(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) When cocaine is snorted up the nose, it heads straight for the dopamine re-uptake sites and blocks them. The "feel good sensation" is not, however, from the drug; but from the fact that dopamine is flooding your cells, binding with the dopamine receptors like crazy, unable to be reabsorbed. And the brain only knows one thing: this feels GREAT! Crack cocaine reportedly produces a more intense sensation of pleasure than any natural act, including orgasm! And, take note that it is from the body's OWN chemical that this pleasure is experienced!
Morphine and Heroin work in a slightly different way. They mimic endorphins which trigger the release of dopamine. So, instead of the sensation occurring because the natural flow of dopamine is not reabsorbed, it occurs because there is too much dopamine to be absorbed!
[Comment - It may be premature and overly-simplistic to suppose that the only dimension of morphine and heroin addiction is a function of what happens with respect to dopamine or that the entire impact of the aforementioned drugs can be reduced down to the way narcotic ligands bind receptors, thus affecting the capacity of dopamine to bind receptors ... end of story. While one of the effects of ingesting or injecting morphine/heroin may be the manner in which dopamine flow is impacted, there also could be other facets of drug intake which alters cellular chemistry in other ways.
When a given ligand (e.g., morphine) binds to a receptor, this process doesn’t just prevent other kinds of ligands from binding to the same receptor through competitive inhibition. In fact, part of the dynamics of ligand-receptor binding is to alter the character and properties of the membrane structure and chemistry which often tends to lead to various sorts of change deep within the cell.
Consequently, why should one suppose that the only change which takes place is a purely surface one of competitive inhibition. If the very essence of ligand-receptor dynamics is to alter membrane functioning which, in turn, leads to changes within the cell, why should one suppose that the only change which occurs is to prevent dopamine or some other neurotransmitter from being able to attach to a given set of receptors? Just as dopamine sets in motion its own cellular dynamics, one might suppose that it is likely that other drugs will set in motion their own form of cellular dynamics, above and beyond the effects of competitive inhibition.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) But, there is something very curious about this: it seems that with repeated use of cocaine, heroin or morphine, the "fake endorphin" that binds with the opiate receptor and sends a signal into the cell body to release more dopamine, the body reacts by reducing the number of receptors! With fewer receptors, the effects of the drug - as well as the body's normal ability to bind dopamine that is naturally present - plummets. And, without the normal flow of dopamine into a normal number of receptors, the brain experiences "withdrawal" which is interpreted quite literally as "pain." It is the agony of a mind that can feel no pleasure at all. Clinicians describe it as:
"Abrupt discontinuation of cocaine, heroin or morphine leads to a state of dopamine depletion, which can cause the intense depression and agitation experienced during the crash phase as well as the subsequent anhedonia, dysphoria, lethargy, somnolence and apathy that can be present for six to 18 weeks after discontinuation of cocaine. [Daly and Salloway, Psychiatric Times, May 1994]
But, more serious than that is the fact that dopamine plays an important role in controlling movement, emotion and cognition. Dopamine dysfunction has been implicated in schizophrenia, mood disorders, attention-deficit disorder, Tourette's syndrome, substance dependency, tardive dyskinesia, Parkinson's disease and so on. Of course, the situation is a lot more complex because at least seven types of dopamine receptors have been identified.
...
Now, going back to our "programs" and "body chemicals," we begin to see how it is possible that anything that causes more dopamine to be released into the system will very likely manifest the same result as cocaine, heroin and morphine: we will go back to the behavior over and over again because the imprint of the way that pleasure is to be achieved has been "set" in the mind of the child.
[Comment - The foregoing claim is not necessarily so. As we grow, there are many experiences which we come across that may be capable of leading to the flooding of our biological systems with dopamine, of one kind or another. In fact, one of the problems of life is choosing among such possibilities given limited resources, time, energy, and other factors that are competing for our attention.
In addition, we are subject to habituation so that the things which may give us pleasure at one point in our lives, becoming boring or uninteresting at another point in our lives. Furthermore, one of the reasons why certain pleasure circuits may be laid down is because of the challenge which is associated with a certain activity and the thrill which is felt when that challenge is successfully met, and the fact of the matter is that what is challenging and stimulating to a youngster is not necessarily going to be viewed the same way by a teenager or adult.
Consequently, there are many experiential factors which serve to alter, over time, the hermeneutical character of what one may find to be pleasurable, interesting, challenging, enjoyable, rewarding, and so on. These factors can set up complex circumstances of competing choices and, so, the so-called circuits of pleasure may not be as entrenched as Laura sometimes gives one the impression they are, and, therefore, the process of ‘ imprinting’ (and, again, I would like to add that Laura’s use of the technical term ‘imprinting’ strays from the original concept as discussed by people like Tinbergen and others) may not be so cut and dried or rigid as she often seems to suggest.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) The street drug "Ecstasy," is the common name for MethyleneDioxyMethAmphetamine, or MDMA. Ecstasy is a central nervous system stimulant and it is thought to work by boosting the levels of seretonin and dopamine.
Immediate effects of ecstasy can include increased feelings of self confidence, well-being, and feeling close to others; a rise in blood pressure, body temperature and pulse rate; jaw clenching; teeth grinding; sweating; dehydration; nausea and anxiety. Higher doses of ecstasy can produce hallucinations, irrational behavior, vomiting and convulsions.
Now, since we already know that using such drugs reduces our dopamine and possibly our seretonin receptors, it's not surprising that Ecstasy also produces "tolerance."
Ecstasy is known as 'the love drug' and commonly makes users feel warm and loving, even towards people they may not know well. Ecstasy can also heighten sexual desire and intensify the sexual experience, as well as decreasing inhibition. Lab results with animals have suggested possibilities of long-term brain damage arising from the reduction of seretonin and dopamine receptors and the ultimate failure of the brain to produce seretonin at all!
So, in a roundabout way, we have come around to the fact that it is very possible that our addictions to our own chemicals may, ultimately lead to permanent inability to feel any pleasure at all. And we all know that, as we age, our ability to be "amused" by simple things diminishes.
[Comment - This last statement would seem to be conflict, to some degree, with Laura’s previous statements about how pleasure circuitry is laid down or ‘imprinted’ early on in life and that this tends to control much of our later life. Apparently, even by her own admission, this isn’t necessarily so.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) Now, nicotine is a most interesting drug. Nicotine mimics one of the body's most significant neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. This is the neurotransmitter most often associated with cognition in the cerebral cortex. Acetylcholine is the primary carrier of thought and memory in the brain. It is essential to have appropriate levels of acetylcholine to have new memories or recall old memories.
[Comment - Just how does acetylcholine carry thought and memory. Once again, Laura is getting a little too loose with her statements.
There is a difference between saying something is, on the one hand, correlated with thinking or memory, and, on the other hand, claiming that such an entity is the carrier of thought and memory. What does it mean for a molecule to carry thought or memory?
Does this mean thought and memory are something apart from such molecules? And, if so, what kind of something are they, and how do they get hooked up with molecules to be carried? And, if thought and memory are not something apart from such molecules, then, how are differences in thought and memory given expression in the same molecule and what is responsible for generating and organizing such differences?
At times I get the distinct impression Laura seems to be vulnerable to a dominant myth in much of science - that all phenomena are, ultimately, a function of material events. Despite all the interesting breakthroughs which have been made in neruo-biology and neruo-chemistry, the fact - and it is a fact - still remains: modern science has no understanding of how consciousness, intelligence, logic, creativity, language, or memory are possible or what the material dynamics are which make any of these phenomena possible - if, indeed, material dynamics are responsible for such phenomena.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) The brain mechanisms that generate a given mental state, or what we choose, for the sake of convenience to call emotion, also give rise to certain measurable physiological states, such as pulse rates or brain waves, as well as observable behaviors such as running away or smiling. "Feelings," by contrast, are a conscious, subjective labeling of the individual's state. One person may say "I feel excited," and another may say "I feel afraid," and both will exhibit the same physiological symptoms and characteristic brain waves. So, trying to work backward is problematical.
[Comment - Brain mechanisms do not necessarily generate a given mental state even though such mechanisms do play some sort of supporting or ancillary role. Feelings are not necessarily just a conscious, subjective labeling of an individual’s physiological state.
While it may be true that one and the same set of external circumstances may elicit very different feeling or emotional responses, the process which leads to those interpretations is not just a mere labeling of internal states. There is a hermeneutic underlying, or standing behind, what label is assigned, and although this hermeneutic may be shaped by physiological events, the latter events are not the sole indicator of what one feels.
Indeed, feelings may be generated through an individual's hermeneutic of the set of circumstances (including the person’s past and recent history) in which certain physiological events arise. This may be why one and the same set of circumstances and even physiological set of indicators can lead to such different feelings - that is, the physiology is not enough to account for the reported feeling. One must take hermeneutical factors into account as well - factors which may not be readily reduce to ligand-receptor activity, brain waves, or the like.]
(From Laura Knight-Jadczyk) Dr. LeDoux writes:
"...In a situation of danger, a variety of physiological responses occur. Blood is redistributed to the body parts that are most in need (the muscles). This results in changes in blood pressure and heart rate. In addition, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, of HPA, axis is activated, releasing stress hormones. In addition, the brain activates the release of natural opiate peptides, morphine-like substances that block the sensation of pain. Called hypoalgesia, this reaction is an evolutionary carryover that allows a wounded animal to keep going."
[Comment - “Evolutionary carryover” - the words roll so effortlessly and smoothly off the pen or word-processing software. Yet, the phrase is deeply, deeply theory-laden - and, often times, the theory-laden language “works” due to assumption and lack of rigor rather than proof.
Whether the hypoalgesia response arose because of a series of random events being allegedly naturally selected to generate a useful physiological tool, or it arose because of the genetic engineering experiments of 4th density beings, or it arose because of the creative fiat of Divinity, or it arose through some other means, one ought to keep in mind that when many people use terms like “evolutionary carryover” they talking in the language of assumption not proof. It is one thing to speak of the adaptive value of some given physiological or biochemical process, and it is an entirely different matter to make the claim that the way in which such adaptive mechanisms came into being was as a result of “evolutionary carryover”.
Less anyone suppose that the foregoing is just the knee-jerk reaction of some sort of Creationist science rant, the interested individual might read the material in the Evolution - Click Here section of this web site. Evolution on Trial is a critical review of the so-called ‘proof’ underpinning evolutionary accounts concerning origins of life issues. No only is that critical discussion entirely unrooted in issues of Creation science, but there is considerable “critical carryover” to the problems which surround almost all aspects of neo-Darwinian theory - a carryover which indicates that evolutionary accounts depend a lot more on the use of assumption than they do on actual understanding of how and why various adaptive capacities came to be as they are.]
(From Dr. LeDoux) "The brain maps are also useful when we want to measure the electrical activity of a particular region. Because communication between neurons is based on electrical activity, we can insert electrodes attached to amplifiers to record responses in a given area of the brain. ...If neuron A activates neuron B, neuron B will fire... which tells us that neuron B is part of the brain circuitry involved in the behavior we're studying."
"Finally, we can trace actual connections in the brain - determining whether area X sends its axons to Area Y or to Area Z - by tracking chemical activity. ...We inject a tracer substance into Area X ...The tracer is taken up by the neurons in the area injected, then hitches a ride on molecules that are being shipped down the axon. We can then stain or dye the brain to see where the substance appears next; the region will stain brightly enough so that we can see it under the microscope. This tells us which areas AreaX talks to."
[Comment - There is electrical circuitry in such devices as personal computers, television sets, radios, and Global Positioning Systems are quite amazing. Ifsomething goes wrong with any of these devices, there are electronics experts who can analyze such technological advancements and pin down where such devices are experiencing glitches, bugs, and so on.
However, not one of these specialists would suggest that the existence of a problem in such devices meant that no signal was being generated from, say, the Internet, or a television studio, or a radio station, or a set of satellites. All that could be said was that, for whatever reason, the device was either not picking up on the signal or was not able to properly process the signal being received.
Moreover, being able to trace out the pathways of various circuit boards within such devices and how different components are linked to generate a working piece of technology says absolutely nothing about the existence of systems of transmission for which such devices are designed to receive. That would require a separate process of exploration, testing and analysis.
Similarly, the ability to trace out biochemical and physiological circuitry or pathways in human beings says little about the processes of transmission existent in the rest of the universe which are being channeled through such pathways. Many sensory and neuro-chemical systems in the human being are about the character of how certain kinds of external signals and data are received and processed internally.
Being able to show how problems with certain facets of such pathways affects the capacity of an organism to function effectively, says nothing about what is going on in the rest of the universe.
External signals may be being sent, but our receiving capacity is breaking down.
The breakdown of biochemistry or physiology capabilities which are associated with certain kinds of malfunctioning, does not prove that such capabilities are the source or cause of consciousness, memory, intelligence, learning, understanding, creativity. All that has been demonstrated so far is that such biochemistry and physiology play vital roles in the capacity of an organism to manifest detectable indications of consciousness, memory, and so on.
As is true in the case of, say, a television set which is broken, in some fashion, and, as a result, unable to process the signals being broadcast from a television studio, the inability of a brain to process certain kinds of information really says nothing about whether, or not, consciousness or intelligence or memory or creativity are still broadcasting their signals and, perhaps, that such signals are falling upon a broken receiving unit - i.e., the brain.]
(From Dr. LeDoux) "Once we have conditioned the animal to respond to a sound - or that the sound produces freezing behavior, changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and so forth - the next step is to trace how the sound, coming into the ear, reaches the parts of the brain that produce these responses in the body. The strategy is to make a lesion in a certain part of the brain to determine whether damage to that area interferes with the fear conditioning. If it does, we then inject the tracer substance there to see which areas that part of the brain communicates with. Then we systematically make lesions in each of those downstream areas to see which one interferes with the fear conditioning, inject tracer substance at that point, look to see where it goes, and so on. We can then record electrical activity to see how cells in the area respond. In this way, we can walk our way, point by point, through whatever pathway of the brain we want to study..."
"Years of research by many workers have given us extensive knowledge of the neural pathways involved in processing acoustic information, which is an excellent starting point for examining the neurological foundations of fear. The natural flow of auditory information - the way you hear music, speech, or anything else - is that the sound comes into the ear, enters the brain, goes up to a region called the auditory midbrain, then to the auditory thalamus, and ultimately to the auditory cortex. Thus, in the auditory pathway, as in other sensory systems, the cortex is the highest level of processing."
[Comment - Nothing in any of the foregoing explains how a person comes to like or dislike the auditory information which is being laid down. Nor does the foregoing explain how an individual comes to invest such information with meanings, uses, emotions, significance, understanding, and so on.
All the foregoing account does is to describe how - in physiological terms - we are able to receive auditory signals. It says nothing about the phenomenology and hermenutics of auditory experience.
The same music, for instance, can be presented to two individuals, and, the physiological description of what is going on in the two individuals may be exactly the same. And, yet, from the perspective of hermeneutics, the same input may be treated in very different ways, and neither physiology nor biochemistry can account for how these differences are introduced or why they are introduced or why different people go about such auditory hermeneutics from vastly different perspectives.
One can vaguely allude to the existence of this ligand-receptor dynamic or that physiological process as being the cause of such hermeneutical differences. However, modern scientists really don’t have a clue as to how hermeneutical phenomenology is possible. All too frequently, scientists assume their way to such conclusions, and in the process, overstep the boundaries of what they actually know.]
(From Dr. LeDoux) "We then did experiments with rats that had amygdala lesions... We found that the amygdala lesion prevented conditioning from taking place."
[Comment - One can accept all of the foregoing but none of this really says what makes the learning or associating or conditioning which takes place possible - other than the fact that one needs certain biochemical and physiological ‘equipment’ to process such learning, association or conditioning - just as a television set needs working components to process signals coming from elsewhere. Similarly, if one generates a ‘lesion’ in the circuitry of a television set, then, yes, one will be able to demonstrate that the set doesn’t work and one will be able to specify why it doesn’t work, but none of this says anything at all about the fact that the signal which is to be processed arises quite independently of the capacity of such a device to process those kinds of signal.
Conceivably, consciousness, intelligence, memory, understanding, language ability, and creativity all may arise independently of the body’s biochemical and physiological capabilities as a receiver of, rather than the producer of, such phenomena. Restricting attention to physiological and biochemical processes is like the drunk who is looking for his/her lost car keys beneath a street light, not because that is where the individual lost the keys but because that is the only light available to illumine the situation - although rather uselessly.
Scientists often look only where their methodology and paradigms permit them to look. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t always fit into such narrowly defined, pre-fabricated holes.]
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