Neuroplasticity through the looking glass (Part 2: and Emotions)

In the last post, I mentioned Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass, which suggested that elements of language has a direct affect on the way we think about the world; not in the strict, untranslatable conceptually schemes of Whorf-Napir hypothesis style linguistic relativism, but in what he called the Boas-Jakobson principle: worldviews are formed by the way our native language forces us to think by its construction, so if you do not have gendered language, for example, it is easier to be ambiguous about genders when speaking or reading. This post will move on from this idea and look at the second book I read recently, Bruce E . Wrexler’s Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (MIT Press, 2008), then I’ll try to tie the two ideas together.

Brain and Culture, turns around a simple premise: the human brain is plastic, able to mold itself not only around evolved innate patterns and DNA, but also through external input. This is particularly the case during childhood and adolescence, as it is in this period that our neuronal structures are particularly plastic, and so the external influences of our youths shape the ways we view the world for the rest of our lives. Each generation has a different developmental experience, as influences come not only from parenting but also beyond –  extended family, friends and so on. Each generation then attempts to shape the environment based upon the cosmology they develop during their youth. As Wrexler explains, it is the ‘ability to shape the environment that in turn shapes our brains that has allowed human adaptability and capability to develop at a much faster rate than is possible through alteration of the genetic code itself’ [p.3-4]. In short, brains have evolved to be shaped by society and culture, which with certain changes from the previous generation causes sociocultural changes, which then effect the brains of the next generation and so on. It’s a biocultural approach to the brain and cultural differences; a material explanation for what cultural psychologists call ‘mutual constitution’: the feedback and influence on brain and behavior caused instantaneously and equally by psychology, society, and culture.

So how does it work.

Well, firstly, as children, our neuronal structures appear to be plastic – not in the sense that they are made from oil and you can wrap a sandwich in them but in the sense that they can be molded and remolded. In the adult brain, the plasticity continues but slows down; this is why at Latin class I still bang my head on the table over simple words like mox, while my younger cohorts take to it like a plastic duck to bath water.

The important point is that this molding is caused in no small part by the outside world when we are younger, and two areas are particularly important: ‘imitation’, and ‘internalization and identification’. Imitation is just that, copying others either by imitating actions that produce perceived end goals – imitation of ends – or by imitating actions that produce and evaluation of an object or person –imitation of values.

The best way I can think to explain this is with a common or garden adolescent. Lets call her ‘Julie’ and her friend ‘Helen’ to protect the innocent.

Julie comes home one day and says, “Dad, I want to be a vegetarian?”

Dad looks at her with a mixture of confusion and respect, and replies, “okay, why?”

“because Helen became a vegetarian” says Julie “and she’s dropped two dress sizes [imitation of ends].”

“I see,” answers Dad, “is that really the best reason to become a vegetarian?”

“Well, I don’t want to be fat cus Helen says that fat people are disgusting [imitation of values]”.

“If Helen told you to jump of a cliff, would you do it?” asks dad.

(and the conversation, in which Dad tells Julie her ambition is laudable but she really ought to think harder about it continues…)

The other way the brain is shaped is through ‘Internalization and Identification’. This is when the child, through imitation, acquires aspects such as feelings, attitudes, beliefs, worldviews, and so on, from those around them. This is the structuring of a child’s cosmology and, through the action of what you might call cultural evolution, or memetics, or whatever, it evolves and alters slight from one generation to the next. What is particularly striking to Wrexler is how divergent types of psychology have all hit upon something similar ideas. I find this striking, too. From Freud’s ‘assimilation of one ego to another one’, behaviorist’s observations of the greater susceptibility of children to forms of conditioning, accelerated schemata (patterns of thought and behavior) development in cognitive psychology, the anthropology of learning through play and even observations of the workings of memes from people such as Susan Blackmore have led down similar paths. Indeed, that the adult seems to be created by the child is nothing new: recall the supposedly 17^th century Jesuit quote: "Give me the child for seven years, and I will give you the man." Wrexler has simply added an observed neurological framework to this.

The second half of Wrexler’s book discusses the troubles this causes as these now less-plastic brains interact in the real world, not often for the best. This part of the book is very interesting, but it is not this that I am concerned with here.

Wrexler points out that ‘language itself is only realized through imitation’ [p.117]. Areas of the brain are linked to understanding and speech, such as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, but if these areas are damaged in children, the power of neuroplasticity simply construct language in another area. This is almost impossible in adults. Similar things happen with the young who become blind: the occipital lobe, now redundant, often appears to begin processing and enhancing other senses. It is absolutely untrue that we only use a part of our brains capacity; we use every wonderful bit of it in stunningly inventive ways.

But I digress.

 

Bringing these two books together, we have a scenario in which language is developed alongside our propsitional attitudes (beliefs, desires, doubts – in short the building blocks of a worldview) and is, in fact the best way in which propositional attitudes can be articulated one to another. If our language does not have an expression for blue, it is difficult for us to develop the belief in a concept of blue, just as we English speakers cannot conceive of light and dark blue as separate entities as the Russians can, or as apples as male and oranges as female as Germans and others can. Language is the tool by which our parents shaped our plastic neurons, and while we can understand other linguistic schemes, our own primary language will remain embedded in our sociocultural cores.

And now, some emotions.

This is a ‘what if’. What if emotions are similar. What if the neurochemicals within our bodies are innate, that there are universal and that certain sensations are felt by everybody, just as every healthy eye will see light with a wavelength of 462nm and a frequency of 645Thz (blue). These neurochemicals, just like the colours, are evolved responses, helping us to mate, remain in groups, avoid danger etc. These feelings, that I’ll call affect, are universal and felt by all. But, we can only understand them according the labels our cultures provide us with during adolescence. If a culture wants to call the neurochemical release that creates a need to run away by its own discrete term, say, flight, and another emotion for the need to defend yourself caused by similar sensations, say, fight, while another culture ties these similar chemical releases to both fleeing and preparedness for fighting, like the English fear, then they are different because the understandings are different. The English would have the emotional equivalent of grue, while our hypothetical would have green and blue. This doesn’t mean that grue, green, or blue don’t exist, nor does it mean that they are universal. They are understood by the cultures in the only they way they can; through the neural pathways created by developmental language.

This is a way to end the nature/nurture, psychology/culture dichotomy facing emotion research and in fact suggests an anthropological approach to studying emotions in history; using comparative and ethnographic techniques to see if, say, 15^th century love and modern love, occupy the same place in the emotional spectrum and if not, what that can tell us about people and emotions, then and now.

Well, I enjoyed that. I’ll try to remain regular but for now, I’ll just tease you with the title of my next post: Problematising Probemlatisation.