December 17, 2013 • 22 mins
Santa or Krampus? Gifts or a stocking full of coal? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie look at negative and positive reinforcement and a new study that looks at the genetics behind each.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Yea, hey, wasn't the stuff through your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. And
it is the holiday season. Yes, it is. It is.
That is a statement of fact, and uh, it's a
(00:23):
statement of fiction. What's your take on Santa? To Santa
come to your house? Did Santa come to your house
as a child? Santa? Uh? And the idea of Santa
was dashed by my brother when I was but a
tender six year old. So my feelings on Santa are, yeah,
pretty whatever. Now he's he's a jolly old guy, and
(00:44):
I do find as an adult though, that his presence
is a bit creepy. Well, I feel like to a
certain extent he should be a little creepy because there
are you know, not to spend much time on it,
but there are a lot of different versions of Santa.
Do you have the sort of westernized American Santa who
is just kind of an overly positive, jolly fat man
who brings you gifts and and there's there's just all good.
(01:06):
There's you know, you sit on his lap, and and
it's so positive that it's like a certain amount of
darkness creeps into it. But then there are the older models.
You know, it's sort of a gaunt uh St Nicholas,
et cetera. These type of characters, I feel like I
have more of an inherent darkness to them, so they
tend not to be as creepy because they're already the
creepiness doesn't grow on it like mold over time. It's
(01:28):
already part of the design. So you're you're talking about
more of the European representation of Santa Claus are scene
through clause, the Dutch Santa. Yeah, the Dutch Santa in particular,
because not only is he a bit dark and and
a little more. I mean, he's still bringing you gifts.
He's still the good cop, but there's also a bad
cop to this scenario. And in this I'm of course
(01:51):
talking about Crampus. Crampus, the holiday demon. The the one
of many types of Crampus is the horn. The beasts
that come down from them the hills in in the
period before the Feast of St. Nicholas and terrorize naughty
children in some cases beat them with sticks or haul
them off all together, perhaps to help. So they come
(02:14):
they come in advance. And there are the characters like this,
like Bell's nickel Um and that that come and sort
of terrorize the children. And and they're using the stick
as opposed to the carrot to try and get good,
good behavior out of them. Where's the good cop, Santa
Claus St. Nicholas whoever? Or the baby Jesus on a
golden string? If if you're if your check, they are
the good cop, and they are trying to dangle the
(02:35):
carrot in front of you to get positive behavior. M okay.
So we're talking about carrot and stick today, what we
respond to. And I just want to read a little
excerpt from Santa. I don't know if you've heard this before.
Quote from Santa. Well, actually, if you reach out to him,
Santas elves sorry. He sees you when you're sleeping, he
(02:55):
knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been good
or bad, So be good for a goodness sake. Are
you familiar with that? Yeah, I'm familiar with that. That's
the that's those are the famous words. Well, I just
can't help but think back to the Panopticon, because we
talked about this, we talked about the c and eye
of God. And the Panopticon, of course, is the actual
(03:17):
structure that was meant as this concentric prison system with
this watch tower in the middle that was watching all
of the prisoners all the time. But doesn't this sound
a bit like Santa Claus, whether or not it's Santa
or Crampus. Really, Yeah, the Santa or Crampus to become
this uh, panoptic figure at the center of everything. They're
(03:38):
all knowing, they're all judging, and uh. And it's right
to be afraid of them, right and and uh. And
we talked in the Panopticon episode about how it's also
the seat of God in the in a belief system,
the idea that there's this divine figure there's looking down
on you and knows everything you've done and knows what
you're doing. And so that's one of the interesting things
about this whole Christmas scenario for children, with the with
(04:02):
the good cops and the bad cops, with the caret
and the stick, because it's it's basically a mini Day
of Doom. I've heard I've heard it referred to. It's
like a model of the of the more elaborate system
that the the adults would have had in which you know,
it's a situation of heaven in hell, fire and brimstone
eternal salvation, and then for the children it's kind of
(04:23):
reduced to a more simpler model. Well, yeah, it's an
initiation into the panopticon system, or basically this idea of
heaven and hell. Yes, yeah, on a simple level, like
people who believe in a in a divine being in
God's or goddesses, Like, is any given particular god is it?
Is it going to be a benign God that rewards
you for good behavior? Or is it a judgmental, harsh,
(04:47):
angry god that is all about punishing you for sin?
And into what degree do you end up using both?
And what sort of personality are you? Right? I mean,
that's kind of what I probably would have thought about
it before. Are you a personality that responds more rewards
or to the possibility of punishment? But it turns out
to be a bit deeper than that, of course it
(05:08):
always does, right, Yeah, I mean with with humans, of course,
there's so many layers of cognition that end up being involved,
especially in in something like religion, but even in folk
tales for children. Uh, it just gets complicated really fast.
But what we're gonna talk about here in the rest
of this episode is that there does appear to be
a certain genetic factors at work here too. We can
actually look at individual genes that are involved in how
(05:31):
we deal with positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement with the
caret or the stick, the good cop or the bad cop,
the Santa Claus or the crampus, because of course it
always boils down to that brain, what's going on and
how we are genetically predisposed. Of course, genetics isn't everything,
but it's very interesting when it comes to something like this.
(05:51):
So on that note, we're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, we're going to get into
the genetics of reward and punishment. Yes, the holidays are here,
and perhaps you want a little holiday viewing, well, head
on over to Netflix dot com, where you can find
various videos, TV shows, movies, feature films, classics, bad movies
(06:14):
as well horror movies, all with a holiday theme to
them that you can plug into your brain. Uh And
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mind listener, you can get a free thirty day trial membership.
All you have to do is go to Netflix dot
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You're supporting this podcast while also benefiting your eyeballs. You
(06:36):
can play all this stuff in your Xbox, your PlayStation,
your mobile device. Selection subject to change, but it's always
a great deal. So go to Netflix dot com slact
blow the Mind sign up today. All right, we're back. Now,
let's travel on over to the Netherlands, not to sit
on the lap of synth class, but to visit with
(06:58):
Hanak than Ordin in Fashion Cools and their colleagues from
the Dodgers Institute in Naimahin in the Netherlands, because they
have published some very interesting research in the journal Journal Neuron. Yeah,
and by the way, uh Nimangen is uh in the east,
in the east of the Netherlands near the German border,
so that's definitely St. Nicholas territory and uh and I
(07:20):
believe that skrampas territory as well. Um, people may have
to correct us on that, but I think he's around there.
So what was what was old Heinekey interested in? Well,
uh in this study that they conducted, they demonstrated serotonin
and dopamine related genes influence how we base their choices
on past punishments and rewards. Now, we believe for a
(07:42):
while that brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin partially determine our
sensitivity to reward and punishment, right, I mean, after all,
dopamine is UH is a neuro transmitter that helps to
control the brain's reward and plasure centers, and serotonin's keyed
into a motion, mood control, digestion, et cetera. I mean,
we've talked about about serotonin and dopamine countless times and
how they end up dictating who we are and how
(08:03):
we behave. But you have gene variants for these, right, yes,
and that would influence your behavior when it came to
punishment and reward. And to test this, the researchers used
a simple computer game to test the genetic influence of
the genes. D a T one that's the dopamine related gene.
Insert a CRT that's the serotonin related gene. As these
(08:24):
genes influenced dopamine in serotonin. Yeah, the variance of note
here UH for for cert is a five H T
T l P r plus R S two five five
and then for d A T one or that one
which seems that seems to me that one would lead
to all sorts of hilarity in the researcher, and but
it could be wrong. But anyway, the variant with that
(08:45):
one is thirty U t R v N t R
thirty one very nice, very nice. Um. During the study,
they had seven hundred participants who would repeatedly choose one
of two symbols, symbol A, which usually resulted in a reward,
or simple B, which usually resulted in punishment. And halfway
through the game, however, there was a twist. The rules
(09:06):
were reversed, and this allowed researchers to measure how flexible
people were in adjusting to their choices, and it also
revealed whether they impulsively changed their choice when the computer
gave them misleading feedback. So in of the words, they
had to sort of readjust and figure out whether or
not it's going to be a reward or a punishment.
And it's interesting because growing up is is kind of
(09:29):
a situation of finding the rules changing on you all
the time, Like what's this, I can't poop in my
pants anymore? I no longer have that option. That's a
that's a that's a game changer. And how am I
going to roll with that? What's this? I I can't
just you know, run around the house half naked. Oh,
I have to change? Well, you know, we're always dealing
with changes, are changes in our diet as we get older? Uh,
you know? Or Santa Claus not real? Are you kidding?
(09:52):
Nobody's watching me. Now I get to assess punishment and
reward in a different way exactly. Yeah, and then how
do you end up rolling with that? Yeah? Life is
full of revelations and new rules, and in our ability
to roll with those rules or not roll them kind
of ends up where we land in the grand scheme
of things. Now, the big result here is that they
discover that the dopamine gene affects how we learn from
(10:15):
the long term consequences of our choices, while the serotonin
gene affects our choices in the short term. So it
would follow that some people would be a little bit
more hardwired to air on the side, say of being
able to learn well with from long term consequences, or
they might be more motivated by choices in the short term. Yeah,
(10:39):
people's tendency to change their choices immediately after receiving punishment
depends on which serotonin gene variant they inherited from their parents. So,
in other words, certin is involved in behavioral adaptation following
losses in other words, the stick, whereas the dopamine gene variant,
on the other hand, exerts influence on whether people can
stop themselves making the incorrect choice that was previously rewarded.
(11:01):
In other words, uh d a t one that one plays,
that one plays a role in experience based preservation or
the carrot. Okay, So this is important because a lot
of neuropsychiatric disorders caused by abnormal dopamine and or serotonin
levels are associated with forms of inflexibility like addiction, anxiety,
(11:22):
or Parkinson's disease. So you see this being played out
in various chemicals in the brain in the extreme. Yeah, yeah,
so and this it goes. The ratifications of a study
like this are far more than just oh, we know
a little bit about more about how we behave and
how we inherit aspects of who we are. But yeah,
this is actually stuff that will be able to use
in the future to to deal with some of these
(11:44):
crippling disorders. All right, so there's an interesting blond called
neuroscience in the Law and is edited by Alex Verbeck,
who says a quote, A minority of Parkinson's patients who
undergo dopamine based therapies will develop persistent and potentially ruinous
impulsive behavior disorders, for example, chronic gambling. And this is
in patience with no prior history of problem gambling. But
(12:04):
once they start to get some of the dopamine based therapies,
their behavior changes. Now, Verbett goes on to say that, um,
that you can look at say chronic meta amphetamine us right, meth,
and you can see that it manics for reproduces the
effects of genetic mutations that would predispose someone to impulsive
(12:25):
or injurious choices. And what Rebetta goes on to say
is that the majority of programs UM have a long
term thinking and planning these rehabilitation programs from meth addicts,
and what happens is that they suffer from a high
washout rate or a high recidivism rate because of this,
(12:46):
because it's not really appealing to more of what we
would say is the carrot here, and that this is
something that when you're talking about neutoscience and law, and
you're talking about addicts that you really need to think
about in terms of rehabilitation, that inherently the system isn't
set up for success if it's not appealing to the
(13:06):
correct ways in which the person perceives the reward or
the punishment. Yeah, they have more carrot wiring in them
at this point. Therefore, it would make sense that you
wouldnit any kind of rehabilitation program would need to be
more carrot centric. Yeah, I mean, and this is true
of kids too, even in terms of lying. And we've
discussed kids and how much they'll lies. Something like a
(13:27):
six year old drops a whopper every like ninety minutes.
By whopper, I mean lie. Um. We were talking scat earlier,
just to be clear, Um. But it turns out that
again the reward and not the punishment is really key
into curbing lying and kids, because when they see that
they haven't been punished for lying, they actually will stop
(13:51):
the lying, whereas if they get punished, they continue to
do it over and over again. And there's some really
interesting studies in this book called Nurture Shop by Poe
Bronson and Ashley H. Merriment and they go over this territory.
But the point that seems to be arising, at least
from a good amount of scenarios is that the stick
isn't always that helpful, and yet it's one of the
(14:14):
I would say pillars of society, at least Western society. Yeah,
I mean you look, I mean that's that's that's always
been a big issue of course, in crime and punishment.
To what extent is that does does prison just become
a punishment to what extent we as a culture become, uh,
just completely wrapped up in the idea of punishing the
guilty rather than trying to rehabilitate people and turn them
(14:35):
around and give them some sort of carrot at the
end of the hallway. You know, what's weird? What's weird?
I came across the study that said that if you
want to be able to control your impulse, right, and
let's say that you're you're in a situation and you're
there's a buffet in front of you, you are actually
going to be able to control those impulses, not by
(14:55):
the reward of the punishment of the situation, but by
your bladder, whether or not it's full. And I'm not
talking about bursting full because you know, then no cognition
occurs other than hey, I have to go to the
bathroom right now. But according to Dr Merrisham Tuk, who
led a study on this, the brain's control signals are
not task specific, but they actually result in an unintentional
(15:19):
increase in control over other tasks. When your bladder is
full and it's saying, hey, I'm full, and you're trying
to control that response to p all over the place,
isn't that fascinating, Like you're trying to control that. So
then you have a plateful of food in front of
you at the same time, and and and you make
the decision to control your impulse on that as well.
H Well, you know, I've often heard that if you're
(15:39):
trying to control your appetite, a lot of times when
we're hungry, we're actually thirsty and therefore drink more water.
So it seems like it would pay then to keep
your bladder at at kind of a full level, um,
you know, not to where you're just you know, you're
risking like complete urinary implosion, but but just enough to
keep you on edge, Like I feel. It's like sometimes
I'm like that and when we come into record of podcasts,
(16:01):
my my bladder are we just full enough that I'm
just a little on edge the whole time without actually
peeing myself? And I haven't really broken it down as
the wind as to why it works. But and certainly
I haven't thought about it much in terms of impulse control.
But but I don't know. I feel like I do better,
I perform better if I have a slightly full butter,
(16:22):
you know what. I do the same thing with podcasts sometimes. Yeah, yeah,
I gotta admit. And now I'm curious about you guys.
Have there if there are certain tasks that you consciously
do with a semi or full bladder. Yeah, and do
you know you're doing that on purpose? Let us know? Yes,
let us know. And hey, let us know what you
think about the carot and the stick in pretty much
(16:43):
any context you can imagine, be it rearing a child,
being a child, uh, celebrating Christmas, UM, to partaking of
your culture, UM, dealing with with crime and punishment on
a on a national or international level. UM. Let us know.
We'd love to hear from you. Uh. And you know,
and I also would love to to hear about your
own particular take on holiday traditions to what extent they
(17:05):
fall on the scale between you know, outright uh, stick thrashing,
negativity and darkness uh. And on the other end of
the scale, you know, candy and puppy dog tails and bright,
jolly old elves and carrots. Uh. You know. Since we
have a few spare moments here, let's call over the
mailbot and see what we have to read. All right,
(17:27):
this one comes to us from Sam. Sam write sentences high,
Robert and Julie. My name is Sam from Aberdeen, Scotland.
I've been listening to your podcast for a long time
and they helped me get through my work day and
I love them. But this is my first message to yourselves.
I was just listening to your podcast on autotommy and
it made me think of the lizard from the Amazing
Spider Man Number six created by Stanley and Steve Ditko
in November nine. The villain is the Newest is In
(17:50):
the Newest Spider Man movie, Dr Kurt Connors tries to
regrow his arm using lizard DNA. It works, but ends
up changing him into a giant, crazy lizard. Compared to
the research is going on today with the regeneration they
were thinking far ahead of their time and the dangers
that may come with it, obviously in a worst case scenarios.
It always amazes me the kind of books and sci
fi from about forty years ago are filled with science
(18:10):
ideas that they are researching in the modern age. Keep
up the fantastic work, Thanks Sam. And indeed, that's one
of the great things that we've talked before about science
fiction is that it's science fiction is always a reflection
of a particular time period and their own dreams, aspirations
and fears about where science is going to take us
and uh and and more often than not, you'll find
(18:33):
some interesting uh um interpretations of where we're gonna go
in the future, and some of those hold out to
be really true. Did you We also got a comment
by Paula and she is responding to a video on
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, a video on
smiling and we also have a podcast episode about this too.
She says, now, I am a longtime smiler, admittedly tipping
(18:56):
over into billy laughter pretty often, so definitely above that
twenty smile average a day for adults. So then she
goes on to say that she put a pencil in
her mouth to try to mimic that pencil in smiling study.
She said she didn't watch a funny funny visual, but
she thought about a scene in The Big Bang Uh
television show and she that I've seen actually that had
(19:17):
her falling off the couch laughing when she first saw it.
And she said, the smile then pushed in from the
muscles further out from the edge of my mouth. When
I felt that part of my cheek move it pressed
against the pencil, I felt a chortal moving from my
chest to my face. I wonder if you are a
habitual smile laugh person, if you routinely move more muscles
in your face, that you have more neuron connections making
(19:41):
it harder to squelch with the pencil and the mouth
question mark. So, you guys have given me so much
to think about, but you almost always managed to get
in something that also gives me a big grin a
total brain delight. Thanks Paula. Huh, that's I think that's
a really good question. If you smile more often, do
you have more neural tonal connections? Um, is it harder
(20:04):
to not smile? Essentially? Huh? That is an interesting question
and it also makes me, think about scuba divers. What
do you have Underwater's actually really hilarious, but scuba divers
always have the apparatus in their mouth, so they can't
laugh as much. It could just be absolutely hilarious down
there if you're there in person, but they never get
(20:24):
to laugh unless you're in some sort of specialized submarine,
which is a little more rare. Huh. I don't know.
That's another test that that could be completed. Yeah, because
I was thinking about the pencil thing, and I was like,
my first thoughts were smokers do so would it affect
smokers because smokers, you don't have it in your mouth
the whole time the cigarette and they were moving into
the corner of their lips right, however, they are using
(20:45):
those muscles that are drawing their lips downward in the
corners of them downward. And we did see in one
of those pencil smile frown tests that if you had
the pencil vertical in sort of like a cigarette position,
that that people did not get the sort of emotional
jolt from others when they were looking at photos of
(21:05):
happy people and smiling people. Huh. Well, there's an area
of exploration for the future. All right, So there you
have it. We'd love to hear from. You can find
it in all the normal places, of course. Stuff to
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(21:27):
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(21:49):
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(22:09):
MHM
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Yea, hey, wasn't the stuff through your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. And
it is the holiday season. Yes, it is. It is.
That is a statement of fact, and uh, it's a
(00:23):
statement of fiction. What's your take on Santa? To Santa
come to your house? Did Santa come to your house
as a child? Santa? Uh? And the idea of Santa
was dashed by my brother when I was but a
tender six year old. So my feelings on Santa are, yeah,
pretty whatever. Now he's he's a jolly old guy, and
(00:44):
I do find as an adult though, that his presence
is a bit creepy. Well, I feel like to a
certain extent he should be a little creepy because there
are you know, not to spend much time on it,
but there are a lot of different versions of Santa.
Do you have the sort of westernized American Santa who
is just kind of an overly positive, jolly fat man
who brings you gifts and and there's there's just all good.
(01:06):
There's you know, you sit on his lap, and and
it's so positive that it's like a certain amount of
darkness creeps into it. But then there are the older models.
You know, it's sort of a gaunt uh St Nicholas,
et cetera. These type of characters, I feel like I
have more of an inherent darkness to them, so they
tend not to be as creepy because they're already the
creepiness doesn't grow on it like mold over time. It's
(01:28):
already part of the design. So you're you're talking about
more of the European representation of Santa Claus are scene
through clause, the Dutch Santa. Yeah, the Dutch Santa in particular,
because not only is he a bit dark and and
a little more. I mean, he's still bringing you gifts.
He's still the good cop, but there's also a bad
cop to this scenario. And in this I'm of course
(01:51):
talking about Crampus. Crampus, the holiday demon. The the one
of many types of Crampus is the horn. The beasts
that come down from them the hills in in the
period before the Feast of St. Nicholas and terrorize naughty
children in some cases beat them with sticks or haul
them off all together, perhaps to help. So they come
(02:14):
they come in advance. And there are the characters like this,
like Bell's nickel Um and that that come and sort
of terrorize the children. And and they're using the stick
as opposed to the carrot to try and get good,
good behavior out of them. Where's the good cop, Santa
Claus St. Nicholas whoever? Or the baby Jesus on a
golden string? If if you're if your check, they are
the good cop, and they are trying to dangle the
(02:35):
carrot in front of you to get positive behavior. M okay.
So we're talking about carrot and stick today, what we
respond to. And I just want to read a little
excerpt from Santa. I don't know if you've heard this before.
Quote from Santa. Well, actually, if you reach out to him,
Santas elves sorry. He sees you when you're sleeping, he
(02:55):
knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been good
or bad, So be good for a goodness sake. Are
you familiar with that? Yeah, I'm familiar with that. That's
the that's those are the famous words. Well, I just
can't help but think back to the Panopticon, because we
talked about this, we talked about the c and eye
of God. And the Panopticon, of course, is the actual
(03:17):
structure that was meant as this concentric prison system with
this watch tower in the middle that was watching all
of the prisoners all the time. But doesn't this sound
a bit like Santa Claus, whether or not it's Santa
or Crampus. Really, Yeah, the Santa or Crampus to become
this uh, panoptic figure at the center of everything. They're
(03:38):
all knowing, they're all judging, and uh. And it's right
to be afraid of them, right and and uh. And
we talked in the Panopticon episode about how it's also
the seat of God in the in a belief system,
the idea that there's this divine figure there's looking down
on you and knows everything you've done and knows what
you're doing. And so that's one of the interesting things
about this whole Christmas scenario for children, with the with
(04:02):
the good cops and the bad cops, with the caret
and the stick, because it's it's basically a mini Day
of Doom. I've heard I've heard it referred to. It's
like a model of the of the more elaborate system
that the the adults would have had in which you know,
it's a situation of heaven in hell, fire and brimstone
eternal salvation, and then for the children it's kind of
(04:23):
reduced to a more simpler model. Well, yeah, it's an
initiation into the panopticon system, or basically this idea of
heaven and hell. Yes, yeah, on a simple level, like
people who believe in a in a divine being in
God's or goddesses, Like, is any given particular god is it?
Is it going to be a benign God that rewards
you for good behavior? Or is it a judgmental, harsh,
(04:47):
angry god that is all about punishing you for sin?
And into what degree do you end up using both?
And what sort of personality are you? Right? I mean,
that's kind of what I probably would have thought about
it before. Are you a personality that responds more rewards
or to the possibility of punishment? But it turns out
to be a bit deeper than that, of course it
(05:08):
always does, right, Yeah, I mean with with humans, of course,
there's so many layers of cognition that end up being involved,
especially in in something like religion, but even in folk
tales for children. Uh, it just gets complicated really fast.
But what we're gonna talk about here in the rest
of this episode is that there does appear to be
a certain genetic factors at work here too. We can
actually look at individual genes that are involved in how
(05:31):
we deal with positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement with the
caret or the stick, the good cop or the bad cop,
the Santa Claus or the crampus, because of course it
always boils down to that brain, what's going on and
how we are genetically predisposed. Of course, genetics isn't everything,
but it's very interesting when it comes to something like this.
(05:51):
So on that note, we're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, we're going to get into
the genetics of reward and punishment. Yes, the holidays are here,
and perhaps you want a little holiday viewing, well, head
on over to Netflix dot com, where you can find
various videos, TV shows, movies, feature films, classics, bad movies
(06:14):
as well horror movies, all with a holiday theme to
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All you have to do is go to Netflix dot
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(06:36):
can play all this stuff in your Xbox, your PlayStation,
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blow the Mind sign up today. All right, we're back. Now,
let's travel on over to the Netherlands, not to sit
on the lap of synth class, but to visit with
(06:58):
Hanak than Ordin in Fashion Cools and their colleagues from
the Dodgers Institute in Naimahin in the Netherlands, because they
have published some very interesting research in the journal Journal Neuron. Yeah,
and by the way, uh Nimangen is uh in the east,
in the east of the Netherlands near the German border,
so that's definitely St. Nicholas territory and uh and I
(07:20):
believe that skrampas territory as well. Um, people may have
to correct us on that, but I think he's around there.
So what was what was old Heinekey interested in? Well,
uh in this study that they conducted, they demonstrated serotonin
and dopamine related genes influence how we base their choices
on past punishments and rewards. Now, we believe for a
(07:42):
while that brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin partially determine our
sensitivity to reward and punishment, right, I mean, after all,
dopamine is UH is a neuro transmitter that helps to
control the brain's reward and plasure centers, and serotonin's keyed
into a motion, mood control, digestion, et cetera. I mean,
we've talked about about serotonin and dopamine countless times and
how they end up dictating who we are and how
(08:03):
we behave. But you have gene variants for these, right, yes,
and that would influence your behavior when it came to
punishment and reward. And to test this, the researchers used
a simple computer game to test the genetic influence of
the genes. D a T one that's the dopamine related gene.
Insert a CRT that's the serotonin related gene. As these
(08:24):
genes influenced dopamine in serotonin. Yeah, the variance of note
here UH for for cert is a five H T
T l P r plus R S two five five
and then for d A T one or that one
which seems that seems to me that one would lead
to all sorts of hilarity in the researcher, and but
it could be wrong. But anyway, the variant with that
(08:45):
one is thirty U t R v N t R
thirty one very nice, very nice. Um. During the study,
they had seven hundred participants who would repeatedly choose one
of two symbols, symbol A, which usually resulted in a reward,
or simple B, which usually resulted in punishment. And halfway
through the game, however, there was a twist. The rules
(09:06):
were reversed, and this allowed researchers to measure how flexible
people were in adjusting to their choices, and it also
revealed whether they impulsively changed their choice when the computer
gave them misleading feedback. So in of the words, they
had to sort of readjust and figure out whether or
not it's going to be a reward or a punishment.
And it's interesting because growing up is is kind of
(09:29):
a situation of finding the rules changing on you all
the time, Like what's this, I can't poop in my
pants anymore? I no longer have that option. That's a
that's a that's a game changer. And how am I
going to roll with that? What's this? I I can't
just you know, run around the house half naked. Oh,
I have to change? Well, you know, we're always dealing
with changes, are changes in our diet as we get older? Uh,
you know? Or Santa Claus not real? Are you kidding?
(09:52):
Nobody's watching me. Now I get to assess punishment and
reward in a different way exactly. Yeah, and then how
do you end up rolling with that? Yeah? Life is
full of revelations and new rules, and in our ability
to roll with those rules or not roll them kind
of ends up where we land in the grand scheme
of things. Now, the big result here is that they
discover that the dopamine gene affects how we learn from
(10:15):
the long term consequences of our choices, while the serotonin
gene affects our choices in the short term. So it
would follow that some people would be a little bit
more hardwired to air on the side, say of being
able to learn well with from long term consequences, or
they might be more motivated by choices in the short term. Yeah,
(10:39):
people's tendency to change their choices immediately after receiving punishment
depends on which serotonin gene variant they inherited from their parents. So,
in other words, certin is involved in behavioral adaptation following
losses in other words, the stick, whereas the dopamine gene variant,
on the other hand, exerts influence on whether people can
stop themselves making the incorrect choice that was previously rewarded.
(11:01):
In other words, uh d a t one that one plays,
that one plays a role in experience based preservation or
the carrot. Okay, So this is important because a lot
of neuropsychiatric disorders caused by abnormal dopamine and or serotonin
levels are associated with forms of inflexibility like addiction, anxiety,
(11:22):
or Parkinson's disease. So you see this being played out
in various chemicals in the brain in the extreme. Yeah, yeah,
so and this it goes. The ratifications of a study
like this are far more than just oh, we know
a little bit about more about how we behave and
how we inherit aspects of who we are. But yeah,
this is actually stuff that will be able to use
in the future to to deal with some of these
(11:44):
crippling disorders. All right, so there's an interesting blond called
neuroscience in the Law and is edited by Alex Verbeck,
who says a quote, A minority of Parkinson's patients who
undergo dopamine based therapies will develop persistent and potentially ruinous
impulsive behavior disorders, for example, chronic gambling. And this is
in patience with no prior history of problem gambling. But
(12:04):
once they start to get some of the dopamine based therapies,
their behavior changes. Now, Verbett goes on to say that, um,
that you can look at say chronic meta amphetamine us right, meth,
and you can see that it manics for reproduces the
effects of genetic mutations that would predispose someone to impulsive
(12:25):
or injurious choices. And what Rebetta goes on to say
is that the majority of programs UM have a long
term thinking and planning these rehabilitation programs from meth addicts,
and what happens is that they suffer from a high
washout rate or a high recidivism rate because of this,
(12:46):
because it's not really appealing to more of what we
would say is the carrot here, and that this is
something that when you're talking about neutoscience and law, and
you're talking about addicts that you really need to think
about in terms of rehabilitation, that inherently the system isn't
set up for success if it's not appealing to the
(13:06):
correct ways in which the person perceives the reward or
the punishment. Yeah, they have more carrot wiring in them
at this point. Therefore, it would make sense that you
wouldnit any kind of rehabilitation program would need to be
more carrot centric. Yeah, I mean, and this is true
of kids too, even in terms of lying. And we've
discussed kids and how much they'll lies. Something like a
(13:27):
six year old drops a whopper every like ninety minutes.
By whopper, I mean lie. Um. We were talking scat earlier,
just to be clear, Um. But it turns out that
again the reward and not the punishment is really key
into curbing lying and kids, because when they see that
they haven't been punished for lying, they actually will stop
(13:51):
the lying, whereas if they get punished, they continue to
do it over and over again. And there's some really
interesting studies in this book called Nurture Shop by Poe
Bronson and Ashley H. Merriment and they go over this territory.
But the point that seems to be arising, at least
from a good amount of scenarios is that the stick
isn't always that helpful, and yet it's one of the
(14:14):
I would say pillars of society, at least Western society. Yeah,
I mean you look, I mean that's that's that's always
been a big issue of course, in crime and punishment.
To what extent is that does does prison just become
a punishment to what extent we as a culture become, uh,
just completely wrapped up in the idea of punishing the
guilty rather than trying to rehabilitate people and turn them
(14:35):
around and give them some sort of carrot at the
end of the hallway. You know, what's weird? What's weird?
I came across the study that said that if you
want to be able to control your impulse, right, and
let's say that you're you're in a situation and you're
there's a buffet in front of you, you are actually
going to be able to control those impulses, not by
(14:55):
the reward of the punishment of the situation, but by
your bladder, whether or not it's full. And I'm not
talking about bursting full because you know, then no cognition
occurs other than hey, I have to go to the
bathroom right now. But according to Dr Merrisham Tuk, who
led a study on this, the brain's control signals are
not task specific, but they actually result in an unintentional
(15:19):
increase in control over other tasks. When your bladder is
full and it's saying, hey, I'm full, and you're trying
to control that response to p all over the place,
isn't that fascinating, Like you're trying to control that. So
then you have a plateful of food in front of
you at the same time, and and and you make
the decision to control your impulse on that as well.
H Well, you know, I've often heard that if you're
(15:39):
trying to control your appetite, a lot of times when
we're hungry, we're actually thirsty and therefore drink more water.
So it seems like it would pay then to keep
your bladder at at kind of a full level, um,
you know, not to where you're just you know, you're
risking like complete urinary implosion, but but just enough to
keep you on edge, Like I feel. It's like sometimes
I'm like that and when we come into record of podcasts,
(16:01):
my my bladder are we just full enough that I'm
just a little on edge the whole time without actually
peeing myself? And I haven't really broken it down as
the wind as to why it works. But and certainly
I haven't thought about it much in terms of impulse control.
But but I don't know. I feel like I do better,
I perform better if I have a slightly full butter,
(16:22):
you know what. I do the same thing with podcasts sometimes. Yeah, yeah,
I gotta admit. And now I'm curious about you guys.
Have there if there are certain tasks that you consciously
do with a semi or full bladder. Yeah, and do
you know you're doing that on purpose? Let us know? Yes,
let us know. And hey, let us know what you
think about the carot and the stick in pretty much
(16:43):
any context you can imagine, be it rearing a child,
being a child, uh, celebrating Christmas, UM, to partaking of
your culture, UM, dealing with with crime and punishment on
a on a national or international level. UM. Let us know.
We'd love to hear from you. Uh. And you know,
and I also would love to to hear about your
own particular take on holiday traditions to what extent they
(17:05):
fall on the scale between you know, outright uh, stick thrashing,
negativity and darkness uh. And on the other end of
the scale, you know, candy and puppy dog tails and bright,
jolly old elves and carrots. Uh. You know. Since we
have a few spare moments here, let's call over the
mailbot and see what we have to read. All right,
(17:27):
this one comes to us from Sam. Sam write sentences high,
Robert and Julie. My name is Sam from Aberdeen, Scotland.
I've been listening to your podcast for a long time
and they helped me get through my work day and
I love them. But this is my first message to yourselves.
I was just listening to your podcast on autotommy and
it made me think of the lizard from the Amazing
Spider Man Number six created by Stanley and Steve Ditko
in November nine. The villain is the Newest is In
(17:50):
the Newest Spider Man movie, Dr Kurt Connors tries to
regrow his arm using lizard DNA. It works, but ends
up changing him into a giant, crazy lizard. Compared to
the research is going on today with the regeneration they
were thinking far ahead of their time and the dangers
that may come with it, obviously in a worst case scenarios.
It always amazes me the kind of books and sci
fi from about forty years ago are filled with science
(18:10):
ideas that they are researching in the modern age. Keep
up the fantastic work, Thanks Sam. And indeed, that's one
of the great things that we've talked before about science
fiction is that it's science fiction is always a reflection
of a particular time period and their own dreams, aspirations
and fears about where science is going to take us
and uh and and more often than not, you'll find
(18:33):
some interesting uh um interpretations of where we're gonna go
in the future, and some of those hold out to
be really true. Did you We also got a comment
by Paula and she is responding to a video on
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, a video on
smiling and we also have a podcast episode about this too.
She says, now, I am a longtime smiler, admittedly tipping
(18:56):
over into billy laughter pretty often, so definitely above that
twenty smile average a day for adults. So then she
goes on to say that she put a pencil in
her mouth to try to mimic that pencil in smiling study.
She said she didn't watch a funny funny visual, but
she thought about a scene in The Big Bang Uh
television show and she that I've seen actually that had
(19:17):
her falling off the couch laughing when she first saw it.
And she said, the smile then pushed in from the
muscles further out from the edge of my mouth. When
I felt that part of my cheek move it pressed
against the pencil, I felt a chortal moving from my
chest to my face. I wonder if you are a
habitual smile laugh person, if you routinely move more muscles
in your face, that you have more neuron connections making
(19:41):
it harder to squelch with the pencil and the mouth
question mark. So, you guys have given me so much
to think about, but you almost always managed to get
in something that also gives me a big grin a
total brain delight. Thanks Paula. Huh, that's I think that's
a really good question. If you smile more often, do
you have more neural tonal connections? Um, is it harder
(20:04):
to not smile? Essentially? Huh? That is an interesting question
and it also makes me, think about scuba divers. What
do you have Underwater's actually really hilarious, but scuba divers
always have the apparatus in their mouth, so they can't
laugh as much. It could just be absolutely hilarious down
there if you're there in person, but they never get
(20:24):
to laugh unless you're in some sort of specialized submarine,
which is a little more rare. Huh. I don't know.
That's another test that that could be completed. Yeah, because
I was thinking about the pencil thing, and I was like,
my first thoughts were smokers do so would it affect
smokers because smokers, you don't have it in your mouth
the whole time the cigarette and they were moving into
the corner of their lips right, however, they are using
(20:45):
those muscles that are drawing their lips downward in the
corners of them downward. And we did see in one
of those pencil smile frown tests that if you had
the pencil vertical in sort of like a cigarette position,
that that people did not get the sort of emotional
jolt from others when they were looking at photos of
(21:05):
happy people and smiling people. Huh. Well, there's an area
of exploration for the future. All right, So there you
have it. We'd love to hear from. You can find
it in all the normal places, of course. Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com is our main homepage, our mothership,
and that's where you will find all of our blog posts,
all of our podcast episodes dating back to the very beginning,
as well as our weekly video series. We've been out
(21:27):
the three a week these days and they're always worth
checking out. Um. You can also find us on social media.
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Mind Stuff Show and the News. Of course, another way
they might send a letter to us, that's right, You
can send a letter to us, particularly if you would
like to discuss if the Elf on a shelf it's
just a stand in for the pen off to come
(21:49):
watch Tower Guard. You can let us know at Blow
the Mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
(22:09):
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