Blame My Brain

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Fulton S, Woodside B, Shizgal P. 2000. Modulation of brain reward circuitry by leptin. Science 287:125–128 Wortley KE, et al. 2004. Genetic deletion of ghrelin does not decrease food intake but influences metabolic fuel preference. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:8227–8232 Mental health gender/sex differences– Gender differences in mental health problems among adolescents and the role of social support: results from the Belgian health interview surveys 2008 and 2013

I suggest that these behaviours “stem from how human brains are ‘wired’”, wiring that makes the behaviours incredibly difficult to avoid. We are, in effect, “wired to love our screens”.

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Oh! Thank you very much for replying. So my teen’s brain has the brake on? She’s not been assessed for Asperger’s or autism, but is currently finding understanding some emotions very difficult. She even thinks it’s strange if I smile every time I’m happy. The quotes from Bengson reinforce the idea that it's a deterministic, "simple cause and effect" understanding of human decisions that challenges free will. Yet assimilating human decisions to random fluctuations doesn't seem a whole lot better than determinism. Are we morally responsible for our "brain noise"? Berthoud HR. 2004. Mind versus metabolism in the control of food intake and energy balance. Physiol Behav 81:781–793 As if that weren’t enough, it seems this inflammation and resulting leptin resistance might even cause our bodies to defend our increased weight. (This seems to be because the brain now views this higher level of leptin and body fat as its new normal.) Let me share some elements of that chapter. The new chapter: The social brain – phones, friends, likes and peer pressure

It has always been my belief that the more we understand how something – in this case, a brain – works, the better we can make it work, the more surely we can prevent things going wrong and fix them when they do. Morton GJ, et al. 2006. Central nervous system control of food intake and body weight. Nature 443:289–295 Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Suparna Choudhury: Development of the adolescent brain: implications for executive function and social cognition Published in 2006 by the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01611.x I feel that Ann’s daughter might like to read some teenage fiction with an emotional content so that she can start to learn what it’s like inside the heads of people who are different from her (as well as people who are the same as her). That’s what stories do: show us inside other people’s heads. If she doesn’t want to, that’s fine, but I think she will find it useful and interesting. She will especially find it useful when she joins new environments, whether a new school or college or a job later on. Even very self-sufficient people need to be able to make friends and we can’t do that easily if we can’t relate to how others are feeling. A meal of whole foods, properly cooked and seasoned, and enjoyed at the dinner table with your family or friends is going to be much more satisfying than eating in your car next to the drive-through window.Chin-Chance C, Polonsky KS, Schoeller DA. 2000. Twenty-four-hour leptin levels respond to cumulative short-term energy imbalance and predict subsequent intake. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 85:2685–2691 spontaneous joy and hilarity (Do I ever laugh as heartily as in a classroom full of adolescent stand up comedians?) My own guess is that it isn't neuroscientific determinism per se that challenges our ideas about free will and moral responsibility. Instead, it could be that simply describing mental processes in terms of the brain discounts our usual explanations for behavior in terms of people's intentions, beliefs and desires. As argued by philosopher Eddy Nahmias and others, it's this replacement of a mentalistic vocabulary with talk of the brain that seems to cut out the intentional agent, the freely willing "I."