Lecture 1: Certainty and Truth in Science

The effect of chance

P<.05 means a 1-in-20 chance that the effect is due to chance (minimally-acceptable
significant result)
Accepting the null hypothesis versus failing to reject the null hypothesis
Mostly positive and significant results get published vs. Negative and non-significant results.
Deliberate and well-intentioned deception it is easier to prove something in which folks
believe
Adaptation, complacency, and scientific blindness. We never tried that!
Lecture 2: Jason Tougaw Literary Issues Related to Pain
Qualia is a word philosophers use to describe the subjective qualities that shape any perceptual
experienceseeing the color red or blue; tasting beef broth or lemon juice; the feeling of a
headache or an orgasm, of pain or pleasure. You might think of qualia as the building blocks of
consciousness. They are fundamental to our existence, our sense of self, and our interaction
with the world (and each other). But theyre unshareable. I cant feel your qualia, and you cant
feel mine. Instead, we spend a lot of time describing our qualia to each other. Literature does
this in a particularly focused and sustained way. Manyperhaps most or even allliterary texts
use highly crafted, aesthetic language to give readers a virtual experience of other peoples
qualia.
Aesthetics A branch of philosophical thinking that deals with the nature of beauty, art, and
tasteas well as the creation of beauty in art and beauty in nature. A painting or poem is an
aesthetic object, recreating reality using the tools of an artist. But you might also describe the
aesthetics of a mathematical proof or a drop of dew on a leaf.
Affect is a synonym for emotion, intended to describe the most basic, often unconscious
emotional statesand to emphasize the physical experience of emotion. You might think of
affect as the qualia of emotion, because the term is also intended to emphasize the subjective
experience of emotion.
Lecture 3: Mind Genomics
Mind Genomics works by presenting people with a group of ideas and getting their reactions
o Reveals consumer segments and what to tell them
o Does all of this quickly and at very affordable costs
o Has an excellent track record across disciplines
Underlying Logic: Mind Genomics discovers how people react to ideas in a formal and
structured way, by identifying patterns of mind-sets (patterned after genomics).
Mind Genomics uses the scientific principles of:
o Stimulusresponse (from experimental psychology)
o Conjoint analysis (from consumer research and statistics)
o Internet-based testing (from marketing research) and Multiple tests
This experimentation approach then constructs new, innovative ideas in business, and new
product development.
Product of Mind Genomics:
o Its a way to understand a topic in depthfrom the bottom up
o How each element in the set drives the response whats important, whats not..in a
way that can be archived for science, or used for business
o How different groups respond to these elements
o New, unexpected groups of people providing new science, new marketing
opportunities
o How to find these people in the population.. And work with them..using intervention
(small tests)
The 5Keys: Inspiration for Elements
o Technique: Qualitative research
o Approach: A holistic framework, integrating psychological & therapeutic approaches, to
dimensionalize consumer experience.
o Process: Unlocks the five key dimensions to possible hidden consumer truths, based on
cognitive, emotive, behavioral, physiological and personality aspects
o Objective: To help R&D conceptualize & appreciate the multi-dimensionality of
consumer schema, distilled into a rich, easy-to-use template.
Lecture 4: When is Pleasure Pain & When is Pain Pleasure
Benthams Principle of Utility regards good as that which produces the greatest amount of
pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and evil as that which produces the most pain
without the pleasure.
Logically then, it should always be good in the exclusive presence of pleasure and the
exclusive absence of pain and it should always be evil in the exclusive presence of pain
and the exclusive absence of pleasure.
Opponent process theory- if you do something thats positive you are immediately left with an
after effect of it. (eating a potato chips in the party, tasting the salty flavor it produces pleasure
and craving)
Physical Components of Addiction
o Tolerance
o Withdrawal Signs
o Dependence
Psychological Components of Addiction
o Anticipation
o Binging/Guilt
o Craving (the stage of addiction matters and makes a difference)
Cues have powerful effects in humans regardless if they are seen or unseen
o The brain reacts to the cues anyway in a pattern that is similar to when they are directly
presented.
o The extent of the brain reaction to the subliminal cue predicts relapse in patients in the
clinic.
You can want something but not necessary like it
Consequences of Chronic Pain
o Chronic pain can aggravate and sensitize other psychological states including
Anxiety
Depression
o Major neurochemical systems involved in anxiety and depression include:
Norepinephrine
Serotonin
GABA
The term dual diagnosis is used to describe the comorbid condition of a person considered to be
suffering from a mental illness (e.g., Axis I) and a substance abuse (e.g., Axis 4) problem.
Theories of Dual Diagnosis
o Causality theory: substance abuse leads to mental illness. (e.g., link between use of
cannabis and later development schizophrenia
o Self-medication theory: people with severe mental illnesses misuse substances to
relieve a specific set of symptoms and counter the negative side-effects of antipsychotic
medication.
o Alleviation of dysphoria theory: people with severe mental illness commonly feel bad
about themselves making them vulnerable to using psychoactive substances to alleviate
these feelings.
o Multiple risk factor theory: mentally-ill people subject to factors such as social isolation,
poverty, lack of structured daily activity, lack of adult role responsibility, living in areas
with high drug availability, and association with people who already misuse drugs.
o Supersensitivity theory: certain individuals who have severe mental illness also have
biological and psychological vulnerabilities, caused by genetic and early environmental
life events.
Anhedonia: lack of receiving pleasure from environmental stimuli that others find pleasurable.
Central feature of:
o Schizophrenia
o Depression
o Caused by:
Stressful life events and Pleasure and Pain
Congenital Insensitivity to Pain
Sadism is the derivation of pleasure as a result of inflicting pain or watching pain inflicted on
others.
Schadenfreude: a German word for pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
Masochism is pleasure in receiving the pain.
BDSM is a shorthand for the three main subdivisions of the culture: B&D (bondage and
discipline), D/s (dominance and submission) and S&M (sadism and masochism).

Lecture 5: Animal Models of Analgesic Systems: Opioids, Sex Differences, and Stress
Opioid Supraspinal Analgesic Systems
o Supraspinal opioid analgesia is mediated primarily by mu, secondarily by delta, but not
by kappa opioid receptor subtypes in a regional brain system including the amygdala
(AMY), periaqueductal gray (PAG), locus coeruleus (LC) and rostroventromedial medulla
(RVM).
Mu is very important for pain inhibition
Upon death there is a massive release of endogenous opioids: feeling less pain
Sex Differences in Opioid Analgesia
o Male rodents typically display significantly greater magnitudes of analgesia than
female rodents.
o Female rodents display significant differences in analgesia across the estrus cycle.
o The activational and organizational effects of gonadal hormones mediate in part sex
differences in analgesia.
o The lower analgesic effects in females may be mediated by functioning of
hypothalamic nuclei producing tonic inhibition to facilitate reproductive effects.
Stress-Induced Analgesia
o Acute exposure to a wide array of stressors (e.g., shock, swims, glucoprivation) can
produce profound analgesia in rodents.
o Repeated exposure to the stressors can produce adaptation (loss) of the analgesic
effect very similar to repeated exposure to opiates (tolerance).
o The pattern (intermittent or continuous) of the swim and shock stressor both produce
analgesia with the former, but not the latter dependent upon the opioid system.
Analgesia induced by glucoprivation interacts with both opioid (morphine) and
nonopioid (continuous swims) processes.
Stress-Induced Analgesia and Pituitary Function
o Stress activates the pituitary gland. Thus, it would follow that stress-induced analgesia
is mediated by the pituitary gland.
o Removal of the pituitary gland decreases some, but not all forms of analgesia.
Sex Differences in Stress-Induced Analgesia
o Male rodents typically display significantly greater magnitudes of stress-induced
analgesia than female rodents; no estrus cycle effects were observed.
o Adult gonadectomy reduces stress-induced analgesia in males and females that is
reinstated by testosterone.

Lecture 6: Social Psychology meets Neuroscience
Mirror Neurons & the Motor System
o Start with Motor Command Neurons
o Originate in primary motor cortex (frontal lobe) & command an action such as pushing a
button
o Planning action in premotor cortex
About 20% of the premotor command neurons react to the sight of others doing the behavior
o Requires reversal of action perception
o Easy imitation of acts (spreads in a group)
o Empathy
o These neurons shaped civilization
Mirror Neurons & Sensory System
o Inferior parietal cortex (parietal is sensory cortex)
o Same area lights up for seeing or doing
o Hand gestures (e.g. hammering a nail, bouncing a ball).
o Touch and phantom limb pain. Touch to other can be mistaken for touch to own skin
when own skin sense is blocked.
Mirror Neurons & Speech
o Classical Wernicikes Brocas circuit of language understanding production
(presented earlier)
o Broca speech production
o Wernickes speech understanding
o Visual input gets translated into words via the Angular gyrus (auditory input not shown)
o Angular gyrus is Inferior Parietal Lobule
Synesthesia - is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic,
involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway
What is Oxytocin?
o Hormone (milk let down reflex, uterine contractions at birth
o Peptide Neurotransmitter
o Potential treatment for shyness (via intranasal administration)
o Promoter of empathy/trust, but oxytocin only produced it in the in-group but increased
willingness to make out-group members a target
Lecture 7: Animal and clinical models of pleasure
Two principles for doing brain research on pleasure
o Must have a good way to measure behavior
o Must have a good idea where in the brain to look
Rate-Frequency Curve-Shift method is used to measure brain stimulation reward in rats
quantitatively. (look at the lecture for the table)
the accumbens is divided into two regions, a core and a shell
o microinjected into the nucleus accmubens
Increases LOR (decrease reward) in Core (squares)
Decreases LOR (increase reward) in Shell (circles)
Accumbens shell subregions
o Apex
o Arch
o Cone
o Intermediate Zone
o Lateral Zone
Lecture 8: Mindfulness, neuroplasticity, and experiential education
Mindfulness
o Old concept, but lets start with book in 1989 by Ellen Langer at Harvard Psychology
Department
o Define it as being the opposite of mindlessness
Zoning out
Performing tasks automatically
Categorical thinking
o Her studies show that nursing home patients live longer if they have a plant for which to
care. Why? Answer: They are engaged.
o Educators think students who are more mindful in class learn more, see more of the
connections between ideas, do less rote processing.
A lot lights up when you think you are being cheated, including Insula Cortex
Posterior Insula is most different in meditators
Insula detects risk in neuroeconomics
Neruoplasticity: The brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.
Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to
adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.
Lecture 9: Neurobiology Of Learned Food Preferences
Hedonic Value (Liking)
---> ability to evoke an affective response (Opioids)
Incentive Value (Wanting)
---> ability to elicit attention on the reward or cues that predict it. (Dopamine)
Learning (e.g., Food Preference learning)
---> modifies the Hedonic and Incentive values
opioid receptor antagonism should reduce flavor preferences conditioned by the sweet taste of
sugars.
The Nucleus Accumbens, Amygdala and Prefrontal cortex are components of a distributed
network involved in food preference learning.

Lecture 10: Cognitive Neuroscience
made possible by introduction of a variety of brain-imaging techniques (e.g., PET, fMRI, ERPs,
MEG, NIRS, TMS)
This allows us to see which brain areas and neural networks underlie different cognitive
processes.
ERPs (Event Related Potentials) are electrical potentials related to the processing of external
(sensory) or internal (cognitive) events (i.e., time-locked to event).
o They reveal whether an experimental manipulation influences process A or B
Evaluation task elicited ERP activity related to both automatically activated and consciously
controlled cognitive processes.
Large MFN response for deceptions about positively viewed items suggests that one aspect of at
least some deceptions is a denial of self reaction that has its own characteristic pattern of
brain activity.
Brain activity in this task was shown to be generated in three midline brain areas shown to be
involved in processing of self.
Pre-response valence-related (good/bad) ERP activity appears to be generated automatically
and thus may provide an index of how items are unconsciously categorized as good and bad.
Being deceptive utilizes the same general-purpose processes used in any task in which a
response must be made.
Deceptive Rs required increased cognitive control compared to truthful Rs (self-generated lies >
instructed lies).
Deceptive Rs required more processing resources than truthful Rs (self-generated lies >
instructed lies).
The levels of cognitive control during deception increased along with personal relevance of the
stimuli.
Lecture 11: Ethics
Free Will
o If you could have chosen otherwise, you have free will
o Your deliberation is causally determinative of your choice
Lecture 12: Brain Imaging
What we measure in fMRI: the increase in blood oxyhemoglobin. This is called the BOLD
response (Blood Oxygen Level dependent response)
3 major components of cortical presentations of pain
o Sensory: intensity, quality, location
Primary and secondary somatosensory cortex
o Affective: unpleasantness
Anterior cingulated cortex, insula
o Cognitive: attention, evaluation
Prefrontal cortex
Empathy: the ability to understand and echo other peoples sensory and emotional states
The anterior insula is more specialized for processing pain-related empathy than the Anterior
cingulated cortex