Several target articles in this BBS special issue address the topic of cerebellar and olivary functions, especially as they pertain to motor earning. Another important topic is the neural interaction between the limbic system and the cerebellum during associative learning. In this commentary we present some of our data on olivo-cerebellar and limbic-cerebellar interactions during eyeblink conditioning. [HOUK et al.; SIMPSON et al.; THACH].

Shors & Matzel somewhat lightly dismiss the evidence that a process like LTP may underlie the learning-induced increase in neuronal activity in the hippocampus in eyeblink conditioning. I provide some 12 lines of evidence supporting this hypothesis and the further hypothesis that this learning-induced LTP-like hippocampal plasticity can play a critical role in certain aspects of learned behavior.

The propositional nature of human associative learning is strongly supported by studies of trace eyeblink and fear conditioning, in which awareness of the contingency of a conditioned stimulus upon an unconditioned stimulus is a prerequisite for successful learning. Studies of animal lesion and human imaging suggest that the hippocampus is critical for establishing functional connections between awareness and trace conditioning.

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

Anorexia nervosa remains an enigma among Western cultures. Various causal explanations have been offered, encompassing biological, psychological, and sociocultural models. These explanations, however, focus on the immediate or proximal mechanisms of causation. A more thorough understanding of anorexia nervosa can be achieved by understanding the relationship between these factors and ultimate causation, the level of explanation which deals with individual reproductive fitness. This paper reviews the biological, psychological, sociocultural, and evolutionary models and indicates a necessary synthesis between proximate and ultimate (...) levels of causation in examining the anorexia nervosa puzzle. (shrink)

In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure of the (...) model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)

The human propensity for casting our social worlds as "us against them" is perhaps the primary impediment to deep and broadly inclusive understandings of the workings of rhetoric. Many decades ago, Kenneth Burke assailed that barrier with regard to Adolf Hitler. Surrounded by the satisfactions of vituperation against the leader of one of the world's most heinous social movements, Burke begged his readers to make space for understanding how Hitler's rhetoric brought about what it did. Philippe-Joseph Salazar's Words Are Weapons (...) makes a similar contribution for our era. He asks us to resist the gratifications generated by dismissing as "Islamaphobic" any critical analysis of what he calls "caliphal"... (shrink)

In the face of documented difficulties in the public understanding of genetics, new metaphors have been suggested. The language of information coding and processing has become deeply entrenched in the public representation of genetics, and some critics have found fault in the blueprint metaphor, a variant of the dominant theme. They have offered the language of the recipe as a preferable metaphor. The metaphors of the blueprint and the recipe are compared in respect to their deterministic implications and other associations. (...) The likelihood of the recipe metaphor framing cognition in more useful ways is called into question. (shrink)

People respond to metaphors as much with regard to the emotions that they generate as to their referential, comparative contents. Interviews with non-geneticists about preferred metaphors for gene-environment interaction that illustrate this tendency are reported. These interviews also reveal the dynamic tendency of such emotional responses. A second set of interviews shows that lay people may preferentially use a metaphor of "virus" or "disease" for talking about genes, as opposed to the coding metaphors transmitted through the mass media and reportedly (...) preferred by geneticists. An explanation based on the differently situated emotions of these groups is proposed. It is proposed that the prominence of emotions in responding to genetics indicates the importance of incorporating analyses of emotions instead of simple principles into policy formulation about genetics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT “Lockdown!” has articulated our collective and individual fear response to the novel coronavirus. Two regnant specialized discourses fostered by the academy—science and ideology critique—could not redirect this inadequate response nor generate their own adequately broad and focused social responses. This suggests the desirability of the academy adding phronesis as a goal for its pedagogical practices.

Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. By Celeste Michelle Condit.