【推荐2】Recently, the laboratory of Sami El-Boustani, an assistant professor at the University of Geneva, has studied the role played by motivation in perception (感知) and decision-making. “We wanted to observe how sensory information sent by cortical neurons (大脑皮层神经元) is changed by the degree of motivation and to what extent the latter can have an effect on learning and performance in a decision-making task,” explains Sami El-Boustani.

The research team developed a behavioral pattern involving mice in a controlled water consumption condition. Researchers first trained these mice to respond to the stimulation of two whiskers (鼠须) (A and B) and to produce an action — licking a spout (舔壶嘴)— only for whisker A in order to obtain a drop of water. Following this training, these mice reacted mainly to the stimulation of whisker A. Finally, the researchers conducted these experiments at decreasing levels of thirst in order to vary the motivation of the mice to participate in the task.

In a state of great thirst, mice licked the spout randomly with great motivation. In a state of medium thirst, the choice of their action became ideal. They mainly licked the spout when whisker A was stimulated. Finally, when they were not very thirsty, their performance in the task dropped again. By observing the activity of neuronal populations responsible for perceptual decision-making in these mice, researchers discovered that high-motivation leads to the strong stimulation of cortical neurons, which causes a loss of accuracy in the perception of the stimulation. In contrast, in the low-motivation state, the accuracy of the sensory information was recovered, but the strength of the signal was too low for it to be sent correctly.

These results reveal that the level of motivation does not only impact decision-making but also the perception of sensory information, which leads to the decision. Researchers observed that mice understood the rule very quickly but could only express this learning much later, depending on a changed perception linked to their level of motivation. The research on the role of motivation in learning opens the way to new adaptive methods that aim to maintain the best level of motivation during learning.

【推荐2】In the film Inside Out, 11-year-old Riley’s emotions are personified as brightly colored internal figures that drive her behaviors. The same five emotions—anger, fear, disgust (憎恶), sadness, and joy—appear in every other character’s head as well, functioning in much the same way in each individual. In Western cultures, this is the case, argues psychologist Batja Mesquita in Between Us. Emotions in such contexts, she writes, are considered “MINE,” or “Mental, INside the person, and Essentialist,” the latter defined in the book as always having the same properties.

This conception of emotion is not universal, however. Emotions elsewhere, she argues, are thought of as “OURS”—“OUtside   the   person,   Relational,   and   Situated.”   Using   this   distinction,   Mesquita   sets   about contrasting emotions in “the West,” where the individual is the top concern, with “the Rest,” where community is prioritized.

Mesquita describes amae as a central emotion in Japanese culture, where it builds interdependence by encouraging tolerance in parenting process. She describes hasham—which includes shame, embarrassment, and   social   respectability—as   a   fundamental   emotion   for   Egyptian Bedouins   (游牧人).   Such   observations provide a background for her to explore a range of issues, including childhood socialization, the nature of friendship, the role of language in shaping emotions, and cross-cultural communication in a globalized world.

Despite   Mesquita’s   emphasis   on   cross-cultural   emotions,   there   is   little   discussion   of whether   the MINE-OURS dichotomy (二分法) accurately explains global cultural variation. Other scholars have noted, for example, that hunter-gatherer societies at the same time emphasize both individual self-government and social cooperation. And in an apparent contradiction to her earlier arguments, Mesquita herself ultimately concludes that Westerners have OURS emotions.

Taken as a whole, however, the book contributes much to the discussion of the origins of emotions, presenting a remarkable collection of cross-cultural studies intermixed with personal stories about foreign residents’ struggles to reunite   diverse   emotional   and   social worlds.   In   chapter   8,   for   example,   Mesquita describes   an   incident   where   she—a   Dutch   native   living   in   the   United   States—bumped   into   the   famous American   psychologist   Hazel   Markus   at   a   conference   Markus   helped   organize.   Wishing   to   express understanding of Markus’s workload, Mesquita declared “You look a little tired.” The remark appeared to make Markus nervous and confused but was intended as an expression of sympathy—to sympathize in Dutch is to acknowledge suffering, not offer comfort as in the US.

The book’s take-home message is fundamental: There are no natural emotions, no inborn emotions, no universal emotions. Mesquita argues that emotions are “meaning making” and “a preparation for action” and that the idea of “emotions as inner states” is a Western construct. Instead, she suggests that emotions are a “dance” cocreated between people who live in a specific cultural context at a particular historical moment.

【推荐3】To the Sweden, there are few smells more attractive than surströmming (臭鲱鱼). To most non-Sweden there are probably few smells more repulsive — the fish has been described variously as smelling like sour cat litter, or even droppings-like. In determining which smells people find pleasant or not, surströmming suggests culture must play a size able part.

New research, however, suggests that might not be the case. Artin Arshamian, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and Asifa Majid, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, began with the expectation that culture would play an important role in determining pleasant smells. This was not just because of examples like that of surströmming. They knew from past experiments by other researchers that culture was important in determining which sorts of faces people found beautiful.

To study how smell and culture relate, the researchers presented ten smells. These smells varied from herb to isovaleric acid, the chemical responsible for smelly socks. More in-between smells, which the team thought might split opinions, included octanoic acid; and octenol, an carthy smell found in many mushrooms. The cultures doing the smelling varied widely too, including hunters, farmers and city folk.

All 235 participants were asked to rank smells according to pleasantness. The researchers found that pleasantness ran kings were remarkable consistent regardless of where people came from. Isovaleric acid was hated by the vast majority, only eight giving it a score of l to 3 (I was very pleasant and 10 was very unpleasant ). On the other hand, more than 190 people gave herb a score of l to 3. Overall, the chemical composition of the smells explained 41 % of the reactions that participants had. In contrast, cultural upbringing accounted for just 6 %

Even so, while culture didn't shape perceptions (感知) of smells in the way that it shapes perceptions of faces, the researchers did find an “eye of the beholder” effect. Randomness, which the researchers suggest has to come from personal preference learned from outside individual culture, accounted for 54 % of the difference in which smells people liked.