Rob Kall: OK, now, I call my show the bottom up radio
show because I believe that we're transitioning from a top down culture to a
more bottom up culture. I also believe
that for hundreds of thousands of years, humans and their predecessors lived in
a more bottom up way, and that it's only since the onset of agriculture and
civilization that our culture has become more top down. But, when you talk about top down and bottom
up when it comes to brain processing, it's a little different.
Still, it's interesting to look at the way the brain functions from top
down and bottom up ways, and it seems to me, especially from what you've
described as the nature of the amygdala, top down brain function is where you
impose upon your experience what you've got in your brain. Bottom up brain function is where you open up
and allow whatever you're experiencing to be processed with the least amount of
influence based on your past. Does that
make sense?
Darren
Schreiber: Yeah, I'm not so sure. I mean, the thing is, that we are always
thinking with our whole brain. So these
brain imaging studies, one of the things that felt a little funny with them
when you're looking at the data is we don't look at the difference between when
your brain is working or when it's not working.
We look at very small differences in blood flow.
So the technique that I'm using in my studies, and that many
neuroscientists are using, is called fMRI.
This is the same MRI that they're using when they're looking at my
knee. It's Magnetic Resonance Imaging;
you're getting a giant magnetic pulse and seeing "Hey, what 's the structure
there?" You can use that because it's a
magnet, and because there are magnetic properties of blood. Blood has iron in it, and that iron
magnetizes, and if it's oxygenated blood, it has a different magnetic signal
than deoxygenated blood. And the brain
imaging can pick that up. But it picks
up differences that are fractions of a percent, and then is able to extrapolate
about the amount of the changes in neuro-activity that are taking place when
that blood flow changes.
What's fascinating, though, is that the brain is always active,
everywhere. There isn't a part of the
brain that just, as far as I know, that just shuts down completely, and a bunch
of neurons that are completely quiescent; in fact, your whole brain is working
together all the time,. It just changes
how much activity is taking place in one part versus in another, and that's
what neuroscientists are paying attention to.
So, there is a constant interplay between these reflexive processes and
these reflective processes: they're constantly in a conversation. Neither one is completely shut out at any
given time.
Rob Kall: That's a very general kind of a statement,
yet, you have a study. Your study, and
I'm going to read a brief excerpt from it:
"...concluded that amygdala activations associated with externally
directed reactions to risk are stronger in Republicans, while insula
activations associated with internally directed reactions to affective
perceptions are stronger in Democrats.
These results suggest an internal versus external difference in
evaluated process."
Now, I don't think my listeners are going to understand that, but it's
my way of transitioning to get you to talk about your study. But what I am reading in that is there were
some real specific differences, and can you tell us about what the study was,
how it worked, and what you found?
Darren
Schreiber: Sure I'd be glad to.
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