This book treats contemporary topics in cognitive neuroscience and has given me a myriad of ideas to
follow and think through, making it more difficult to settle on just one idea
for research. I assure myself that this might be one of the factors characteristic to creative thinking,
particularly the defocused attention described by the “cognitive disinhibition hypothesis” (p.320), although I
feel the stringent need to use some sort of heuristic (that will presumably
activate my left temporal pathways, p.126), a kind of spontaneous thought (p.
275), which will lead me in taking the decision to elaborate just one idea for
a research project.
With this in mind I choose
to elaborate on the implications and ramifications of decision making in a
social context, especially under the pressure of a significant person, and find
that important regions lie in the prefrontal cortex having projections to and from the hypocampus, amygdala, the human striatum which is a central
region of interest when researching social decisions. Another brain region of interest
is the anterior insula, which exhibits a greater activation in unfair
situations, an interesting point when one considers that
it is also found to be responsive to physically painful stimuli (p.233).
Taking it on the “who
knew!?!” aspect that each neuroscience book comprises, I have found that:
- Ventromedial
prefrontal cortex is important in personal and social decision making, and
impairment in this structure can make it difficult to choose friends,
partners and activities (p. 74).
- An abnormal
social environment can have negative consequences on the structures
involved in triggering somatic/emotional states, deficits which were
observed in various laboratory settings, when individuals with
neurobiological abnormalities failed to express proper emotions, empathize
or fear negative consequences. This negative learning can be undone when
individuals are exposed to proper learning environment (p. 90).
- An acetylcholine
(ACh) deficit (lack of sensory bound signals) might be involved in some
hallucinatory experiences, a consistent point of the idea that
hallucination is antagonistic to sensory processing(p.105).
- The ventral
striatum is sensitive to the magnitude of an anticipated reward (p.151).
- A feature
of depression is a diminished functional connectivity within fronto-cingulate
pathways which can contribute to a diminished behavioral adjustment as a
consequence of difficulties in cognitive control (p.212).
- Intranasal administration
of oxytocin (a neuropeptide involved in affiliative behavior) increased
trust behavior (p. 231)
These ideas were just a
few of the wonderfully treated ideas presented in the book. They have harvested
my interest and the corresponding neuronal pathways involved in learning and
memory formation.
I must confess that writing
a review, or rather a personal view of the book I carefully read and learn from
has proven to be a challenging task. For any confusions or misunderstandings made
I apologize in advance.
