Determined, page 44
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G. Caruso and D. Dennett, “Just Deserts,” Aeon, https://aeon.co/essays/on-free-will-daniel-dennett-and-gregg-caruso-go-head-to-head.
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R. Kane, “Free Will, Mechanism and Determinism,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014), the quote comes from p. 130; M. Shadlen and A. Roskies, “The Neurobiology of Decision-Making and Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism and Mindedness,” Frontiers of Neuroscience 6 (2012), doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2012.00056.
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S. Spence, The Actor’s Brain: Exploring the Cognitive Neuroscience of Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2009).
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P. Tse, “Two Types of Libertarian Free Will Are Realized in the Human Brain,” in Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, ed. G. Caruso and O. Flanagan (Oxford University Press, 2013).
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A. Roskies, “Can Neuroscience Resolve Issues about Free Will?,” Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014), the quote comes from p. 116; M. Gazzaniga, “Mental Life and Responsibility in Real Time with a Determined Brain,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4: Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014), 59.
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Families losing fortunes: C. Hill, “Here’s Why 90% of Rich People Squander Their Fortunes,” MarketWatch, April 23, 2017, marketwatch.com/story/heres-why-90-of-rich-people-squander-their-fortunes-2017-04-23.
Footnote: J. White and G. Batty, “Intelligence across Childhood in Relation to Illegal Drug Use in Adulthood: 1970 British Cohort Study,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 66 (2012): 767.
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J. Cantor, “Do Pedophiles Deserve Sympathy?” CNN, June 21, 2012.
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Footnote: Z. Goldberger, “Music of the Left Hemisphere: Exploring the Neurobiology of Absolute Pitch,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 74 (2001): 323.
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K. Semendeferi et al., “Humans and Great Apes Share a Large Frontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience 5 (2002): 272; P. Schoenemann, “Evolution of the Size and Functional Areas of the Human Brain,” Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 379. In addition, depending on the way it is measured, the human PFC is proportionately greater in size and/or more densely and complexly wired than in any other primate: J. Rilling and T. Insel, “The Primate Neocortex in Comparative Perspective Using MRI,” Journal of Human Evolution 37 (1999): 191; R. Barton and C. Venditti, “Human Frontal Lobes Are Not Relatively Large,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (2013): 9001. Embedded in all these findings is the challenge of figuring out what precisely is the equivalent of the human frontal cortex in, say, a lab rat; see M. Carlen, “What Constitutes the Prefrontal Cortex?,” Science 358 (2017): 478.
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E. Miller and J. Cohen, “An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 24 (2001): 167; L. Gao et al., “Single-Neuron Projectome of Mouse Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience 25 (2022): 515; V. Mante et al., “Context-Dependent Computation by Recurrent Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature 503 (2013): 78. Some more examples of frontal cortical involvement in task switching: S. Bunge, “How We Use Rules to Select Actions: A Review of Evidence from Cognitive Neuroscience,” Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 4 (2004): 564; E. Crone et al., “Evidence for Separable Neural Processes Underlying Flexible Rule Use,” Cerebral Cortex 16 (2005): 475.
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R. Dunbar, “The Social Brain Meets Neuroimaging,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16 (2011): 101; P. Lewis et al., “Ventromedial Prefrontal Volume Predicts Understanding of Others and Social Network Size,” Neuroimage 57 (2011): 1624; K. Bickart et al., “Intrinsic Amygdala–Cortical Functional Connectivity Predicts Social Network Size in Humans,” Journal of Neuroscience 32 (2012): 14729; R. Kanai et al., “Online Social Network Size Is Reflected in Human Brain Structure,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279 (2012): 1327; J. Sallet et al., “Social Network Size Affects Neural Circuits in Macaques,” Science 334 (2011): 697.
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J. Kubota, M. Banaji, and E. Phelps, “The Neuroscience of Race,” Nature Neuroscience 15 (2012): 940.
Footnote: Reviewed in J. Eberhardt, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do (Viking, 2019).
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N. Eisenberger, M. Lieberman, and K. Williams, “Does Rejection Hurt? An FMRI Study of Social Exclusion,” Science 302 (2003): 290; N. Eisenberger, “The Pain of Social Disconnection: Examining the Shared Neural Underpinnings of Physical and Social Pain,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3 (2012): 421; C. Masten, N. Eisenberger, and L. Borofsky, “Neural Correlates of Social Exclusion during Adolescence: Understanding the Distress of Peer Rejection,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4 (2009): 143. For an interesting study of the gene regulation in the prefrontal cortex mediating resilience during stress, see: Z. Lorsch et al., “Stress Resilience Is Promoted by a Zfp189-Driven Transcriptional Network in Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience 22 (2019): 1413.
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Neurobiology of fear: C. Herry et al., “Switching On and Off Fear by Distinct Neuronal Circuits,” Nature 454 (2008): 600; S. Maren and G. Quirk, “Neuronal Signaling of Fear Memory,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5 (2004): 844; S. Rodrigues, R. Sapolsky, and J. LeDoux, “The Influence of Stress Hormones on Fear Circuitry,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 32 (2009): 289; O. Klavir et al., “Manipulating Fear Associations via Optogenetic Modulation of Amygdala Inputs to Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience 20 (2017): 836; S. Ciocchi et al., “Encoding of Conditioned Fear in Central Amygdala Inhibitory Circuits,” Nature 468 (2010): 277; W. Haubensak et al., “Genetic Dissection of an Amygdala Microcircuit That Gates Conditioned Fear,” Nature 468 (2010): 270.
Neurobiology of extinguishing fear: M. Milad and G. Quirk, “Neurons in Medial Prefrontal Cortex Signal Memory for Fear Extinction,” Nature 420 (2002): 70; E. Phelps et al., “Extinction Learning in Humans: Role of the Amygdala and vmPFC,” Neuron 43 (2004): 897.
Neurobiology of re-expressing conditioned fear: R. Marek et al., “Hippocampus-Driven Feed-Forward Inhibition of the Prefrontal Cortex Mediates Relapse of Extinguished Fear,” Nature Neuroscience 21 (2018): 384.
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J. Greene and J. Paxton, “Patterns of Neural Activity Associated with Honest and Dishonest Moral Decisions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106 (2009): 12506. Also see his superb book: J. Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them (Penguin Press, 2013).
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H. Terra et al., “Prefrontal Cortical Projection Neurons Targeting Dorsomedial Striatum Control Behavioral Inhibition,” Current Biology 30 (2020): 4188; S. de Kloet et al., “Bi-directional Regulation of Cognitive Control by Distinct Prefrontal Cortical Output Neurons to Thalamus and Striatum,” Nature Communications 12 (2021): 1994.
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Frontal disinhibition: R. Bonelli and J. Cummings, “Frontal-Subcortical Circuitry and Behavior,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 9 (2007); E. Huey, “A Critical Review of Behavioral and Emotional Disinhibition,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 208 (2020): 344 (I’m proud to say that the author, a professor at Columbia University Medical School, was once a stellar member of my lab).
Frontal damage and criminality: B. Miller and J. Llibre Guerra, “Frontotemporal Dementia,” Handbook of Clinical Neurology 165 (2019): 33; M. Brower and B. Price, “Neuropsychiatry of Frontal Lobe Dysfunction in Violent and Criminal Behaviour: A Critical Review,” Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 71 (2001): 720; E. Shiroma, P. Ferguson, and E. Pickelsimer, “Prevalence of Traumatic Brain Injury in an Offender Population: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of Corrective Health Care 16 (2010): 147.
Footnote: J. Allman et al., “The von Economo Neurons in the Frontoinsular and Anterior Cingulate Cortex,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1225 (2011): 59; C. Butti et al., “von Economo Neurons: Clinical and Evolutionary Perspectives,” Cortex 49 (2013): 312; H. Evrard et al., “von Economo Neurons in the Anterior Insula of the Macaque Monkey,” Neuron 74 (2012): 482. For an appropriately skeptical critique of the linkage of empathy, mirror neurons and von Economo neurons see: G. Hickok, The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition (Norton, 2014).
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Y. Wang et al., “Neural Circuitry Underlying REM Sleep: A Review of the Literature and Current Concepts,” Progress in Neurobiology 204 (2021): 102106; J. Greene et al., “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” Science 293 (2001): 2105; J. Greene et al., “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment,” Neuron 44 (2004): 389.
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A. Barbey, M. Koenigs, and J. Grafman, “Dorsolateral Prefrontal Contributions to Human Intelligence,” Neuropsychologia 51 (2013): 1361. For an overview of both the dlPFC and vmPFC, see Greene, Moral Tribes.
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D. Knock et al., “Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex,” Science 314 (2006): 829; A. Bechara, “The Role of Emotion in Decision-Making: Evidence from Neurological Patients with Orbitofrontal Damage,” Brain and Cognition 55 (2004): 30; A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt, 1999). These issues are also explored in L. Koban, P. Gianaros, and T. Wager, “The Self in Context: Brain Systems Linking Mental and Physical Health,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 22 (2021): 309.
Footnote: E. Mas-Herrero, A. Dagher, and R. Zatorre, “Modulating Musical Reward Sensitivity Up and Down with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation,” Nature Human Behaviour 2 (2018); 27. See also J. Grahn, “Tuning the Brain to Musical Delight,” Nature Human Behaviour 2 (2018): 17.
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M. Koenigs et al., “Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgments,” Nature 446 (2007): 865; B. Thomas, K. Croft, and D. Tranel, “Harming Kin to Save Strangers: Further Evidence for Abnormally Utilitarian Moral Judgments after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23 (2011): 2186; L. Young et al., “Damage to Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Judgment of Harmful Intent,” Neuron 25 (2010): 845.
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J. Saver and A. Damasio, “Preserved Access and Processing of Social Knowledge in a Patient with Acquired Sociopathy Due to Ventromedial Frontal Damage,” Neuropsychologia 29 (1991): 1241; M. Donoso, A. Collins, and E. Koechlin, “Foundations of Human Reasoning in the Prefrontal Cortex,” Science 344 (2014): 1481; T. Hare, “Exploiting and Exploring the Options,” Science 344 (2014): 1446; T. Baumgartner et al., “Dorsolateral and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Orchestrate Normative Choice,” Nature Neuroscience 14 (2011): 1468; A. Bechara, “The Role of Emotion in Decision-Making: Evidence from Neurological Patients with Orbitofrontal Damage,” Brain and Cognition 55 (2004): 30. Consequences of damage to the vmPFC: G. Moretto, M. Sellitto, and G. Pellegrino, “Investment and Repayment in a Trust Game after Centromedial Prefrontal Damage,” Frontiers of Human Neuroscience 7 (2013): 593.
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The PFC keeping track of long-lasting categorization rules: S. Reinert et al., “Mouse Prefrontal Cortex Represents Learned Rules for Categorization,” Nature 593 (2021): 411. The PFC having to work hard continuously to keep track of an ongoing rule change can extend for weeks in rats (which is a long time for them): M. Chen et al., “Persistent Transcriptional Programmes Are Associated with Remote Memory,” Nature 587 (2020): 437.
“Cognitive load” has become highly controversial. The concepts of cognitive reserve and ego depletion were pioneered by social psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues: R. Baumeister and L. Newman, “Self-Regulation of Cognitive Inference and Decision Processes,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20 (1994): 3; R. Baumeister, M. Muraven, and D. Tice, “Ego Depletion: A Resource Model of Volition, Self-Regulation, and Controlled Processing,” Social Cognition 18 (2000): 130; R. Baumeister et al., “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (1988): 1252. A number of studies, however, began to report problems with replicating the effect (e.g., L. Koppel et al., “No Effect of Ego Depletion on Risk Taking,” Science Reports 9 [2019]: 9724). Amid that, others reported replications; see, for example: M. Hagger et al., “A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 11 (2016): 546. Discussion of some of the possible sources of the confusion can be found in M. Friese et al., “Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 23 (2019): 107. Baumeister and colleagues responded to the reported failures of replication with R. Baumeister and K. Vohs, “Misguided Effort with Elusive Implications,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 11 (2016): 574. Meta-analyses of these studies have become so numerous—and produced conflicting conclusions as to whether the effect is for real—that there are now even meta-analyses of the meta-analyses: S. Harrison et al., “Exploring Strategies to Operationalize Cognitive Reserve: A Systematic Review of Reviews,” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 37 (2015): 253. I’m in no position to assess the debates surrounding the social psychology aspects of these studies, let alone those regarding data analysis; I’m on slightly more solid ground assessing the biological elements of these studies. As such, my relative outsider’s read is that the effects are often for real but typically of considerably smaller magnitude than the early research suggested. This would certainly not be the first time this sort of revisionism has been necessary in science.
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W. Hofmann, W. Rauch, and B. Gawronski, “And Deplete Us Not into Temptation: Automatic Attitudes, Dietary Restraint, and Self-Regulatory Resources as Determinants of Eating Behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (2007): 497.
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H. Kato, A. Jena, and Y. Tsugawa, “Patient Mortality after Surgery on the Surgeon’s Birthday: Observational Study,” British Medical Journal 371 (2020): m4381.
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M. Kouchaki and I. Smith, “The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior,” Psychological Sciences 25 (2014): 95; F. Gino et al., “Unable to Resist Temptation: How Self-Control Depletion Promotes Unethical Behavior,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 115 (2011): 191–92; N. Mead et al., “Too Tired to Tell the Truth: Self-Control Resource Depletion and Dishonesty,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009): 594.
These issues playing out in medical settings: T. Johnson et al., “The Impact of Cognitive Stressors in the Emergency Department on Physician Implicit Racial Bias,” Academy of Emergency Medicine 23 (2016): 29; P. Trinh, D. Hoover, and F. Sonnenberg, “Time-of-Day Changes in Physician Clinical Decision Making: A Retrospective Study,” PLoS One 16 (2021): e0257500; H. Nephrash and M. Barnett, “Association of Primary Care Clinic Appointment Time with Opioid Prescribing,” JAMA Open Network 2 (2019): e1910373.
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S. Danziger, J. Levav, and L. Avnaim-Pesso, “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (2011): 6889.
Footnote: The hungry judge effect: K. Weinshall-Margel and J. Shapard, “Overlooked Factors in the Analysis of Parole Decisions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (2011): E833. Also: A. Glöckner, “The Irrational Hungry Judge Effect Revisited: Simulations Reveal That the Magnitude of the Effect Is Overestimated,” Judgment and Decision Making 11 (2016): 601. Additional studies: D. Hangartner, D. Kopp, and M. Siegenthaler, “Monitoring Hiring Discrimination through Online Recruitment Platforms,” Nature 589 (2021): 572. See also P. Hunter, “Your Decisions Are What You Eat: Metabolic State Can Have a Serious Impact on Risk-Taking and Decision-Making in Humans and Animals,” EMBO Reports 14 (2013): 505.
Meanwhile, subsequent research has suggested a very different version of judicial decisions being influenced by implicit factors—on the average, judges give lighter sentences if it’s the defendant’s birthday that day. For example, in New Orleans courtrooms, there’s about a 15 percent decrease in sentence length; tellingly, the effect is about twice as great if the judge and defendant are of the same race. Day before or after your birthday? No dice, has no effect. And even more telling but not surprising, no judge mentioned abstractions like birthdays in their judicial opinions. The paper’s title aptly summarized how this is a case of conflicting values—“criminals should be punished” versus “we should be nice to people on their birthdays.” D. Chen and P. Arnaud, “Clash of Norms: Judicial Leniency on Defendant Birthdays” SSRN (2020), ssrn.com/abstract=3203624 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3203624.
