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I received an interesting video from a neuropsychotherapist discussing the promotion of fear and a neuropsychiatric approach. I shared the video in our family WhatsApp group, drawing attention to it by saying, “A neuropsychiatric’s perspective! In other words, a perspective of wisdom in the face of dystopia!”
Since I had made a mistake by mislabeling a neuropsychotherapist as a neuropsychiatrist, my daughter Alessandra corrected me and explained the proper way to distinguish between these two related professional fields. Furthermore, she pointed out that — in the sense transmitted by the neuropsychotherapist — the subject matter isn't related to psychiatry. Consequently, I posted a text titled “The Promotion of Fear and the Neuropsychiatric Approach”, which included information gathered via Google and was intended for a lay audience.
Since Alessandra insisted on her view that, as presented by the psychotherapist, the topic had no connection to psychiatry—arguing that, as presented in the video, the issue of fear is not linked to this field (in a narrow sense, she is correct; however, in a broader sense, there are additional aspects to consider)—I sent her the following message:
Daughter Alessandra,
Some have discussed Picasso’s work by—rightly or wrongly!—invoking a psychiatric perspective. Picasso was a rogue and he had a penchant for young, beautiful women, yet he produced hundreds of paintings of ugly women.
In short, many people are addressing this subject, whether correctly or incorrectly. One thing is certain: there exists a political-ideological approach—seen in politics, cinema, literature, and other arts—which advocate for the inversion of values!
Leftists are fond of the notion that the beautiful is ugly and the ugly is beautiful… at least in their rhetoric!
Those who entertain this supposed—and quite possibly false—psychiatric interpretation belong to the segment of the population that propagates such fallacies: that “the ugly is beautiful” and “the wrong is right.”
Another certainty: given that there are billions of neurons, there are hundreds of trillions of interactions taking place between them within a single human mind.
Therefore, when it comes to human beings, nothing should come as a surprise!
Your Dad.
Furthermore, I conducted some research and identified many studies that link the two fields of thinking. Below is another message for Alessandra, along with the scientific articles that connect the Apology of Fear to the Neuropsychiatric Approach.
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Dear daughter Alessandra,
Attached are some scientific articles that discuss the Apology of the Ugly in the context of a Neuropsychiatric approach.
These articles were written by scientists in the field of neuroscience.
If Socrates (who was born facing the Rock, id est, the Rochedo) were among us in Brasilia, he would repeat: "I Know only one thing and that is I know nothing!"
If Aristotle— who was not born facing the Rock, i. e., Rochedo; and who was neither modest nor humble—were among us in Brasilia, he would continue to challenge his teacher, Plato, by saying: "Knowledge belongs to three major areas: the theoretical, aimed at contemplation and truth; the practical, focused on human action, ethics, and politics; and the productive, related to technique, the arts, and the creation of something useful or beautiful."
In other words, Aristotle a priori condemned anything that leaned toward an Apology of the Ugly—and, by extension, dismissed a Neuropsychiatric Approach. Yet, the very science he helped to establish has shown that even one of humanity’s greatest geniuses stopped short of his final destination.
Your Dad, with love.
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Apology of the Ugly and Neuropsychiatric Scientific Articles
[1] Neural Response to Self- and Other Referential Praise and Criticism in Generalized Social Phobia – By Karina Blair, PhD; Marilla Geraci, RN; Jeffrey Devido, BA; et al – JAMA Psychiatry, 2008
Abstract
Context Generalized social phobia (GSP) is characterized by fear/avoidance of social situations. Previous studies have examined the neural responses in GSP to one class of social stimuli, facial expressions. However, studies have not examined the neural response in GSP to another equaly important class of social stimuli, the communication of praise or criticism.
[2] Beauty and ugliness in the bodies and faces of others: an fMRI study of person esthetic judgement – By M Martin-Loeches et al – Neuroscience, 2014.
Abstract
Whether beauty and ugliness represent two independent judgement categories or, instead, opposite extremes of a single dimension is a matter of debate. In the present 3T-functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, 20 participants were scanned while judging faces and nude bodies of people classified as extremely ugly, extremely beautiful, or indifferent. Certain areas, such as the caudate/nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), exhibited a linear relationship across esthetic judgments supporting ugliness as the lowest extreme of a beauty continuum. Other regions, such as basal occipital areas, displayed an inverse pattern, with the highest activations for ugly and the lowest for beautiful ones. Further, several areas were involved alike by both the very beautiful and the very ugly stimuli. Among these, the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), as well as the posterior and medial portions of the cingulate gyrus. This is interpreted as the activation of neural circuits related to self- vs. other-assessment. Beauty and ugliness in the brain, at least in relation to natural and biologically and socially relevant stimuli (faces and bodies), appear tightly related and non-independent. Finally, neutral stimuli elicited strong and wide activations of the somatosensory and somatomotor systems together with longer reaction times and higher error rates, probably reflecting the difficulty of the human brain to classify someone as indifferent.
[3] (Neuro)Aesthetics: Beauty, ugliness, and ethics – By Philip Dietrich et al – Psychiatry J., 2022
Abstract
The objective of this essay is a holistic view of aesthetics, ethics, and neuroaesthetics. After a few introductory case studies, aesthetics is systematically introduced as a philosophical subdiscipline. This perspective is then expanded from aesthetics to neuroaesthetics. Using various art forms as well as current media formats, the aspects of beauty and ugliness are discussed, and aesthetic properties are expanded to include ethical implications. These can be expressed through ideals of beauty and the compulsion for body transformation. This perspective is then expanded from aesthetics to neuroaesthetics.
From this point of view of art, the so-called golden ratio will play a central role. It will be shown how representations affect people and what ethical implications are associated with the effects.
Therefore, this essay first has to look at art from the perspective of neuroaesthetics, and then consider the ethical aspects of the beautiful and the ugly. The considerations lead to a brief discussion of Socrates's three sieves.
[4] Neuroscience of aesthetics – By Anjan Chatterjee et al – Ann NY Acad Sci., 2016
Abstract
Aesthetic evaluations are appraisals that influence choices in important domains of human activity, including mate selection, consumer behavior, art appreciation, and possibly even moral judgment. The nascent field of neuroaesthetics is advancing our understanding of the role of aesthetic evaluations by examining their biological bases. Here, we conduct a selective review of the literature on neuroaesthetics to demonstrate that aesthetic experiences likely emerge from the interaction between emotion-valuation, sensory-motor, and meaning-knowledge neural systems. This tripartite model can in turn be evoked to explain phenomena central to aesthetics, such as context effects on preferences. Indeed, context-dependent appraisals that focus on objects rather than on outcomes could be an important factor distinguishing aesthetic experiences from other kinds of evaluation.
[5] Visual information processing of faces in body dysmorphic disorder – By Jamie D Feusner, Jennifer Townsend, Alexander Bystritsky, Susan Bookheimer – JAMA Psychiatry, 2007
Abstract
Context: Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a severe psychiatric condition in which individuals are preoccupied with perceived appearance defects. Clinical observation suggests that patients with BDD focus on details of their appearance at the expense of configural elements. This study examines abnormalities in visual information processing in BDD that may underlie clinical symptoms.
Objective: To determine whether patients with BDD have abnormal patterns of brain activation when visually processing others' faces with high, low, or normal spatial frequency information.
Design: Case-control study.
Setting: University hospital.
Participants: Twelve right-handed, medication-free subjects with BDD and 13 control subjects matched by age, sex, and educational achievement. Intervention Functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing matching tasks of face stimuli. Stimuli were neutral-expression photographs of others' faces that were unaltered, altered to include only high spatial frequency visual information, or altered to include only low spatial frequency visual information.
Main outcome measure: Blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging signal changes in the BDD and control groups during tasks with each stimulus type.
Results: Subjects with BDD showed greater left hemisphere activity relative to controls, particularly in lateral prefrontal cortex and lateral temporal lobe regions for all face tasks (and dorsal anterior cingulate activity for the low spatial frequency task). Controls recruited left-sided prefrontal and dorsal anterior cingulate activity only for the high spatial frequency task.
Conclusions: Subjects with BDD demonstrate fundamental differences from controls in visually processing others' faces. The predominance of left-sided activity for low spatial frequency and normal faces suggests detail encoding and analysis rather than holistic processing, a pattern evident in controls only for high spatial frequency faces. These abnormalities may be associated with apparent perceptual distortions in patients with BDD. The fact that these findings occurred while subjects viewed others' faces suggests differences in visual processing beyond distortio of their own appearance.
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Interação entre este pai e a filha Alessandra
Recebi um interessante vídeo de uma neuropsicoterapeuta tratando da apologia do medo e a abordagem neuropsiquiátrica. Incluí o vídeo na rede WhatsApp da família chamando a atenção da “Visão de uma neuropsiquiatra! Vale dizer, a visão da sabedoria contra a dystopia!”
Como errei, atribuindo a uma neuropsicoterapeuta a condição de neuropsiquiatra, a querida filha Alessandra fez reparo e expôs a forma correta de encarar os dois campos profissionais correlatos. Ademais, ela indicou que não há nada de psiquiatria no tema abordado. Então, postei o texto “A Apologia do Feio e a Abordagem Neuropsiquiátrica”, com dados obtidos por intermédio do Google e voltado para leigos.
Como a Alessandra insistiu na opinião de que o assunto tratado no vídeo não dizia respeito a psiquiatria, sob a alegação de que a questão do medo nada teria a ver com psiquiatria (em sentido restrito, ela tem razão, contudo em sentido amplo, há aspectos adicionais a considerar), enviei-lhe a seguinte mensagem:
Filha Alessandra,
Há quem tratou da obra do Picasso, mencionando — certo ou errado! — a abordagem psiquiátrica. Picasso era malandro, gostava de mocinhas jovens e bonitas, porém tem várias centenas de pinturas de mulheres feias.
Enfim, tem muita gente tratando desse assunto de forma certa ou errada. Uma coisa é certa: há a abordagem político-ideológica,… na política, no cinema, na literatura e em outras artes, em que pregam que é preciso inverter os valores!
Os esquerdistas gostam dessa ideia de achar o belo feio e o feio belo… da boca pra fora!
Quem está admitindo a suposta — e possivelmente falsa — abordagem psiquiátrica está na amostra do universo que prega essas aleivosias de que “o feio é belo” e o “errado é certo”.
Algo que também é certo: como há bilhões de neurônios, há centenas de trilhões de interações entre eles em uma única cabeça.
Então, no atinente a humanos não pode haver surpresa!
Ademais, fiz uma pesquisa e identifiquei muitos estudos associando as duas coisas. Seguem outra mensagem para Alessandra, bem como os artigos científicos que associam a Apologia do Medo com a Abordagem Psicopsiquiátrica.
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Querida filha Alessandra
Seguem alguns artigos científicos que mencionam a Apologia do Feio associada com Abordagem Neuropsiquiátrica.
São artigos escritos por cientistas do campo da neurociência.
Se Sócrates (nascido em frente aos Rochedos) estivesse entre nós ele repetiria “Uma coisa que eu sei é que nada sei!”
Se Aristóteles — que não era modesto nem humilde — estivesse entre nós, ele prosseguiria contrariando o mestre Platão e diria: “Bom, o conhecimento inclui: a origem dos sentidos (o ser humano conhece a realidade experimentando-a materialmente); a matéria e a forma (a essência das coisas habita os próprios seres e objetos); e a divisão do conhecimento (teórico, prático e produtivo)”.
Ademais, Aristóteles (que não nasceu em frente aos Rochedos), acrescentaria: “O saber pertence a três grandes áreas: teórica, voltada para a contemplação e a verdade; prática, focada na ação humana, na ética e na política; e produtiva, relacionada à técnica, às artes e à fabricação de algo útil ou belo."
Ou seja, Aristóteles condenou a priori tudo aquilo que se volta para a Apologia do Feio e, portanto, descartou a Abordagem Neuropsiquiátrica, contudo a Ciência que ele ajudou a criar mostrou que mesmo um dos maiores gênios da humanidade parou antes do destino.
Seu pai, com amor!
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