Gene Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics

DrLudicrous writes "According to a recent Reuters article, scientists have been able to cause monkeys to stop procrastinating by blocking the development of a dopamine receptor in the brain. The net result- the monkeys turned into workaholics. An article has appeared in the online version of Nature. Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks. The original article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An additional blurb appears here courtesty of Science Blog." NIH has a press release.

Comments

Not a slacker gene!

[Keighvin]

Even though the terms gene therapy are being bandied about in conjunction with this story, there is no such thing as a slacker gene.

What the experiment did here was essentially introduce a learning disorder into the primates, using a method to inhibit a dopamine (specific kind of neurotransmitter) generating process in a localized area. This made it impossible for the primates to connect the visual stimulus indicating the number of tasks remaining and the introduction of a reward - hence the completion criteria becomes effectively decoupled through this dissociation and they have no clue when they will be rewarded.

This does not translate well into humans, which have several other cues that can connect activity with the expectation of reward. The induced learning dissability would have to cover these as well, and would have a disastrous societal effect; no effective expectation of reward also translates to reduced expectation of punishment.

Alternatively this same behavior could be produced in the workplace without the chemistry by having managers arbitrarily provide discipline and praise. This technique has been known for some time, and even quantized into a specific practice (though without conscious concession to this premise as the genesis for the method) in the awful book "The One Minute Manager," whereby an environment is constructed to remove personal validation of the employees and place the entirety of that role on the manager, who is then free to act illogically (or semi-logically, personality and cluefulness depending) in their delivery of the same.