[Apropos an article I recently read in New Scientist.]
Baby mice who by genetic engineering are mu-opioid receptor free,
don't get distressed by being deserted by their mothers nor by being
dealt a different one (i.e., a stand-in mother).
Another way or describing this psychobehavioral effect is, that this
particular gene manipulation causes this "psychobiological needlessness"
and a close correlated painlessness in situations (or in
respect of lifetime stressors) that to normal ("mu-opioid receptor gene
intact") baby mice would be seriously distressing.
A question that may be asked is: What is the coding function of this gene?
It is plausible that NOT ONLY does it code (or provide a recipe-like
instruction) for a pain controlling mechanism (one in which both opioid
transmitters and receptors are known to be "key cogs") that achieves (most
notably in certain slowly traumatic situations) a state of suppression of
pain or distress (IOW, allows synaptic/selective "hibernation" of slow
traumas) BUT
that it also instructs the forming - by way of
Waddingtonian "genetic canalization" - of the neural hardware behind THE
CORRESPONDING KIND OF PRIMAL PSYCHOBIOLOGICAL NEED;
A need that when not environmentally fulfilled will primarily endogenously
motivate a corresponding pain or distress.
In the same light, this gene (presumably arisen in the phylogeny of both
mice and men), that has now been identified as the "mu-opioid receptor gene"
(for lack of a more complete understanding of its more extensive role), can
be referred to as an example of the tendency for (principle of)
"ambi-advantageous" (ambi-advantageously adaptive) and ditto 'functure
forming' [functure=functional structure] mutations to have a competitive
advantage in the phylogeny of fauna.
Moreover it can illustrate what constitutes a strange attractor within
animal evolution in the direction of "AEVASIVE" genophenotypes.
AEVASIVE genophenotypes is a logical, and by Natural Laws led, evolutionary
patterning-tendency (a subprinciple of Darwin's super-principle, which is
"natural selection")
that seem to have reached its most extreme and elaborate phenotypic
manifestation in the form of the AEVASIVE psychological and cultural
characteristics of our own species.
[AEVASIVE pragmatically stand for: Ambi-advantageously Evolved Veritable
Actention (Selection) System Incorporating Various Endoopiates.]
P
P.S. More information, about what other uniquely formulated to be
excEPTionally edutaining "concEPTs" are part of my effectively philosophy
terminating explanatory platform-terminology, is freely available. However,
only intellectually aggressive, insight seeking, philosophically inclined,
pundits 'need' apply.
D.S.