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The brain is not an onion with a tiny reptile inside (2020)

324 points by optimalsolver 3y ago

Octokiddie 3y ago
> Does it matter if psychologists have an incorrect understanding of neural evolution? One answer to this question is simple: We are scientists. We are supposed to care about true states of the world even in the absence of practical consequences. If psychologists have an incorrect understanding of neural evolution, they should be motivated to correct the misconception even if this incorrect belief does not impact their research programs. The hallmark of an incorrect model in science is that it makes incorrect predictions about the natural world (experiment). What incorrect predictions has psychology made based on the incorrect triune-brain theory? I'm going to guess zero, not because the model works, but because psychology has made no experimentally testable predictions based on it.
- robg 3y ago
  The biggest I’ve seen is that talk therapies don’t work well if an underlying sleep concern is not addressed. Sleep as the parasympathetic nervous system is predictable from a more primitive model whereas a cognitive - behavioral model assumes thoughts can drive recovery.
- mannykannot 3y ago
  I think there's a good chance you are right, but academically-minded people have a tendency to hastily dismiss hypotheses that run counter to what they believe is a correct theory. I can imagine someone dismissing the idea that a psychological pathology is related to a neurological one because the latter is in the "wrong" part of the brain for the symptoms the former presents.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  Psychology can barely make any predictions. This isn't a meaningless technicality like the not-to-scale diagram of atoms used in old textbooks. Correcting poor assumptions to find new models of understanding is still important in this field.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
  Most of psychology can't be ethically tested. It doesn't mean the entirely field is not empirically verifiable.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Is there a reasonable distinction between "it's not possible to test $X" and "it's not possible to test $X in any ethical way?"
    - john-radio 3y ago
      Yes edit: I was trying to jokingly reply "Yes {smiling-imp-emoji}" when I realized I've never seen an emoji on Hacker News before - looks like they get automatically removed!
    - blowski 3y ago
      Perhaps one distinction would be that ethics change across time and country. So it might be possible to run a test in 2020s UK that cannot be repeated in 2030s.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    That doesn't prevent modern researchers from using past data collected via less scrupulous means though. e.g. Pavlov's experiments
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    It means it hasn’t been verified, which means you can’t be sure a lot of it is useful at all.
    - corethree 3y ago
      Scientific rigor has it's limits. Certain fields need to make intuitive leaps of speculation. For example the entire field of astronomy is basically unverifiable bullshit. It's all speculation. We make guesses on what's going on with the stars outside of our solar system from twinkling light that comes from light years away. Any science to verify the claims made by astronomy with the amount of rigor you demand would involve light speed space ships to go to those stars and verify. If we could do this I think you'd find a ton of astronomy would be flat out wrong. Nonetheless the field is still useful and legitimate despite the high likelihood a lot of it is wrong and despite the fact we can't verify much.
- speak_plainly 3y ago
  The goal of cognitive science is to basically build the foundation (the understanding of how the brain works) that psychology lacks and is a field that psychologists are actively contributing to. Ultimately, psychology was created as a pragmatic branch of philosophy with the understanding that we would not know how the brain works for quite some time but that we could still do something of value and help people.
- corethree 3y ago
  Not just psychology. Even the claims within this very paper are hard to test. Anything involving evolution is almost impossible to test. The "science" is mostly observational and descriptive and arrived at through logical guesses. If all of "science" involved strict rigor to the "scientific method" we'd have none of the social sciences like anthropology or evolutionary psychology. This paper is simply pointing out differences in view points. I think the general idea in psychology is real though, the paper gets into details which is a bit pedantic. In fact the paper literally states that they are all in agreement that all brains evolved from a common ancestor. This would be the "reptile" and for sure common features in our brain such as serotonin stem from this "reptile" brain. Psychology gets a lot of bad rep for the reproduction crisis, but evolution should largely be worse because we can't experimentally verify anything without time travel. So it's not like this paper is about true science defeating pseudo science. It's all really speculative.
- deleted 3y ago
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- kbenson 3y ago
  > The hallmark of an incorrect model in science is that it makes incorrect predictions about the natural world (experiment). Sure, if you are insular and only care about how it affects the field and other scientists. Sometimes these incorrect models are incorrect in ways that are really attractive from a narrative standpoint. The hallmark of those models is to be used to spawn hundreds of pop science books that expound on those models in unfounded ways and push people into useless behavior, sometimes at a societal level. Maybe scientists and psychologists aren't using the idea of a lizard brain in experiments and current theories, but I know there's at least some laypeople people that use it as a way to explain their behavior or make assumptions about other people's behavior, or to form their own ad-hoc explanations and models of behavior based on poor understanding of even what was previously reported to them. I would hazard it's actually more than some, and a lot of people do it, with this or some other poorly reported incorrect model of behavior or how the body works or how the world works. Incorrect knowledge should be corrected. Leaving it it as it is leads to myriad problems, small and large, eventually.
  - JacobThreeThree 3y ago
    Well said. Just because it may be hard to pin down the consequences of the wrong-but-attractive narrative, there probably are consequences, especially on the long term. The "chemical imbalance" narrative with depression is also probably wrong: https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-new-study-186672 https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-cause... Is it really so surprising that these simplistic narratives don't actually accurately describe how the brain works? We should be prepared to admit that the brain is complicated and we don't really know it's functioning at a fundamental level.
robg 3y ago
Especially since the master reptile - the adrenal cortex - is located atop the kidneys. Fight or flight is first an electrical relay to the hands and feet and heart. The brain in the skull and consciousness reflects upon what’s already happening in the periphery.
- ozim 3y ago
  It is also super important for everyone to understand that. Because our body is not "brain -> body control" most of stuff just happens and brain reacts. For overall health it is also important to understand that body needs movement and all neural pathways are also somewhat independent and also contain "intelligence". I am not neurobiologist so hope I am not going into mumbo-jumbo too much but I workout at the gym quite often and can observe over-training or how muscles often could still work but your neural pathways are done and you cannot hold the weight even if muscle/tendons feel quite fine on its own. It is also quite common knowledge as I read on the internet stuff on training. So in the end I don't feel body-mind separation is useful as much and thinking that your whole body is also ones mind is super important.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    One thing that people need to realise that you can use your body to trick your mind into doing things. If your brain is anxious, you can consciously use breathing techniques to trick it into thinking you're calm. Box Breathing for example works pretty well. Or just taking 2-3 really deep slow breaths. An anxious/nervous brain defaults to short shallow breaths for some reason.
- Cpoll 3y ago
  > The brain in the skull and consciousness reflects upon what’s already happening in the periphery. I've read summaries of these studies as well, but... the adrenal cortex doesn't have any sensory-processing facilities, right? In the end it's the brain that informs the adrenal gland?
  - armada651 3y ago
user3939382 3y ago
It may not be true from the perspective of evolutionary biology. But 90% of the time I've heard this referenced (our "primitive brain") it's a useful device for discussing the parts of our psychology we have in common with more primitive members of the animal kingdom. That's not to contradict the article whatsoever, which is explicitly addressed to psychologists who, I concur, should be educated and clear on the distinction between a rhetorical device and real biology.
- robg 3y ago
  The autonomic nervous system is real biology that most psychologists don’t start with. While this article is based on textbook descriptions of the evolution of the brain in the skull, not seeing much on how the autonomic nervous system is primal specifically for survival.
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  I'd be more inclined to agree if it weren't an increasing issue in my life that laymen do not understand they're parroting back a rhetorical device and use this information to make all kinds of ridiculous conclusions.
  - toomim 3y ago
    Like what?
  - teucris 3y ago
    Increasing? This has always, and will always be an issue. My approach is to roll with it - rather than banish them altogether, I treat all devices like this as such and no more, holding others to the same standard. This, hopefully shifts the meaning away from the scientific and towards the domain of “quaint sayings.” For instance, I invoke the concept of the “lizard brain” quite commonly as a way of expressing how base instincts can override my better judgement. But I’m careful to never imply there (in the words of the article) “a scala naturae view of evolution in which animals can be arranged linearly from ‘simple’ to the most ‘complex’ organisms.”
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
if only psychology was a real science where hypothesis are thoroughly tested and tests are independently reproduced.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Well, the main problem with this is, it would require human experimentation to be efficient. You know, those babies raised in this way, those in that way. And by the age of 2 cut open and everything meassured. Or do you have other ideas how to do proper testing? Because otherwise experiments with control groups, electrodes, MRT etc. are a thing in psychology. But you can only achieve so much with it.
  - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    The study of psychology is done in neuroscience. But the research is extremely different. Neuroscience is like studying quantum mechanics and electromagnetism to understand the movement of electrons in a wire, while Psychology is comparable to UI/UX research. Many people are working on bridging neuroscience and psychology but it hasn't happened yet.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Ok, I see (maybe formally wrong) neuroscience as a part of psychology. (At least some psychologists I talked to, had this position) And the reason why bridging is not really happening, because of the ethical restrictions. But this is my hypothesis. The other hypothesis might be, that too many careers depend on models that would not hold up by experiments, but I really cannot judge here because of lack of knowledge.
      - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
        It’s more of the former - it’s not ethical to do the experiments that would prove or disprove the hypothesized links. There’s plenty of real work to do, not a conspiracy lol
      - 3y ago
hn8305823 3y ago
I thought the line art evolution images were from Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series, but it looks like they are slightly different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk The drawing of humans is from the Pioneer Plaque which Sagan was involved with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
derefr 3y ago
I feel like the "lizard brain" thought-paradigm can actually be understood as communicating something true/useful/important... but it'll only make sense to people with a good understanding of "speciated evolution": namely, evolutionary biologists themselves; and software engineers who've worked with programming languages that use prototypical inheritance. Outside of those two groups, the actual "intuition" for what the claim is saying, gets lost. The "lizard brain" claim, as far as I understand it, was never that you have a complete copy of a "lower" brain inside your brain. Nor even that you have specific structures within your brain whose implementation was evolutionarily conserved. Rather, what I understand the "lizard brain" claim as trying to communicate, is that you have one or more components of the architecture of your brain, where the APIs presented by those components to the rest of the brain, have been mostly conserved throughout evolution. The components themselves may have internally evolved, but the structural boundaries between those components and the rest of your brain have stayed stable in a way that allows biologists to recognize those same components in the architectures of brains in vastly different species. To put that in concrete terms: you and a mantis shrimp both have e.g. "an amygdala." The gene code for "an amygdala" may have differentiated between the shrimp and you, but there's still a conserved part of the brain's architectural plan that says "put an amygdala here." Now for the overwrought OOP analogy: If you imagine HumanBrain as an OOP class, then it's an OOP class that is a subclass about 800 layers of inheritance deep; with the root of the inheritance hierarchy being some prototypical bilateral-vertebrate nerve-cord class. In this inheritance hierarchy, each layer can introduce new "features" — components of the brain that have specific APIs; in other words, members of the class with known interface types, that other parts of the class can have their implementations — but not their own APIs — altered to work in terms of. Under this mental [heh] model, the "lizard brain" claim isn't about the LizardBrain level of the hierarchy itself; but rather is that one or more brain features seen in the HumanBrain class, are features that were introduced in or around the LizardBrain level of the inheritance hierarchy, and whose APIs have stayed stable ever since. (Also, if you're wondering if any real-world computer software has ever done 800-layer-deep inheritance hierarchies such that it starts to actually reflect this kind of speciated evolution: yes! The programming of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO was exactly like that. Why? Because, unlike a regular codebase, but like evolution, LambdaMOO was a gradual accretion of private objects "owned" by amateur coders, where each dev would implement the features they cared about by finding someone else's object with that feature, and forking it [i.e. prototype-inheriting from it] to suit their own needs. There was no common codebase that anyone could refactor, so it gradually came to resemble an actual biological process.)
shadowgovt 3y ago
For all the good work he did, this is the one misstep in Sagan's career that likely caused the most disruption: he was big on the "reptile brain inside a mammal brain" hypothesis and described it quite convincingly on Cosmos. We don't have a great strategy yet for undoing the work of an effective science educator when they teach things science goes on to disprove.
ivanhoe 3y ago
So now we've learned what brain is not - but what is the biologically/evolutionary correct model that explains the opposite impulses that we all are dealing with? And why some of those impulses need willpower and grow weaker under the influence of stress/alcohol/drugs, while others seem to grow stronger?
- sdwr 3y ago
  Three-brain structure (Freud's id, ego, superego) is still the best simple explanation I know. Maybe the physical reality is a bit different, but it partitions actions so nicely. Id - base impulses, bubble up automatically and subconsciously Ego - the self, the "me". Where the story of identity comes from, what gets judged in court. Superego - rules imposed from on high that restrict behavior ----- I think "opposite impulses" can be explained as a form of self-control. Let's say I see someone I'm attracted to, but want to maintain composure and stay in a neutral stance. Left to my own devices I'll flush, and my eyes will widen, maybe I'll get clumsy. Bringing an opposite-but-aligned emotion in maintains equilibrium (anger, disgust...) I see opposite-but-aligned impulses with my dog all the time. He knows I don't like him chasing squirrels. When he sees one, he gets activated + alert, but redirects his energy into running a few paces the other way. It's a bridge between the id (Go! Chase!) and the superego (Stay calm, don't pull!)
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I never understood why the superego isn't me.
    - arrosenberg 3y ago
      It probably makes sense to think about it as base-me and societally-influenced-me.
    - mrkeen 3y ago
      You don't need to. 'Superego' is an invention. You could invent your own abstract idea and call it you. Or you could simply declare that the superego is you.
DueDilligence 3y ago
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3seashells 3y ago
The what watches from those eyes who can not see and see anyway? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
crazygringo 3y ago
After reading this article as well as the relevant Wikipedia entry [1], I still don't get what's supposedly "wrong" with the triune brain model. In fact, this article seems to set it up as a bit of a straw man. The main rebuttals in this article are 1) that evolution is branched rather than linear, 2) that larger brains aren't necessarily more complex, and 3) that evolution modifies existing brain structures in addition to adding new layers. But all of that seems rather obvious, and doesn't really refute the triune brain theory at all. Isn't it scientifically true that we have a basal ganglia which evolved from reptiles, a limbic system also present mammals, and a neocortex that works similarly to that in other primates, dolphins, and elephants? And each of those map to certain types of behaviors, that we see in these species? The triune brain hypothesis doesn't seem "wrong", it just seems like a simple categorization that is useful for making big-picture distinctions. Am I missing something? I literally don't understand what is even being "refuted" here, because the refutations don't seem to match the claims at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain
- csours 3y ago
  > "The triune brain hypothesis doesn't seem "wrong", it just seems like a simple categorization that is useful to the layperson." Yes. Anything this simple will be wrong. Almost everything you learn in school before graduate level courses will be wrong. Most of it won't matter to you unless you start working in that field.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    [1] is a nice book that explains in the first chapter why all science is wrong and gets replaced by a less wrong model, in steps. In fact the author argues that all those wrong models are perfectly fine and usable, for their period of time and applications. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems
  - KMag 3y ago
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful" - George Box
alex01001 3y ago
brain is a receptor for consciousness, it doesn't create it. Consciousness is "broadcasted".
- deleted 3y ago
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- FeteCommuniste 3y ago
  That’s a spicy take. Is there any evidence to support it?
  - booleandilemma 3y ago
    I recently read about that idea in the book "Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being". It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted. https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Complexity-Scientific-Connection-Consciousness/dp/1954118252 https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Complexity-Scientific-Connectio...
    - kbelder 3y ago
      >It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted. Probably because he stated it as a fact instead of an interesting fringe theory.
cperciva 3y ago
All models are wrong, but some models are useful. Asking if the model is wrong is asking the wrong question; the important question is whether it's useful.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It's useful for padding a chapter or two into self-help books, if nothing else.
- fieldbob 3y ago
  Donald hoffman says something exactly like that in this talk. David Bohm came the same conclusion science will never fully figure it out the answer is much spiritual and imaginative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafVevceWgs&t=5117s&pp=ygUVZG9uYWxkIGhvZmZtYW4gcnVwZXJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafVevceWgs&t=5117s&pp=ygUVZ... Why? because ultimately we are talking about a empty field of space propagated by light, similar to holograms. Things that grow here things that stem from this world do you think they really are what they appear to be? Of course not. So what are they god damnit? perhaps its better to not answer the question and like a good old mystic leave it be and open a portal to another dimension and have this experience for one self
  - mistermann 3y ago
    The errors/issues here are much higher in the stack than what Hoffman and Bohm are getting that at the levels you note, though Bohm in addition to that also spoke a lot about language and communication (which is an important part of the issue here).
    - fieldbob 3y ago
      Please elaborate The problem is always thought?
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  It’s not wisdom that comes with age, it’s the realization that reality is a broken record. Roll with it.
aaroninsf 3y ago
ITT a lot of fully justified scorn for pearl-clutching performative polemics. An interesting application of weasel words and passive voice in the article..
sebringj 3y ago
I can think of it like the wheels are still there, the frame, engine, body etc but the design and materials have been completely refined and overhauled to be modern future tech today. The car even has new stuff like electronics and wifi. Meaning there are still base conceptual things there but they are not the same...knowing that reasoning by analogy is flawed but still satisfying to me to feel like I understand it enough.
- tim333 3y ago
  There's quite an interesting analogy there. I guess you could have a four wheeled wagon structure similar to wooden wagons of old, then an engine added and now electronics added, as an analogy to the triune brain. It's not that modern cars are built on wagon chassis but that the basic body with four wheels structure is similar for functional reasons. Probably similarly with the 'reptilian brain.' Our bits are maybe similar because they do the same job rather than because they evolved from that.
  - sebringj 3y ago
    ya that's another way i would say it as well
1lint 3y ago
I'm surprised by how much this publication reads like an advocacy piece for a specific viewpoint, rather than an objective review of existing literature. Just from reading the paper, it is clear that there are many experts in the field that take the opposing viewpoint that is being attacked in the paper, especially considering that their hypotheses have been published in widely circulated textbooks. When it comes to research publications in general, I very much prefer to hear an objective, good faith presentation of the major viewpoints, with the author taking an opinionated but measured take in the conclusion as they review the overall weight of the literature. I'm sure there are issues with this "triune brain" model, but at a certain level every model is inaccurate; the real question is whether a model is useful in its framework, and the answer has a degree of subjectivity such that I do not think it is fair to categorically reject the perspectives of opposing experts in the field.
- deleted 3y ago
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fieldbob 3y ago
To figure this out one has to sit in meditation and find out for one self This is metaphysics not psychology, perhaps you are asking the wrong people.
- potatoman22 3y ago
  Why is science not suitable to answer this question?
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Inappropriate methodology, culture(s), conventions, etc.
mrangle 3y ago
The inarticulate abstract was a red flag. I read 2/3 of the paper before giving up when finally, after untold quantity of adjectives, assertions, and halfway through, the supposed first couple of arguments made an appearance and were mostly indecipherable as such. The paper reads like what a high school junior thinks that a research review(?) is supposed to look like. Also, it is clear to me that the authors began with a conclusion around which they attempted to wrap support. The psych field needs low quality papers like Alaska needs snow.
- mrkeen 3y ago
  What was wrong with the abstract? * Widespread misconceptions: a) "Newer" brain structures were added on top of "older" brain structures. b) The "newer" brain structures provide more complex functions. * Psychologists have been publishing these in textbooks. * Neurobiologists have known these to be wrong for some time.
  - mrangle 3y ago
    The core statement of the abstract is that the author's conclusions are the "clear an unanimous" views of "those studying nervous system evolution". This statement is incorrect on its face. Worse, it would be a bad scientific statement in any paper. Last, it is at once superfluous and incomplete even if it were true. Instead, a good abstract would briefly list the points of the author's preferred theory rather than waste the reader's time by only deferring to a loosely defined general authority in support of an assertion. Which is abstract writing 101, at least in fields for which writing standards are somewhat kept. Maybe that isn't the psychology field, but it should be. The last sentence of the abstract reads as if written by said high school junior. Science authors generally don't use the word "mistaken" to describe another theory, especially in the context of theories of brain evolution nor for anything else for which literally every theory can only be a theory. Including that preferred by the author. Good papers don't introduce their arguments / pov halfway through, or further. Good papers don't lean on deference to authority 1/2 paper before presenting what is supposed to be their evidence or theory. Good papers almost completely exclude adjectives when describing theories, conclusions, or data, let alone negative adjectives that are doing all of the work in making their yet-unsupported point.
dicroce 3y ago
Not that the opinion of some random on the internet means anything, BUT.... I think the neocortex for the most part lets other parts of the brain control themselves... and really only has high level access. I think emotions are one of these lower level semi autonomous subsystems... but so are things like autonomous body control, balance, each of the senses etc, etc... The neocortex is playing the "Human" video game and controlling things from a high level... but cannot directly control every aspect of these subsystems... and honestly, this is how complexity is dealt with (if the neocortex could control it all, the whats the point of the other subsystems)?
lukeinator42 3y ago
I think it's easy to underestimate how different our brains are relative to different classes of animals, and there is a lot of convergent evolution going on. For example, even low level auditory perception, such as how the brain evolved to localize sound directions, evolved independently in mammals and birds: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00026.2009 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.000... (this is because their common ancestor didn't have a tympanic ear). So the Triune brain really isn't the best model for explaining what is going on in the brain. Models such as reinforcement learning don't fully explain what is going on in the brain either, but I think explanations such as how dopamine flooding the reward system can mess with predicted rewards and contribute to addiction, etc. are more useful.
nickdothutton 3y ago
I think some people’s brains have trouble understanding the purpose and value of models (it’s their predictive power). For some use cases it doesnt matter of the model is “correct” so much as whether or not it has predictive value. I’m sure someone else here can phrase it far better than I.
moab9 3y ago
There's a rat in there.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
This is an example of an article that claims to debunk something that nobody said. Anyway it was informative and clarified things nicely. Just wish it had a better lead.
- mrkeen 3y ago
  > article that claims to debunk something that nobody said About a third of the article was dedicated to who said it and when: >> As Paul MacLean (1964), originator of the triune-brain theory, stated: man, it appears, has inherited essentially three brains. >> This belief, although widely shared and stated as fact in psychology textbooks, lacks any foundation in evolutionary biology. >> The most widely used introductory textbook in psychology states that: ... The brain’s increasing complexity arises from new brain systems built on top of the old, much as the Earth’s landscape covers the old with the new. Digging down, one discovers the fossil remnants of the past >> we sampled 20 introductory psychology textbooks published between 2009 and 2017. Of the 14 that mention brain evolution, 86% contained at least one inaccuracy along the lines described above. >> For example, Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001), [...] write that: when new species develop, this is done by adding new brain parts to existing old ones >> Examples of MacLean model of brain evolution appear in other areas, including models of personality (Epstein, 1994), attention (Mirsky & Duncan, 2002), psychopathology (Cory & Gardner, 2002), market economics (Cory, 2002), and morality (Narvaez, 2008). Nonacademic examples are too numerous to fully review. >> Carl Sagan's (1978) Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Dragons of Eden, and Steven Johnson's (2005) Mind Wide Open were both popular books that drew heavily on this idea
  - mistermann 3y ago
    If the authors are going to classify colloquial language (3 brains) as literal, their own study is then open to the same attack, and there is plenty of material from even the short skim of it I did. "Pedantry" is a double edged sword.
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    has inherited essentially three brains. fossile remnants The quoted text give lie to the title. Nobody said it was an onion etc. Just that it was built new structures on old, all changing, integrated more or less well. Not being pedantic, I don't think? The title is disparaging, deconstructing the idea to the point of ridicule. It's reasonable to say "Nobody said that!"
OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago
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OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago
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dboreham 3y ago
Countering a widely held intuitive model by...asserting loudly and repeatedly that it's incorrect, while providing no supporting evidence.
- nemo 3y ago
  It's surreal to see so may people reading the article with this takeaway, the "What's Wrong" section seemed very clear to me and elaborated for a while including a number of citations on why the simplistic layer model was flawed. > providing no supporting evidence I checked, there's seventeen separate citations for evidence in the "What's Wrong" section as well as several figures.
anigbrowl 3y ago
I have not read the paper yet, but what a great title - a very welcome change from the formulaic 'verbing the noun: towards a metastatic model of semantic construction' that has become so widespread over the last couple of decades.
sgarrity 3y ago
I'm pretty sure mine is.
- joe__f 3y ago
  I was going to post this
jakobson14 3y ago
https://xkcd.com/1257/ https://xkcd.com/1257/ Another dumb analogy about the brain bites the dust.
jrflowers 3y ago
I am glad that someone is finally clearing this up. The brain is in fact a plump shallot with a tiny noble heron inside.
sirsinsalot 3y ago
And the weather isn't discrete data points. We still use models based on this to illustrate, predict, and communicate. These things are a model. They're useful for the bounds of the model.
itvision 3y ago
The article does not seem to actually refute the old theories. What a mess.
mikhailfranco 3y ago
I really enjoyed that article. I especially like surveying textbooks over time, to call out the originators of misconceptions, and the lazy copy pasta cohorts who followed their lead. The misrepresentations are particularly egregious in neurophysiology, which should be a very concrete observational science, based on dissections of many species in the context of evolution. Perhaps Just So pop-sci evo-psych theories have their reckoning with scientific reality ahead of them.

324 points by optimalsolver 3y ago

> Does it matter if psychologists have an incorrect understanding of neural evolution? One answer to this question is simple: We are scientists. We are supposed to care about true states of the world even in the absence of practical consequences. If psychologists have an incorrect understanding of neural evolution, they should be motivated to correct the misconception even if this incorrect belief does not impact their research programs. The hallmark of an incorrect model in science is that it makes incorrect predictions about the natural world (experiment). What incorrect predictions has psychology made based on the incorrect triune-brain theory? I'm going to guess zero, not because the model works, but because psychology has made no experimentally testable predictions based on it.

robg 3y ago
The biggest I’ve seen is that talk therapies don’t work well if an underlying sleep concern is not addressed. Sleep as the parasympathetic nervous system is predictable from a more primitive model whereas a cognitive - behavioral model assumes thoughts can drive recovery.
mannykannot 3y ago
I think there's a good chance you are right, but academically-minded people have a tendency to hastily dismiss hypotheses that run counter to what they believe is a correct theory. I can imagine someone dismissing the idea that a psychological pathology is related to a neurological one because the latter is in the "wrong" part of the brain for the symptoms the former presents.
zeroCalories 3y ago
Psychology can barely make any predictions. This isn't a meaningless technicality like the not-to-scale diagram of atoms used in old textbooks. Correcting poor assumptions to find new models of understanding is still important in this field.
KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
Most of psychology can't be ethically tested. It doesn't mean the entirely field is not empirically verifiable.
- pc86 3y ago
  Is there a reasonable distinction between "it's not possible to test $X" and "it's not possible to test $X in any ethical way?"
  - john-radio 3y ago
    Yes edit: I was trying to jokingly reply "Yes {smiling-imp-emoji}" when I realized I've never seen an emoji on Hacker News before - looks like they get automatically removed!
  - blowski 3y ago
    Perhaps one distinction would be that ethics change across time and country. So it might be possible to run a test in 2020s UK that cannot be repeated in 2030s.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  That doesn't prevent modern researchers from using past data collected via less scrupulous means though. e.g. Pavlov's experiments
- edgyquant 3y ago
  It means it hasn’t been verified, which means you can’t be sure a lot of it is useful at all.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Scientific rigor has it's limits. Certain fields need to make intuitive leaps of speculation. For example the entire field of astronomy is basically unverifiable bullshit. It's all speculation. We make guesses on what's going on with the stars outside of our solar system from twinkling light that comes from light years away. Any science to verify the claims made by astronomy with the amount of rigor you demand would involve light speed space ships to go to those stars and verify. If we could do this I think you'd find a ton of astronomy would be flat out wrong. Nonetheless the field is still useful and legitimate despite the high likelihood a lot of it is wrong and despite the fact we can't verify much.
speak_plainly 3y ago
The goal of cognitive science is to basically build the foundation (the understanding of how the brain works) that psychology lacks and is a field that psychologists are actively contributing to. Ultimately, psychology was created as a pragmatic branch of philosophy with the understanding that we would not know how the brain works for quite some time but that we could still do something of value and help people.
corethree 3y ago
Not just psychology. Even the claims within this very paper are hard to test. Anything involving evolution is almost impossible to test. The "science" is mostly observational and descriptive and arrived at through logical guesses. If all of "science" involved strict rigor to the "scientific method" we'd have none of the social sciences like anthropology or evolutionary psychology. This paper is simply pointing out differences in view points. I think the general idea in psychology is real though, the paper gets into details which is a bit pedantic. In fact the paper literally states that they are all in agreement that all brains evolved from a common ancestor. This would be the "reptile" and for sure common features in our brain such as serotonin stem from this "reptile" brain. Psychology gets a lot of bad rep for the reproduction crisis, but evolution should largely be worse because we can't experimentally verify anything without time travel. So it's not like this paper is about true science defeating pseudo science. It's all really speculative.
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kbenson 3y ago
> The hallmark of an incorrect model in science is that it makes incorrect predictions about the natural world (experiment). Sure, if you are insular and only care about how it affects the field and other scientists. Sometimes these incorrect models are incorrect in ways that are really attractive from a narrative standpoint. The hallmark of those models is to be used to spawn hundreds of pop science books that expound on those models in unfounded ways and push people into useless behavior, sometimes at a societal level. Maybe scientists and psychologists aren't using the idea of a lizard brain in experiments and current theories, but I know there's at least some laypeople people that use it as a way to explain their behavior or make assumptions about other people's behavior, or to form their own ad-hoc explanations and models of behavior based on poor understanding of even what was previously reported to them. I would hazard it's actually more than some, and a lot of people do it, with this or some other poorly reported incorrect model of behavior or how the body works or how the world works. Incorrect knowledge should be corrected. Leaving it it as it is leads to myriad problems, small and large, eventually.
- JacobThreeThree 3y ago
  Well said. Just because it may be hard to pin down the consequences of the wrong-but-attractive narrative, there probably are consequences, especially on the long term. The "chemical imbalance" narrative with depression is also probably wrong: https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-new-study-186672 https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-cause... Is it really so surprising that these simplistic narratives don't actually accurately describe how the brain works? We should be prepared to admit that the brain is complicated and we don't really know it's functioning at a fundamental level.

robg 3y ago

Especially since the master reptile - the adrenal cortex - is located atop the kidneys. Fight or flight is first an electrical relay to the hands and feet and heart. The brain in the skull and consciousness reflects upon what’s already happening in the periphery.

ozim 3y ago
It is also super important for everyone to understand that. Because our body is not "brain -> body control" most of stuff just happens and brain reacts. For overall health it is also important to understand that body needs movement and all neural pathways are also somewhat independent and also contain "intelligence". I am not neurobiologist so hope I am not going into mumbo-jumbo too much but I workout at the gym quite often and can observe over-training or how muscles often could still work but your neural pathways are done and you cannot hold the weight even if muscle/tendons feel quite fine on its own. It is also quite common knowledge as I read on the internet stuff on training. So in the end I don't feel body-mind separation is useful as much and thinking that your whole body is also ones mind is super important.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  One thing that people need to realise that you can use your body to trick your mind into doing things. If your brain is anxious, you can consciously use breathing techniques to trick it into thinking you're calm. Box Breathing for example works pretty well. Or just taking 2-3 really deep slow breaths. An anxious/nervous brain defaults to short shallow breaths for some reason.
Cpoll 3y ago
> The brain in the skull and consciousness reflects upon what’s already happening in the periphery. I've read summaries of these studies as well, but... the adrenal cortex doesn't have any sensory-processing facilities, right? In the end it's the brain that informs the adrenal gland?
- armada651 3y ago

user3939382 3y ago

It may not be true from the perspective of evolutionary biology. But 90% of the time I've heard this referenced (our "primitive brain") it's a useful device for discussing the parts of our psychology we have in common with more primitive members of the animal kingdom. That's not to contradict the article whatsoever, which is explicitly addressed to psychologists who, I concur, should be educated and clear on the distinction between a rhetorical device and real biology.

robg 3y ago
The autonomic nervous system is real biology that most psychologists don’t start with. While this article is based on textbook descriptions of the evolution of the brain in the skull, not seeing much on how the autonomic nervous system is primal specifically for survival.
libraryatnight 3y ago
I'd be more inclined to agree if it weren't an increasing issue in my life that laymen do not understand they're parroting back a rhetorical device and use this information to make all kinds of ridiculous conclusions.
- toomim 3y ago
  Like what?
- teucris 3y ago
  Increasing? This has always, and will always be an issue. My approach is to roll with it - rather than banish them altogether, I treat all devices like this as such and no more, holding others to the same standard. This, hopefully shifts the meaning away from the scientific and towards the domain of “quaint sayings.” For instance, I invoke the concept of the “lizard brain” quite commonly as a way of expressing how base instincts can override my better judgement. But I’m careful to never imply there (in the words of the article) “a scala naturae view of evolution in which animals can be arranged linearly from ‘simple’ to the most ‘complex’ organisms.”

peoplefromibiza 3y ago

if only psychology was a real science where hypothesis are thoroughly tested and tests are independently reproduced.

hutzlibu 3y ago
Well, the main problem with this is, it would require human experimentation to be efficient. You know, those babies raised in this way, those in that way. And by the age of 2 cut open and everything meassured. Or do you have other ideas how to do proper testing? Because otherwise experiments with control groups, electrodes, MRT etc. are a thing in psychology. But you can only achieve so much with it.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  The study of psychology is done in neuroscience. But the research is extremely different. Neuroscience is like studying quantum mechanics and electromagnetism to understand the movement of electrons in a wire, while Psychology is comparable to UI/UX research. Many people are working on bridging neuroscience and psychology but it hasn't happened yet.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Ok, I see (maybe formally wrong) neuroscience as a part of psychology. (At least some psychologists I talked to, had this position) And the reason why bridging is not really happening, because of the ethical restrictions. But this is my hypothesis. The other hypothesis might be, that too many careers depend on models that would not hold up by experiments, but I really cannot judge here because of lack of knowledge.
    - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
      It’s more of the former - it’s not ethical to do the experiments that would prove or disprove the hypothesized links. There’s plenty of real work to do, not a conspiracy lol
    - 3y ago

hn8305823 3y ago

I thought the line art evolution images were from Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series, but it looks like they are slightly different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk The drawing of humans is from the Pioneer Plaque which Sagan was involved with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

derefr 3y ago

I feel like the "lizard brain" thought-paradigm can actually be understood as communicating something true/useful/important... but it'll only make sense to people with a good understanding of "speciated evolution": namely, evolutionary biologists themselves; and software engineers who've worked with programming languages that use prototypical inheritance. Outside of those two groups, the actual "intuition" for what the claim is saying, gets lost. The "lizard brain" claim, as far as I understand it, was never that you have a complete copy of a "lower" brain inside your brain. Nor even that you have specific structures within your brain whose implementation was evolutionarily conserved. Rather, what I understand the "lizard brain" claim as trying to communicate, is that you have one or more components of the architecture of your brain, where the APIs presented by those components to the rest of the brain, have been mostly conserved throughout evolution. The components themselves may have internally evolved, but the structural boundaries between those components and the rest of your brain have stayed stable in a way that allows biologists to recognize those same components in the architectures of brains in vastly different species. To put that in concrete terms: you and a mantis shrimp both have e.g. "an amygdala." The gene code for "an amygdala" may have differentiated between the shrimp and you, but there's still a conserved part of the brain's architectural plan that says "put an amygdala here." Now for the overwrought OOP analogy: If you imagine HumanBrain as an OOP class, then it's an OOP class that is a subclass about 800 layers of inheritance deep; with the root of the inheritance hierarchy being some prototypical bilateral-vertebrate nerve-cord class. In this inheritance hierarchy, each layer can introduce new "features" — components of the brain that have specific APIs; in other words, members of the class with known interface types, that other parts of the class can have their implementations — but not their own APIs — altered to work in terms of. Under this mental [heh] model, the "lizard brain" claim isn't about the LizardBrain level of the hierarchy itself; but rather is that one or more brain features seen in the HumanBrain class, are features that were introduced in or around the LizardBrain level of the inheritance hierarchy, and whose APIs have stayed stable ever since. (Also, if you're wondering if any real-world computer software has ever done 800-layer-deep inheritance hierarchies such that it starts to actually reflect this kind of speciated evolution: yes! The programming of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO was exactly like that. Why? Because, unlike a regular codebase, but like evolution, LambdaMOO was a gradual accretion of private objects "owned" by amateur coders, where each dev would implement the features they cared about by finding someone else's object with that feature, and forking it [i.e. prototype-inheriting from it] to suit their own needs. There was no common codebase that anyone could refactor, so it gradually came to resemble an actual biological process.)

shadowgovt 3y ago

For all the good work he did, this is the one misstep in Sagan's career that likely caused the most disruption: he was big on the "reptile brain inside a mammal brain" hypothesis and described it quite convincingly on Cosmos. We don't have a great strategy yet for undoing the work of an effective science educator when they teach things science goes on to disprove.

ivanhoe 3y ago

So now we've learned what brain is not - but what is the biologically/evolutionary correct model that explains the opposite impulses that we all are dealing with? And why some of those impulses need willpower and grow weaker under the influence of stress/alcohol/drugs, while others seem to grow stronger?

sdwr 3y ago
Three-brain structure (Freud's id, ego, superego) is still the best simple explanation I know. Maybe the physical reality is a bit different, but it partitions actions so nicely. Id - base impulses, bubble up automatically and subconsciously Ego - the self, the "me". Where the story of identity comes from, what gets judged in court. Superego - rules imposed from on high that restrict behavior ----- I think "opposite impulses" can be explained as a form of self-control. Let's say I see someone I'm attracted to, but want to maintain composure and stay in a neutral stance. Left to my own devices I'll flush, and my eyes will widen, maybe I'll get clumsy. Bringing an opposite-but-aligned emotion in maintains equilibrium (anger, disgust...) I see opposite-but-aligned impulses with my dog all the time. He knows I don't like him chasing squirrels. When he sees one, he gets activated + alert, but redirects his energy into running a few paces the other way. It's a bridge between the id (Go! Chase!) and the superego (Stay calm, don't pull!)
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I never understood why the superego isn't me.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    It probably makes sense to think about it as base-me and societally-influenced-me.
  - mrkeen 3y ago
    You don't need to. 'Superego' is an invention. You could invent your own abstract idea and call it you. Or you could simply declare that the superego is you.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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3seashells 3y ago

The what watches from those eyes who can not see and see anyway? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

crazygringo 3y ago

After reading this article as well as the relevant Wikipedia entry [1], I still don't get what's supposedly "wrong" with the triune brain model. In fact, this article seems to set it up as a bit of a straw man. The main rebuttals in this article are 1) that evolution is branched rather than linear, 2) that larger brains aren't necessarily more complex, and 3) that evolution modifies existing brain structures in addition to adding new layers. But all of that seems rather obvious, and doesn't really refute the triune brain theory at all. Isn't it scientifically true that we have a basal ganglia which evolved from reptiles, a limbic system also present mammals, and a neocortex that works similarly to that in other primates, dolphins, and elephants? And each of those map to certain types of behaviors, that we see in these species? The triune brain hypothesis doesn't seem "wrong", it just seems like a simple categorization that is useful for making big-picture distinctions. Am I missing something? I literally don't understand what is even being "refuted" here, because the refutations don't seem to match the claims at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

csours 3y ago
> "The triune brain hypothesis doesn't seem "wrong", it just seems like a simple categorization that is useful to the layperson." Yes. Anything this simple will be wrong. Almost everything you learn in school before graduate level courses will be wrong. Most of it won't matter to you unless you start working in that field.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  [1] is a nice book that explains in the first chapter why all science is wrong and gets replaced by a less wrong model, in steps. In fact the author argues that all those wrong models are perfectly fine and usable, for their period of time and applications. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems
- KMag 3y ago
  "All models are wrong, but some are useful" - George Box

alex01001 3y ago

brain is a receptor for consciousness, it doesn't create it. Consciousness is "broadcasted".

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FeteCommuniste 3y ago
That’s a spicy take. Is there any evidence to support it?
- booleandilemma 3y ago
  I recently read about that idea in the book "Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being". It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted. https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Complexity-Scientific-Connection-Consciousness/dp/1954118252 https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Complexity-Scientific-Connectio...
  - kbelder 3y ago
    >It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure why the parent is being downvoted. Probably because he stated it as a fact instead of an interesting fringe theory.

cperciva 3y ago

All models are wrong, but some models are useful. Asking if the model is wrong is asking the wrong question; the important question is whether it's useful.

robertlagrant 3y ago
It's useful for padding a chapter or two into self-help books, if nothing else.
fieldbob 3y ago
Donald hoffman says something exactly like that in this talk. David Bohm came the same conclusion science will never fully figure it out the answer is much spiritual and imaginative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafVevceWgs&t=5117s&pp=ygUVZG9uYWxkIGhvZmZtYW4gcnVwZXJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafVevceWgs&t=5117s&pp=ygUVZ... Why? because ultimately we are talking about a empty field of space propagated by light, similar to holograms. Things that grow here things that stem from this world do you think they really are what they appear to be? Of course not. So what are they god damnit? perhaps its better to not answer the question and like a good old mystic leave it be and open a portal to another dimension and have this experience for one self
- mistermann 3y ago
  The errors/issues here are much higher in the stack than what Hoffman and Bohm are getting that at the levels you note, though Bohm in addition to that also spoke a lot about language and communication (which is an important part of the issue here).
  - fieldbob 3y ago
    Please elaborate The problem is always thought?
hindsightbias 3y ago
It’s not wisdom that comes with age, it’s the realization that reality is a broken record. Roll with it.

aaroninsf 3y ago

ITT a lot of fully justified scorn for pearl-clutching performative polemics. An interesting application of weasel words and passive voice in the article..

sebringj 3y ago

I can think of it like the wheels are still there, the frame, engine, body etc but the design and materials have been completely refined and overhauled to be modern future tech today. The car even has new stuff like electronics and wifi. Meaning there are still base conceptual things there but they are not the same...knowing that reasoning by analogy is flawed but still satisfying to me to feel like I understand it enough.

tim333 3y ago
There's quite an interesting analogy there. I guess you could have a four wheeled wagon structure similar to wooden wagons of old, then an engine added and now electronics added, as an analogy to the triune brain. It's not that modern cars are built on wagon chassis but that the basic body with four wheels structure is similar for functional reasons. Probably similarly with the 'reptilian brain.' Our bits are maybe similar because they do the same job rather than because they evolved from that.
- sebringj 3y ago
  ya that's another way i would say it as well

1lint 3y ago

I'm surprised by how much this publication reads like an advocacy piece for a specific viewpoint, rather than an objective review of existing literature. Just from reading the paper, it is clear that there are many experts in the field that take the opposing viewpoint that is being attacked in the paper, especially considering that their hypotheses have been published in widely circulated textbooks. When it comes to research publications in general, I very much prefer to hear an objective, good faith presentation of the major viewpoints, with the author taking an opinionated but measured take in the conclusion as they review the overall weight of the literature. I'm sure there are issues with this "triune brain" model, but at a certain level every model is inaccurate; the real question is whether a model is useful in its framework, and the answer has a degree of subjectivity such that I do not think it is fair to categorically reject the perspectives of opposing experts in the field.

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fieldbob 3y ago

To figure this out one has to sit in meditation and find out for one self This is metaphysics not psychology, perhaps you are asking the wrong people.

potatoman22 3y ago
Why is science not suitable to answer this question?
- mistermann 3y ago
  Inappropriate methodology, culture(s), conventions, etc.

mrangle 3y ago

The inarticulate abstract was a red flag. I read 2/3 of the paper before giving up when finally, after untold quantity of adjectives, assertions, and halfway through, the supposed first couple of arguments made an appearance and were mostly indecipherable as such. The paper reads like what a high school junior thinks that a research review(?) is supposed to look like. Also, it is clear to me that the authors began with a conclusion around which they attempted to wrap support. The psych field needs low quality papers like Alaska needs snow.

mrkeen 3y ago
What was wrong with the abstract? * Widespread misconceptions: a) "Newer" brain structures were added on top of "older" brain structures. b) The "newer" brain structures provide more complex functions. * Psychologists have been publishing these in textbooks. * Neurobiologists have known these to be wrong for some time.
- mrangle 3y ago
  The core statement of the abstract is that the author's conclusions are the "clear an unanimous" views of "those studying nervous system evolution". This statement is incorrect on its face. Worse, it would be a bad scientific statement in any paper. Last, it is at once superfluous and incomplete even if it were true. Instead, a good abstract would briefly list the points of the author's preferred theory rather than waste the reader's time by only deferring to a loosely defined general authority in support of an assertion. Which is abstract writing 101, at least in fields for which writing standards are somewhat kept. Maybe that isn't the psychology field, but it should be. The last sentence of the abstract reads as if written by said high school junior. Science authors generally don't use the word "mistaken" to describe another theory, especially in the context of theories of brain evolution nor for anything else for which literally every theory can only be a theory. Including that preferred by the author. Good papers don't introduce their arguments / pov halfway through, or further. Good papers don't lean on deference to authority 1/2 paper before presenting what is supposed to be their evidence or theory. Good papers almost completely exclude adjectives when describing theories, conclusions, or data, let alone negative adjectives that are doing all of the work in making their yet-unsupported point.

dicroce 3y ago

Not that the opinion of some random on the internet means anything, BUT.... I think the neocortex for the most part lets other parts of the brain control themselves... and really only has high level access. I think emotions are one of these lower level semi autonomous subsystems... but so are things like autonomous body control, balance, each of the senses etc, etc... The neocortex is playing the "Human" video game and controlling things from a high level... but cannot directly control every aspect of these subsystems... and honestly, this is how complexity is dealt with (if the neocortex could control it all, the whats the point of the other subsystems)?

lukeinator42 3y ago

I think it's easy to underestimate how different our brains are relative to different classes of animals, and there is a lot of convergent evolution going on. For example, even low level auditory perception, such as how the brain evolved to localize sound directions, evolved independently in mammals and birds: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00026.2009 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.000... (this is because their common ancestor didn't have a tympanic ear). So the Triune brain really isn't the best model for explaining what is going on in the brain. Models such as reinforcement learning don't fully explain what is going on in the brain either, but I think explanations such as how dopamine flooding the reward system can mess with predicted rewards and contribute to addiction, etc. are more useful.

nickdothutton 3y ago

I think some people’s brains have trouble understanding the purpose and value of models (it’s their predictive power). For some use cases it doesnt matter of the model is “correct” so much as whether or not it has predictive value. I’m sure someone else here can phrase it far better than I.

moab9 3y ago

There's a rat in there.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

This is an example of an article that claims to debunk something that nobody said. Anyway it was informative and clarified things nicely. Just wish it had a better lead.

mrkeen 3y ago
> article that claims to debunk something that nobody said About a third of the article was dedicated to who said it and when: >> As Paul MacLean (1964), originator of the triune-brain theory, stated: man, it appears, has inherited essentially three brains. >> This belief, although widely shared and stated as fact in psychology textbooks, lacks any foundation in evolutionary biology. >> The most widely used introductory textbook in psychology states that: ... The brain’s increasing complexity arises from new brain systems built on top of the old, much as the Earth’s landscape covers the old with the new. Digging down, one discovers the fossil remnants of the past >> we sampled 20 introductory psychology textbooks published between 2009 and 2017. Of the 14 that mention brain evolution, 86% contained at least one inaccuracy along the lines described above. >> For example, Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001), [...] write that: when new species develop, this is done by adding new brain parts to existing old ones >> Examples of MacLean model of brain evolution appear in other areas, including models of personality (Epstein, 1994), attention (Mirsky & Duncan, 2002), psychopathology (Cory & Gardner, 2002), market economics (Cory, 2002), and morality (Narvaez, 2008). Nonacademic examples are too numerous to fully review. >> Carl Sagan's (1978) Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Dragons of Eden, and Steven Johnson's (2005) Mind Wide Open were both popular books that drew heavily on this idea
- mistermann 3y ago
  If the authors are going to classify colloquial language (3 brains) as literal, their own study is then open to the same attack, and there is plenty of material from even the short skim of it I did. "Pedantry" is a double edged sword.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  has inherited essentially three brains. fossile remnants The quoted text give lie to the title. Nobody said it was an onion etc. Just that it was built new structures on old, all changing, integrated more or less well. Not being pedantic, I don't think? The title is disparaging, deconstructing the idea to the point of ridicule. It's reasonable to say "Nobody said that!"

OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago

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OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago

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dboreham 3y ago

Countering a widely held intuitive model by...asserting loudly and repeatedly that it's incorrect, while providing no supporting evidence.

nemo 3y ago
It's surreal to see so may people reading the article with this takeaway, the "What's Wrong" section seemed very clear to me and elaborated for a while including a number of citations on why the simplistic layer model was flawed. > providing no supporting evidence I checked, there's seventeen separate citations for evidence in the "What's Wrong" section as well as several figures.

anigbrowl 3y ago

I have not read the paper yet, but what a great title - a very welcome change from the formulaic 'verbing the noun: towards a metastatic model of semantic construction' that has become so widespread over the last couple of decades.

sgarrity 3y ago

I'm pretty sure mine is.

joe__f 3y ago
I was going to post this

jakobson14 3y ago

https://xkcd.com/1257/ https://xkcd.com/1257/ Another dumb analogy about the brain bites the dust.

jrflowers 3y ago

I am glad that someone is finally clearing this up. The brain is in fact a plump shallot with a tiny noble heron inside.

sirsinsalot 3y ago

And the weather isn't discrete data points. We still use models based on this to illustrate, predict, and communicate. These things are a model. They're useful for the bounds of the model.

itvision 3y ago

The article does not seem to actually refute the old theories. What a mess.

mikhailfranco 3y ago

I really enjoyed that article. I especially like surveying textbooks over time, to call out the originators of misconceptions, and the lazy copy pasta cohorts who followed their lead. The misrepresentations are particularly egregious in neurophysiology, which should be a very concrete observational science, based on dissections of many species in the context of evolution. Perhaps Just So pop-sci evo-psych theories have their reckoning with scientific reality ahead of them.