. Les circonstances ne font pas tout, la part de l’inné est immense ».

''I think pedophiles are as they are already at birth. The absence of treatment for such a pathology is a real problem. There are 1200 to 1300 youths who commit suicide every year in France, that's not the fault of their parents. That's because they have a certain predisposition, a fragility, a precondition for suffering. Take for example smokers. Some will developp cancer and others won't. The first have a precondition, a certain physiological hereditary weakness, the others don't. Circumstances are not everything, there is a huge part for the innate in what we are.''

I recommend reading the whole interview published on Onfray's blog in French because Onfray's rendition of the interview gives a chilling portrait of Sarkozy, the man...

In his statement, Sarkozy seems to oscillate between two points of view, both of them false and both of them extreme. His judgement on pedophiles accredits the idea of the all genes explanation while what follows still accredit the all genes explanation, for smokers for example, while countering the other view which states that environment influences gene expression. Ironically, the all genes explanation, in the classical Nature/Nurture debate, can be turned the other way, where the causes of a pathology are attributed entirely to the environment. However, in the now more than two centuries quarrel between the Nature and Nurture explanations of complexe behaviours, none of the parties has been able to prove entirely the complete causal relationship bridging the multiple levels of organisations and transactions between the organism and its environment(going from the gene to the cell, to the organ and Brain structure, to the Brain network involved in the behaviour, etc..., and the other way, from the environment to the body and the brain and back to the behaviour). This is why the actual science of behaviour has moved from this sterile opposition between Nature and Nurture. If smokers and people who are suicidal come to smoke and commit suicide, it is because they have experienced an adverse environment whixh adds to their innate predispositions for a pathology.

There is no way out from such a debate. The only way out is the one taken actually by modern biological science, which is to recognize that we are the products of both our genes and environment through a non linear history of transactions between both components.

The far right candidate Jean-Marie le Pen was a better analyst and had a more critical view of the Nature/Nurture debate by stating that Sarkozy must have been wrong. How on earth can Sarkozy affirm such a thing while not noticing, at the same time, that biological determinism is antinomic to personal responsibility ? Says Le Pen. In other words, Le Pen is asking what is the use of Politics if everything is predetermined by our genes ?

According to Sarkozy, there might be also a gene for voting for Sarkozy. Indeed, this vision of Genetics and Biology is inflational. There is nothing that could not be explained by Genes and therefore, Genetics, as seen this way, could well be the end of Politics and the end of everything else.

It is interesting however to realise that Sarkozy is articulating naively the main contradiction in the Conservative NeoLiberal Ideology of our time, which relies heavily and exclusively, for its social policies, on the biological sciences, to boost the old idea of the survival of the fittiest, an idea Darwin borrowed from the social sciences of its time, while borrowing from Religion a conservative framework for morality which make all people equal because they are the creation of God. Sarkozy pushes his naiveté even further when he expresses his views on Religion which he considers as the ultimate tool for taming people's discontent with Neoliberalist policies which leave many behind.

Les propos sur la génétique de Nicolas Sarkozy suscitent la polémique
LEMONDE.FR | 04.04.07

2007-02-09T08:32:00.000-05:00

Loneliness In Old Age Linked To Alzheimer's : When Mind and Society contribute to neurological disorders

This is a nice medical research study and it comes from practitioners in the field of Alzheimer's, not from fundamental research on animal models. However, researchers might be encouraged now to produce a credible laboratory model for loneliness to further investigate the question. We definitely need both fundamental and medical practice induced research.

Some diseases have biological and social manifestations, Parkinson, Tourette, Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia, and so on. They have also biological and social causes. However, the pervasiveness of materialist thinking among some scientists who work on the mind and in some intellectual circles makes it impossible to have a concept of a neurological disorder in sociological terms . I have an example: Ian McEwan's Saturday have two characters with neurological degenerative diseases; Baxter who has his early symptoms of Huntington disease and Perowne's mother who has Alzheimer. The central character is a neurologist and the author gives his neurologist a background theory on human consciousness, emotions, and behaviour which falls into the most reductivist materialist theories of mind. We are told details about the inner workings of the brain and what genes have to do with these diseases but we are not given a single hint about how modern scientific efforts in the field of Neurology and Psychiatry are tracking both the biological and psychosociological aspects, factors, and sometimes causes of the diseases. We are being served a vision of human mental life and behaviour that does not account for the dominant current paradigm in Neurobiological Sciences which considers human behaviour and consciousness as a result of a long history of transactions between Nature, personal history and Society.

The study on Loneliness and Alzheimer does not give a proof that loneliness is actually a cause but it does demonstrate that it is not a symptom of Alzheimer's. That is. It does not appear to be a behavioural result of the biological factors contributing to Alzheimer. On the contrary, it appears to be a contributing factor. And it surely exerts this influence through biological channels for emotions, stress and mood. It is not physical loneliness that matters here but the patient's own perceived loneliness. What matters to my brain is how I feel and what I think, this thing about me that cannot be reduced to few chemicals and some degenerate cells. Our biological Self is not shielded form our body, from our presence to the world - and not in the world, as Merleau-Ponty would put it. Biology does not exert a one way influence and initiate behaviour and thought with the internal biological machinery from the inside to the outside because this same machinery is actually structured by the outside, starting with the interface formed by our bodily and perceptual interactions in nature and society, and reaching deep into our biology, including gene expression (not gene sequence). From birth until death these interactions shape the biology of growth, maturity and old age, as in Loneliness and Alzheimer.

This study is a breakthrough and it will surely be followed by more scientific evidence gathered from other levels of organisation of this complexe entity that is the Human being. It is promising also for theories of consciousness because this kind of investigation occuring at a high level of mind functioning is needed to fill the explanatory gap between internal material causation in the explanation of consciousness, that is, causation that exists between the different parts and levels of the brain producing thoughts, emotions and behaviour, and the external material causation chain, causation linking outside factors, like ways of life and our social psychology, with the internal causative chain in the brain.

I smile when I remember that, in Mc Ewan's Saturday, Perowne takes great care not to eat cheese because he believes that fat helps build the degenerative plaques around brain cells leading to Alzheimer. What this study tells us however is that no matter how much we eat or don't eat cheese, the way we lead our life, give it meaning and directions, both psychologically and morally, is as important as the piece of cheese in the shaping of our old age physical diseases. And Perowne might as well develop Alzheimer, after all. Because in addition to the fact that he might have inherited a risk gene from his mother, his loneliness is obvious. The conscious stream of one day in his life tells the story of a lonely son, a lonely husband, and a lonely father. Although he is able to reach some empathy with the people who surround him, his empathy never reaches a level where he can consider himself through other people's eyes. He is so infatuated with himself and his knowledge that the reader is never presented with the slightest glimpse into what others think of Perowne. His loneliness is so evident when we consider his wife's character. This character is so flat and seen only through the eyes of Perowne as an object of love, pride and happiness that we never get to know who is the real person behind.

Maybe loneliness is, after all, the condition of the modern inner life of men and women in an era where individualism and personal achievement are perceived the number one criteria for happiness. Not the Other, not the Other... "Overall, these data suggest that both the quantity of social interaction and the quality of social attachments affect risk of late-life dementia," concluded the authors of the research.

In the Press: Loneliness linked to Development of Alzheimer's

Source article: "Loneliness and Risk of Alzheimer Disease."Robert S. Wilson, Kristin R. Krueger, Steven E. Arnold, Julie A. Schneider, Jeremiah F. Kelly, Lisa L. Barnes, Yuxiao Tang, David A. Bennett.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2 February 2007;64:234-240.

2007-02-07T22:48:00.000-05:00

Boys Academic Performance: Discipline, Violence and the Gender issue.

In an article I wrote on this blog a while ago in French, 'Les garçons et l'école: que sont nos hommes devenus', I tackled the question of the poor academic performance of boys, compared to girls, in developed countries. I defended the idea that this phenomenon might be linked to an increase in behavioural problems and disorders more endemic or prevalent in boys, among them; Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
I tried to explain boys behavioural disorders from a sociological perspective in which the classical types of authority, the natural and physical, the divine and religious, and the authority derived from personified knowledge, the teacher, have been replaced now by what French philosopher Alain Renaut calls the contractual authority. This latter form might better suit girls, putting boys at some level of disadvantage. I defended the idea that the absence, from today's pedagogy, of the above mentioned classical forms of authority which relied on hierarchy and resorted to a certain degree of violence, have actually created an internal conflict in boys who are invited to play the game of contractual authority while they clearly feel that this game does not acquaint them with what they perceive as the social division of genders that bestows upon them, more than their female counterparts, the authority, leadership and violence existing in the social space devoted to men.
And while most sociologists have a constructivist approach to the question of gender and violence, we cannot dismiss the biological grounds for social perceptions and social divisions of roles based on gender, as the experiments on Monkeys, cited in the above mentioned post, demonstrate. Recognising that there exists a biological ground to the question of violence and gender does not however exclude some form of social constructivism; the two factors, biological and social, collaborate during development in a transactional manner to define the final outcome of a certain behavioural charcteristic.
The question put here therefore is that some social transformations, like the democratisation of previous forms of authority at school relying on violence into a contractual form of authority, are disadvantaging boys for two obvious reasons; one is that the social perception and roles of adult males, despite the egalitarian feminist struggle, didn't change much, the other is that violence seems to be rooted in social structures - like hierarchy in the workplace - devoted classically to males. Women who occupy male territory are not transforming these structures but rather adopting their culture and conforming to it including the culture of violence in hierarchical relations at work.
In this new social scheme, girls seem to be adapted to both forms of authority, contractual and classical, showing their willingness to negociate when necessary and to fight their way agressively when required, while boys seem to be stuck in one scheme. Because women, while pursuing their social struggle toward more equality with men, have not only occupied part of the social space reserved to men but also kept their own, they are becoming versatile, rapidly adapting to different social situations. Men, on the other hand, had no demands like the feminists; they didn't ask forcefully to occupy functions and fill social roles traditionally devoted to women, they have, in their majority, stuck to their traditional role, therefore becoming unable to show the same versatility as women.

One issue not adressed often by the feminist movement is their willingness to let men invade their social space and take on their classical social roles. Sociologists believe that gender equality will be attained when men will become able to cross lines massively into what is perceived as women's territory. Indeed, gender inequality is stratified, touching many social functions, and is also reciprocal and bidirectional. The fact that women's movement was not matched by another movement in the other direction from men might explain the social malaise of boys and their academic and behavioural problems in school. Caught in the internal contradictions of their gender, having to comply to a non violent form of hierarchy at school but to bear the burden of violence in the workplace and in society in general, boys are expressing the malaise of a transitional generation.

Our responsibility as adults is to pursue these social transformations in a more egalitarian way. To expect from women to bring their contractual authority skills, learned and integrated at school, to the workplace, instead of adopting the old cutlure of hierarchical violence merely imitating men. And to expect from men the reverse movement toward conquering teritories traditionally reserved to women. Because once women would have conquered all the social strata defining the male gender, without a reverse movement, we will probably assist to a collapse of the social stratification of gender identity. But with a reverse movement from men and a more active contribution of women, what may come out is not a gender collapse but rather the ubiquity of both genders with less social stratification and real equality. Meanwhile, like in every social transformation, there is no going back. And this transitional malaise of generations must be alleviated by creating more awareness on the violence in the workplace and in the world in general and by actively decreasing this violence. May be then, men, relieved from the burden of violence, will try to conquer other territories and start the reverse movement, the march toward their equality with women.
After all, what counts most is not our gender but what unites us, men and women, our humanity and our capacity to inhabit this different and distant other...

Documents and articles that inspired this post:

Randall Collins; Janet Saltzman Chafetz; Rae Lesser Blumberg; Scott Coltrane; Jonathan H.Turner. 1993. Toward an Integrated Theory of Gender Stratification. Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 36, No. 3., pp. 185-216.
Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff R. Hern and Robert W. Connell. 2004. Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, Sage Publications.

2006-01-28T18:29:00.000-05:00

Les garçons et l'école: Que sont nos hommes devenus ?

Les élèves chahuteurs du magnifique 'Zéro de conduite' de Jean Vigo, l'écolier charmeur, menteur et espiègle des '400 coups' de François Truffaut, ceux qu'on imagine étourdis, bagarreurs et volontiers téméraires de Paris et sa région dans l'album de Robert Doisneau 'Les doigts pleins d'encre' constituent, pour la génération qui a connu la démocratisation de l'enseignement, autant de tableaux vivants du quotidien de l'école et de l'écolier des années qui ont précédé les transformations sociales de l'après mai 68. Une caractéristique générale de l'école semble émerger de ces tableaux: le fait que le chahutage et les attitudes espiègles, contraires aux règles et à une discipline totale, étaient socialement acceptées comme marques du comportement des garçons dans le milieu scolaire. Que s'est-il donc passé pour que les garçons, autrefois servant de norme et de référence à ce qui pourrait être défini comme une acceptation sociale du milieu scolaire, en soient devenus aujourd'hui le problème ? Car il semble que les problèmes des garçons à l'école sont intimement liés à des questions d'attitude plutôt qu'à une question de capacité intellectuelle.

Démocration et libéralisation de l'école

La libéralisation de la société après mai 68 ne fut pas un événement uniquement français. Dans le monde francophone, le Québec a connu un mouvement socio-politique similaire, tandis que dans le reste des pays développés, des transformations sociales identiques furent amenées de manières différentes; le mouvement anti-guerre aux États-Unis, le mouvement rock et la contestation croissante de la monarchie en Grande Bretagne peuvent être perçus comme des répliques de mai 68. Tous ces mouvements de la fin des années soixante dans les pays développés ont conduit, entre autres, à la démocratisation de l'école qui est apparue comme une suite logique de la démocratisation de l'enseignement. La démocratisation de l'enseignement est le processus par lequel l'état et la société ont voulu amener plus d'enfants dans le système scolaire et dans le processus de la réussite scolaire tandis que la démocratisation de l'école est un processus psychosocial par lequel l'ouverture de l'école et la libéralisation de la société ont conduit à des rapports maître-élève, parent-élève et parent-maître moins formels (moins teintés de respect affiché et de distance psychologique).

Les deux démocratisations, même si elles nécessitent des réformes au sein de l'institution scolaire, n'ont cependant pas le même impact sur le vécu du processus d'apprentissage de l'enfant et de l'élève. La démocratisation de l'enseignement a eu beaucoup d’impact sur les réformes pédagogiques et très peu sur les rapports des acteurs dans le processus d'apprentissage. A l'inverse, la démocratisation de l'école, phénomène spontané et moins visible, a eu jusqu'à maintenant très peu d'impact sur les réformes scolaires tout en ayant un grand impact sur les rapports réciproques maître-élève-parent, rapports dont l'élève est le centre.

Changement de référentiel

A partir des années 80 émerge une nouvelle préoccupation pour les éducateurs, le phénomène de la moindre performance scolaire des garçons. Les hypothèses abondent pour expliquer ce phénomène. On a accusé l'école d'être devenue intolérante aux comportements des garçons, d’être inadaptée aux garçons et mieux adaptée aux filles. On a dit que les classes surchargées ne permettaient plus aux professeurs de prendre en compte les besoins spéciaux de certains élèves. On a dit que la société de marché mettait une pression indue sur les garçons pour une réussite économique conditionnée par la réussite scolaire par un glissement dans l'orientation de l'éducation vers un processus consacré à former les travailleurs de demain et non à former les esprits. On a dit que les professeurs sont devenus en majorité féminins et que les garçons étaient en mal d'identification dans le milieu scolaire. On a dit que les filles, se percevant comme moins aptes et moins intelligentes que les garçons mettent plus d'ardeur au travail que ces derniers qui s'appuient sur leur intelligence et que la stratégie des filles est mieux payante. On a appelé à réinstaurer la ségrégation des sexes à l'école. On a aussi dénoncé le désinvestissement des pouvoirs publics dans l'éducation.

Il faut cependant constater que seulement des tentatives isolées sont nées de cette prise de conscience. Tout se passe comme si le problème relevait de la fatalité. Et alors que nombre de ces explications reposent sur des caractéristiques avérées du milieu de l'éducation aujourd'hui, ces caractéristiques ne suffisent pas, à elles seules, à expliquer le phénomène du plus grand échec et décrochage scolaire chez les garçons, même si elles peuvent y contribuer. Il y a derrière ce phénomène d’autres facteurs. Parmi eux se trouve, à mon avis, le changement profond que la démocratisation de l'école a opéré dans les perceptions réciproques des relations, autrefois faites de hiérarchie et d'autorité, entre l'élève d'un côté et le maître d'école et le parent de l'autre. Or, il semble que cette nouvelle donne affecte différemment les filles et les garçons mais avant d'expliquer cette différence, je vais en exposer les fondements.

Autrefois, les media de l'autorité, quand elle n'était pas physique, étaient liés à Dieu et au Savoir. Le soldat, le prêtre et le maître d'école représentaient le sommet des échelons hiérarchiques des sociétés traditionnelles. Nos sociétés modernes, anti-militaristes et anti-confessionnelles furent aussi saisies par l'égalitarisme social dès les années 60. A première vue, l'effritement des autorités physique, militaire, et divine, confessionnelle, devait conduire logiquement à l'effritement de ces deux aspects de l'autorité à l'école, à savoir, la criminalisation des châtiments physiques et la déconfessionnalisation, mais ne devait en rien conduire à l'effritement de l'autorité par le savoir ou l'autorité du maître. Or cette dernière forme d'autorité a été érodée, à mon avis, par trois événements majeurs caractéristiques de nos sociétés: les cycles successifs de crises économiques, de chômage et de précarité de l'emploi qui y sont associés et qui ont conduit à un glissement de valeurs associées au savoir vers celles associées à la réussite économique et à l'argent, la multiplication des centres du savoir (media électroniques, parents plus diplômés qu'avant et valorisation du savoir par l'expérience) et l'éclatement du savoir par la diversification et la complexification ainsi que la montée en puissance de l'égalitarisme. Cette dernière donnée, étayée par le philosophe français Alain Renaut, en faisant de l'enfant l'égal de l'adulte en droits, a fini par effacer toute distance psychologique et identitaire entre l'adulte et l'enfant.

Le développement affectif biopsychosocial de l'enfant au centre du problème

Malgré ce qui précède, on ne peut pas dire qu'il y a absence totale de rapports d'autorité dans les écoles. Les formes archaïques de l'autorité ont été remplacées par ce que Alain Renaut appelle l'autorité contractuelle qui relève de l'autorité judiciaire et repose sur les règlements, la faute et les sanctions. La question subsidiaire, et non moins importante, est donc la suivante: est-ce que cette nouvelle forme de l'autorité fonctionne dans les écoles et pourquoi les garçons semblent moins adaptés dans l'école d'aujourd'hui ?

Il faut reconnaître que cette nouvelle forme de l'autorité place les rapports de l'élève au maître dans un carcan réglementaire et juridique, à première vue prédéterminé et moins flexible que les rapports psychologiques qui existaient dans les anciennes formes d'autorité. L'autorité devient ici impersonnelle, elle n'engage pas les émotions. Il en va de même du côté de la famille. Les parents aujourd'hui rechignent à démontrer toute forme d'autorité et ont le plus souvent recours à une autorité contractuelle de type négociée dont les termes sont déterminés conjointement par les parents et les enfants et à laquelle l'enfant participe pleinement. Ces deux nouvelles formes d'autorité contractuelle (à l'école et dans la famille) sont rationnelles et impliquent moins les émotions. Elles restreignent aussi la gamme de comportements jugés acceptables par les adultes de la part des enfants. Ce n'est pas qu'on est devenu intolérant aux comportements cités dans le premier paragraphe et illustrés par des films ou des photos cultes, c'est tout simplement qu'une fois qu'on définit de manière contractuelle les rapports, on limite la gamme des comportements acceptables contractuellement et on ne sait comment réagir à des comportements non prévus initialement par le contrat ou qui ne peuvent être résolus de manière contractuelle.

C'est là qu'intervient une explication d'un autre genre de l'attitude et des problèmes des garçons dans les nouveaux systèmes d'apprentissage. En effet, un aspect fondamental est négligé, à mon avis, dans toutes les explications fournies jusqu'à maintenant du problème des garçons dans le système scolaire; le développement affectif et biopsychosocial. Par développement affectif biopsychosocial j'entends tout processus qui implique des facteurs sociaux et biologiques contribuant conjointement à former la personnalité et l'esprit de l'enfant. Dans le domaine de la performance scolaire des garçons, aucune explication actuelle ne veut s'avancer sur le terrain biologique, même si des facteurs biologiques semblent exister.La raison est qu'on oppose dans nos explications processus biologiques et processus culturels, processus biologiques et processus sociaux, alors que les deux types de processus sont interactifs et contribuent, surtout chez l'enfant, à la structuration du comportement et du phénotype psychologique. Or, dans les sociétés animales, les rapports d’ «autorité », qui sont en fait des rapports de domination, contribuent, à travers les interactions entre adultes et enfants et entre enfants par le jeu, à structurer à la fois le groupe social et la place de l'individu dans le groupe. Ils impliquent les émotions.

Dans les sociétés animales dirigées par des mâles comme les sociétés de primates, les rapports d'autorité entre mâles adultes et jeunes et entre jeunes mâles établissent, à travers les émotions impliquées par le jeu et les rapports de domination, des modifications hormonales et chimiques dans le cerveau qui influencent la détermination de la position sociale du mâle dans le groupe. Le groupe ne pouvant accueillir qu'un nombre limité de mâles pour assurer la reproduction, la sécurité et la pérennité du groupe, un certain nombre de mâles doivent quitter le groupe à l'adolescence pour en intégrer un autre. Les travaux de Steven Suomi montrent que cette transition difficile se prépare dès l'enfance par le jeu et par les interactions entre jeunes et adultes. Les rapports d'autorité et de domination qui sont mis à l'oeuvre lors de l'éducation et le jeu influencent de manière permanente, lors du développement postnatal, les indicateurs biologiques contribuant à fixer la position sociale du mâle dans un groupe, comme par exemple, les taux de sérotonine (neuromédiateur impliqué dans les comportements d'agression et dans l'humeur). Les femelles, quant à elles, ayant un rôle déterminé à l'avance auprès des jeunes, ne participent pas aux rapports formateurs de domination pour achever un statut social car elles ne doivent pas quitter le groupe à l'âge adulte.

L'univers de l'éducation d'aujourd'hui s'est éloigné des relations de domination et d'autorité physique pratiquées par les sociétés animales et par les sociétés humaines dans l'âge classique. Il s'est aussi éloigné de leurs substituts, l'autorité divine et l'autorité du savoir. Il faut comprendre l'autorité ici dans son sens neutre, un processus par lequel l'adulte d'un groupe, exerçant sa responsabilité vis-à-vis de l'enfant, accompagne, par ses rapports inégaux avec l'enfant, le développement normal de celui-ci. Dans ce sens, il n'y a aucune connotation négative ou abusive à l'autorité.

L'absence de rapports physiques d'autorité, ou de substitut d'autorité, à l'école et dans la famille, dans une société dont la survie économique reste dominée et dirigée par des mâles, est de nature à perturber le processus de développement de la personnalité chez le garçon quand elle conduit à une carence dans les liens affectifs nécessaires au développement psychosocial de l'enfant. Ce n'est donc pas tant l'absence d'autorité en elle-même qui crée cette situation mais plutôt notre incapacité en tant que société à vivre les transformations sociales provoquées par la démocratisation de l'école et à imaginer des substituts adéquats de liens entre adultes et enfants pour pallier à ce vide. La contractualisation de l'autorité, même si elle représente un substitut satisfaisant sur le plan social, ne semble pas initier les liens affectifs nécessaires pour créer le contexte psychologique formateur adéquat au développement de la personnalité de l'enfant. Peut-être tout simplement parce que les garçons en particulier ne semblent pas comprendre le contrat par lequel ils se trouvent liés à leurs éducateurs ou que ce lien reste non motivant sur le plan affectif. Si les filles ne semblent pas souffrir de cela c'est parce que malgré le gain en droit que les filles et les femmes ont enregistré ces dernières années, notre société reste tout de même une société dominée par des mâles et que les filles savent qu'elles ne portent pas encore en elles le fardeau de l'organisation du groupe et de la société dans laquelle elles vivent et que cette tâche reste quand même dévolue aux mâles alors que les garçons savent bien que cette tâche leur revient et n'arrivent pas à trouver dans leur entourage familial et scolaire les rapports adéquats et les références qui les préparent à cette tâche.

Dans ce contexte d'absence, il n'est pas anormal que les garçons, sachant ce qui les attend dans le milieu du travail (il leur suffit de regarder leurs parents porter le poids du travail et ses insécurités à la maison car l'enfant n'a jamais été auparavant autant mêlé à la problématique du travail que de nos jours) où les rapports classiques d'autorité sont restés intacts et ont parfois évolué dans le sens contraire, soient désemparés. Ils ne font par cela que nous montrer les contradictions de nos sociétés, contradictions propres à des transitions sociales désorganisées que les enfants sont amenés à en payer le prix et qui sont relayées majoritairement par ce qui reste à l'enfant, dans ce cas-ci, son organisation biologique dans l'intuition qu'il a du rôle positif de ses émotions.

A suivre...

Lectures et sites web qui ont inspiré cet essai:

La fin de l'autorité par Alain Renaut, 2004, Flammarion, Paris.

The minds of boys: saving our sons from falling behind in school and life by Michael Gurian and Kathy stevens, 2005, Jossey-Bass, CA.

Site du gouvernement britannique sur les difficultés scolaires des garçons.

Un autre site du gouvernement britannique

Site du gouvernement australien sur les difficultés scolaires des garçons.

Une fenêtre sur les travaux de Steven Suomi

2006-01-24T10:56:00.002-05:00

Reclassifying Chimps and Enhancing Humans

Two recent articles caught my attention and it is pure coincidence that one is about new evidence for reclassifying chimps in the evolutionary tree and the other is about re-engineering humans.

Dr. Soojin V. Yi* and her colleagues 'performed a large-scale analysis of lineage-specific
rates of single-nucleotide substitutions among hominoids.' They 'found that humans indeed exhibit a significant slowdown of molecular evolution compared to chimpanzees and other hominoids.'
Nucleotides are structural elements of DNA. During evolution, a nucleotide in a DNA sequence can be replaced or substituted. The substitution may result, depending on internal and external factors related to the organism, in phenotypical and organismic differences thus contributing to the temporal and cladistic divergences of Species. Nucleotide substitution is an important component of what is called a Generation Time of a species, or the history of the DNA of this species, or the molecular clock of the species. Generation Time for a species is the average rate of Nucleotide substitution per Loci (localisation on the DNA sequence) and per year. The less there are Nucleotides substitutions, the more the Generation Time is slow.

According to this approach:
Nucleotides substitutions differences between Hominoids and Chimps indicate that Hominoids diverged recently.
Chimps still have the slowest Generation Time among non Hominoids.
Chimps' Generation Time is, among non Hominoids, the closest to that of Hominoids.

Because of this, researchers conclude that Chimps and Hominoids didn't diverge very much and propose reclasifying Chimps among Hominoids.

That's an interesting proposal based entirely on the study of DNA sequences and changes in DNA sequences across species and across time. However small the difference can be between us humans and our closest cousins, the Chimpanzes, one must admit that behavioural differences are huge. We are today studying the Chimpanzes genome and kindly proposing to make them even closer to us, Chimps cannot do this. How this came to happen with such a small difference between them and us ?
Some people might say Language, others might say Technology and I think the second answer contains both since language was the first technology among humans. Language is Technology at its source, the emergence of fine (handy) motor skills, as their practice was made possible in Bipeds, paved the way for a better performance by the speech muscles. There are certainly other concomittant factors that contributed to this first technology, however we have to remember that language is technology and action before it is cognition. Language came first and higher cognition after.

Since it mastered this first technology, our species built on it to extend the power and the number of its tools. Technology, and its cumulative progress, became part of our phenotype and an integral part of our phenotypic expression. It acts on the phenotype the same way nucleotide substitution acts on it. This is exactly what separates us from Chimps and makes the behavioural divergence great despite the small nucleotide substitution.

Now that we are ready to aknowledge our kins as part of our larger Hominoids group, it seems to me that we are ironically using technology to 'enhance' or modify our human phenotype, and the new modifications we are seeking for our phenotype are not just external, they are internal to what defines us as humans; Memory, Intelligence, Mood and so on...

Under the title ' Science will soon give some of us the tools to make ourselves cleverer and stronger. What will it mean for our humanity? ' Madeleine Bunting** wrote a fictional piece based on this new trend in technology that may be called Human Enhancement Technology. Although all technologies are basically enhancement in a certain form or another, the race for making ourselves stronger, brighter, and less depressed, will be routine 25 years from now. It will be based on a two way approach: Genetic manipulations and cognitive enhancement, tools which are used already now in a restrictive manner for people who need them (challenged andor mentally ill people, and might become routine for anybody trying to cope with the ever increasing challenges of life. Bunting's piece, although fictional, is totally convincing because it relies on two premices: our hunger for new technology serving personal purposes like perfection, the ever increasing personal and professional challenges of our societies, and the fact that the technology she describes is already in motion.
''My daughter is 10. Fast forward 25 years, and she is having her first child - early by the standards of all her friends, but she's keen on "natural". Of course, she did pre- implementation genetic diagnosis, and she and her husband (yes, very old fashioned, they married) had some agonising days deciding on whether to modify a genetic predisposition to depression and whether to splice in a gene for enhanced intelligence. In the end, they felt they had no option but to give their baby the best possible start in life.
Five years later, my little grand-daughter is starting school. Again her parents have talked over the pros and cons of cognitive enhancement. A pharmcogenetic package is now routinely offered on the NHS after the government decided that, given international competition in the global knowledge economy, there was no option but to ensure the nation's schoolchildren had better powers of memory and concentration. I had my doubts, but I have to admit that my little granddaughter is proving a wonderfully clever creature - a constant source of amazement to me.
My doubts were in part assuaged by the fact that I had already started stronger doses of the same cognitive enhancement drugs. They've helped hugely with my forgetfulness (I'm just hitting my 70s). They are part of a cocktail of drugs I'm now taking to postpone many of the effects of ageing. I dithered a bit but in the end there was no option. I'm doing the childcare for all my five grandchildren and I need to be strong and fit for them. My age expectancy is now 110, so the plan is that I can help out a bit with the great grandchildren too.
What we've been unhappy about is that my daughter has been very tired trying to hold down her job and be a mum, and she's come under a lot of pressure from her boss to get help. What they mean is that she should go on to Provigil. They point out that if she was taking it, she could miss several nights of sleep without any problem. Her colleagues call her a bio-Luddite for refusing. She's already the only one not to have taken her company's early diagnosis - she said she didn't want to know whether she was going to get Alzheimer's disease in 30 years' time. ''

A delicious piece of writing. None of this will be fiction in a couple of years and I don't think we will wait 25 years from now to make this technology routine. Surely, Chimps can still hope catching us one day but we have been, since the dawn of humanity, running in the other direction, a direction opposite to Nature. It is la fuite en avant, as they say in French. As we are starting a new era, the Human Enhancement Technology with its new tools focused on cognitive enhancement will become the technology that will modify the very notion of Humanity itself. As we race towards 'perfection' and pull ourselves from the natural world to a world created by our own making, how would we still define ourselves and, most importantly, how would we adapt our moral values to this new reality ?

*Variable molecular clocks in hominoids (Proceedings of the national Academy of Science, January 31, 2006, vol. 103, no. 5, p.1370–1375)
**There is no stop button in the race for human re-engineering, Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, Monday January 30, 2006.

2005-12-31T18:37:00.001-05:00

Psychotropes and social institutions: Ritalin in France from 1995 to 2005.

On July 31st 1995, the drug Ritalin is approved in

France

for Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) under the following conditions:

It might be prescribed after clinical and neuropsychological exams diagnosing ADHD.

The diagnosis itself should not be definitive if the symptoms are recent.
Ritalin can be prescribed only to children older than 6 years, it is not suitable to all subjects diagnosed with ADHD, it should be part of a larger treatment strategy including psychotherapy, special education and counseling, it can be obtained only via prescription from a specialist in the first place working in a university hospital (Pediatrician, Psychiatrist, Neurologist) and renewed only for one year by a private practice doctor. (Réservé aux enfants de plus de six ans, Le Monde, 15.09.95).

Before 1995, French parents with ADHD children had to rely on a complex procedure in which the medication was bought from countries outside France under a special request.

In 1995, Ritalin is overprescribed in North America (

United States

and

Canada

). It is even sometimes recommended by teachers to parents and pupils in the States and publicized on TV to the extent that some states voted to prohibit non medical personnel recommending Ritalin.

When the authorization for Ritalin is given in

France

, it is immediately perceived as an importation of the American way of life, mercantile above all other considerations.

France

is and still a country where Psychiatry is practiced mainly on the basis of individual psychotherapies and psychoanalysis*, where Psychiatrists are reluctant to medicalize psychological problems and doubt biological psychiatry in general and where Freud and Lacan are revered as if they were Rock Stars. This context for Psychiatry is within the cultural context of the French society, a more general one in which the social contract, when compared to north America, is well and alive, and in which the Mental is seen as the product of the society and its institutions, specially when it comes to the mental well being of children.

The first reactions to the introduction of Ritalin in 1995 are suscpicious

The pharmaceutical indutstry is accused of trying to heap up its profits on a product prescribed only for few conditions (Bernard Chalchat, président des laboratoires Ciba-Geigy « Nous n'envisageons nullement un accroissement massif des ventes », Le Monde, 15.09.95).

The diagnosis for ADHD is seen as socially biased in the sense that this trouble does not exist in itself but is correlated with changes related to the school and to the society.

For critics of Ritalin, the use of the medication is believed to hasten the Americanization of French society, a process which is seen as a prelude to the decrease in institutional commitment in lending help to the children and their families.

''Many psychiatrists fear that the authorization given to Ritalin in the treatment of ADHD is the symptom of the collective regression of French society in its ability to help children, who certainly manifest difficult behavioural problems but for whom the attentive availability of educators can replace the drug treatment.'' (Jean-Yves Nau, Un médicament pour enfants « hyperactifs » suscite une controverse, Le Monde, 15.09.95, my translation)

In 2000, the pharmacological ADHD treatment is still seen as radical in France and the WHO classification of ADHD still disputed.

The success of Ritalin is explained by pressures exerted on medical specialists coming from:

The parents and the school who want the child to conform to the school system,

The increasing influence of medical personnel inside the school system,

The profit orientation of social insurance compagnies who find the treatment less expansive than psychotherapies. (Les tout petits enfants américains se soignent aux psychotropes, Le Monde, 29.02.00)

Child psychiatrists send a Cri d'Alarme in the pages of the first national newspaper, le Monde (Ne bourrez pas les enfants de psychotropes !, Le Monde, 27.05.00 ). Contrary to what the title suggests (don't stuff children with psychotropes), the psychiatrists who signed the article use the case of Ritalin in ADHD children to highlight the dangers of a wider trend in French Psychiatry, ''the univocal medicalization of mental troubles deprives the patient from the ability, given to him by Psychotherapy, to reflect on the profound sense of his mental uneasiness, discomfort and ill-being.'' (My translation). Also, contrary to what the title suggests, the signers express their concern not only for the use of psychotropes in children but for its use in Psychiatry in general and the impact this use has on the classification of mental illnesses. They affirm that the use of psychotropes reduces the mental illness to the neuronal and chemical elements and their perturbations. This is correct as long as Psychiatrists continue to ignore Integrative Neuroscience where concepts of relations and maternal care are being investigated as neurobiological concepts integrating social aspects to the biological view of the mind. And they conclude erroneously that this reduction is made accordingly to the reductive DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) and WHO (World Health Organization) classifications. DSM classification takes actually into account not only the biological aspects of the disorder but also the emotional, family and social aspects.

I believe that the fierce opposition of some French psychiatrists to the DSM is actually hampering their understanding of this diagnostic tool, because clearly DSM classification offers a window for a variety of treatments, sometimes multimodal where actually Psychoanalytic classification does offer only one alternative for treatment. The signers accuse the media of broadcasting and reverberating the 'triumphalism' of American Neurobiological theories of Mental illnesses. Within this general context, they see the use of psychotropes to treat children as a risk for an increase in the intake of illicit substances when these children will reach maturity. They surprisingly conclude by advocating multidisciplinary approaches for the treatment based not only on psychotropes but also on Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, Sociology and transcultural studies...The closing lines of their discourse highlight the dangers of a univocal medical approach on both the future of child psychiatry and the future of mental development in children. However I believe these alternative treaments, while highly recommandable, are not embedded in a standardized, systematic and evaluation prone approach which can offer a rapid answer to a wide and urgent public health problem concerning children and families living very difficult situations which require prompt interventions. When health problems of that scale exist and concern the well being of a large part of the population, specially when it comes to children who are tomorrow's adults, the solutions designed must conform with the most basic criteria for public health interventions, standardization, evaluation and cost effectiveness. This is not to say that treating mental health problems is like treating any other physiological problem, the former require that social , psychological and emotional dimensions should be adressed, however effective Psychoanalysis can be, it does not answer one of these basic criteria and it even refuses to adress them.

The first question arising from this attitude is that why French child psychiatrists oppose Ritalin when they advocate a multimodal approach to the care of ADHD children in which Ritalin could be a component ? It is because they know very well that at the time we are discussing these matters, the other components are not able or does not have the correct structure to adress a problem that has an impressive epidemic and an urgent call for effective solutions. They know that in the short and middle terms, Ritalin will be adopted by parents and educators and public health officilas looking for these rapid and effective solutions.

2005: the emergence of official and public reports on the treatment of ADHD children with Ritalin in France.

In ''Dépister et traiter l'hyperactivité'' (Le Monde, 08.11.05), ADHD is not seen anymore as an 'American invention'. The article insists that ADHD is not a trouble, neither the extreme of some normal behavior. It is a constitutive illness with tremendous negative implications on the child, its learning capacity, its well being and its later social integration. For the first time, psychiatrists recognize that the manifestations of ADHD are not under anybody's control, children and parents included. This goes along the recognition of biological factors predisposing for ADHD, contrary to the notion that society and its institutions are the sole repsonsible for the mental well being of individuals. Coming from where they started when the medication was introduced in France this can be seen as a swing to the other extreme. For the first time, DSM and the related WHO classifications of the ADHD are mentioned as acceptable references (in the press). For the first time, the combination of Psychotherapy and Ritalin is mentioned as the best treatment. For the first time, child psychiatrists start to recognize that treatment with Ritalin is necessary to put the child on a positive path which will be successful in a ratio of two children over three. However some insist that Ritalin intake must be accompanied by psychotherapeutic treatment because they believe that family and social contexts have a great impact on the condition. A psychiatrist mentions for example that 80 % of children who were abused or come from negligeant parents, and children who had postnatal treatment which kept them at the hospital, develop the symptoms for ADHD.

Another article, Les tribulations de la famille d'un hyperactif (Le Monde, 08.11.05) exposes, for the first time and at length, the suffering and the wandering from one doctor to another of a family with an ADHD child in France. The child experienced problems at his first year at school when he was 4 years old, however the parents started to consult only two years later when the problems reached a peak. Early consultations did not yield any clear diagnosis and treatment. It is only when the parents went to a child psychiatry service where biological concepts in Psychiatry were accepted and operationnalized that they heard for the first time of the ADHD diagnosis. Even then, they refused to accept the diagnosis because they heard from the media that ADHD is an American 'invention' and that it does not exist in France. They even refused to treat their child with Ritalin fearing negative consequences like addiction to Amphetamines because they heard that Ritalin is an Amphetamine molecule, even though there is not one study ascertaining Ritalin treatment as a cause for later addictive behaviour. But with the situation worsening years later and the child having great difficulties keeping up with the pace of normal schooling and social integration, the parents finally accepted to treat the child with Ritalin. They did it with the help and the support of a national association of parents of children with ADHD. This made it possible for the child to stay in the normal school system. The article informs the reader that Ritalin is in fact like a pair of eyeglasses, its effect being displayed only upon intake and lasting only 8 hours a day.

The story of this family takes place between 1995 and 2005 and summarizes the changes and the struggles in social and medical perceptions toward ADHD and its treatment in France. During this time, public perceptions about ADHD and its treatment started to change under the pressure of public health personnel and parents. A public report on mental disorders in children including ADHD was made public in September 2004 by the government sponsored clinical research insitute, Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM). The report adopts the international classification for ADHD for purpose of identification and diagnosis and recommends a systematic and early diagnosis in children as part of a national effort to prevent the early negative impact of ADHD in school age children. There were instant negative reactions to the recommendations made in the report. Specialists of children's mental health, mostly France's community of child psychiatrists wrote their disagreement with the report in the national press. Even a year after its release, the report is still disputed.

Pierre Delion, chief of Psychiatry at the university hospital in Lille told Le Monde (23.09.05) that ADHD is a disputed classification because it refers to external social norms like behavioural disorders while he prefers to use the concept of 'psychological suffering' to characterize the condition of the children showing this trouble. He points to the risk of teachers using this external classification in order to recommend a medication for the child. He accuses the pharmaceutical business of advancing the concept of ADHD and pushing Ritalin in the market in order to boost the profits. He refutes epidemiological results showing a high incidence of the disorder among children as mere statistics that do tell a lot about the way society view and treats the children but that do not tell anything about the child's psyche or the way we should face the child as carers who must feel responsible for the child's condition.

What a debate like this do tell us about the relations between Scientific applications in Mental Health and Society ?

It must be noted that, despite nationwide negative reactions to the introduction of Ritalin in France for the treatment of ADHD, there was a rapid and positive evolution for the acceptance of the medication, made possible, on the parent's side, by the need for an effective and a rapid care for these children to facilitate their integration in school. For the health authorities, the problem was to find a cost effective approach to an ever growing concern for children's mental health and to a public health problem.

However, the resistance to this evolution in the French society and among french Psychiatrists shows that the resistance to the pharmacological approach to mental health problems in children in particular and to an external classification or characterisation of the problem created a vacuum which rendered a constructive and critical approach to the medicalization of ADHD impossible. This resistance derives from two major social conceptions of the child and the mental. The French society inherited a conception of the child which dates back to Les Lumières, a century which is not only characterized by the triumph of reason but also by the concern the adults had for the intellectual well being of children and for knowledge transmission. Most importantly, what the conception of the child in Les Lumières shows is that an adult could not consider the child as his equal, because the child requires his care and his instructions. Hence the feeling that children's attention and learning disorders must be resolved within a social setting providing what is necessary for these children to perform in school, hence the resistance to the classification of ADHD as a biological problem, hence the resistance to the idea that drugs can resolve what is considered as a learning and a social problem, hence the appeal to social institutions to provide the adapted educational framework for these children. But this conception of the child, which is still rooted in the French educational system, does not explain, on its own, the many problems encountered by the introduction of Ritalin in France and the reactions and regulations that accompanied this introduction.

Another framework is the psychoanalytic tradition in French psychiatry. Psychoanalytic approach opposes the exclusive use of drugs for therapy and considers the drugs as primers for facilitating the therapy. However, I think that while opposing Ritalin, Psychoanalytic conception of mental illness have actually facilitated the acceptance of Ritalin by parents for the following reasons: 1) Psychoanalysis tells us that everthing that goes wrong with our mental life has roots deep inside in our subconscious and in the way this subconscious is affected by our relationships with others. French psychiatrists still call the object of Psychiatry as being 'La Pathologie du Lien', 'The Pathology of the Relation' but the target of Psychoanalysis is not the relation, it is the inner self. From a behavioural problem, ADHD becomes, within the psychoanalytical framework, internalized as a mal d'être, a psychological suffering, at the image of the psychological suffering of adults. This is not to say that a behavioural approach does not recognize the psychological suffering of children but the psychoanalytic approach constrains the symptoms to the inner part of the child-individual and therefore, constrains the treatment to what is going on in the inside focusing, like the pharmacological approach, on the inside. However, things can be seen the other way, even with a psychoanalytical approach. For example, Alain Ehrenberg, a French sociologist in his book, 'La fatigue d'être Soi', explains the phenomenon of the excessive use of psychotropes in France by the demise of the state and of political and social institutions, in other words, the relation between the individual and failing social institutions is bringing mental suffering and misery upon individuals. This is a psychoanalytical explanation. But the remedy, suggests Ehrenberg, is in institutional change, not only with Psychotherapy. 2) In France, as in developped countries, the economic crisis that brought unhappiness and the political changes that accompanied this economic transformation made room for a change in the conception of the child. This change led to the declaration of children's rights, at the image of human individual rights, a good and a great move, but at the same time a move by which the child acquires the status of the adult vis-à-vis the political, legal and economic spheres (see Alain Renault and Sylvie Mesure in Alter Ego, les paradoxes de l'identité démocratique). The child, as an individual, is more and more seen as an equal to the adult. This goes along an internal Psychoanalytical conception and classification of mental problems in children and against Les Lumières where children were seen as requiring adults care in order to achieve maturity but most importantly this leads to our recognition of the existence of an internal psychological suffering, at the image of ours, in the child. So here the Psychoanalytic conception of the mental in children is in contradiction with the conception of Les Lumières.

So here we have two competing conceptions of the child, one inherited from Les Lumières , may lead to an anti-psychotropes attitude stemming from external considerations related to the responsibility of adults and institutions for the mental and intellectual well being of children. Another conception, inherited from Psychoanalysis, is against psychotropes consumption because it is against an external classification of mental problems, a classification that does not explicitly aknowledge the internal mental suffering of the child both as the source of the problem and the target of the treatment.

Psychoanalysis does not offer an alternative and reliable classification of ADHD which can be operationalized and tested in the context of a pulic health approach, neither a reliable testable therapy and most importantly, it does not offer social institutions, concerned by the well being of the child, a plan of action at the national level and a cost effective strategy for a public health problem.

And as Integrative Neuroscience aknowledge the influence of social and emotional factors on the brain and the mental well being, we know that we may not fully control the causes of ADHD, specially when they are related to developmental processes where they can participate in the structuring of children's brains and minds and cause them trouble at school. However, we might be able to help our children achieve a healthy and successful life by being open to new knowledge on the brain and the mind including how biology is shaped by society and culture and prevent some hypothetic dramatic shifts which derive from this at the social level**. Understanding this new reality by accepting an open and a honest debate and adapting accordingly from all parts of society to make sure that ADHD children have a good chance for the future, is a priority if we want to keep our educational goals and our responsibilities toward children.

I am quite sure that the real debate on the medicalization of children's problems is about to start now...

* French adults are known to be heavy on light psychotropes consumption, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, prescribed mainly by General Practitioners.

** The poor performance of boys in the school system is one of the biggest challenges in Education today. It is also well known that ADHD affects more boys than girls and could be linked to their overall academic performance.

2005-12-31T18:02:00.000-05:00

The Man With The Perfect Memory: The Inside Outside of Autobiographical Memory.

Do you know how many memory bytes one needs to record everything, including documents, medical history, conversations, movement, steps, all... except video, in a life of 83 years on an average ? Only 1 terabyte, the equivalent of one fiftieth of the memory available on actual ipods. It takes, of course, a lot to have video recordings for the same period, 200 more terabytes approximately.

Ian Sample (The Guardian, December 28, 2005) reports that Microsoft is conducting such an experiment since 2001 on Dr. Gordon Bell. Cameras, sensors for light, heat, movement, steps, are part of the everyday equipment of Dr. Bell.

''At first, he merely scanned books and work documents, but the project ballooned, embracing the mundane and the moving: details of plumbers, of others he's met, sit digitally alongside letters from his children, his advice when they hit difficult times. Conversations with his grandchildren, his wife, are there too. Occasional musings on the world that would otherwise be confined to a diary now go straight into the database, accompanied by a thousand pages of medical records.
The trickiest decision came a few years ago when Dr Bell was trawling through old files and scanning them in. His assistant found a memo with a stern note urging: "Do not ever reproduce this." It was an extremely frank letter purging his thoughts on a company he was involved with at the time. It named names, pointed the finger, ranted. It was never meant to be posted, copied, or seen by anyone other than himself. "I decided we should put it on the system after all. I still feel the same about it, but it's on there," he says. ''

The experiment is generating many challenges, not only for Dr. Bell, but also for the company's programmers who must struggle with the organization of the information and more importantly with ways to retrieve it. Moreover, the personal, ethical and social implications of the experiment are many. Among them, Sample points to three: Forgetfulness becoming impossible and its contrary, Reliance on an external memory, but also the Privacy of the information and its Ownership. Dr. Bell decided to bequeath his external memory or this part of his life, as recorded by Microsoft, to his children.

The problems of Privacy and Ownership have been brought upon us by the communication technologies and existing legal decisions concerning these issues can be applied with some modifications and adaptations to this new technology. However, the most important implications of this new technology, in my opinion, are that the organization of the facts of one's own life, as well as the routes to their retrieval, are made here, not by the subject himself, but by external agents, in a way understandable, not only by the subject, but also by the programmers who are working on the project. This has a direct effect on the structure of consciousness and the sense of Self.

Even though most neurocognitive and philosophical theories consider consciousness and sense of Self within the domain of subjectivity, there is a difference to be made for the subjective experience between its ownership and its genesis. Because even if we own completely our experience, since it takes place within the limits of our body and mind, its genesis still depend on the interactions between our body, mind and the environment, stretching beyond our own physical limits. This is the case for all creatures with a sense of Self and since the beginning of time for our species. However, the human environment participating in the genesis of the conscious experience and the sense of self, being physical or cultural, is not static. This is an environment that is continually changing with every new addition in knowledge and technology and each new addition in knowledge and technology affecting communication between the subject and its environment have a potential impact on the Self.

We are inclined to believe that we have total control over the process of organizing and retrieving our intimate experience, our memories and our past. But early in the history of mankind, storytelling, myths, writings, correspondence, literature, postal service, telephone, television, and recently, internet and email, have all participated, not only in the way we organize and retrieve our own memories and experience, but in the way we view and reflect on our own experience. This sums up to the way we construct our sense of Self both on the intimate and the social levels.

On the intimate level, our own personal history is narrated with stories taken from our uninterrupted episodic memories; facts about ourselves situated in time and space. On the social level, this intimate experience is shared to the extent it accommodates the image we want to divulge to others and/or in order to treat others tactfully. The new technology developed by Microsoft is different from previous cultural artifacts for communication because it will record and sense, for the first time, our movement in real space and real time. Being so close to our bodily and daily experience, the records will be able to serve, not only as a helper, but as a substitute to an important part of our episodic and narrative memory. Even if we keep constructing our own experience on the basis of our internal memory, we may have to face this 'external' experience and reflect on the whole thing differently. So for the first time, the external factors participating in the genesis of our autobiographical memory are qualitatively different since they are closer to our experience, more integrated into the body than anything else before - i.e. sensors for movement- and more integrated into our mind- since they stop us from forgetting.

The technology has tremendous clinical applications for the care of Alzheimer's patients and it was partly developed for this purpose. A pilot study suggests that a recording of the events of one day, viewed at the end of the day, seems to calm the high levels of anxiety felt by these patients.

But used in everyday life by people with a normal memory, the technology may become a substitute to our episodic memory, a mirror of our Self. A Self upon which we will not have absolute control since it must conform to the capacities of the machine, the format of the computer programs being implemented to store our life, open to the scrutiny of other persons and, in itself, a legal issue which will not die with the death of its original owner. If applied widely outside clinical settings, this tool may change the way we organize our memories, the way we view ourselves, the way we construct our narratives and ultimately, our intersubjectivity. For we may start to rely, in the process of social identification and communication, not on our inner projected Self but on a Self that exists already out there. Although this external Self is not or will not be always and/or integrally public, because it exists already outside us, may change the construction of our inner narratives for purpose of social communication.

Didn't the age of the image media took over the discourse and the argumentation ? Even though this new technology offers an image of the Self that is as faithful as possible to the original, the difference between the original and the duplicate could arise over a long term period. The internal narrative can always be 'corrected', rearranged and the drafts thrown into oblivion while in a recorded narrative oblivion is impossible. We may have then to confront our own contradictions and lose ourselves into them. On the other side, the recorded Self will not be able to retain events situated within a very short time period and inaccessible to consciousness, the time of brain mechanisms, the inner deliberations behind every action, decision or judgment; the language of thought. These processes are being investigated by brain imaging techniques.

However, while both our inner Self and our social Self are the subject of scientific monitoring and inquiry, what will be left unaccounted for, in our autobiographical memory, are the identification processes by which we came to define ourselves as moral agents in our inner narratives. Because this is not an assumption, an a priori and a constitutive part of the narrative, neither a given proposition imposed upon us, as a whole, from the outside. It is rather constructed by the continual dialogue between our inner narratives and our projected, external Self. But this external Self is becoming, with the new technology, less and less projected and more and more constructed by outside factors which escape our subjectivity and our ownership.

2005-12-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

Telling Truth from Lie with FMRI...

Cerveau, Mensonge et vérité

Dans le dernier numéro du Monde Diplomatique (décembre 2005), mensuel français, Olivier Oullier, maître de conférences à l'université de Provence et chercheur à la Florida Atlantic University, fait le point sur la dernière application en vogue de l’imagerie cérébrale avec la Résonance Magnétique Fonctionnelle (FMRI); détecter les mensonges dans un cadre d'interrogation de suspects d'actes de terrorrisme.

Les chercheurs de l'école de médecine de l'université de Pennsylvanie (Langleben et al., 2005, Human Brain Mapping, 26:262–272) expliquent à la revue Nature (Vol 437, 22 September 2005) que le test qu'ils ont développé, avec le soutien financier de la section Defense Advanced projects de l'armée américaine, montre qu'il y a une activation dans le cortex frontal lorsque les sujets mentent. Ils estiment que leur test, demander au sujet de mentir ou de dire la vérité sur la possession d’une carte à jouer spécifique, n'est pas prédictif, qu'ils ne pourront pas dire si un sujet sera un terroriste ou plantera des bombes mais qu'il permet de dire si le sujet ment ou dit la vérité sur une question qui lui est demandée sous la forme d'une proposition : ‘avez-vous participé à des activités X ou Y ?’ …’Etes-vous l’individu A ou B ?’…D'autres chercheurs ont même trouvé des différences structurales dans le lobe frontal entre les menteurs pathologiques et les personnes normales (Yang et al., 2005, British Journal of Psychiatry , 18 7, 3 20- 3 2 5).

Malgré un générique négatif accrocheur : 'Neurosicences sans conscience', Olivier Oullier prend la défense de la discipline face aux abus dans ses applications. En effet, l'ensemble de ce champ semble avoir soulevé un espoir fou dans ses applications commerciales et sociales alors que ses effets immédiats sont plutôt attendus du côté de l'amélioration du diagnostic et de la prise en charge dans le domaine de la santé.

M. Oullier pointe sur plusieurs faits qui font que l’utilisation de l’imagerie cérébrale dans la lutte contre le terrorisme est irréaliste et non seulement non éthique.

1) Le fait que le sujet doit être immobile dans le scanner pour assurer la fiabilité des résultats, or si un sujet veut mentir, il n’a qu’à bouger la tête.

2) Le fait qu’il existe deux manières distinctes d’analyser les résultats d’une étude comme celle-là : la plus répandue étant la méthode par soustraction où l’on soustrait la moyenne d’activité dans les cerveaux du groupe qui ment de celle du groupe qui dit la vérité. Cette méthode fait cependant l’impasse sur le fonctionnement du cerveau par réseau neuronal distribué, réseau qui peut impliquer d’autres structures et qui ne peut être capté par la méthode de soustraction mais par des modélisations. La conclusion est que lorsqu’on met en évidence des différences d’activation par soustraction, nous n’avons pas toute l’information sur ce qui se passe dans le cerveau mais seulement une partie. Or peut-on condamner et juger des êtres humains sur la base de méthodes scientifiques d’analyse non fiables à 100% ?

3) Le lobe frontal est activé, non seulement pour des actes volontaires, comme le mensonge, mais aussi dans des tâches de mémoire, de décision et de sélection. Or, il suffit que le sujet, placé dans des conditions d’interrogation plus complexes, ne soit pas sûr de la réponse à donner, cela suffirait pour activer le cortex frontal et conclure au mensonge. Nous avons vu que dans des conditions complexes (je cite ici le cas de la tragédie d’Outreau en France où plusieurs personnes innocentes ont dû faire face à des accusations de pédophilie, voir aussi pascale robert Diard, le fils Legrand a expliqué pourquoi il s'est accusé du pire, Le Monde, édition web, 24-11-05), certains sujets vont même jusqu’à s’accuser volontairement de crimes qu’ils n’ont pas commis.

Ce qui compte dans les faits à propos de nous-même ce sont les croyances que nous pouvons avoir sur nous-mêmes. Si un sujet, perçu comme terroriste, ne se croit pas terroriste, un test du genre de celui qui est proposé sera fondamentalement biaisé.

4) Le fait que la compréhension du fonctionnement du cerveau est aisée est une illusion créée par les media et par nos attentes démesurées vis-à-vis de cette entreprise scientifique.

Depuis 2001, rapporte Olivier Oullier, une quinzaine d’articles véhiculant des concepts similaires ont été publiés dans des revues scientifiques internationales bien réputées. Les attentes démesurées vis-à-vis de l’utilisation des techniques d’imagerie dans le domaine social sont nombreuses et suscitent une véritable frénésie médiatique et commerciale qui prend des dimensions gigantestques aux Etats-Unis où les entreprises privées en imagerie cérébrale se multiplient offrant aux individus et au monde corporatif toutes sortes de services. Le plus en vogue est le neuromarketing où des entreprises de marketing proposent de détecter les préférences des consommateurs en analysant l'activité du cerveau de quelques sujets face aux produits de consommation. A tel point que le NIH (National Institutes of Health) a décidé de financer des projets de recherche destinés à l’élaboration d’une réglementation stricte sur ce qui est considéré comme fiable et acceptable dans le domaine de l’imagerie cérébrale.

De plus, il n'est pas étonnant de trouver des différences structurales dans les régions frontales car étant les régions du cerveau les plus récentes évolutivement, elles montrent plus de différences interindividuelles que les autres régions. l'étude structurale repose sur uniquement 12 sujets pathologiques et même si la différence entre eux et le groupe contrôle est de près de 20%, elle nécessite une comparaison avec une étude standardisante de ces régions cérébrales se basant sur une large population. L'hippocampe, par exemple, structure évolutivement plus ancienne que les régions frontales du cortex, montre une variation interindividuelle de l'ordre de 10 % dans une population normale. Or des études de neuroimagerie sur de larges populations servant à établir des standards pour de meilleures comparaisons avec des groupes pathologiques, manquent encore, limitées par des impératifs éthiques, techniques et financiers.

Il est plus que temps de ramener la neuroimagerie à son destin initial et principal: l’amélioration des soins de santé dans les approches diagnostiques, chirurgicales et traitantes car c’est là que cette technique a démontré sa fiabilité et son potentiel, le domaine physique et biologique de l’individu et non le domaine de ses croyances. Cela ne veut pas dire que la neuroimagerie ne peut explorer le domaine des croyances mais, contrairement au domaine médical où il existe une validation permanente de la neuroimagerie par les niveaux d’organisation biologiques, celui des croyances ne peut être validé en dehors des neuroscicences fondamentales. Or jusqu’à maintenant, malgré les progrès fulgurants des neurosciences fondamentales de ces vingt dernières années, on peine toujours à trouver des méthodes de validation de leurs applications à l’activité humaine mentale normale et pathologique se situant à un haut niveau d'intégration comme en psychiatrie par exemple. Cela n’a rien d’étonnant, nos connaissances sur le cerveau sont plus avancées pour certains niveaux d’organisation qui sont fondamentaux que pour d’autres qui sont globaux. Il nous suffirait d’attendre une décennie ou deux pour affiner encore un peu plus nos techniques d’imagerie cérébrale, qui sont multiples, les insérer dans une certaine complémentarité et les valider avec les autres niveaux biologiques du cerveau et du corps.

Vu la complexité de l’objet d’étude, le mental, les neuroscientifiques et les chercheurs intéressés par la santé mentale ne pourront se passer, cette fois-ci, de l’aide précieuse que pourront apporter les modélisations mathématiques, non seulement dans les paradigmes d’expérimentation et d’analyse, comme cela se fait maintenant, mais aussi dans les paradigmes d’intégration des connaissances provenant de niveaux d’organisation différents du cerveau et de l’organisme et des paradigmes explicatifs du phénomène mental se situant à un haut niveau d'intégration comme les croyances que nous avons sur nous-même face à la vérité et au mensonge et face à des propositions sur nos appartenances.

2005-11-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

Torture and the Sciences: The perversion of the scientific enterprise.

''The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo?''

The New Yorker's reporter Jane Mayer wrote in the july 11th 2005 issue about experiments being conducted by psychologists and psychiatrists on prisoners at the american prison in Guantanamo bay, Cuba. A link to this article appears in one of her recent reports on the death of a prisoner at the hands of the CIA in the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prison (November 14th, 2005, issue).

Torture with the intimate knowledge.
The question asked by the reporter is: Are the methods, applied in the training of the military to withstand torture, being misused at Guantánamo ? The question derives from the fact that specific complaints about the treatment received by Guantanamo prisoners at the hand of their interrogators seem to coincide with methods used by the American military in an ensemble of training techniques grouped as a special program known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape). These methods, developed at the end of the korean war, are used to increase the ability of military personnel, sent on sensitive missions, to resist to extreme physical and psychological conditions. They were accompanied by research charting levels of cortisol in blood and saliva as measures of anxiety and stress. The same methods are being used now in Guantanamo with a different intent; to break the physical and psychological integrity of the prisoners hoping it will contribute to extract information. The methods are being performed by the same people who were specially trained for them, and had to withstand them in different conditions, with the intimate knowledge of the personal experience on their effects, and without the safeguards inherent to the training program. This amounts actually to plain torture.

Torture with the scientific knowledge.
This fact, which the US administration is trying to hide, is highly disturbing. However, most disturbing is that torture sessions performed by former trainees of SERE - and actual interrogators - are conducted with the help of psychologists and psychiatrists in what is known as the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs). These teams assist the interrogators, not to provide safeguards, but to actualize and optimize the technique, adapting it to the special context related to the cultural and religious specifics of the prisoners in Guantanamo.

''The research, which began during the Cold War, developed new currency after September 11th, when the Bush Administration declared a global war on terror and began trying to extract intelligence from radical Islamists, many of whom have been trained not to reveal anything about their activities. Since 2001, the critics say, medical and scientific personnel have played a role, largely hidden, in helping to design and monitor interrogations that are intended to exploit the physical and mental vulnerabilities of detainees. According to a former interrogator at Guantánamo who was interviewed at length by a lawyer, behavioral scientists control the most minute details of interrogations, to the point of decreeing, in the case of one detainee, that he would be given seven squares of toilet paper per day.''

The intimate knowledge, the interrogators engage in performing torture with the SERE methods, is a knowledge which seems to induce in some interrogators real satisfaction, if not relief of being this time on the other side of the interrogation compared to when they received their training, and derived from the feeling of being in a powerful position - something that was aknowledged at the stage of training when they had to assume such a role on their colleagues. But there is a scientific knowledge at work here. This knowledge does not derive from personnal experience, it is institutional, systematic and even more destructive to prisoners because it does not rely on common knowledge of human relationships but on independant knowledge about the inner working of their body and their mind, accessible only to scientists.

Torutre and killing as experimentations for the purpose of knowing more in order to do more harm, in order to know more.

''In past wars, the U.S. military has used health-care consultants for therapeutic purposes, to evaluate the combat readiness of soldiers with psychological or physiological problems, and to provide soldiers with counselling and psychotropic drugs. But Major General Geoffrey D. Miller—who commanded the Guantánamo Bay detention center between November, 2002, and March, 2004, and who was then sent by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to manage Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq—established a new role for health-care advisers. “These teams, comprised of operational behavioral psychologists and psychiatrists, are essential in developing integrated interrogation strategies and assessing interrogation intelligence production,” Miller explained in an internal report in September, 2003.''

Where safeguards may have played a role in discarding some experiments that could have been done on trainees in the SERE program, there is no such a thing in Guantanamo. On the contrary, previous scientific knowledge extracted from the SERE training on american army personnel is being used in its full extent and developped during interrogations on Guantanamo prisoners in what may be called in vivo experiments on the real thing. This leaves out the possibility that the interrogators are merely using their intimate knowledge of torture derived from the training provided by the SERE program. They are being guided and helped by behavioral scientists participating in the interrogations. We are left with the only possibility for the role of Science in this story: An active and systematic role in torture. What I mean by active is that scientific knowledge is applied here in order, not only to manage the risks of torture, notably death, but to extract information about the working of the body and the mind. This may seem secondary to the first objective of interrogations, extracting intelligence from detainees, but the monitoring and the use of feedback by a scientific team is part of the scientific methodology of experimentations. Scientists helping torturers are collecting data in these circumstances. Whether they are going to publish them is not an issue, they are using them to perfect the methods of torture. The scientific team is not using a preestablished protocol based on a certain conception of humanity, dignity and so on..., it is changing its interrogation techniques, according to context, culture and beliefs of the tortured. This is an interactive scientific program that is being perfected by learning from actual torture. It s following exactly the scientific method of investigation: a hypothesis put to test is revised and refined from feedback resulting from experimental manipulation. This amounts to knowledge about brain and mind, extracted by torture. What we have here is a deliberate and systematic approach using science not only as a independant knowledge used to harm and not to kill, but as a methodology applied in an experimental setting relying on torture where harm is done at every step from the initial knowledge (initial conditions) to the confirmation/refutation approach used to produce the intelligence and back again to the newly produced knowledge modifying the initial conditions on how to Torture with the desired outcome.

Guantanamo Brain/Mind experimentations: A further step in the perversion of Science.

What the BSCTs are doing in Guantanamo goes a little bit further than other unethical use of scientific experimentation in history. The history of research ethics on Humans is relatively recent. It started at the dawn of the twentieth century with the introduction by the US congress of laws regulating the manufacturing and the use of vaccines and continued with regulations introduced each time something goes wrong in scientific research; the Nuremberg code with a ten point statement restricting the use of Humans in scientific experimentation, the regulations prompted by the effects of Thalidomide on developmental abnormalities in babies, the Helsinki declaration by the world medical association and, more recently, the Belmont Report, at the end of the seventies, adding more regulations in the US on the use of Humans in research after it was shown that african american men treated for Syphillis with Arsenic in a research project were refused alternative medecine (penicilline) when it became available and more importantly were kept ignorant about the less harmful treatment. These recent and past events of the history of research on Humans not only showed the ugly entanglement between scientific experimentations and crimes against humanity but helped us, scientists, lawmakers and ethicists, take action against the abuse of human dignity and integrity to shape the modern ethics of scientific research.

Guantanamo's psychological and behavioural experimentations with Torture on detainees are a step further in the abuse of Humans in scientific experimentations because: 1) they evolve with experimentation on torture, they are dependant a posteriori on results obtained in an unethical setting, 2) they are production oriented.
The Bush administration have set the conditions and the means, including an extraterritorial facility and scientific teams, for producing intelligence on the basis of Torture. “These teams, comprised of operational behavioral psychologists and psychiatrists, are essential in developing integrated interrogation strategies and assessing interrogation intelligence production,” Miller explained in an internal report in September, 2003. Note that, in this statement, general Miller is preoccupied with the production and not the quality of intelligence.

Scientific research cannot ignore what happens beyond its official limits. Regulations in scientific research on Humans were introduced after abuses were done, most of the time, outside mainstream and academic Science. However, every new perversion of the scientific enterprise challenges the current and existant rules in scientific research ethics. And this new one is at the heart of science and has advocates at very high levels in the US government. At this point, I am still surprised that, aside doctors and lawyers working for humanitarian organizations, there are no Brain/Mind scientists publicly condemning such a dramatic perversion of their Science.

2005-11-02T14:55:00.000-05:00

Psychiatry and Neuroimaging: great expectations but little patience.

While proponents of Neuromarketing are planning to uncover the mysteries of the consumer's mind with Neuroimaging techniques (Time magazine Oct. 24, 2005, Getting inside your head), Psychiatrists (New York Times, Oct. 18, 2005, Can brain scans see depression ?) are complaining that the techniques, as of the year 2005, did not live up to their promises or, more exactly, to their expectations.

Why these two fallouts are contradictory in terms of the application of Neuroimaging ? Since Neuromarketing is not under the constraints of the classical explanation - prediction - modelisation and, in the end, the curative therapy application, it does not have to bridge the gap between reality and expectations. It is the same with the science of Economics, it can make predictions and design interventions based on expectations but it does not have to meet reality in its implications.

Lets then examine the gap between reality and expectations in Psychiatry and Neuroimaging.
A New York Times article (Oct. 18, 2005, Can brain scans see depression ?) voices the frustration of some psychiatrists:

After almost 30 years, researchers have not developed any standardized tool for diagnosing or treating psychiatric disorders based on imaging studies.

That's a hasty judgment pulling toghether more than three different approaches to brain imaging; ElectroEncephaloGraphy and Event Related Potentials - EEG and ERP, Positron Emission Tomography- PET (which the article mistakingly calls Positron Emission Topography) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging - MRI, both anatomical and functional. These approaches were historically introduced in brain research and clinical research in the order shown above with the last being the more recent and only some 10 years in the work. Note that while the first approach is completely non invasive, the second requires the injection of radioactive material in order to visualise brain activity and the last, while non invasive, is applied with some restrictions. Moreover, there are restrictions - common to all three approaches - inherent to research on humans. They are related to the fact that researchers must make sure that the criteria for their studies are normative before applying them in clinical settings and to pathological conditions.

Setting the norms

The number factor: Research methodology requires large populations with matching and homogenous criteria, so research on humans is very limited because of the difficulty in recruitment.

The time factor: Time is another limiting factor in research on humans specially when it comes to the Mind sciences. Most mental illnesses developp over a long period of time. Some of them start in childhood and result in overt symptoms only during adolescence or adulthood. To study the final phenotype of an illness is to study the complex results of many subphenotypes changing over time under the influence of the environment. In some cases like ADHD, there is an effort from granting agencies to finance longitudunal studies but most of the time, it is not the case in research where projects are financed for 3 to 5 years at best.

The method factor: The oldest in Neuroimaging techniques performed in specific behavioral contexts or cognitive events is The Event Related potentials approach. It is more than 30 years old. But research in this area stayed focused for a long time on normal events in behavior and cognition. The PET technique stood alone in its applications because of its mild invasiveness; no pressure and no unrealistic expectations accompanied the emergence of the technique in clinical settings. Nothing of the sort was allowed for MRI techniques. Because of the non-invasiveness of these techniques and the good and precise observation they offer of the anantomy of the brain, they created instantly great expectations about their potential fallout and they were immediately used in clinical research on mental illnesses. However widely these techniques are used now, they still lack normative studies - studies on normal populations and their common features. The normative studies are made complex by interindividual differences in brain anatomy and functioning which can be evaluated sometimes at more than 10% for features like hippocampal volume. Despite all this, I am confident that, with more time, Neuroimaging techniques will be able to achieve normative studies that can be applied to diagnostic and treatment of mental illnesses . EEG and ERP techniques were able to achieve this goal and are increasingly used now to study, predict or diagnose mental illnesses including those who are difficult to predict like Alzheimer (New York Times, Oct. 25, 2005, Predicting Alzheimer's is more wish than reality).

However, when the methodological limitations of Neuroimaging techniques will be overcome there are still some important things to fix in order to fill the gap between Neuroimaging applications in Psychiatry and their related expectations among practitioners. The most important of them is what I may call the explanatory and interpretation gap.

Filling the explanatory gap

What to make of brain scans, images of brain slices and images of brain activity ? An important thing to understand is that these images don't stand alone in the explanation, they need and interpretational framework. The framework is that of the brain with its many levels of organisation and of the biological system in which the brain is embedded. This system is made of the body, its environment and the ever changing interactions which continually affect the system. The whole thing contribute to an external and observable phenotype that is related to many subphenotypes at all the organisational levels of the brain and the organims. It is true that it is difficult to study complexity and change, two features of livings which that are closely related. However, in the life of an organism, there are biologically defining moments and biologically defining interactions between the organism and its environment that contribute to the final complexity of the phenotype. Longitudinal studies are made to track these defining moments and to systematise them and translate them into norms, despite interindividual differences. The biologically defining moments can be located at different levels of the phenotype. Neuroimaging shows only some levels of the phenotype but not all of them, namely, the level of the structure and of the network. No wonder Dr. Mayberg's studies of depression with PET and their fallouts were so successful (New York Times, Oct. 18, 2005, Can brain scans see depression ?), it is because they referred to an interpretational framework that goes beyond the single structure to reach the network. Although Dr. Mayberg's studies still lack placebo groups, there is a strong indication that the interpretation and its subsequent application is powerful since the patients report immediate change in their mood as soon as the electrical device slowing Brodmann area 25 - whose overactivation is at the center of a network involved in depression - is implanted and working in the brain.

In order to extract a reliable, normative, predictive and applicable interpretation of Neuroimaging techniques, researchers still have to connect the network to the behaviour of its cellular, chemical and molecular components and, beyond, to the physiology of the whole organism in its interactions with its environment.

Non invasive Neuroimaging techniques still have a long way to go in their own development and, at the conceptual level, we still have a long way to go in the Mind Sciences in order to connect the many dots and the many levels of organisation sustaining a behaviour or a specific brain structure and activity.

My advice to psychiatrists: please be understanding and, more importantly, be patient !

2005-10-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

Le cerveau dans les nouvelles: peu d'information et beaucoup de sensationnalisme.

J'ai récemment lu deux articles, un dans le journal français Le Monde daté du 22 octobre 2005 faisant état d'une exposition interactive sur le cerveau au musée de l'homme à Paris et un autre dans le magazine Time daté du 24 octobre 2005 faisant état des avancées de la Neuroimagerie ou de l'imagerie du cerveau dans divers domaines comprenant la psychiatrie, l'éthique, le marketing et l'économie.

Bien que les deux articles aient des objets et des buts différents, ils ont comme point commun de mal informer. L'article français le fait par manque d'informations et l'article anglais, par sensationnalisme.

Etant une abonnée de longue date et une lectrice assidue du Monde, je n'ai cependant jamais pu apprécier leurs articles scientifiques - tous journalistes confondus - car ils me laissent toujours perplexe ou sur ma faim. A tel point que je me suis souvent demandée s'il n'y a pas une crise du journalisme scientifique en France. Le lecteur sort des articles scientifiques publiés dans Le Monde avec, souvent, une impression de vide sémantique. Sans information et sans messaage cohérent, s'agissant, dans le cas sus-mentionné, d'une exposition sur le cerveau, la lecture de l'article ne donne pas vraiment envie d'aller la voir. Sans effort et sans réflexion, l'article paraît découler d'une lecture rapide du catalogue de l'exposition et avoir omis quelques pages de cette lecture. L'auteur mentionne le crâne de Gall et le cerveau de Leborgne de Paul Broca et effectue un saut historique, conceptuel et méthodologique de 100 années de recherches sur le cerveau pour atterrir dans les neurosciences modernes, l'imagerie cérébrale, la mort neuronale et la plasticité des connexions neuronales - fruit des recherches des 20 dernières années - en nous les présentant sous forme de liste d'épicerie dans le dernier paragraphe.

Quant à l'article de Time, intitulé Getting inside your head, il nous promet monts et merveilles des nouvelles méthodes de visualisation du cerveau et de l'activité cérébrale connues sous le nom de Neuroimagerie. Il nous dit, sans aucune perspective critique, que la Neuroimagerie est en train d'envahir tous les aspects de notre vie, clinique, éthique, économique et commercial et qu'elle sera un outil puissant pour comprendre les motivations humaines. Ces assertions sont ironiques car moins d'une semaine auparavant, le New York Times faisait état des frustrations des psychiatres face aux promesses des techniques de visualisation de l'activité cérébrale dans le traitement des patients en psychiatrie (Can brain scans see depression ? édition du 18 octobre). En effet, l'article de Time désinforme par son sensationnalisme car la réalité actuelle de la Neuroimagerie est toute différente. Cette technique s'est révélée très utile en Neurologie. On ne peut aujourd'hui intervenir chirurgicalement dans le cerveau avec l'objectif d'un minimum de dommages sans avoir recours à la Neuroimagerie. Aussi, cette technique très nouvelle dont le plein potentiel reste encore à explorer est en cours de développement et d'amélioration, il est vrai qu'elle suscite, avec d'autres approches neurobiologiques de la cognition et du comportement, comme l'utilisation grandissante des psychotropes dans des buts non seulement thérapeutiques, des questions éthiques intéressantes qu'on regroupe sous le terme de Neuroéthique.
Comme les promesses de la Neuroimagerie en psychiatrie constituent un vaste sujet, elles feront l'objet d'un prochain commentaire. En attendant, vous pouvez lire mon commentaire au sujet du Neuromarketing sur ce même blog.

2005-10-18T15:36:00.001-04:00

The Flores people debate: A 'breakthrough' story and a cautionary tale.

In 2004, a team of australian and indonesian scientists reported on their discovery of the remains of a skull and a jaw of a small size hominid which lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, some 18000 years ago (P. Brown et al., 2004. A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature, 431, 1055-1061). With the skeleton remains, they found advanced stone tools usually used by early modern humans. Their discovery was followed in April 2004 by a publication featuring an endocast of the skull (D. Falk et al. 2005. The Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis. Science, 308(5719):242-245). The endocast shows a surprisingly small brain of 417 cc compared to that of a modern human brain which averages 1450 cc. The co-existence of a small size individual (projected size about one meter) with advanced tools usually used by hominids having big brains led the scientists to postulate a new species, Homo floresiensis or 'hobbitt' and to present their discovery as a breakthrough in the study of human origins. Despite many skeptical voices raising the possibility that the new species might as well be deriving from a pathological condition known as microcephaly, the researchers persevered and published recently more findings with more remains which, they say, come from 9 small size individuals including another jawbone similar to the original but which is 3000 years more recent than the original.

Still, this didn't quell the skeptics who challenge the methodology and contend that not only evidence for Microcephaly was not completely adressed and eliminated but also the evidence for a new species still shaky and that the authors are not sure about the ancestor species (E. Culotta, 2005. Human origins. Battle erupts over the 'hobbit' bones, Science, 307(5713):1179 AND, Paleoanthropology: New 'Hobbits' Bolster Species, But Origins Still a Mystery, Science, 310(5746):208a-9a. ALSO, J.Weber et al. 2005. Comment on ‘‘The Brain of LB1,Homo floresiensis’’, Science, 310: 236b.)
Some critics say that small size individuals with a small brain could not have invented nor even used tools measuring about 12 cm and that the existence of the tools in the cave could be explained by soil movements and accidents. Some other critics maintain that individuals with microcephaly have brains which average the size of the Flores endocast and that these individuals are deeply handicapped, they cannot even walk and they are mentally retarded, lets not talk about using advanced tools.

Most of the arguments displayed in the controversy did not go into the details of two major implications of the new species theory, one epistemological and one moral.
The new species theory challenges some deep rooted aspects of the current explanation of human origins; namely the fact that the actual human species is the sole outcome of hominid evolution and that this evolution was accompanied by a rapid increase in brain size as considered relatively to the size of the body. Although scientists recognize that there is no direct evolutionary advantage to the increase in the size of the brain, they insist on the fact that the increase in brain size during hominid evolution seems to hold the key for increased variations in the potential displayed by an individual in his interactions with its environment leading to inventions of new expertises and tools. Since the proponents of the new species theory wrote that floresiensis might have descended from erectus than shifted the descent hypothesis to australopithecus, we are entitled to ask with the most vocal critic of the new species theory, prof. T. Jacob: As both ancestors had bigger brains, could evolution be reversible ?

This figure, taken from the Prehistoric Cultures web page of the University of Minnesota Duluth, shows the probable (or improbable) descent of Homo floresiensis.

The new species theory tells us that the Flores people lived some 12000 years ago, this is like yesterday in evolutionary history. If we, sapiens, were to live with the Flores people, how could we have looked at them ? Could we have looked at them as our equals in humanity or as a different species ? Knowing human nature, my bet is that our perceptions, being very normative, we would have discriminated heavily against these people, even if they were our equals in intelligence and technology, which I really doubt. But equality in intelligence and technology are not criteria for equality in rights, very often, in everyday life, immediate perceptions override such criteria.

The new species theory challenges our uniqueness as humans. Suddenly, we are forced to think that we are not the only living human creatures who possess intelligence and expertise. But we are uncertain about this fact. For the new species theory to become more plausible, more evidence is needed. The beauty of science is that it is at the same time creative and conservative. To overthrow a whole edifice, the edifice of human uniqueness and its particularities, the edifice of many sciences, we need more than few skeletons, two jawbones and some tools found in an indonesian cave.

In reviewing the press releases and the scientific articles in specialised journals, it appeared to me that the scientific journal which initially published the story is less cautious than the mainstream media covering the story. Actually, many reportings of the Flores people story were restrained and well informed, the best being that of John Noble Wilford of the new York Times (oct.12th, 2005).

My guess is that mainstream media, being aware of the potential and controverisal use of the Flores story by creationnists and anti-creationnists, were careful to report accurately and in a more balanced way about it while its coverage by Nature, a scientific journal, was, in my opinion, flately enthusiastic and one-sided. Indeed, most papers critical of the new species theory were published in the journal Science. Read here for the fun about the strange coincidence of the publishing of the Nature article and of the critical articles in the journal Science.
But this is not the first time Nature goes to such extremes in order to stay ahead in breaking big science stories and this is not the first time Anthropology, a science in search of a renewal and a new breath, delves into controversy.

2005-10-07T14:09:00.000-04:00

La psychiatrie française et francophone entre l’héritage psychanalytique et la nouvelle biologie de la conscience et des comportements.

Le débat ayant actuellement cours entre d’un côté, la majorité des praticiens de la psychiatrie en France et une partie des psychiatres francophones au Québec et d’un autre côté, les tenants d’une approche scientifique de la psychiatrie, est en train de se transformer en un affrontement publique ouvert. Les opinions sont surtout radicalisées en France. Les lecteurs du journal Le Monde inondent chacun des articles de commentaires extrêmement négatifs pour la psychiatrie biologique. Cet affrontement oppose deux visions du fait mental et de ses pathologies, différentes par beaucoup d’aspects; conceptuels, méthodologiques, sociaux et professionnels. En une année, de septembre 2004 à octobre 2005, au moins une vingtaine d’articles faisant état de cet affrontement sont publiés dans le seul journal français Le Monde (Lire notamment :Querelle publique autour de l'identité de la psychiatrie,22.06.05). En 2005 aussi, un numéro spécial de Santé mentale au Québec ouvre ses pages à ce débat sous le titre :Où va la psychiatrie ?

L’affrontement devient publique lorsque l’INSERM (institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale en France) rend publique un rapport au ministère de la santé évaluant les différentes prises en charge thérapeutiques en psychiatrie. Ce rapport, demandé par le ministère dans le cadre d’un plan visant à donner un cadre réglementaire aux différentes approches psychothérapeutiques, reconnaît la supériorité, en terme d’efficacité, de la thérapie cognitivo-comportementale (TCC) sur deux autres thérapies dont la psychanalyse. La fureur des psychanalystes est sans pareil à tel point que le chef de file de l’école de la cause freudienne (école lacanienne), Jacques-Alain Miller, gendre de Jacques Lacan, obtient du ministre de la santé le retrait du rapport du site du ministère, un an après sa publication. Des psychiatres, réunis dans un collège de psychiatrie, rejoignent le mouvement de protestation des psychanalystes. Ils refusent les approches TCC basées sur des données scientifiques qui considèrent les pathologies mentales comme des troubles originant de certaines composantes du comportement qui ont des bases biologiques et prônent une approche holiste des pathologies mentales basée sur la notion de Sujet et sur l’observation clinique du Sujet dans sa totalité (Le Monde, Querelle publique autour de l'identité de la psychiatrie, 22.06.05).

Dès octobre 2004, des psychiatres et des psychanalystes accusent le rapport de l’INSERM de biais méthodologiques. Le point central de ces biais serait lié au fait que les TCC sont facilement évaluables car elles ciblent des symptômes discrets et circonscrits alors que les thérapies psychodynamiques ou psychanalytiques ne le sont pas car elles se donnent pour but de soigner la souffrance ou le mal-être du Sujet dans sa totalité. Comme la science est incapable d’aborder le sujet dans sa totalité, certains psychanalystes québécois, Appollon, Bergeron et Cantin somment leurs collègues de 'choisir entre la science et la clinique'. Ils n'hésitent pas à mettre en doute l’éthique de l'approche scientifique en prétextant qu'elle ne s’intéresse pas au Sujet.

La médecine s’est toujours placée aux confluences des sciences biologiques et humaines et le fait mental n’est pas une exception. Le fait de traiter une appendicite avec une chirurgie ne constitue, à mes yeux, aucune négation du Sujet ni de sa souffrance, bien au contraire. Tout comme le fait de considérer une pathologie mentale comme la manifestation d’un désordre partiel et de le traiter comme la manifestation d’un dysfonctionnement partiel lié à une composante biologique déterminée, ne constitue aucunement une négation du Sujet et de sa souffrance qui est une manifestation globale du désordre.

Pour donner un exemple, il n’y a rien de plus holiste que la douleur physique et pourtant les chercheurs ont pu isoler dans la douleur deux composantes, une sensitive, purement physique et quantifiable et une émotive plus subjective. Il existe de plus des structures et des mécanismes dans le système nerveux central qui assurent les interactions entre ces deux dimensions, objective et subjective de la douleur. Ceci montre que même la complexité de la douleur peut être circonscrite au seul niveau biologique. Y-a-t-il là une négation de la personne ou du Sujet ? Non.

Les approches scientifiques offrent une meilleure compréhension qui nous oblige à une révision de nos connaissances, à une reclassification et une recatégorisation des phénomènes observés. Ce sont potentiellement des approches sans limites. Ironiquement, les psychanalystes considèrent que les approches scientifiques de la psychiatrie sont limitées car elles n’offrent pas une compréhension du Sujet dans sa totalité. Les approches scientifiques ne sont pas limitées, elles sont partielles. Potentiellement, elles sont limitées par le temps car nos caonnaissances changent dans le temps. On ne peut formuler une théorie du tout, surtout d’un tout complexe, en peu de temps. On est contraint par les faits et par la somme de connaissances disponibles à un moment donné.

En ce qui concerne les bases biologiques des phénomènes mentaux, les vingt dernières années ont été fructueuses. Certains phénomènes comme la mémoire, ayant subi une réduction poussée, ont suscité tellement de recherches que celles-ci peuvent aujourd’hui prétendre à contribuer à une théorie systémique de la mémoire (Squire and kandel, Memory, from mind to molecules, 1998, Sci. Am. library).

J’aimerais faire ici la différence entre holisme et systémisme. Le holisme considère le phénomène dans sa totalité mais dans son apparence; il reste essentiellement herméneutique et superficiel. Par contre, le systémisme considère le phénomène à la fois dans ses parties et dans son ensemble. Il base son jugement de l’ensemble sur des éléments de réalité et non de perception. Donc, il n'est pas vrai qu'il n'y a pas dans la psychiatrie biologique une idée du Sujet dans sa totalité. Cette idée existe et est défendue par beaucoup de théoriciens de la biologie de la conscience dont Antonio Damasio mais elle est différente de celle qui nous est léguée par la psychanalyse et l'herméneutique.

Les psychiatres français et francophones ne semblent pas avoir assimilé les transformations profondes que les théories biologiques de la conscience apportent à la notion même de Sujet. De plus, leur apprentissage et leur formation clinique reposent encore sur un malentendu né d'une confrontation entre des pratiques d'observation clinique ayant comme fond théorique la psychanalyse et des pratiques de traitement et de prescription ayant recours aux médicaments pour soulager certains symptômes. Le fait que l'approche psychodynamique ait utilisé les médicaments sans leur accorder de statut explicatif dans la manifestation de la maladie explique en partie pourquoi la médicalisation de la psychiatrie est mal perçue. En effet, le médicament n'y constitue qu'une simple amélioration des méthodes barbares qui ont caractérisé les premiers temps de la psychiatrie biologique.

La compréhension de la dimension biologique du phénomène mental se complique encore pour les psychanalystes par le fait que la classification des troubles mentaux présentée dans le DSM se proclame athéorique et statistique. Sans analyse plus approfondie, ils en concluent à une approche normative ignorant la spécificité du Sujet. En fait, l'approche DSM se fonde sur la validité statistique des associations de comportements observables reconnus commes source de souffrance pour le sujet dans une même entité clinique et sur le caractère reconnaissable et distinct des ces entités cliniques. Elle ne fait qu'exceptionnellement référence au normal, en se focalisant sur la classification des symtômes psychiatriques en troubles de pathologie mentale bien définis. Mais si la classification des troubles mentaux se veut uniquement statistique, sans théorie sous-jacente, il est évident que les approches explicatives et que les traitements qui découlent d'une telle démarche diagnostique s'inspirent quant à elles de multiples courants théoriques provenant des sciences biologiques, psychologiques, sociales et humaines. Le fait même que la définition des entités cliniques n'est pas le résultat d'une approche théorique permet d'aborder dans un deuxième temps l'étude de ces entités cliniques dans différents cadres théoriques, chacun apportant à la fois une explication biologique et réductioniste du trouble et des propositions thérapeutiques. Ces hypothèses sont testables et la finalité de l'approche initialement athéorique du DSM est bien de pouvoir présenter dans un temps ultérieur une classification des maladies psychiatriques basées sur des théories étiologiques et thérapeutiques, mais surtout sur des preuves fournies par les sciences biologiques et les sciences de l'homme. Un exemple de cette évolution se retrouve dans les changements d'appelation entre la DSM II (1968) qui introduit le trouble hyperkinétique de l'enfance et le DSM III (1980) qui définit le trouble déficitaire de l'attention, avec ou sans hyperactivité, comme dans les versions suivantes (DSM III-R, 1987; DSM IV, 1994), parce que les problèmes d'attention étaient considérés comme sous-jacents au trouble mental considéré. La dissociation entre la démarche diagnostique athéorique dans le DSM auquel se réfère la psychiatrie biologique et les bases théoriques multiples des traitements qui naissent de cette démarche, biologiques, interventions psychologiques, comportementales et sociales, est donc cruciale. Tout d'abord, la démarche diagnostique dans le DSM permet d'identifier des composantes spécifiques dans la complexité du phénomène mental qui seront ciblées par le traitement. Le traitement quant à lui se réalise sur fond théorique étiologique emprunté à la fois aux sciences biologiques et aux sciences de l'homme, dépendant des composantes identifiées par la démarche diagnostique, et peut conduire sur la base des résultats obtenus à une révision des classifications diagnostiques. La toile de fond des interventions est constituée par les connaissances courantes en sciences biologiques, psychologiques et sociales à une époque déterminée. La démarche diagnostique du DSM permet une objectivité dans l'identification des composantes de la maladie tout en facilitant la complémentarité et la multimodalité dans le traitement nées du fractionnement même du phénomène mental, pour le bien du Sujet. Cette démarche est clairement différente de l'approche de la psychiatrie psychanalytique qui, parce qu'elle veut comprendre le phénoméne mental dans son apparente totalité et se refuse à en analyser les multiples composantes, a souvent tendance à considérer le traitement médicamenteux à la fois comme un mal indispensable et comme une réduction du phénomène mental isolée des autres perspectives scientifiques de ce phénomène, psychologiques et sociales.

J’ai contribué à une réponse à ces psychanalystes pour montrer les limites, non de l’approche scientifique en psychiatrie, comme ils le prétendent, mais de l’approche psychanalytique. En effet, l’approche scientifique en psychiatrie suit de près les progrès des sciences du cerveau et de la conscience ainsi que les transformations sociales provoquées par ces sciences, alors que la caractéristique principale de l’approche psychanalytique est d’être liée à un contexte scientifique et social qui date d’il y a plus de cent ans qui résiste à l’évaluation, à la reclassification et aux progrès scientifiques. Alors que nos conceptions du Sujet changent sous l’effet du progrès de la science et des connaissances[1], l'approche psychanalytique se proclame la gardienne du Sujet pour mieux le figer. En faisant, elle ne tend qu’à se sauvegarder elle-même d'une disparition qui de toute façon est de plus en plus manifeste au niveau international.

La psychiatrie française et francophone est à une croisée décisive de chemins. Ou bien elle renonce à une conception dualiste et idéaliste du phénomène mental et elle se transforme en science médicale et humaine capable d’anticiper, d’accompagner et de corriger l’impact social du progrès des sciences du cerveau - car les applications de ces sciences nécessitent une implication de la part des psychiatres - ou bien elle s’accroche à la psychanalyse et à l'idée de plus en plus anachronique que cette discipline offre du Sujet et elle se retranchera dans le champs sans cesse diminuant des pathologies les plus complexes et les moins connues, laissant aux autres disciplines médicales le soin de s’occuper d'un nombre toujours croissant de pathologies du mental. D’autres crises sont donc en perspective.

[1] Certains diront que ces changements ne sont pas pour le mieux mais il nous appartient de les exploiter pour notre bien et d’être les acteurs du changement plutôt que de le subir de l’extérieur tout en le critiquant et en condamnant les sciences qui l’ont provoqué.

2005-09-28T14:04:00.000-04:00

Biology and Culture : An interactive co-evolution.

Two recent papers published in Science point to a rapid evolution in Humans of two developmental genes known to regulate brain size (2005, vol. 309, p.1717-1722). This rapid evolution, which is different between ecogeographical regions, seems to be initiated along with radical and historical changes in the Human environment, migrations and agriculture. Researchers don't want to speculate about this because, as impressive as they can be, these are preliminary data. They must be confirmed by more investigations focusing on the precise phenotype of these genes, their physiology and more importantly, in my opinion, there must be quantification, with MRI techniques, of the differences these genes introduce in the phenotype of the brain . Moreover, these genes are probably not the only ones involved in regulating brain size. A year ago, researchers published a finding concerning a Myosin gene mutation in the jaw. This mutation relaxes the jaw muscles. It was speculated that this fact might have contributed to the expansion of the cranium and consequently to a larger brain (Nature 428, 415–418, 2004).

These findings are fascinating. They point to a new direction in many research areas in the brain and mind sciences. Indeed, some beliefs related to these sciences will have to adapt to the new findings. One is that there is one direction to evolution, from genes to phenotypes, and that it is reproductive success which ultimately give a direction to evolution. Another is that the structure of the brain is the product of a random gene selection and a third is that genes are selected on the basis of their behavioral outcomes as ultimate phenotypes. These three assumptions are often part of the ideological arsenal of what is usually called evolutionnary psychology which is a radical version of adaptationist thinking. According to evolutionary psychology, the explanation of the rapid evolution of genes controlling brain size during development can go like this: an allele is selected randomly and it becomes dominant in a population because it gives his owner more fitness - based on the outcome of the gene on the behavioral level - accompanied by reproductive advantage.

This kind of thinking, however powerful (and I am not saying true), does not apply to genes involved in developmental regulation of the phenotype. Why ? Because development is a construction based on interactions between genes and environment. Depending on the developmental stage, these interactions have different pathways . In the evolutionary psychology paradigm, they are carried out mainly by the behavioral outcomes of the gene - note that, most of the time, behavioral outcome is not fully displayed in species with a very slow development like Humans. During development, pre and early post natal, interactions between genes and environment are more likely to be carried out by structural constraints related to the whole organism. Starting at the level of the interface of the organism and its environment, they are transmitted to lower levels of structural organisation in the organism. In humans, the body, its sensations, motions and affects are the primary interface for genes/environment interactions. These interactions are mainly translated, in early development, into constraints on the construction of the organism which go down to the structure of genes.
Phenotype regulation during development acts on forms and not on behavioral outcomes since these outcomes are determined later at maturity. This kind of selection is exerted at the level of an individual organism, it is not populational.

The findings above point to a possibility that the environment - including the one that is our own making like migrations and agriculture - introduces structural constraints on the expression of genes in the construction of the organism, playing an active role in the phenotypic outcome at the structural level and thus directing the evolution. The term 'positive selection' used by the researchers to describe the process of the rapid evolution of genes controlling brain size is nothing else than directed - and not random - selection. Selection directed by the environment. Indeed, positive selection occurs when selection favors only one allele increasing its frequency in a population, where random selection operates on more than one allele.

Arguments against directional selection claim that directional selection is actually an instruction and not a selection. This kind of thinking is erroneous since it assumes that the environment 'knows' what it is doing. There is no 'anticipation' of adaptation in the process, there is only a joint effect on the construction of organisms during a developmental period in which organisms are dependant on their environment for their survival, as in the case of slow human brain development. This slow development is even magnified by an increase in the size of the brain which extends the duration of the maturation process.

What does this mean for us as Humans and as a society ? It means that the environment we are changing continually with our cultural artifacts and products and with our social expertises - which are passed on across generations - is contributing to our biological evolution. It means that Culture is irreversibly grounded in Biology. It means also that radical environmental changes of any kind, being physical, cultural or social, have an impact on our destiny as species for generations to come.

However, in the case of Human brain environment, instruction - as knowledge transfer - is an essential part of the interactions between the organism and its environment. But even though it is directional for the behavioral outcome, it 'knows' what to expect, it is not directional when it comes to structural constraints it may place on the organism and the brain at different organisational levels. At the structural level, instruction is a blind and a neutral process, value free. It has however an unanticipated advantage: it produces additional variations in the phenotype, induced by the environment and not included in the initial genetic program inherited from other species. These value free variations are specified in a social context. We are then responsible for the values that will be attached to these variations.

There is a big challenge here. As Humans, we have the knowledge and the moral capacity to judge behavioural outcomes of gene/environement interactions during development. From these behavioural outcomes we must anticipate and construct an ethic of harmony and agreement between Nature - biological nature of Humans - and Nurture in which every generation must take lessons from the past - the impact of past expertises on present behavioral and environmental outcomes (including man made social and ecological changes) - to build a better future for the generation to come. This is a great responsibility that falls upon us, a responsibility in which every man and woman have to become their own god.

2005-09-14T14:51:00.000-04:00

How serious is neuromarketing ?

On June 22, 2002, an american advertising company called The Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences is officially launched with a press release. Their goal is to use brain imaging techniques to ''unlock'' the consumer's mind and understand what is behind consumer's decisions to buy a product.

Quote:According to Brian Hankin, President of Thought Sciences, marketers will now be able to understand, for the first time ever, the drivers of their consumers’ behavior.-more-“Imagine being able to observe and quantify a consumer’s true response to something without the influence of groupthink and other biases that plague current research approaches,” says Hankin. “This could not only help marketers truly understand why specific marketing efforts are effective, but it could also help societal concerns such as identifying why the current anti-drug campaign has not effectively deterred our youth from using drugs.”

There was and still a big scare among consumer's advocates who tried to stop neuromarketing. I believe consumer's advocates are right under the condition that what neuromarketers are promoting is actually true.

However, let me tell you why one should take Neuromarketing with a grain of salt. If there is any damage that this new approach may do to the consumer and the society it is in raising the overall price of a new product on the market and in misrepresenting the sciences of the mind as scary and manipulative. Why is this ?

First: The FMRI technique mentioned and which will be widely used in Neuromarketing because of its non invasiveness shows only that a product x activates structure a or b known for such and such features. It might be that structure a, known as a pleasure center, lighten up when I see a bottle of Coke and it might be that this same structure lighten up even more when I see a bottle of Pepsi but there is a big jump to do in interpretation in order to see the level of activation as a preference for the product. The FMRI signal is produced by an increase in the level of oxygenation of the blood in a certain brain area, relatively to other brain areas, in response to a regional and specific metabolic demand. This kind of physiological response is very slow compared to the neural response which is behind it. FMRI signal is then constrained by time and does not reflect the state of the entire neuronal network involved in the task but shows us the more activated structure in the network in a defined time frame. Now, the intensity of this regional increase is relative to the level of oxygen in other brain areas. So, in the case of an increased intensity to a stimulus, either the whole brain is more active or other brain areas are less activated or deactivated. FMRI scientists know that even deactivation could mean something.

FMRI technique started to be widely used in research 10 years ago and scientists are still trying to understand some of its features.

Second: Brighthouse proclaims that Neuromarketing will ''observe and quantify the consumer's response'' without the influence of context and others. I understand that marketing requires that you should probe consumer's tendencies and preferences even before product conception and commercialisation. But on the other hand, advertisement is all about context and group thinking. Advertising is perception in a context, it is context biased, it is adressed to the person and not to the brain. For this reason, I don't buy into the rethoric of Neuromarketing because there is a huge leap between Neuromarketing and advertising. The person is not only a brain, it is a brain embedded in a variety of contexts including the body and its physical and social environment.

Third: What is useful in the fact that ice cream made by Z tickles a specific area in my brain ? Unless there are lasting changes in the brain like recpetor expression levels in the activated structure as in the case of addiction, there is always place for competition. The contrary explains why ''...the current anti-drug campaign has not effectively deterred our youth from using drugs.'' it is because youth behavior is driven by context, the group context, and once they use drugs on a regular basis or even on a non regular basis -depending on the drug used- addiction is established through lasting changes in levels of brain receptors for the drug.

Fourth: What to think if an advertisement campaign based on Neuromarketing fails ? Should we consider this as a refutation for Neuroimaging ? To which extent, in this particular context, results from economic and social interventions based on hard science (because Neuromarketing is being sold as more certain, based on hard science and not on surveys) will affect the status of this science ?

There is nothing for the consumer to be scared of in Neuromarketing since knowing somebody's brain better (and I doubt Neuromarketing could achieve this) does not necessarily mean knowing better her or his mind - brain in a body in a social context. Moreover, the consumer's mind will always be the target of the new economy, Neuromarketing or not. The entire new economy is based on targeting our subconscious. Neuromarketing is no exception. The only way out for consumers is vigilance and consumer education. As the success of Neuromarketing depends on the extent to which its target is a subconscious process, I believe that being aware that we are a target can help to reverse the process.

My concern is elsewhere. There is a huge risk for the science itself, namely Neuroimaging, when its status as a new science is put at risk by factors for which it has no test and on which it has no control. In other words, Neuromarketing is more dangerous for the science it proclaims as its core principle because it will obscure the public understanding of this science by stretching it beyond its current limits.

2005-09-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

Bad Science and bad Media.

There is an interesting article in The Guardian (Sept. 8th, 2005) on science reporting in newspapers presented by Ben Goldacre as badscience. According to the author, science reporting falls into three categories: ''wacky stories, scare stories and "breakthrough" stories'' with the ''paradoxical health story'', chocolate is good for your health, falling in the first category. Goldacre argues that this misrepresentation of science is comforting the suspicions among the public . He blames what he calls ''science communicators'' and journalists and most notably the Humanities, the actual background of most science communicators.

I am glad someone has finally the gut to say it plain and I read Goldacre's article with jubilation. Science reporting in newspapers is bad.
Scientists have the power to react to such stories in the press but they don't. The question is why they don't ?

Scientists are pressed to justify their research fundings in terms of their social impact, if they don't, they don't get funding. They are also trained to be suspicious of Science in the public eye. So they see Science in the pulic eye as something different from the Science they practice. These two perspectives on science are irreconcilable unless the public is educated about scientific methodology and science itself. Most of the time, scientists are pressed to communicate their research, to cross the line between the two worlds. From the world of reality and facts to the world of expectations, fantasies, beliefs and scares. So why would we put the scientist at risk of falling into the trap of misrepresenting his results. In the contrary, moving in the other direction, from the world of beliefs to the world of reality, is actually a gain in educating more people about science.

However, not all scientists are afraid to cross the line. I must say that bad science in the news is perpetuated sometimes by scientists who not only cross the line from reality to beliefs but also manipulate the public understanding of science for better funding and better notoriety. As we live in the media age, these scientists consider that even a misrepresentation of science is better than no representation at all, otherwise how will they be able to channel funding from their government and their benefactors preferably for their own projects ?

There is no easy end to bad science as there is no easy end to bad media. Most mainstream media don't feel that educating people is part of their mission, they don't feel that they should report, above all, on facts. They only want to reverberate people's fears, to map their beliefs and to entertain them. In the end, bad science is a paradigm for bad media.

Read Bad science every thursday at http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience

2005-09-12T17:32:00.000-04:00

Mind your brain !

Welcome to this new blog dedicated to the Brain and the Mind.

I will be blogging on the Brain and Mind Sciences in relation to Society. These Sciences are progressively challenging many critical aspects of our individual and social life. Unlike Genetics which offer us a window on who we are in the chain of life and who we are as individuals, the Sciences of the Mind hold the promise of a profound understanding on who we are as Humans.

Contrary to post modernist belief, science is not a source of disappointment, it is an infinite source of progress and knowledge. Because as humans we live in the future, our expectations are always set high and because not one science could stand alone in the field of knowledge when it comes to the question of Meaning, Life and Self, many promises of the sciences don't turn out what we expected them to be.

In order to offer an informed update, this blog will be commenting on the Sciences of the Brain and the Mind from a systemic perspective which considers the mind as embedded in a system made by the organism and its environment.

My sources will be multiple, from Biological and Neurological Sciences to Philosophy, Psychology, Human Sciences and science reporting in newspapers.

Bienvenue à ce blog dédié aux sciences du cerveau et de la conscience, à leur recension dans les media et à leur réception par le public.

Ces sciences nous offrent une autre compréhension des phénomènes de la conscience, de l'intellect et de l'esprit qui remet en question des aspects critiques de notre vie individuelle et sociale. Alors que la génétique nous permet de nous situer en tant qu'êtres humains dans la chaîne de la vie, les sciences du cerveau promettent de nous offrir une meilleure compréhension de notre condition humaine.
Contrairement à ce que la pensée post-moderniste laisse croire, les sciences sont une source de connaissance toujours renouvelée et de progrès. Elles ne déçoivent que parce que l'humain, vivant toujours projeté dans le futur, a des attentes élevées, et parce qu'aucune science ne peut, à elle seule dans le vaste champ des connaissances, produire du sens quand il s'agit de nous, de notre vie et du regard intérieur que nous portons sur ces aspects.

Ce blog offrira, dans une perspective systémiste et critique qui considère que l'esprit et l'intellect font partie du système formé par l'organisme et son environnement, des commentaires sur les sciences du cerveau en relation aux problèmes existentiels de l'individu et de la société. Mes sources seront multiples provenant de publications scientifiques et philosophiques ainsi que de la presse écrite.