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Vol.24 : Dr. Niall P. Murphy, Ph.D. (RIKEN Brain Science Institute)
August 8, 2007
Fate of reforms up in the air after LDP's election defeat
Land price rise spreads to local centers
Sharp unveils big LCD plans
Accounting rules to fall in line by 2011
Expanded coverage: Popular psychics offer peace of mind for vulnerable,
thin-skinned populace
mental disorders：精神障害
addiction：依存症
subjective feelings：主観的感情
neurons：神経細胞
（ N: Niall, T: Terri ）
| T : |
What in the world does in your lab do? |
| N : |
My lab works essentially on the study of what mental disorders, but especially disorders that are related to feelings, mood and emotion; and primarily the one that we are most interested in is addictions of various type, whether they are drug addiction or food addiction. But we are also interested in any mental disorder where there is a change in moods; so, for example, a very good example of that, say, is depression, where there is a long-term...
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| N : |
...change in mood, a depressed mood.
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| T : |
Right. I see. So, you're studying the reason or you're studying how the brain manifests depression, for example, or ... |
| N : |
Manifest or express and perhaps yes, we are very interested to know how feelings and emotions arise in the brain or wherever they do arise. Some people may argue that they actually arise in the body also.
We are interested in what the subjective feelings are, how they come about, how they change under normal circumstances and particularly how they change in certain of these disorders such as depression and addiction.
Of course, getting at the heart of a very complex thing of an emotion or a feeling can be very difficult, but primarily what we are trying to understand is how - what areas of the brain produce these so-called feelings. What types of neurons in the brain do that, and perhaps what these feelings are for?
I mean, we may know why, say, for example we feel good about something or we feel bad about something, but we question those things too, it's exactly what are these feelings for these emotions? Why do things make us happy, why do things make us sad?
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| T : |
Very, very good and concise way to explain it. Now, one of the things I read on the site was, you know, evolution has to do with this, so the survival mechanism. |
| N : |
That's right. Of course that's a whole different area of study is how, say, for example, emotion evolved over and over time and why did emotion evolve. So, for example, you could go out into your yard and look at an ant and you could probably point it and say, it doesn't have an emotion and it doesn't need an emotion. It got a very simple lot in life and it doesn't any particular emotion to be able to live and survive.
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| N : |
Now, as animals gets more and more complicated in their structure, is that probably the emotions develop more and more and more and we as humans probably, perhaps, arrogantly believe that we are the most emotional of all animals.
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| N : |
So the question is why have those emotions developed and what role do they play in our survival?
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| N : |
And how they develop is very, very fascinating, and perhaps how much more they develop in the future, perhaps they will...
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| N : |
...some people may even reason that they may even develop beyond certain other aspects in life and that may become a problem in itself.
And even if you look at different languages, for example, you just, say, compare...
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| N : |
...English and Japanese, we have different words for different feelings, say for example... |
| N : |
...in English we may say, we watched a movie... |
| N : |
...and I think, we would say, it was funny.
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| N : |
But a Japanese person might say it was a omoshiroii, it was interesting. And so sometimes you can get a blend of two different or at least maybe have different interpretations or how it is interpreted to different individuals.
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ingest：摂取する
expectations：期待
mingle：交流する
（ N: Niall, T: Terri ）
| N : |
Now, what happens with addiction is that although we don't fully understand it, but we are certainly getting closer is that we know that certain things you could just simply ingest. You could eat them, you could inject them, you could snort them, there is all sorts of ways of doing it.
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| N : |
These are chemical things, they go straight into the brain and they essentially fool the brain into thinking; thinking is not a great word, but fool the brain into giving you this sense of pleasure. And that's why you do it. |
| N : |
And so and of course if that happens then you are more likely probably to do it again. Of course, actually that's actually quite difficult to prove experimentally that people do things because they like them. They could maybe perhaps do it simply because there is some other mechanism in the brain that will make you repeat something that you should be repeating and you could do it without actually liking it. And, in fact, some people argue...
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| N : |
So rather like the ant we are talking about...
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| N : |
An ant, say, for example, if it finds something that it needs, it may find some sugary water, is that it will tend to return there over and over again. Now, you could look at the ant and say, well I don't think he is very happy by that, he has just learnt to go there, the behavior is becoming reinforced over and over again.
It is conceivably possible that that could actually happen in very sophisticated animals, like mammals and humans. In fact, some addiction researchers argue that. They say that the reason why in addiction is that we don't keep repeating this behavior that's very bad for us over and over again necessarily because we like the outcome.
It is just that we just want to do it more and more. Whereas other researchers argue that well actually we do like the outcome but the more that we like it the more the brain tries to adjust to this pleasure. And pushing, kind of, our pleasure state lower and lower, so we got to keep doing this behavior more and more to, kind of, get ourselves back to normal again.
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| N : |
It sounds very deep but the concepts are actually quite simple and sometimes it's worth reevaluating your own behavior, why do you do these things. And, say, for example, probably most of those have in our lives, we do something that we don't want to do or we feel like we shouldn't be doing it.
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| N : |
It could be, you know, should I that eat that third scoop of ice cream? Now you probably say, no, I shouldn't but I want to. |
| N : |
And then evaluate yourself after you got that third scoop of ice cream, how do you feel about it? Did it meet your expectations? And that's an important idea is that often in addiction is when people finally get what they want, it doesn't actually meet their expectations.
And so looking at it simply as like, we do things that we like is perhaps an oversimplification and it's something that's fascinating about this field, because you don't have to be a scientist. We have lots of expensive and fancy equipment; ask yourselves these very basic questions.
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| T : |
Differences between research conditions in Japan and other countries; you came here partially because of RIKEN, so perhaps you will tell us what happened in the UK, what's the difference? |
| N : |
Oh, the difference is between research... Well, of course, there's like a socio-economic differences, things like funding levels of course, but I don't think we really want to talk about that because I think perhaps what's most interesting to you and me too is the way people approach their science and approach things...
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| N : |
There are differences and in some senses we often joke is that Japan is a little bit, not old fashioned, but, kind of, old school, like we say, is that in Japan the Sensei-Gakusei, the relationship, the professor-student relationship is quite different I think. It's changing now, but to that, say, for example, in the US, and US, for example, it's very casual.
And the student doesn't really have very much fear of saying his ideas or perhaps even telling the professor is wrong at something. Of course, the way Japanese society is structured is that the student would have a bit more hesitation or certainly have to enshroud it in much softer words to get that point across.
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| T : |
But you feel it's changing a little bit? |
| N : |
It is changing, oh definitely. This thing about scientist is it is very international; scientists mingle a lot and so they see the way the other people do things. And then this way that people are approaching their science and one of the great things I like about Japan is that the public has a very strong interest in science.
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| N : |
They see science as a way to the future.
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 Alain Wenckebach / Managing Director
PTS Consulting Japan K.K. 
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