tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post3640773816982963022..comments2024-03-09T15:46:44.638+01:00Comments on For what they were... we are: Poverty: a peculiar type of stress that dramatically reduces cognitive functionMajuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-37950817944921115902013-09-01T20:05:30.640+02:002013-09-01T20:05:30.640+02:00I fail to see how this is relevant or on topic.I fail to see how this is relevant or on topic.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-33092003045606607262013-09-01T18:24:08.492+02:002013-09-01T18:24:08.492+02:00May I offer this
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe...May I offer this<br />http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2013/08/the_us_effect_p.html<br />In a paper published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, John Ioannidis of Stanford University—who’s been beating this drum for a long time—and Daniele Fanelli, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, show that behavioral researchers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in other countries to publish papers with “extreme effects”—that is, big, splashy results which also come with a higher likelihood of being wrong.<br /><br />I could think of a slew of possible explainations (as exhaustion, self hypnosis etc) before suggesting a new inherent response.<br />Also alas if it is genetic then I am afraid simple talk therapy would likely not be effective.<br />aeoliushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09528717028785728695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-8350619954674289062013-09-01T01:08:06.073+02:002013-09-01T01:08:06.073+02:00No because the study (or at least the press releas...No because the study (or at least the press release) clearly notes that it is not caused by social status but directly and often temporarily by lack of resources: the same people before sugar cane harvest perform much worse than after it, when they have money in their pockets. It's the lack of resources, which may be chronic but can also vary, what very apparently becomes such a peculiar stressor that literally takes over the brain, limiting its ability to respond to just the short term and little more. <br /><br />Hence what the authors seem to find is that people in dire straits (temporarily or chronically, it does not seem to matter) will focus absolutely in short-term survival and everything else, including long term planning to get out of such situation, becomes quite irrelevant, the brain becoming effectively unable to work on anything but the most direct concerns. <br /><br />It seems to me a survival mechanism: the mind knows that it's an emergency situation and dedicates all resources to emergency management and nothing else. Of course the difference between temporary poverty and chronic poverty would be that in the latter the "state of emergency" is permanent. <br /><br />But it has nothing to do with status: just outright survival. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-59978234401441500172013-09-01T00:03:45.565+02:002013-09-01T00:03:45.565+02:00I think that this study ignores our primate herit...I think that this study ignores our primate heritage and interaction between social status and gene regulation<br />ie:<br />Cell Mol Life Sci. 2013 May 18. [Epub ahead of print]<br />Social environmental effects on gene regulation.<br />Tung J, Gilad Y.<br />Source<br /><br />Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Box 90383, Durham, NC, 27708, USA, jt5@duke.edu.<br />Abstract<br /><br />Social environmental conditions, particularly the experience of social adversity, have long been connected with health and mortality in humans and other social mammals. Efforts to identify the physiological basis for these effects have historically focused on their neurological, endocrinological, and immunological consequences. Recently, this search has been extended to understanding the role of gene regulation in sensing, mediating, and determining susceptibility to social environmental variation. Studies in laboratory rodents, captive primates, and human populations have revealed correlations between social conditions and the regulation of a large number of genes, some of which are likely causal. Gene expression responses to the social environment are, in turn, mediated by a set of underlying regulatory mechanisms, of which epigenetic marks are the best studied to date. Importantly, a number of genes involved in the response to the social environment are also associated with susceptibility to other external stressors, as well as certain diseases. Hence, gene regulatory studies are a promising avenue for understanding, and potentially developing strategies to address, the effects of social adversity on health.<br /><br />PMID:<br /> 23685902<br /> [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] <br /><br />While in some primates as Baboon there is a continual battle for status, there seems some advantage,especially in a marginal environment, for some genetic control of status.<br />So is it may be that the relationship to depressive-like lowering of cognition etc may in fact be due to a response to the social status of the very poor<br /><br />aeoliushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09528717028785728695noreply@blogger.com