Table Of ContentPragmatism and the
Search for Coherence in
Neuroscience
Jay Schulkin
Pragmatism and the Search for Coherence in
Neuroscience
Pragmatism and the
Search for Coherence in
Neuroscience
Jay Schulkin
Department of Neuroscience
Georgetown University, USA
© Jay Schulkin 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-52672-4
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First published 2015 by
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This book is dedicated to Mike Hawrylycz of the Allen
Institute, Elizabeth and Bob Aylward from Seattle Children’s
Hospital, the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team, and my
colleagues, Matt Carter, David Eschenbach, Richard Palmiter,
and Larry Zweifel, at the University of Washington. Thank you
for a very rich scientific experience.
Contents
List of Figures v iii
List of Tables x
Preface x i
Introduction Beginnings: Foraging and Neuroscience 1
1 Foraging, Learning, and Knowing 15
2 Keeping Track of Objects in a Visual Species 35
3 Active Brains in Search and Satisfaction 6 5
4 Coping and Sampling in Biological Machinery 87
5 A Field Expanding 112
6 Motivation, Endurance in an Adaptive Brain 1 36
7 Some Therapeutic Expectations, Strategies, and Alternatives 1 54
Conclusion: Neuroscience, Experience, and the Larger Culture 182
References 1 98
Index 245
vii
List of Figures
0.1 D epiction of text, papyrus plant used for the creation
of paper, and the Egyptian symbol for the brain 1
0.2 T he diagram by Al-Haytham of the visual system 5
0.3 Leonardo, experimentalist and artist 6
0.4 From Willis’s Cerebri Anatomie 8
0.5 The Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Almbert 9
1.1 S table groups and encephalization 19
1.2 B ayesian inference and information representation [natural
sampling of frequencies and standard probability format] 24
1.3 Abduction 25
2.1 Learning names and rapid generalization 39
2.2 Brain as food 49
2.3 Memory 51
2.4 An overview of the macaque visual system 56
2.5 P ercent of olfactory cortex in different species 57
2.6 T he hypothesis of amygdala function in primate
social cognition 60
3.1 P late I of the Commentarius 69
3.2 I llustration of the pain pathway in Rene Descartes’
“Traite de l’homme 1664” 72
4.1 Faces, fear, and the amygdala 89
4.2 Cerebral hemispheres of the mouse 95
4.3 Meynart (1872 in Swanson, 2003, 2011) 98
4.4 “Man as Industrial Palace” by Fritz Kahn, 1927 103
4.5 I maging was performed in adult mouse brains
(3 months old) 105
4.6 S pecific and efficient functional expression of optogenetic
transgenes in locus coeruleus neurons 108
4.7 N euronal activity in the hippocampus 110
5.1 N ovice group 118
5.2 ( Left) an observational drawing of early 20th-century
brain surgery; (middle) coronal view of the external,
middle and inner ear; (far right) course of vestibulocochlear
nerve within the auditory meatus 123
5.3 Photograph of Jim Sprague, Louis Flexner, and Eliot Stellar 125
viii
List of Figures ix
6.1 Environmental stressors and genetic predisposition 150
6.2 A trophy of cortical neurons is caused by chronic stress or
a BDNF polymorphism 151
7.1 Cure of Folly by Hieronymus Bosch 156
7.2 Evolving definition of “Autism” 161
7.3 Growth in autism research 162
7.4 A Smith advertisement for Glyco-Heroin, a mixture of
heroin and glycerin, from the early 20th century 166
7.5 One definition or criteria for dependence 167
7.6 Native American smoking, 1591 168
C.1 CLARITY 197
List of Tables
1.1 Table of heuristics 26
1.2 Relationships that underlie cognition and action 29
1.3 Metaphors in neuroscience 30
2.1 Some properties of external objects that are
characteristics of Mathematics 46
2.2 Beverages for brains 50
2.3 Man versus mouse 55
3.1 Endogenous generators 65
3.2 Classic neurotransmitters in the CNS 75
4.1 Growth factors 96
4.2 Genes and optogenetics 107
5.1 Fields of neuroscience 112
5.2 Growth of the Society for Neuroscience from 1969 to 2012 126
6.1 Functions linked to dopamine 137
7.1 List of psychiatric medications, what they treat,
and their mechanisms of action 158
7.2A List of alternative medicine techniques, what they treat,
and their known effects 159
7.2B List of alternative substances, what they treat, and their
known effects 159
7.3 Behavioral/cognitive features of autism 163
7.4 Catalog of candidates 164
7.5 The diverse range of addictive drugs 168
7.6A Neurobiological substrates for the acute reinforcing
effects of drugs and abuse 169
7.6B Brain reward function during acute withdrawal
(0–72 hours) 169
7.6C Neurotransmitters implicated in the motivational
effects of withdrawal from drugs of abuse 169
7.7 Table of thought disorders 172
x
Preface
We have known for over a thousand years that the brain underlies behav-
ioral expression, but effective scientific study of the brain has taken place
only very recently. I went to my first Society for Neuroscience meeting
in 1975 with my science professor and laboratory mentor, George Wolf,
who had been a student of Neil Miller. Miller was one of the prominent
figures who helped build the Society for Neuroscience. As an under-
graduate in philosophy and science, my experience of attending such a
meeting was mesmerizing. The society was not large then; it had fewer
than a few thousand investigators.
I could sense not only the importance of understanding specific brain
functions for those of us interested in behavior but also the idea that
understanding the brain as a whole is imperative in the quest to under-
stand ourselves. For me, Socrates’ dictum ‘know thyself’ was transformed
into ‘know the brain.’ From the outside, the brain looks rather disap-
pointing: dull and dreary, a blob of gray and white shaded tissue, giving
no hint of the human self with which we identify. However, in the adept
hands and keen eyes of an anatomist such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal,
that inert exterior form revealed an incredible world of complexity,
capability, and wonder.
My PhD thesis advisor, Eliot Stellar, was on the original committee
that set up the Society for Neuroscience. He had co-written one of the
original textbooks (with his colleague Clifford Morgan at Johns Hopkins
University) on what was then called physiological psychology – a disci-
pline that by the time I came along was called behavioral neuroscience.
Both Stellar and Morgan were students of Karl Lashley, best remembered
for his contributions to our understanding of learning and memory.
Reading their book P hysiological Psychology , as well as one Stellar wrote
with Vince Dethier (who did elegant work on the fly brain), provided
me with a wide background in attempting to track brain–behavior rela-
tionships. Indeed, Dethier and Stellar began the debate about whether
motivation as a concept provides an explanation of behavior within
neuroscience, something that still reverberates within the field.
The goal, at least for those of us interested in the behavioral side of
things, was not to eliminate behavior in understanding brain function,
but to bring them both into clarity and connect different domains of
xi
