[djtango]

Not really challenging me, I'm more marvelling at the fact that as giant bags of proteins, we're able to look at our baby and our testicles decide that it's the time to stop doing what they do most of the time.

Cognition is such a handwave IMO - what's the biochemistry behind that? What's the signalling mechanism by which our brain does that? Does that mean with the right external brain signals we can turn off T production?

The implication of cognition having control over the body, which you assert is so well known, is that if we can achieve more control over our cognition we can achieve biochemical control of our body. So the bene gesserit is less fiction than we like to think?

[disgruntledphd2]

I think that (as with many of the problems of the modern world ;P) it can all be blamed on Descartes.

The notion of dualism is profoundly problematic in a bunch of ways, but the biggest problem with it is that it created generations of scientists who ended up believing that consciousness and body experience are completely separate, which is a little ludicrous when you think about it.

[fgd135]

Is it really much different to, say, looking at food and getting hungry, or looking at someone naked and getting aroused? While these are more immediate and conscious experiences, its clear that something as simple as looking at things can affect our biochemistry.

[djtango]

I take your point - you're right maybe there isn't anything that much more different.

But it feels a lot more different because the two examples you used are very clear and direct stimulus-response pairings. See food, get hungry (and get ready to digest)

See mate, get aroused, genitals get ready.

But a hormonal response is weird because:

- you see a baby then your body makes you more nurturing

- testosterone has all kinds of health implications on a longer time frame, it affects decision making, strength, muscle growth etc etc

So the fact that the body has been preprogrammed to alter our mind when we see (our?) baby is kind of impressive. Would be interesting to know if it's all babies or just our own. Do male midwives or fathers of adopted children see the same T drop.

Not to mention that T is also such a sought after hormone that understanding (and controlling) this response could be quite helpful

[ramblenode]

> Cognition is such a handwave IMO - what's the biochemistry behind that?

Hormones are chemical messengers. They exist to relay messages between different organs and tissues. An organism is constantly sampling its environment and adjusting its internal state to optimize survival and reproduction. Within this framework, it is not at all surprising that cognition interacts with hormones; in fact, it would be kind of surprising to find a biochemical pathway that is entirely independent of cognition.

A good example is stress. For those of us in the first world, stress begins as something cognitive, but it is expressed hormonally as increased serum cortisol. All you have to do to change your hormone balance is start ruminating!

Another example is oxytocin. If another human touches you affectionately, you'll see a bump in serum oxytocin. But it depends on your judgment of how affectionate the contact is, which is cognitive.

[djtango]

I appreciate your response here but it's still pretty handwavy.

Ultimately it's pretty easy to sit back and say - well it's just so. Sure we have a flight or fight and pathways towards adrenaline and cortisol. We also have pathways for oxytocin so we like to find a friend/mate. So obviously we'd also have pathways towards wanting to nurture our kids. That's evolution bro - I guess nature and science are pretty obvious and boring after all /s

The response to children is impressive to me because it appears to be highly specific in its stimulus and the ramifications are pretty large.

Our cortisol and adrenaline response is very generic. All kinds of things can trigger it. You can experience adrenaline by jumping out of a plane or gambling at a roulette table. Even in a showdown in poker or playing video games. So the same response has been conditioned towards all kinds of situations when originally it might have been predominantly towards enemies/predators

Likewise for oxytocin we can probably produce oxytocin from cuddling a pet so it's kind of generic in stimulus.

Meanwhile there's a whole slew of specific responses that men and women have towards babies that I personally find fascinating in their specificity. Maybe because I'm just ignorant but I'm excited for the future when we may be able to understand how a bunch of senses (visual, aural, olfactory) convert into specific neural signals which the body is preprogrammed (how?) to then produce a specific response (via what biochemical pathways) to induce a hormonal response. Which incidentally have pretty wide ranging physiological consequences in the case of testosterone.

[borski]

“Mind over matter” is not a colloquialism for no reason. It doesn’t work all the time, but to say it never does is a mistake.