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When Love Overrides Other Needs

When Love Overrides Other Needs

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

Of course love overrides everything – how could you think differently?!

Well, no it wouldn’t make sense for love to override everything – we need to be alive to love. The question though, is how do competing needs play out in our brain.

If you’re thirst and hungry, or hungry and afraid, what do you prioritise and how does the brain do this?

And what’s this got to do with love?

Well, it’s not really love but potential love (or unromantically: potential mating partner) – and in this piece of research it’s in birds, zebra finches to be precise.

In birds?

Yes, it’s not just mice in neuroscience labs. Andrea Roemer et al. of Cornell University wanted to find out how needs compete with each other in animal models. There is plenty of research into motivation for single needs but little on competing needs.

“Love” is also a bit of a stretch of the imagination, or a very human interpretation. Specifically in this case brain signals of a lone male thirsty zebra finch were measured using optogenetics (i.e. very precise measurement of neuronal activity in real time).

First they were recorded as the thirsty finch was given water and trained to recognise signals for water – but then the researcher added a female zebra finch to see what would happen.

Oh, interesting and what did happen?

First off, we know that dopamine, you will have likely heard for me previously, is triggered by small rewards such as drinking and eating. Dopamine is also considered a motivation transmitter in the brain – triggering motivation to engage in an activity such as getting said drink or food. It is also involved in addiction.

The question now is does adding an extra need, or motivation, mix up dopamine systems, or switch between them, or something else. And then what is prioritised?

…and…

And when the female finch was added to the scenario what happened is that the male zebra finch, who had been trained to recognise a signal for water, ignored the signal and this was accompanied by the dopamine signal being switched off.

So the dopamine system stopped activating to thirst?

Precisely – and it is important to understand that this is biological. We often talk of “psychological” mechanisms but here we can see that this is not “psychological”, switching to another focus, but the signalling mechanism in the brain being deactivated when a new potential reward is added.

And is this really love?

Well, no. But maybe in zebra finch terms it is. What it shows is that attraction to the other sex can trump a simple emotion such as thirst – but this may depend on how severe that other need is.

But it also neatly explain some phenomenon such as how we can ignore certain needs under certain conditions – later the finch may have felt doubly thirsty because of his brain switching from one need to another.

In this case it also shows that there was no real competition in the brain – it wasn’t different dopamine networks fighting it out with each other, rather a damping of the dopamine response in one area of the brain.

It also shows that our brains are constantly rebalancing our needs according to current environmental conditions.

And that male zebra finches prioritise crumpet over other needs

Or prioritise love!


For a deep dive into the brain and love see Your Brain on Love

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Andrea Roeser, Vikram Gadagkar, Anindita Das, Pavel A. Puzerey, Brian Kardon, Jesse H. Goldberg.
Dopaminergic error signals retune to social feedback during courtship.
Nature, 2023
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06580-w

More Quick Hits

Role of Dopamine in Speed and Accuracy of Decisions

Role of Dopamine in Speed and Accuracy of Decisions

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

Making fast and accurate decisions is the goal right?

Right. But we know from research that there is a speed/accuracy trade off i.e. the faster you make a decisions the more it is likely to be inaccurate.

 

And what has dopamine got to do with this – I thought dopamine was a reward chemical also known for the little dopamine “hits” on social media.

Yes, dopamine is related to reward – as you mentioned particularly with reward learning i.e. you do something and get a reward – in the classic rat experiments they get something to eat.

But dopamine is also involved in movement – Parkinson’s is also related to dopamine and L-Dopa the common Parkinson’s medication simply boosts dopamine. Dopamine is also considered one of the key motivation chemicals.

Ok, and what did these researchers do?

The researchers from the University of Cologne in Germany had participants (humans not rats that is!) do various computer-based reward learning tasks. They did this under various conditions with L-Dopa for example, to boost dopamine, or with placebo.

And what were the results?

By using these computer-based learning scenarios they were more accurately able to measure responses and accuracy. And indeed they noticed that dopamine did increase this speed vs accuracy divide. Meaning that dopamine increases decision-making speed but at the expense of accuracy.

Ummm that’s kind of not the best thing then!

Yes, dopamine motivates and drives action, and in this scenario it increased decision making speed. But that may not necessarily be a good things if accuracy loses.

But if you have trouble making decisions then dopamine might help?

We’re a long way from using supplements to improve decision making despite what some “biohackers” may claim. Sure, for those who can’t make decisions and for some forms of ADHD a dopamine boost may help ability to make or get to decisions, which could be very useful. But for most of us that is not the case.

And a reminder to slow down sometimes to increase accuracy?

Yes, indeed!

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

Karima Chakroun, Antonius Wiehler, Ben Wagner, David Mathar, Florian Ganzer, Thilo van Eimeren, Tobias Sommer, Jan Peters.
Dopamine regulates decision thresholds in human reinforcement learning in males.
Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41130-y

More Quick Hits

Do Conservatives and Liberals Have Moral Brains?

Do Conservatives and Liberals Have Moral Brains?

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

I do have a moral brain! I do! Don’t I?

Well, we know almost all babies have moral reasoning, so I suppose you have too

Do babies have moral reasoning?

Well, depends on what you mean by moral reasoning. But I have used some of the research into babies in my workshops for years. And it is well documented that babies make moral judgments – and this is good news. It means that morality is inborn.

Great!

But there is also downside to this because babies also show in-group (those similar to yourself) preferences and this includes punishing the out-group!

Oh dear!

But that is not what the research I’m reporting on is about. This research was trying to get to the bottom of moral processing in the brain. This should answer question such as do we have a morality hub and are different moral contexts processed differently?

What about liberals and conservatives moral brains?

I’ll get on to that later.

So do we have a morality hub in the brain…and is that missing in some people?

Not really, and not really, is the answer to both questions:

These researchers from the University of California took 64 participants and gave them bunches of moral and non-moral questions to answer and also scanned their brains while doing so.

The researchers used something called the Moral Foundations Framework (MFF) which rates morality into these six groups:

  1. Issues of care and harm

  2. Concerns of fairness and cheating

  3. Liberty versus oppression

  4. Matters of loyalty and betrayal

  5. Adherence to and subversion of authority

  6. Sanctity versus degradation.

Ok, so there is more than one type of morality – what were the results?

Well, there are a few important points. First off is they noticed that moral reasoning activates regions associated with what is called theory of mind. Theory of mind is being been able to think, and feel, what other people are feeling.

Ok, that makes sense

However, moral decisions didn’t just activate the same areas as social reasoning i.e. just reasoning with and about other people. This shows that moral reasoning has its own specific structure.

What is that?

Ok, let’s get technical. The regions more associated with moral reasoning were: the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and posterior cingulate (amongst others).

I’ve written about these in other areas and how they relate to various social functions. However, they couldn’t see a moral hub, but more a distributed network that differs depending on the moral context.

A machine learning tool could also identify the six moral contexts mentioned above just from the brain activity patterns. This therefore suggest that those six groups of morality in the MFF are indeed separate groups.

What is also interesting is that moral situations used more processing and decisions were longer to take.

I thought they were instinctive, and therefore hard-wired, and therefore quick to process?

We could think that – but moral processing is sometimes complex because you have to take into account various questions. As the researchers noted you may need to process: who does what, when, to whom, with what effect, and why?

But some people may be more interested in what this means for politics.

Well, we all agree on morals don’t we?

Well, yes but how we prioritise them is different!

In the above six categories you can see that the first two are individualised (issues of care and harm /concerns of fairness and cheating) and the last four are group behaviours (liberty versus oppression / matters of loyalty and betrayal / adherence to and subversion of authority / sanctity versus degradation) also known as “binding” morals. They’re morals that create cohesion.

And what doe this mean?

Well, those that are based on groups use less representations of the self in the brain. But that is in brain processing.

There is bunch of evidence, also supported with this research, that liberals are more sensitive to the individual morals: care and harm and concerns of fairness and cheating. This is why they are always keen to promote individualisation and try to make the world perfect for everybody – all inclusive.

However, conservatives are much more focused on group behaviours: liberty versus oppression / matters of loyalty and betrayal / adherence to and subversion of authority / sanctity versus degradation. Their language, you will be quick to notice, reflects this.

Ahh, yes, I see what you mean!

This means that liberals and conservatives have different moral priorities and also speak across each other.

Oh dear!

Yes, oh dear! What we can see is that our brain is wired to be moral. That morality uses unique networks but we prioritise these differently.

Let’s hope we can keep these balanced!

And see my other articles on the political brain of more on the differences.

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

Reference

Hopp, F.R., Amir, O., Fisher, J.T. et al.
Moral foundations elicit shared and dissociable cortical activation modulated by political ideology.
Nat Hum Behav (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01693-8

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