Here's the URL for the article:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/122352699v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&searchid=1029244927537_2572&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0
Quoting from the Abstract:
"The patient, R.M., had extensive bilateral limbic system damage, affecting orbitofrontal cortex, temporal pole, and amygdala."
"Extensive" lesions, indeed.
I've only read the abstract, and guess I'll leave it at that. Not because the problem is not interesting. It is. It's just that I'm in penny-pinching mode, and have to reserve what I've left to specifically nurture my own survival [with respect to which, it seems the presently-most-important thing is for me to 'splurge' on a purchase of a night with a Voice filled with Genius. Presently, I need such more than most other stuff. She helps me find the Will to Survive.]
Anyway, this subject has much more to tell Neuroscience than 'social non-reciprocation.
A couple of things from the perspective of AoK:
When I wrote the ms., I did not differentiate orbitofrontal cx from prefrontal cx, and for the sake of consistency, have carried this 'Error' through. (I'm not going back to check, but 'recall' that Phineas Gage's lesions involved orbitofrontal stuff [and connectivity connectivity, unilaterally, but this'd still have bilateral ramifications via few-to-many relays] - "Anyone, anyone, anyone?" :-)
As is discussed in AoK, Ap5, both 'prefrontal' and amygdalar lesions result in "supersystem configuration" deficits, with the former having the capacity to govern the latter. This last thing means that the generalized lesion 'picture might be correlated with an initially-focused lesion, and that what's being looked-at, now, is the result of a spreading of the lesion due to loss of inputs from the initially-focused lesion.
I expect that, if the subject's experiential history is thoroughly integrated, the researchers will discover that there is a =learned= component in the results they obtained. That is, these extensive lesions correlate better to more-generalized supersystem configuration deficits, and, so, what the researchers are focusing upon is probably the result of learned stuff through which the subject 'compensates' with respect to more-generalized deficits by 'emulating' the 'moving away from' 'social reciprocation' that the subject has experienced during interaction with others.
Others 'move away from' the subject 'because' they experience TD E/I(up) when they detect the subject more-generalized supersystem configuration deficits, the subjects 'emulates' the others' 'moving away from', and the researchers've just 'hit-upon' one 'facet' of the more-generalized thing.
During the 'Terrible Times', needing to comprehend their experience, I studied the experience of 'social outcasts', In recent years, because of 'my inability' to obtain employment in the profession through which I'd earned a roof and food for the theory and me, I've been, pretty much, thrust into experiencing more of the same.
These 'social outcasts' are routinely subject to Truly-Savage Harrassment.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if future studies disclose that such interpersonally-Savage 'cognitive' experience plays an initiating-role with respect to the lesions.
Anyway, I've, pretty-much, decided that I'll not pursue this ref further than the discussion I've posted here. There's a 'world' of stuff in-there and I've not the means to persue such commensurate-with-the-'world'-that's-in-there.
It's a Sorrow.
k. p. collins
Ian Goddard wrote in message <3d585bfb.166425528 at news.erols.com>...
>Possibly seen as supplemental to (Neuro-Cooperation):
>>http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3d35e5d2.340387416%40news.erols.com>>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992663>>>Brain's 'cheat detector' is revealed
>>22:00 12 August 02
>Emma Young
>>Part of the human brain is dedicated to detecting cheats, say
>evolutionary psychologists, after a study with a brain-damaged man.
>>"We think it develops in all normal individuals, and that it develops
>in part because our brains were selected to develop this competence,"
>says John Tooby at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
>>Tooby and his colleagues studied a man who suffered accidental damage
>to the limbic system, a brain region involved in processing emotional
>and social information. RM, as he is referred to, performed as well
>as other people on one set of reasoning problems, did much worse on
>problems specifically designed to test reasoning about social
>exchanges.
>>At its simplest, social exchange runs along the lines of "you scratch
>my back and I'll scratch yours". Previous work has shown that people,
>and some animals, are extremely good at keeping a check of who owes
>who within a group - and at spotting and punishing cheaters.
>>Researchers had proposed that general reasoning abilities could
>account for this. But RM's deficit suggests that detecting social
>cheaters depends on specialised neural circuitry, the team says.
>>Their conclusion is "robust," says Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary
>psychologist and director of the Centre for Organisational Research
>the London Business School. "It's essential we have trusting
>relationships with people in communities where we are highly
>interdependent for survival and reproduction. Cheat detection is
>very important," he adds.
>>Separable component
>>The first problems given to RM and the 37 non-brain-damaged controls
>concerned so-called precaution rules. For example: "If you work with
>toxic chemicals, you have to wear a safety mask." The second tested
>social contracts, for example: "If you go canoeing on the lake, you
>have to have a clean bunk house."
>>RM recorded a score of 70 per cent on the precaution rule tests - the
>same as the controls. But he scored only 39 per cent on the social
>contract tests, compared with 70 per cent for the non-brain damaged
>people.
>>Identical tests on two other people with brain damage similar to BM's,
>but with a slightly different pattern of damage, showed that their
>social contract reasoning was unimpaired.
>>"RM's differential impairment indicates that being able to detect
>potential cheaters may be a separable component of the human mind,"
>the researchers conclude in the journal Proceedings of the National
>Academy of Sciences.
>>Utterly unfamiliar
>>However, if a region of the brain has evolved to specialise in cheat
>detection, it should be present in all people, the team reasoned.
>Most experiments are performed on people living in modern, western
>societies.
>>So they studied people living in traditional, non-developed
>communities in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. And they found that
>these people were equally proficient at social exchange tasks, even
>when the problems concerned social rules that were unfamiliar to them.
>>"What is quite amazing about their performance on cheater detection
>is that it flies in the face of all ordinary ideas about learning a
>higher level cognitive skill," Tooby told New Scientist. "People are
>just as good at utterly unfamiliar rules as they are with rules that
>are personally and culturally highly familiar."
>>Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
>(DOI: 10.1073/pnas.122352699 and DOI:10.1073/pnas122352999)
>>> Out-of-Body Explanation: http://IanGoddard.net/paranorm.htm>>-------------- next part --------------
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