Day 1

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Today, I will begin to record the activities and time spent out of class working on the building bases and development of my question. Today, I worked on the different criteria that needs to be defined in order to come up with a question.

1. Defining the components of the question:

• What is reward?
• I spent about 30 minutes researching on what the word 'reward' actually means. It is a concept that comes up in different disciplines, including business, psychology, neurology, etc. I tried to come up with my own definition of the word for my question.
  • Reward: The result of experimenting pleasure and its effects on human behaviour.
• I spent another 30 min. researching on the concept of pleasure. However, it is very subjective, and I can't quite figure out how I want to relate it to my question. I also looked up definitions of the word, but none of them really suffice the expectations of my question.
  • It is necessary to define what pleasure is in order to pinpoint its biological explanation.
  • Pleasure, in the biological sense, relates to the secretion of specific neurotransmitters and hormones in the human body.
  • Pleasure, in the philosophical sense, I still can't define. (Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit – Chapter on “Pleasure and Necessity” could be a useful reading. I spent about 45 min. before going to bed reading the chapter over and over, it took me about 3 times of reading each sentence out loud to get a grasp of what each sentence means.) I don't really want to go into philosophy...Maybe I can run away from it forever?)
• One of my personal goals is to integrate biological and psychological explanations of reward, pleasure and addictions. I'm also aiming to define the differences between those three key terms.

2. Related ideas

• What is the role of our brain's “reward system” in evolutionary terms?
• Is human behaviour driven by reward/pleasure? If so, to what extent?
• The concept of epigenetics refers to the study of the inheritance of characteristics that are not embedded in the DNA sequences. This concept has been widely researched until recently, but it could provide an effective way to study the way that addictions might be passed on to offspring. I spent about an hour looking up peer reviewed articles on the subject, however, I found out I'm not quite ready to understand the technical aspects of the area. It really interests me, though.
  • Is it possible to inherit traits that make us more prone to fall into addictions?
  • Is it possible to be born with an addiction? If not, what triggers an addiction?
• What is vice? (Possibly explore this concept in the philosophical sense)
• How does the use of recreational drugs affect the reward system in our brains?
• How effective is the use of drugs to treat drug addiction?
• Material possessions and reward: What is the effect of earning money in the brain?
• Addictive personalities (?): Compulsive eating, gambling, smoking.

I spent about an hour looking up and reading peer reviewed papers using keywords from the questions above and came up with a rough outline of related questions that I'd like to explore.

3. Relevant disciplines

• Biology: The study of the etiology, development and distribution of living organisms.
• Neuroscience: The study of the nervous system.
• Psychology: The study of human behaviour.
• Neuropsychology: The study of the relationship between structure and function of the brain.
• Biopsychology: The study of the effect of neurotransmitters and other brain structures in human behaviour.
• Pharmacology: The study of the effects of drugs in the human body.
• Social neuroscience: The study of the nervous, endocrine and immune systems are involved in human behaviour.

4. Possible advisors/conversants

• Annie: Molecular biology, the branch of epigenetics specifically.
• Neal: Neuroscience/ Molecular biology
• Megan: Psychology