Believing Read online

  Published 2013 by Prometheus Books

  Believing: The Neuroscience of Fantasies, Fears, and Convictions. Copyright © 2013 by Michael McGuire. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopy­ing, re­cord­ing, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, ex­cept in the case of brief quotations em­bodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  McGuire, Michael T., 1929-

  Believing : the neuroscience of fantasies, fears, and convictions / by Michael McGuire.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61614-829-4 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-61614-830-0 (ebook)

  1. Belief and doubt. 2. Neuropsychology. 3. Cognitive neuroscience. I. Title.

  BF773.M34 2013

  153.4—dc23

  2013022513

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1. A Career Turns Upside Down

  Chapter 2. Where to Start?

  Chapter 3. Types and Uses

  Chapter 4. What Psychologists Have Found

  Chapter 5. Lessons from History

  Chapter 6. Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation

  Chapter 7. Seeing What We Believe

  Chapter 8. Religion as an Exception to Science—Or Is It?

  Chapter 9. Philosophical Considerations

  Chapter 10. Awareness, Belief, and the Physical Brain

  Chapter 11. The Biology of Belief

  Chapter 12. Enter Imaginings, Beliefs, Uncertainty, and Ambiguity

  Chapter 13. Theory of Mind, Mirroring, and Attribution

  Chapter 14. Stories and Models

  Chapter 15. Triggering

  Chapter 16. Intransigent Beliefs and Belief-Disconfirmation Failure

  Chapter 17. And Why?

  Chapter 18. What to Do?

  Notes

  Index

  Books of this type can be unfair to their many sources. Where ideas were first read or heard are often forgotten. How discussions and advice led to textual and conceptual changes is often difficult to pinpoint. This book is no exception. For the sources and reviewers that deserve to be named here but are not, I apologize.

  Many people reviewed drafts of the book or participated in discussions. These include Scott Anderson, Gary Brammer, Robert Briner, John Chandler, Toby Cronin, Damon deLaszlo, Lynn Fairbanks, Ted Harris, Steve Lorch, Roger Masters, Colleen McGuire, Katherine McGuire, Marsden McGuire, Michael Raleigh, Frank Salter, Kevin Stone, Lionel Tiger, Hap Wotila, and Arthur Yuwiler.

  Four people contributed to major conceptual and organizational changes: John Beahrs, Jay Feierman, Beverley Slopen, and Lowell Striker. Without their contributions, the book is unlikely to have been finished and certainly not in the way it has turned out.

  Beverley Slopen (the book’s agent) deserves special thanks for her support and efforts in securing the book’s publication. My wife, Nancy, who read and commented on each of its many drafts, deserves a special, special thanks for her efforts.

  MRS. X

  Summer in Boston is hot and humid. In my office in the hospital where I see patients, the air-conditioning drones its summer-long low hum as Mrs. X tells me once again about her persistent belief. It is a story I have heard at each of our fifteen treatment sessions. I have been practicing psychiatry for ten years, trying to treat patients with varying levels of psychic distress and feelings of inadequacy. Before that, I spent four years in medical school, one year in internship, and three years in psychiatric residency. But neither my training nor my clinical experience can help Mrs. X relinquish her strongly held belief. “I’m someone else’s child,” she insists.

  “Let’s review once more,” I say. “Your birth record is signed by your mother and father. They believe you’re their child. Your grandparents and your parent’s friends who have known you since the day you were born believe the same thing. People say you’re the spitting image of your mother. And you say your belief doesn’t influence your behavior, that you love your parents, enjoy their company, spend hours with them, and still your belief is unchanged.”

  “That’s right—Excuse me for crying.”

  I take a long pause, my pen floating above the pad of lined notepaper searching for something to write. I looked at her tearful face, feeling helpless. “I think it’s time we accept the fact that I’m unable to provide you with the help you seek. We’ve talked for months. It seems clear that I don’t know what to say or do to assist you in resolving your dilemma.”

  She continues to cry, “What about a drug?”

  “I wouldn’t know which drug to prescribe.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  Again, a long pause. “We could continue to talk with the understanding that it’s unlikely to help. It’s not my recommendation. Another therapist is a possibility. Therapists differ in their techniques, and another technique might work. If you would like, I can give you some names. Or you might take a break for six months and then consider what to do.”

  “Have you talked with other therapists?” she asks.

  “Yes, several. Their experiences are similar to ours. The beliefs usually persist.”

  After sitting there, dejected, for another few minutes, Mrs. X decided to take a break. We would meet again during winter.

  Mrs. X is not the first patient I treated with beliefs that remain unchanged in the face of strong contradictory evidence. Often their beliefs and behavior are disconnected—that is, they behave as if the belief doesn’t exist. Otherwise, such patients are normal and free of the everyday signs and symptoms of mental illness, such as anxiety, depression, and obsessions. Mrs. X is a typical example. She was happily married, a mother of four children, and, on matters other than her parents, was perfectly rational.

  Usually I’m not easily frustrated over minor failures. Trying to fix my car and botching the job or planting a vegetable garden only to have it serve as a gourmet meal for some clandestine animal are part of living—the “fleas of life,” as they are often called. But at this point, I had approached my limits. Despite nearly two decades of training and experience, I was helpless if not clueless in my ability to solve what on the surface seemed like a simple problem, altering beliefs that persist contrary to evidence in otherwise normal people. What causes such beliefs, why they persist, and what might change them had eluded me.

  My wife and friends understood my frustrations, but their sympathies were no cure for my state of mind. I needed to change. I met with the chairman of the medical school department where I worked. “I need some time off to go back to basics, to study a related but simpler species. Humans are too bewildering. I want to know more about other primates. Perhaps it can lead to new treatment strategies.”

  We talked for an hour. He was skeptical. There were few precedents for what I was proposing. But he did grant me a leave of absence to pursue research with nonhuman primates in the hope I
could satisfy my quest for answers to confounding questions of human belief and behavior.

  SAINT KITTS

  Three months later, I was unpacking my bags and research equipment on the island of Saint Kitts in the Eastern Caribbean. Saint Kitts and Nevis, a nearby island, are unique in that they are the present-day home of vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus), a species of Old World monkeys that is prevalent throughout much of Africa. They arrived in the New World perhaps as early as 1600 CE as extra “for-sale” items on boats conducting the slave trade.

  The two islands are of volcanic origin and sit atop the interface between two tectonic plates. Abundant rain feeds dense rainforests on the slopes of the volcanoes. There vervets live, breed, and thrive largely free of human interference.

  The first task was to survey the island and locate good spots for observing the monkeys. It was during the third week that I encountered an elderly man carrying bananas down a mountain trail.

  We talked. He was sixty-four and a native of Saint Kitts. His occupation: “I roam the hills for food that I can sell, like these bananas.”

  “Then you must know the monkeys pretty well.” I replied.

  “I do. I’ve lived with them all my life. Two are my pets and friends. One is thirty-two years old, but he’ll not be with me long. He’s ill.”

  “I’m sorry. Losing friends hurts. We had a cemetery for our dogs and cats on the ranch where I grew up.”

  “You buried your friends?” he asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “The monkeys bury their own, you know?” he said with great assurance.

  “They what?” I asked.

  “Yes, they bury their dead,” he said again.

  “How do you know?”

  “You never find their dead bodies or bones. Have you?”

  “Well, no, but I’ve only been on the island for three weeks.”

  “You won’t find any.” He was smiling now.

  “Has anyone seen these burials?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone you know seen them?”

  “No.”

  “But what about other explanations?” I asked.

  “Like . . . ?”

  “Well, the island is filled with animals that kill and devour dead animals. There are land crabs, carnivorous birds, ants, and probably more. Anyway, I’ve not seen a dead rat, mongoose, lizard, or bird. Something must be eating them.”

  “But there are many monkeys. They are large like dogs. There would be bones and skulls. Someone would have seen them unless they are buried.”

  My studies began.

  During the following eighteen years, I spent three months each year studying vervets on Saint Kitts. Did I ever see a dead vervet or evidence of one’s remains? No.

  Do I believe they buried their dead? No.

  BELIEFS

  Our team conducted studies and recorded myriad findings about vervet behavior. Before dawn six days a week, we would depart for a specific location on the island, await the arrival of monkeys, and then record their behavior for five or six hours. There were moments of excitement that accompanied new discoveries, and there were moments of disappointment when the bottom fell out of “hot ideas.” But for me, trying to tease out information on beliefs, hierarchy, and especially the role of the brain chemical serotonin held special fascination.

  To ask it simply: Do monkeys, like humans, have beliefs? No evidence of this had been established when I arrived on Saint Kitts. But it soon appeared that they might and that their beliefs were closely tied to their behavior—that is, not disconnected from it. There were examples of beliefs that we might catalogue. The presence of humans predictably leads to their departure. Yet they are at home in the presence of land crabs, peacocks, turtles, mongooses, lizards, thousands of different bugs, and a range of island birds. They prefer group membership to living alone. Only once did I observe an animal—an elderly and graying male—living a solitary life. They have “friends” with which they spent most of their time. Certain foods are preferred and those that contain poisons are avoided.

  Do they believe that humans are dangerous and many of the island’s indigenous animals are not? Possibly. Do they believe that group living is desirable to living alone? Seemingly so. Do they prefer certain animals to others? Yes. Do they believe that certain foods are dangerous to their health? Also seemingly so.

  The predictability of their behavior is striking. The presence of a human literally always leads to their rapid departure. Friends regularly seek close proximity to one another. The availability of specific foods leads to an interruption in what they are doing to enjoy a meal. The “disconnects” between beliefs and behavior like those of Mrs. X and others are nowhere to be found. Something is occurring in humans that is absent among their distant relatives.

  HIERARCHIES

  Like many species of nonhuman primates, vervets have separate male and female hierarchies. There is a dominant animal for each sex. Their behaviors differ, however. Subordinate females have close relationships with dominant females and provide them with company, grooming, and babysitting services. Challenges to a dominant female’s status are rare, as is physical conflict.

  Male hierarchies work another way. The struggle for who is and will be dominant occurs daily. Dominant males behave as if they believe that maintaining their status requires frequent assertion of their place. This they do by spatially displacing subordinate animals or by threatening them.

  Most of the time, subordinate males respond submissively. Physical contact is likely if they don’t. But at other times, they challenge dominant males with threats. The dynamic is played out daily, multiple times. Perhaps they believe that their failure to challenge a colleague may bypass an opportunity to dethrone the dominant male.

  These findings aren’t novel to vervets. Other species behave in similar ways. Nonetheless, their behavior is consistent with the idea that males believe that dominant status is far more desirable than subordinate status. There is no competition to remain or become subordinate.

  SEROTONIN

  I was struggling to make sense of these observations when a visiting biochemist alerted me about a noninvasive technique for assessing the chemical makeup of the brain via analysis of an animal’s cerebral spinal fluid, the fluid that surrounds the spine. The source of this fluid is the brain, and it can be acquired without endangering an animal. A host of chemical events that occur in the brain are revealed in the composition of the fluid.

  The neurochemical serotonin is a case in point. It is manufactured in the brain, where it acts to increase or decrease the frequency of certain behaviors, influences the intensity of certain emotions, and affects the interpretation of information. During these actions, it is metabolized to several byproducts, including 5-Hydroxyindolacetic acid (5-HIAA), which migrates to the cerebral spinal fluid. The greater the amount of 5-HIAA in the spinal fluid, the greater the serotonin activity in the brain.

  What I’m describing may sound complex, but it isn’t. In principle, it is no different than examining the contents of a neighbor’s garbage can and inferring what has been eaten from what you find. If their garbage is full of artichoke leafs but there are no corncobs, an obvious inference is that they have been eating artichokes and not corn.

  New techniques invite new questions. For example, does brain serotonin activity differ between dominant and subordinate males? If so, might these differences affect their beliefs and behavior? Heady questions were begging for answers. We set out to answer them.

  Once every two weeks, small samples of spinal fluid were extracted from dominant and subordinate males among stable groups. The process of analyzing the fluid for 5-HIAA began. Results would be available in two or three days. Such analyses are subject to the inadvertent introduction of human error, which requires intense concentration and focus to avoid, so much so that one often forgets why the fluid is being studied.

&n
bsp; When the results arrived, despair set in. “They can’t be true,” was our first response. There was no reason to believe that dominant males have twice the activity of the brain serotonin compared to subordinate males. Differences of such magnitude had not been identified previously nor had they been anticipated.

  Caution prevailed. It was essential to repeat the study. The differences could be due to an error in the analysis of the fluid or unrecognized factors. Caution disappeared when the same two-to-one serotonin differences were found with the second repetition of the study. And the third, and the fourth.

  Because discoveries don’t occur every day, they trigger novel responses. At first we experienced doubt and confusion. I tried to make sense of the differences in ways that were consistent with what I knew before the discovery: namely, serotonin was reported to be a stable and unchanging chemical in the brain. If so, why was there an increase in serotonin in dominant or high-status males? Clearly, there was no easy explanation. Then, slowly, a warm and relaxing feeling spread over my body. A moment of self-appreciation and exhilaration followed. Then a sense of possession—“This is our discovery, our idea: dominance and high serotonin levels go hand in hand.”

  Other studies followed. For example, after assessing the level of 5-HIAA among subordinate males in groups, dominant males were removed from their groups. Soon the subordinate males began competing with each other to determine which among them will become dominant. After several weeks, new dominant males were in place. They had twice the brain activity of serotonin compared to the remaining subordinate males. As for the dominant males that were removed from their groups, their activity of the brain serotonin declines to that characteristic of subordinate males.

  Why serotonin activity is significantly higher in dominant males—it’s not higher in dominant females—remains unexplained to this day, as do the factors that lead to changes in its activity. Behavioral observations suggest an answer, however. The increase in serotonin activity positively correlates with the number of submissive displays an animal receives each day: the greater the number of such displays, the higher the serotonin activity in the animal receiving the displays. In effect, external information alters the brain’s chemical activity.