Davey's discussion of phobias is criticized because of the lack of distinctions between the various classes of phobias. Psychopharmacological evidence indicates differing pathophysiologies. Clinical psychopharmacological distinctions are not congruent with either a strict phylogenetic preparedness model or with cognitive biases. Davey's critique of the laboratory bred animal studies seems far fetched. His hypothesis concerning the importance of historical significance is clearly ad hoc rather than based on comparative data.

In addition to active wake, emotions are generated and experienced in a variety of functionally different states such as those of sleep, during which external stimulation and cognitive control are lacking. The neural basis of emotions can be specified by regarding the multitude of emotion-related brain states, as well as the distinct neuro- and psychodynamic stages (generation and regulation) of emotional experience.

Over the last 102 years, a lot of discussion was being held about the psychoanalytic conception of the “death drive,” but still with inconclusive results. In this paper, we start with a brief review of Freud’s conception, followed by a comprised overview of its subsequent support or criticisms. The core of our argument is a systematic review of current biochemical research about two proposed manifestations of the “death drive,” which could hopefully move the discussion to the realm of science. It (...) was already established that drive satisfaction leads to the secretion of beta-endorphins, and research evidence also shows that the same biochemical mechanisms get activated in the case of masochism and the gambling disorder but only if they are preceded by chronic frustration of the essential drives. We conclude that the actual situation is more complex than Freud hypothesized, and that a fundamental revision of the psychoanalytic drive theory is necessary. (shrink)

The early gene knockout studies with a neurobiological focus were directed at fairly obvious target genes and added very little to our knowledge of behavioural neuroscience. On the contrary, since the behavioural consequences were often predictable, this helped confirm that the technology was working. However, a substantial number of knockouts of genes expressed in the brain have been without obvious behavioural consequences, supporting the concept of genetic canalisation and redundancy. Others have produced a behavioural deficit for which there is no (...) obvious explanation. Many cells of different tissue types have a capacity for memory, and in the brain, cells of the hippocampus are important for spatial learning and memory. Deleting genes that are expressed in the happpocampus has received considerable attention in this behavioural context. Although the initial studies experienced problems of interpretation, considerable advances have since been made. Knockout mice are now subject to tests of different forms of learning, multicellular hippocampal recordings, and restricted gene deletion specific to cells of component regions. This multi‐level approach is proving more informative. Nevertheless, there is still a need to recognise that behavioural expression is several steps removed from gene expression, and that the relationship between genes and behaviour can be reciprocal. (shrink)

Jung’s advance, for Deleuze, must lie in this identification of a « problematic » zone of human intelligence, through which the instinctual form of consciousness can return. A gap is opened up for the return of an « instinct devenu désintéressé, conscient de lui-même, capable de réfléchir sur son objet et de l’élargir indéfiniment ».

I examine critically the application of information‐theoretic ideas to biological communication during embryonic development and in the functioning central nervous system (CNS). I show that intercellular communication relies mostly on simple signals whose role is to effect a selection among predetermined cellular states. Hence, a crucial role is played by cellular memory, which stabilizes such states. Memory in cells is partly located in the nuclear DNA; no less important however is (phenotypic) memory lying in the cell's organelles and compartments. Because (...) of combinatorial effects in gene expression patterns, cell memory is an enormously powerful mechanism, which also underlies plasticity, and thus constitutes the factor unifying genetic determination, plasticity and learning. Communication in the CNS is analyzed in some detail: here, cellular memory is embodied in anatomy (i.e., cell shape) and neurochemistry. These are the major, relatively “static” factors affecting the routing of neural impulses in the adult CNS. In addition, however, faster channeling is also required: action potentials must be directed to their targets along a few of exponentially many paths, and this dynamic routing is crucial for proper operation. I suggest that collective oscillatory modes may play a role in solving this addressing problem, in the same way that the clock signal gates the operation of man‐made computers. BioEssays 25:699–708, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper explores the case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton’s Law. The uses of robots raises several questions that this paper seeks to address. The first concerns the role of the robots in biological research: do they simulate something or do they participate in something? The second question concerns the physicality of the robots: what difference does embodiment make to the role of the robot in these experiments. Thirdly, how do life, embodiment and (...) social behavior relate in contemporary biology and why is it possible for robots to illuminate this relation? These questions are provoked by a strange similarity that has not been noted before: between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze’s reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra. (shrink)

This paper aims to do three things: First, to provide a review of John Staddon's book Adaptive dynamics: The theoretical analysis of behavior. Second, to compare Staddon's behaviorist view with current ideas on embodied cognition. Third, to use this comparison to explicate some outlines for a theoretical analysis of behavior that could be useful as a behavioral foundation for cognitive phenomena. Staddon earlier defended a theoretical behaviorism, which allows internal states in its models but keeps these to a minimum while (...) remaining critical of any cognitive interpretation. In his latest book, Adaptive dynamics, he provides an overview and analysis of an extensive number of these current, behaviorist models. Theoretical behaviorism comes close to the view of embodied cognition, which also stresses the importance of behavior in contrast to high-level cognition. A detailed picture of the overlaps and differences between the two approaches will be sketched by comparing the two on four separate issues: the conceptualization of behavior, loopy structures, parsimonious explanations, and cognitive behavior. The paper will stress the need for a structural analysis of behavior to gain a better understanding of both behavior and cognition. However, for this purpose, we will need behavioral science rather than behaviorism. (shrink)

The concept of instinct has fallen into disrepute, due to a number of problems with the way it had been conceived, mostly related to the concept of innateness. Yet the legacy of instincts survives in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, in the form of an emphasis on the genetic determinants of behavior. Through a consideration of the two main theories of instinct and the objections that have been raised against them, it becomes clear that existing theories of instinct founder because of (...) their inability to reconcile the psychic and physiological “faces” of instinct. Merleau-Ponty's notion of “being-in-the-world” as a third term linking the psychic and the physiological makes possible a new conception of instinct which escapes these criticisms. At the same time, it opens up a new way of understanding how instincts may operate in human beings. (shrink)

Despite several decades of criticism, dichotomous thinking about behavioral development remains widespread and influential. This is particularly true in study of birdsong development, where it has become increasingly common to diagnose songs, elements of songs, or precursors of songs as either innate or learned on the basis of isolation-rearing experiments. The theory of sensory templates has encouraged both the dichotomous approach and an emphasis on structural rather than functional aspects of song development. As a result, potentially important lines of investigation (...) have been overlooked and the interpretation of existing data is often flawed. Evidence for a genetic origin of behavioraldifferencesis frequently interpreted as evidence for the genetic determination of behavioralcharacters. The technique of isolation rearing remains the methodology of choice for many investigators, despite the fact that it offers only a rather crude analysis of the contribution of experience to song development and provides no information at all about genetic contributions to development. The latter could in principle be elucidated by the application of developmental-genetic techniques, but it is unlikely that these can easily be applied to the study of birdsong. Because developmental questions are so often posed in terms of the learned–innate dichotomy, “experience” is taken to be synonymous with “learning” and the possible role of nonobvious contributions to song development has largely been ignored. An alternative approach, based on Daniel Lehrman's interactionist theory of development, permits a more thorough appreciation of the problems that have yet to be addressed, and provides a more secure conceptual foundation for theories of song development. (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness or subjective experiencing is a rapidly expanding research program engaging philosophers of mind, psychologists, cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, evolutionary biologists and biosemioticians. Here we outline an evolutionary approach that we have developed over the last two decades, focusing on the evolutionary transition from non-conscious to minimally conscious, subjectively experiencing organisms. We propose that the evolution of subjective experiencing was driven by the evolution of learning and we identify an open-ended, representational, generative and recursive form of associative (...) learning, which we call Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL), as an evolutionary transition marker of minimal consciousness. This evolutionary marker provides evidence that the evolutionary transition to consciousness has gone to completion and allows reverse-engineering from this learning capacity to the system that enables it – making possible the construction of a toy model of UAL. The model allows us to identify some of the key processes and structures that constitute minimal consciousness, points its taxonomic distribution and the ecological context in which it first emerged, highlights its function and suggests a framework for exploring developmental and evolutionary modifications of consciousness. We point to ways of experimentally testing the relationship between UAL and consciousness in human and in non-human animals and discuss the theoretical and ethical implications of our approach. The framework we offer allows the exploration of the evolutionary changes in agency, value systems, selective processes and goals that were involved in the transition to subjective experiencing from a perspective that resonates with the approaches of bio-semioticians. (shrink)