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.

Neuroplasticity through the looking glass (part 1)

In the last couple of days I read two very interesting and though provoking books: Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass, Why The World Looks Different in Different Languages (Arrow Books, 2011)  and Bruce E. Wexler’s Brain and Culture, Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (MIT Press,2008). This time I’ll look at the first of these, next time the second and I may even then get to my point, if you are really lucky.

Through the Language Glass, follows the linguistic Alice through the wonderland of cultural construction. Split into two parts, it begins by taking us through ‘the language mirror’ into the rather troubled relationship between colours and the words we use to describe them. As it turns out, many cultures have very different ways of understanding what colours are what, with some, like Russia, having terms that different between light blue and dark blue, while others are unable to understand the differences between black and blue, or green and yellow linguistically, even though they were able to sort these colours one from the other visually. This seemingly unusual labeling of colour stretches as far back as Gladstone’s observation of Homer’s rather odd use of colours. It is true, the Iliad and Odyssey are filled with wine-soaked seas,, black skies and violet sheep; if you don’t believe me, go and have another read. Another odd discovery is that as societies become more complex, and so the complexity of the language alters (Deutscher has no time for the dogma that all languages are of equal complexity), the more labels for colours we find. Some thought this might be due to the eye evolving over time, but there is scant evidence of this, especially in so short an amount of time. Others thought it was due to a complication of language, although contrary to this, Deutscher argues that languages simplify the larger and more elaborate the community we find them in. Deutscher’s hypothesis is that simpler cultures simply don’t need more complicated words.  For example, if you live in a jungle, the only useful words might be green and brown for the trees, red and yellow for ripeness, white and black. Therefore other colours are superfluous to language and describing the sky as a darkened green, or a lightened form of black - the word blue is just not important. Deutscher emphasises this by explaining how children find colour words very difficult during development, often able to identify a square shape long before a yellow one.

In the second part, Deutscher takes on the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, exposing it for all its silliness. To cut a long story short, this hypothesis suggests that our understanding of the world is developed through language, and that we cannot understand anything that our language does not expressly have terms for. This means that people with different languages have entirely different conceptual schemes and live in entirely other worlds to us. This hypothesis was drawn from a study of the ‘Hopi’ people by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s, who based his ideas on previous work by Edward Sapir (amongst others). Whorf's study suggested that the Hopi language had ‘no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time”, or to past , present, or future’ and that as a result the Hopi ‘has no general notion or intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate’ [Whorf quoted in Deutscher, p142]. They saw the world, even the world of time, differently; so differently it is impossible for us to really conceive of their understanding of time.

Although Deutscher himself does not touch upon it, it is worth pointing out that this idea of linguistic relativity went on to influence the likes of Thomas Kuhn, whose concept of scientific paradigms - concepts and dogmas untranslatable between intellectual camps until the great upheaval of a paradigm shift - causes titillation in philosophers of science and consternation and frustration in actual scientists to this day.

Linguistic relativity, conceptual schemes, and paradigms are a deeply flawed concept for a number of reasons. One of the most famous comes from philosopher Donald Davidson who in ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ pointed out that the concept of ‘triangulation’ – in short, the ability for different paradigms to point to a single frame of reference and agree what it is, makes translation possible. Indeed, without this, none of us would ever be able to learn a language past the age of 18 (I’ll get to why next time). This is highlighted by Deutscher who points out that English speakers are quite capable of understanding what is meant by taking joy from another’s misfortune, with or without the word schadenfreude. There is another problem with Whorf’s hypothesis, however.

Whorf didn’t really study the Hopi language in the round. He studied the Hopi language as described to him by a member of the Hopi  he knew who lived locally. When anthropological linguist Ekkehart Malotki eventually did a proper study of the Hopi in the early 1980s, it led to the first page of his book becoming one of the greatest examples of academic pwnage in history. 

This virtually blank page had only the following text

After a long and careful study and analysis, the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’.

(Benjamin Lee Whorf ‘An American Indian Model of the Universe’, 1936)

 pu’ antsa pay qavongvaqw pay su’its talavay kuyvansat, pàasatham pu’ pan piw maanat taatayna

Then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time then, he woke up the girl again

(Ekkehart Maltoki, Hopi Field Notes, 1980)

Ouch indeed.

Would you like more cream for your burn Dr Whorf?

Deutscher doesn’t think that the idea of language affecting a worldview should be dismissed altogether, however. Instead, he gives the example of groups who use geographical centres for direction – north, east, south, and west – rather than egocentric ones – such as left and right – as evidence for what he calls the ‘Boas-Jokobson Principle’, named after, linguists Franz Boas and Roman Jakobson from whom Deutscher drew the idea. This suggests that those areas of language that must be expressed influence the speakers worldview. For example, if an English person were asked who they were going away this weekend, they could answer without giving away the gender of the person they are going away with; in many languages, such as French, it would not be so easy. Equally, Deutscher, whose first language is Hebrew, points out that Hebrew has one word for both hand and arm, so they ‘think’ of the hand and arm as one unit as they have no other choice. This does not mean that they cannot understand that there might be a boundary, anymore than it suggests that an English person might be unable to understand that an apple is masculine to a German, but it does add a certain tincture to thought that, to Deutscher at least, carries over into his secondary languages at a fundamentally psychological level.

Coming back to colours, Deutscher reminds us that what we see is not what is real. Humans, contrary to popular belief, do not see with their eyes but with the workings of their occipital lobes, with colours and objects filtered, distorted, and tweaked to fit the patterns our mind has come to expect through a combination of billions of years of evolution and the neuroplastic schemata imprinted by culture through development [more next time] and language. This means that some people really do see the sky as grue, or blueack. Russians see the dark sea as one colour and the light sky as another and find it odd that we conceive of it as lighter and darker shades of a single colour. It also means that children can learn how to recognise where North, South, East and West are at such an early age it becomes a second-nature part of their universe.

I am sure many of the #emostorians out there, or even emotion scientists, have an idea where I might be going, but I’ll leave that for next time as my hour is up.  Next I’ll discuss how by combining the role of language in culture with neuroplasticity, and to some extend the fledgling field of neurepigenetics, it may be possible to find a compromise in the nature/nurture, culture/evolution debate that rages on within the emotion sciences and humanities.

Let’s hope I get to it soon!