Sense of justice is not emotional but fully driven by reason

This may be highly counter-intuitive because we culturally associate this sense of justice with idealism or, as Che Guevara put it, with being driven by superior feelings of love for fellow humans.

Actually it has nothing to do with it but with greater rational function, brain scans show.

Keith J. Yoder & Jean Decety, The Good, the Bad, and the Just: Justice Sensitivity Predicts Neural Response during Moral Evaluation of Actions Performed by Others. Journal of Neuroscience 2014. Pay per view → LINK [doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4648-13.2014]

A copy of the study has been uploaded by co-author J. Decety to academia.edu.

Complementary source: press release.

From the latter:

During the behavior-evaluation exercise, people with high justice sensitivity showed more activity than average participants in parts of the brain associated with higher-order cognition. Brain areas commonly linked with emotional processing were not affected.

The conclusion was clear, Decety said: “Individuals who are sensitive to justice and fairness do not seem to be emotionally driven. Rather, they are cognitively driven.”

According to Decety, one implication is that the search for justice and the moral missions of human rights organizations and others do not come primarily from sentimental motivations, as they are often portrayed. Instead, that drive may have more to do with sophisticated analysis and mental calculation.

This may explain why there is a well known positive correlation between intelligence and leftism: fairness is simply more rational.

Brain's electrical fields: feature, not any bug

Caltech researchers have found that the electric fields of the brain are not just any mere by product of neuronal electrical activity but that they actually provide feedback to neurones and is an important part of the cognitive process.

In the words of lead researcher Costas Anastassiou:

... while active neurons give rise to extracellular fields, the same fields feed back to the neurons and alter their behavior.

So far, neural communication has been thought to occur at localized machines, termed synapses. Our work suggests an additional means of neural communication through the extracellular space independent of synapses.

Importantly external electric fields as weak as 1 mV/mm alter the behavior of neurones. Typically mammalian brains have fields of 2-3 mV/mm or more, what implies that they are actually affecting the brain's behavior internally.

An open question is whether electric fields external to our bodies such as those produced by all types of machines, as well as electric and telecommunication installations, do have an effect in our brains and which one. Even the Earth has its own significant electromagnetic field which interacts with the also powerful Solar one in barely researched ways.

Source: Science Daily.

Ref. paper: Costas A. Anastassiou et al., Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons. Nature Neuroscience, 2011. Pay per view.

Meditation changes the brain

A new study has confirmed that meditation, reported to increase awareness and calmness, actually does alter the brain. 

Participants in an 8 week meditation program practiced some 30 minutes of the exercises (similar to yoga) every day. As result their brains showed increase of grey matter in the hippocampus (learning and memory) and decrease of grey matter in the amygdala (fear and stress). No change was detected in the insula (self-awareness), reported to have changed in previous studies. The authors suspect that longer practice is needed for this last.

No such changes were detected in the control group, showing that the plastic changes in the brain were caused by the meditation exercises. 

Full story at Science Daily.

Ref. (pay per view): Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, Sara W. Lazar. Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2011; 191 (1): 36 DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006

Alexander Shulgin, 85, hospitalized with a stroke. Donations and volunteers asked to preserve his work

Ann and Alexander Shulgin

I just learned via Psychedelic Research that one of the greatest researchers in psychoactive drugs, Alexander Shulgin, 85, has been hospitalized with a stroke. He was surgically intervened two years ago to replace a defective aortic valve and, given his age, he may leave us at any moment. 

Shulgin, a Ph. D. Biochemist, has made extensive research in synthesis drugs such the widely known ecstasy, which he intended to use for the treatment of depression and other psychological disorders.

In 1994 he saw his laboratory raided by the DEA after he published PHiKAL, a chemical love story. 

The drug knowledge vault, Erowid, is now asking for volunteers (for transcriptions and image enhancement) and donations in order to help preserve his legacy. You can donate here (either to Erowid or directly to the Shulgins) and you can volunteer your services here.