Recognition & Emotion

[dr_mabeuse]

Heard of a fascinating brain disorder today in which you can recognize the faces of your loved ones but you think they're all imposters!/I].

Some guy's written a book about it-won the National Book Award. Of course I've forgotten the name of the disease, something like Glaspbar's Disease. It's caused by an injury to the amygdala, a little structure in the base of the brain that's involved in infusing memories with emotion. Every memory has an emotional tag associated with it, and that's how the brain sorts them, by emotional priority. In Glaspbar's Disease you're able to recognize your husband and wife and children, but the rich emotional associations aren't there, so you feel that they must be imposters. Nothing can convince you otherwise. They don't feel like these people.

There's a few reasons I think this is fascinating. First because it shows that every memory comes with a little emotional tag attached. The brain is an emotion-processing machine at least as much as it's an information processing machine. When we dream, we don't process information, we process emotion. When we think, most of the time we're trying out emotional scenarios, not doing logic.

For another, the world is largely a feeling. It's not: I think, therefore I am. It's I feel, therefore I am. Emotion is prime. Feeling is fundamental. It's not the thought that makes us know we exist, but the experience of the thought, the feeling.

Third: How fragile it all is. Our certainties of what we know and experience and of who we love and what we are. The author described the self as a fragile overlay existing over some hundred organelles of the brain, trying to keep peace and organization and integration. How easy it is to disrupt, and what strange places it leads us to.

 

[rgraham666]

Hmm. Interesting thoughts, dr_m. I think you're on to something there.

Myself, I regard emotion as another type of information. Just not the sort amenable to enumeration, which is how we usually categorize information. One of the main tenets of our society is, 'If it can't be measured or marketed, it doesn't exist.'

I read an interesting book entitled Snapping on cults and how they worked. It dealt in how the cults created the sudden and extreme personality changes in their victims. They called the syndrome 'Information Disease'. I wrote an essay about it here for a contest a couple of years ago.

Also, here's a little bit on Phineas Gage who was the first person recorded to have personality changes due to brain damage.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Nothing to add except we just studied this in my human anatomy class. There are several classes of disorders like this, caused by disfunctions in various parts of the brain. Interesting stuff.

 

[lisa123414]

Recognition without the emotional tag - this sounds like hell to me. The damage has taken away the feelings, how very awful both for the patient, and certainly also for the loved one, who is now just another stranger.*tear*

 

[cantdog]

I wish the fuck I could remember who said it-- ah, that poet Muriel Rukeyser: the world is not made up of atoms; it is made up of stories. The emotional tags on memories, the brains sorting by emotion, the emotional content of smells-- rationalism is a lot of hooey. We are hardly rational ten percent of the time, some people lots less.

Work with teenagers a while. Man, everything is limbic then. It's all so fucking important! Imaging studies show that teenage brains use the limbic system, hippocampus, amygdala when processing an event. The reasoning faculty, the real filter of sanity, doesn't come into its own fully until the last great growth spurt, the brain's maturation, happens between about seventeen and about twenty-five. Millions of new crosslinks and neural pathways are laid down at that time. Nature doesn't, seemingly, find a lot of use for reason until it gets everyone to fucking and rearing the resulting children, finding their place in the troop hierarchy.

Even then, reason is completely laid on afterward, like a veneer.

Heard of a fascinating brain disorder today in which you can recognize the faces of your loved ones but you think they're all imposters!/I].

Some guy's written a book about it-won the National Book Award. Of course I've forgotten the name of the disease, something like Glaspbar's Disease. It's caused by an injury to the amygdala, a little structure in the base of the brain that's involved in infusing memories with emotion. Every memory has an emotional tag associated with it, and that's how the brain sorts them, by emotional priority. In Glaspbar's Disease you're able to recognize your husband and wife and children, but the rich emotional associations aren't there, so you feel that they must be imposters. Nothing can convince you otherwise. They don't feel like these people.

There's a few reasons I think this is fascinating. First because it shows that every memory comes with a little emotional tag attached. The brain is an emotion-processing machine at least as much as it's an information processing machine. When we dream, we don't process information, we process emotion. When we think, most of the time we're trying out emotional scenarios, not doing logic.

For another, the world is largely a feeling. It's not: I think, therefore I am. It's I feel, therefore I am. Emotion is prime. Feeling is fundamental. It's not the thought that makes us know we exist, but the experience of the thought, the feeling.

Third: How fragile it all is. Our certainties of what we know and experience and of who we love and what we are. The author described the self as a fragile overlay existing over some hundred organelles of the brain, trying to keep peace and organization and integration. How easy it is to disrupt, and what strange places it leads us to.

 

[Gi_Venus]

Heard of a fascinating brain disorder today in which you can recognize the faces of your loved ones but you think they're all imposters!/I].

Some guy's written a book about it-won the National Book Award. Of course I've forgotten the name of the disease, something like Glaspbar's Disease. It's caused by an injury to the amygdala, a little structure in the base of the brain that's involved in infusing memories with emotion. Every memory has an emotional tag associated with it, and that's how the brain sorts them, by emotional priority. In Glaspbar's Disease you're able to recognize your husband and wife and children, but the rich emotional associations aren't there, so you feel that they must be imposters. Nothing can convince you otherwise. They don't feel like these people.

There's a few reasons I think this is fascinating. First because it shows that every memory comes with a little emotional tag attached. The brain is an emotion-processing machine at least as much as it's an information processing machine. When we dream, we don't process information, we process emotion. When we think, most of the time we're trying out emotional scenarios, not doing logic.

For another, the world is largely a feeling. It's not: I think, therefore I am. It's I feel, therefore I am. Emotion is prime. Feeling is fundamental. It's not the thought that makes us know we exist, but the experience of the thought, the feeling.

Third: How fragile it all is. Our certainties of what we know and experience and of who we love and what we are. The author described the self as a fragile overlay existing over some hundred organelles of the brain, trying to keep peace and organization and integration. How easy it is to disrupt, and what strange places it leads us to.

*grin* this must explain my problem, my lack of emotional intelligence.

In the fact of such enlightenment does this change things? I mean if you are cognizant of such processes is one able to rest control with rational thought and change reality? Or if the natural process is filtered through the emotional state are we to victimize ourselves anyway even if aware?

 

[cantdog]

*grin* this must explain my problem, my lack of emotional intelligence.

In the fact of such enlightenment does this change things? I mean if you are cognizant of such processes is one able to rest control with rational thought and change reality? Or if the natural process is filtered through the emotional state are we to victimize ourselves anyway even if aware?

Christ, it's not a tragedy! You can be as rational as ever you were. The information should simply make you a bit suspicious of just how infallible your reasoning may actually be. Learn the rules of logical discourse (takes maybe a couple hours) and then you can double-check. A lot of times, surprise! you've been rationalizing. The capacity for rationalizing seems to be infinite. You argue with the raw data until it takes a form you are comfortable with, essentially. Happens all the time.

 

[Katyusha]

Heard of a fascinating brain disorder today in which you can recognize the faces of your loved ones but you think they're all imposters!/I].

Some guy's written a book about it-won the National Book Award. Of course I've forgotten the name of the disease, something like Glaspbar's Disease. It's caused by an injury to the amygdala, a little structure in the base of the brain that's involved in infusing memories with emotion. Every memory has an emotional tag associated with it, and that's how the brain sorts them, by emotional priority. In Glaspbar's Disease you're able to recognize your husband and wife and children, but the rich emotional associations aren't there, so you feel that they must be imposters. Nothing can convince you otherwise. They don't feel like these people.

There's a few reasons I think this is fascinating. First because it shows that every memory comes with a little emotional tag attached. The brain is an emotion-processing machine at least as much as it's an information processing machine. When we dream, we don't process information, we process emotion. When we think, most of the time we're trying out emotional scenarios, not doing logic.

For another, the world is largely a feeling. It's not: I think, therefore I am. It's I feel, therefore I am. Emotion is prime. Feeling is fundamental. It's not the thought that makes us know we exist, but the experience of the thought, the feeling.

Third: How fragile it all is. Our certainties of what we know and experience and of who we love and what we are. The author described the self as a fragile overlay existing over some hundred organelles of the brain, trying to keep peace and organization and integration. How easy it is to disrupt, and what strange places it leads us to.

That is extremely interesting. I love reading about things like this, although they ought to scare me to death.

I have a book that discusses various disorders caused by brain injuries and lesions. I haven't read the book in a long time so I can't remember the name of the disorder, but the case study in there couldn't recognize faces as faces. He saw them as inanimate objects. He would sometimes pick at his wife's face as he was leaving because he thought she was his hat. Another was about a disorder a girl developed after she was hospitalized with meningitis. She couldn't control her arms unless she looked at them; as soon as she looked elsewhere her arms seemed to take on a life of their own.

Strange stuff indeed.

 

[cantdog]

That is extremely interesting. I love reading about things like this, although they ought to scare me to death.

I have a book that discusses various disorders caused by brain injuries and lesions. I haven't read the book in a long time so I can't remember the name of the disorder, but the case study in there couldn't recognize faces as faces. He saw them as inanimate objects. He would sometimes pick at his wife's face as he was leaving because he thought she was his hat. Another was about a disorder a girl developed after she was hospitalized with meningitis. She couldn't control her arms unless she looked at them; as soon as she looked elsewhere her arms seemed to take on a life of their own.

Strange stuff indeed.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Sachs

 

[Guest]

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Sachs

Oliver Sacks, yes. Also read Anthropologist from Mars. We got into his work while dealing with Alzheimer's and my husband's mother. And we found how it also related to the autism/Asperger's spectrum with our own children.

Sacks has a new book out about music and amnesia "Musicophilia" that looks fascinating though I haven't had the chance to read it yet.

 

[Katyusha]

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Sachs

Yes that would be it.

 

[fifty5]

Yet people still talk about 'immortal souls' and so on.

The more science discovers, the more it becomes apparent that 'humanity' and so on is an artefact of biological mechanisms.

Including the accordingly increasingly more persuasive dictum that: "If God didn't exist, Man would have to create Him in their own image!"

 

[McKenna]

When we dream, we don't process information, we process emotion.

When I write, I process emotion. Sometimes it's the only way I know how to deal with it.

Fascinating thoughts, Doc, though it sounds like a horrible disease; not only for those who have it, but for the loved ones who have to watch it (not unlike, I imagine, Alzheimers.)

All of this leads me to wonder about those who seemingly have no emotion; when, where, and how is it processed? Always in dreams? But what if they don't dream?

 

[scriptordelecto]

I remember reading an article that focused on how damage to the Amygdala also kept people from recognizing emotions in others. The article focused on self-preservation and the inability to recognize fear from the facial expressions of another person. Most of the people in the study weren't able to look into the eyes of the other person unless commanded to do so. When they complied with the command, they were able to recognize the emotion with dramatically increased frequency.

People who were trained to look at a person's eyes for cues, could identify fear almost as much as those with an undamaged amygdala.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I remember reading an article that focused on how damage to the Amygdala also kept people from recognizing emotions in others. The article focused on self-preservation and the inability to recognize fear from the facial expressions of another person. Most of the people in the study weren't able to look into the eyes of the other person unless commanded to do so. When they complied with the command, they were able to recognize the emotion with dramatically increased frequency.

People who were trained to look at a person's eyes for cues, could identify fear almost as much as those with an undamaged amygdala.

I didn't know that, but I've heard that one of the features of autism is this kind of "emotional blindness" in communication. Autistics simply don't pick up on or respond to emotional cues in other's speech or action. It's like they have a lack of empathy--no emotional imagination.

I have a relative who's autistic, and that describes him perfectly. He just doesn't deal in the emotional side of things. Information only.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

All of this leads me to wonder about those who seemingly have no emotion; when, where, and how is it processed? Always in dreams? But what if they don't dream?

I think, with memories, they don't just have big emotions involved, but more like little micro-emotions. You know how you have little prejudices about the letters of the alphabet or numbers? 8's kind of friendly while 7's like a weird hooker or something? Those are emotional tags as well. I find this when I'm trying to remember a word. I remember emotional or sensual things about it. It was a pleasant word that was kind of wet-sounding and made me think of a beach. That's how we organize our memories, by weird things like that.

 

[starrkers]

The few autistic folk I've known have a marked lack of eye contact in their interactions with people too.

 

[scriptordelecto]

I didn't know that, but I've heard that one of the features of autism is this kind of "emotional blindness" in communication. Autistics simply don't pick up on or respond to emotional cues in other's speech or action. It's like they have a lack of empathy--no emotional imagination.

I have a relative who's autistic, and that describes him perfectly. He just doesn't deal in the emotional side of things. Information only.

They're looking at the correlations between difficulties with the amygdala and autism. The comparisons between those injured and those with autism were similar. I found it interesting.

 

[Huckleman2000]

An acquaintance of mine's wife had brain surgery recently, and the doctors told them that a fairly common effect of the type of surgery was that the patients can't read anymore, although they can write.
The brain really is a strange organ.

 

[scriptordelecto]

An acquaintance of mine's wife had brain surgery recently, and the doctors told them that a fairly common effect of the type of surgery was that the patients can't read anymore, although they can write.
The brain really is a strange organ.

Isn't it though? So much more is learned about it every day, but there's still more about it that's a mystery than is understood.

 

[Katyusha]

An acquaintance of mine's wife had brain surgery recently, and the doctors told them that a fairly common effect of the type of surgery was that the patients can't read anymore, although they can write.
The brain really is a strange organ.

Yes it is, and it's amazing what we don't know about it.

Can these patients type, or is it just handwriting that they're still capable of? If it's both, or even just one, perhaps that has something to do with muscle memory? Like the muscles and tendons of your hands and fingers still remember how to move to form words even though your brain can't process the words visually anymore.

Hmmmm.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Yes it is, and it's amazing what we don't know about it.

Can these patients type, or is it just handwriting that they're still capable of? If it's both, or even just one, perhaps that has something to do with muscle memory? Like the muscles and tendons of your hands and fingers still remember how to move to form words even though your brain can't process the words visually anymore.

Hmmmm.

I don't know, but the group of us talking also speculated that 'muscle memory' might be the way this happens. I think there still has to be some sort of mental trigger, "write an A...", then it relies on muscle memory. Or not; I really don't have any idea. That explanation may be an exercise in trying to project ourselves into an experience that we siimply can't comprehend or imagine.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

An acquaintance of mine's wife had brain surgery recently, and the doctors told them that a fairly common effect of the type of surgery was that the patients can't read anymore, although they can write.
The brain really is a strange organ.

We were just talking about this. One of the things that makes writing fiction so difficult is that the process used to create it is not at all the same as the process used to decipher it. Reading and writing are totally different functions using totally unrelated areas of the brain, which is why most of my good writing gets done when I'm rereading what I've written in first draft and fixing it, so I can see where what it says falls short.

In painting it's not like that. You're seeing what you paint and you're seeing the final picture--same process. But writers use a different process to create than they do to interpret what they've created.

On top of that, the process of speech is totally unrelated to both writing and reading. Just ask anyone who's tried to write a book by using voice-recognition software and dictating it. You think more formally when you write and use a much larger vocbulary.

 

[Stella_Omega]

We were just talking about this. One of the things that makes writing fiction so difficult is that the process used to create it is not at all the same as the process used to decipher it. Reading and writing are totally different functions using totally unrelated areas of the brain, which is why most of my good writing gets done when I'm rereading what I've written in first draft and fixing it, so I can see where what it says falls short.

In painting it's not like that. You're seeing what you paint and you're seeing the final picture--same process. But writers use a different process to create than they do to interpret what they've created.

On top of that, the process of speech is totally unrelated to both writing and reading. Just ask anyone who's tried to write a book by using voice-recognition software and dictating it. You think more formally when you write and use a much larger vocbulary.

There are some anecdotes which I can tell, but have never been able to write down. And the reason is that there was no coherence to these happenings, they had no plot, no theme, they were real events but utterly surreal. I figure I need to record myself telling them, and then write down what i said-- cool little stories.

One is about how a maid in a hotel I was staying at went crazy and attacked the guests in the middle of the night...

Another is about how a deer jumped in front of our car, and, as we were discussing killing it-- it had broken a leg-- another guy pulled up and insisted that we try to save it instead, leading to a goose-chase that used up a day of travel-time, three different sheriff's stations... And no haunch of venison for hungry me. And two grand body damage to the car, of course.


( I don't think the quote function is quite working; I'm sure I quoted Doc, but my window came up with Huck's post in it instead)

 

[Oblimo]

I have a relative who's autistic, and that describes him perfectly. He just doesn't deal in the emotional side of things. Information only.

That's why I've always been slightly disappointed in Star Trek's logic-driven adroids and Vulcans. Where are all the pointy-eared Aspies?