Author Archives: mfwu

The London Riots & the Brains Behind Them

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On August 6, 2011, two days after the shooting of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police, what started off as a peaceful protest in response to the police handling of the shooting and a call for justice turned into a full-scale riot in Tottenham, North London. The city descended into chaos as over 300 rioters battled police using makeshift weapons and petrol bombs, set fire to police cars, double-decker buses, and shops, and rampantly looted. The riot resulted in 26 police officers injured, several citizens hospitalized, and 55 rioters arrested. The riot in Tottenham was only the first in a series that popped up across London, as similar disturbances in Peckham, Battersea, Birmingham, and Salfrod sprung up in the following days. As a response to the unrest, the government funded a study by the National Centre for Social Research to look into the motivation of and triggers behind young people’s participation in the riots.

Interviewing over 200 people primarily from the areas affected, the resulting study found that there was not one simple explanation but instead, the young people, both participants and non-participants, were influenced by a series of “nudge” and “tug” factors. Researchers were able to categorize situational, personal, family/community and societal factors that either helped to “nudge” them into getting involved (facilitators) and others which helped to “tug” them away from involvement (inhibitors).This struggle between nudge factors such as peer pressure and tug factors such as fear of getting caught and the struggle between the emotional and rational mind demonstrate the concept of the brain as a team of rivals as discussed in Ch. 5 of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman. In considering the risks of getting involved, many young people who chose not to participate frequently described “being able to counter impulsive ‘here-and-now thinking’, with thoughts about their future plans or long-term goals, and what they had to lose.”

The study also cites that a primary motivation for participation in the riots was “not individual badness or disadvantage so much as the urge to join in.” Rioters cited the strong influence and trigger of the “party atmosphere, adrenaline and hype”, which they found “encouraging”. As explored in social psychology and neuroscience, peer pressure and “simple herd behaviour” are surprisingly significant drivers of our behavior as our brains are “hardwired” to imitate. Does this mean that rioters are less culpable for their criminal behavior because they were merely following human instinct? As the study demonstrated, there are a large number of factors that the brain considers in making a decision to either to join or not join in the rioting, destructive behaviors, and looting. Many young people said they were motivated by “the thrill of getting free stuff – things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have”, and antipathy towards the police. Neurological encouraged herd behavior is definitively less of a clear cut influence than the tumor growing in the right frontal lobe in the case of the “sudden pedophile”and is just one factor in a large number of other factors that the brain considered. While it may have made a difference, the real question regarding herd behavior’s role in the riots is not in determining culpability, but rather in determining how the government and pro-social groups can deter similar riots from happening in the future. These groups should look at the totality of nudge and tug factors, and seek to minimize nudge factors such as feelings of “having nothing to lose” and boredom while maximizing tug factors, such as building attachments to a community and providing chances for “jobs, prospects, and aspirations”.

Further Reading:

Morrell, Gareth. “The August Riots in England: Understanding the Involvement of Young People.” National Centre for Social Research.

Taylor, Matthew. “Brain Science and the Law: Should We Understand More and Condemn Less?” The Guardian. 3 Nov. 2011.

Taylor, Matthew, and Paul Lewis. “Opportunism and Dissatisfaction with Police Drove Rioters, Study Finds.” The Guardian. 3 Nov. 2011.

Video Games: Teaching the Brain to Reward Violence?

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The discourse surrounding video games has often been highly polarized. Most recognize video games’ ability to help develop fine motor and spatial skills as well as problem solving and cite it as a strong educational tool. Still, there has been strong criticism regarding its ‘addictive’ nature and role in an over stimulated society. Video games have been blamed for a variety of things, including its role in the rise in childhood and adolescent obesity and particularly for increasing violent tendencies and aggression among youth. Researchers have battled and disagreed especially over this supposed casual relationship between video games and violence. A recent study in Translational Psychiatry, “The Neural Basis of Video Gaming” might perhaps provide the start to our ability to understand exactly how video games affect the brain and our impressionable youth.

In the past, using functional neuroimaging, scientists have discovered that there are similarities in neural processes underlying video game playing and gambling when it comes to the reward system. While playing video games, subjects demonstrated an increased level of dopamine release in the ventral striatum, the part of the brain that responds to rewards, which was reflected by similar increased dopamine released in the same zone in Parkinson’s patients which led to obsessive gambling and other addictive behavior. The central striatum and neurotransmitter dopamine help individuals assess rewards that help them survive. When one experiences something pleasurable or rewarding, such as food or winning a game, dopamine neurons are triggered. Over time, they help the brain learn and predict when it will happen again and encourage the signs of potential reward. In “The Neural Basis of Video Gaming”, researchers further discovered that regular video game players actually had a larger ventral striatum than infrequent gamers. The researchers are unsure whether this relationship is due to video games actually cause the region to enlarge or whether those with larger regions are more susceptible to preoccupation with the high-reward element of video games.

With this information about the neural affects of video games in mind, can we determine whether video games actually cause violence? Video games stimulate the reward zone of the brain and video gamers, in particular, have brains that are more susceptible to responding to these rewards. Therefore, it is very likely that games that frame violence as pleasurable or rewarding, for example as something that leads to success in the game, will causes dopamine neurons to be triggered in the ventral striatum and teach the individual’s brain that violence is rewarding in the same way it taught him food is rewarding. Therefore it is very important for video game craters to be careful about how they frame goals and success in violent video games, since there is a possibility they can inadvertently teach the brain that violence brings reward.

Denzler, Markus, Michael Hafner, and Jens Forstner. “He Just Wants to Play: How Goals Determine the Influence of Violent Computer Games on Aggression.”

Lehrer, Jonah. “Your Brain on Gambling: Science Shows How Slot Machines Take Over Your Mind.” The Boston Globe.

Kuhn, S, et. al “The Neural Basis of Video Gaming.” Translational Psychiatry

Gallagher, James. “Computer Gamers’ Brains ‘Differ’.” BBC News

Reading Minds: Neuroscience Replaces Psychics

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The pages of science fiction are coming alive as neuroscience combines brain imaging equipment with popular ‘user-generated content’ websites to read minds.

In order to determine what someone is seeing, scientists at the Gallant Lab at the University of California, have studied the visual cortex of subjects under fMRI machines as they watched hours of film trailers on YouTube. Then with the help of “the brute power of modern computing”, the researchers compared the film trailers with the fMRI images frame by frame, searching for correlations. Using the found correlations, the researchers at Gallant asked the computer to predict what fMRI patterns would look like for an additional 5,000 hours of clips from YouTube. Finally, the subjects watched a new set of trailers and based on the fMRI patterns in the visual cortices, the computer picked bits of YouTube footage that best corresponded to the patterns and created an estimation of what the real clip looked like (video). Those the resulting images and videos are fuzzy, butr they generally matched the silhouettes and movement of the original clips with surprising accuracy.

A study led by Francisco Pereira at Princeton University achieved another feat of mind-reading by determining what people were thinking about. Using brain-scan data of subjects as they were shown and then asked to imagine pictures of 60 objects, Pereira attempted to create pattern-detection algorithms. Though he was unable to distinguish exactly which objects were being thought about (ex. carrot), Pereira could determine what type of object is was (ex. vegetable). The object categories were established with the help of another user-generated content website, Wikipedia, where they looked at the way names of objects tended to cluster together, which was reflected in the way the brain clusters things.

This ‘brain-reading’ technology has also been used previously by scientists such as Dr. Bin He for another use that also seems to come straight out of science-fiction, the melding of mind and machine. In his study, Dr. He creates non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to allow users to interact with computer systems using their thoughts, such as controlling a virtual helicopter in a three-dimensional virtual environment. Further research and development of BCIs are a very important part of creating new ways of communication between prosthetic devices and people with paralyzing injuries or illness so that they may perform everyday tasks. Already, research has shown that “a brain implant that can record brain electrical activity directly can control a prosthetic device,” and scientists are continuously on improving this technology to create artificial limbs that can better translate brain signals into natural movements.

While the concept of a mind-reading device might sound scary and reminiscent of Orwellian autocratic mind-control, those working with BCIs and prosthetics have demonstrated how it can be useful. Still, while the current mind-reading technology might appear only to be a parlor trick, once the field develops and becomes more predicative, there are legitimate concerns about how it will be used. While it might be beneficial to “see” into the mind of a coma patient to make hard decisions as those faced by the Shiavo family, it can also be abused. Issues such as admissibility in court as testimony against a criminal and invasion of privacy will most certainly come up and need to be resolved.

Further Reading:

“Reading the Brain: Mind-Googling” < http://www.economist.com/node/21534748>

“Reading Minds: The Science, not the Fiction” <http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainBriefings_10_readingminds>

Gallant, Jack. “Reconstructing Visual Experiences from Brain Activity Evoked by Natural Movies” <http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900937-7?switch=standard>

He, Bin. “Continuous Three-Dimensional Control of a Virtual Helicopter Using a Motor Imagery Based Brain-Computer Interface” <http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026322>

The Neuroscience of Location

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Scientists have long known that where you live affects your mental health. Researchers in Great Britain have studied the difference between the mental health of urban and rural dwellers and have found that urban dwellers demonstrated higher rates of CIS-R morbidity, alcohol dependence and drug dependence as a result of being more likely to belong to deprived social groups and have adverse living circumstances and stress. Also, a more recent study by Dutch researchers found that urban dwellers had a 21% higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and 39% higher risk of developing mood disorders. Now, the latest study by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg’s Central Institute of Mental Health delves into the neuroscience behind these differences made by place and uses fMRI to undercover the difference between urban and rural brains.

Meyer-Lindenberg had previously studied risk mechanisms in schizophrenia with emphasis on the role of genes, but found that genes only conveyed 20% increase in risk. On the other hand, he found that schizophrenia is twice as common in those who were city-born and raised as opposed to those from the countryside and was interested by the strong correlations. Using fMRI, Meyer-Lindenberg and his team studied participants as they took difficult math tests in which they were doomed to fail while providing negative feedback to induce stress, a major factor in causing schizophrenia. The fMRIs showed differences in activity between rural and urban brains in primarily the amygdala and the perigenual anterior cingulated cortex (pACC), leading researchers to believe that rural and urban brains respond to the stress in different ways. Those currently living in rural areas had lower levels of activity in amygdalas, the area of the brain responsible for “assessing threats and generating the emotion of fear”, compared to those living in urban areas. On the other hand, differences in the pACC, the part of the brain that regulates the amygdales and process negative emotions, correlated with where the subjects had been brought up. Regardless of where the subject was currently residing, the more urban the subject’s childhood was, the more active his pACC was in response to stress. Meyer-Lindenberg’s team suggest that based on this research, the amygdala is much more flexible, responding to ‘the here-and-now, while the pACC reacts in a way that has been programmed very early on.

Another interesting discovery by Meyer-Lindenberg’s team was that while external ‘second-to-second changes in activity’ and amygdala changes should be correlated due to the amygdalas job as a regulator, subjects brought up in urban areas has a much weaker correlation. This suggests that the regulatory mechanism of native urban brains are often ‘out of kilter’. As pACC-amygdala links are also ‘out of kilter’ in many schizophrenics, Meyer-Lindenberg’s study might demonstrate the reason for the correlation between urban-dwelling and schizophrenia. Using this knowledge gained, researchers can start to better understand how to prevent and treat disorders such as schizophrenia that are more prevalent in urban-dwellers as well as begin to solve which variables in urban living contribute to the ‘neurobiological impact of city living’.

Further Reading:

“A New York State of Mind” <http://www.economist.com/node/18864354>

“City Living Marks the Brain” <http://www.nature.com/news/2011/220611/full/474429a.html>

Meyer-Lindenberg, Andreas.”City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”. Nature, 474 498-501, 23 June 2011.

Paykel, E. S., R. Abbot et. al, “Urban-rural Mental Health Differences in Great Britain: Findings from the National Morbidity Survey”. Psychological Medicine (2000), Vol. 30, Issue 2, pg. 269-280.

The Teenage Years: Mood Swings and now IQ Swings

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Though in the past it has been traditionally believed that Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores remained constant over a person’s lifetime, a study by researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging have found that individual IQ scores are less stable than previously thought. Researchers tested the IQ scores of 33 teenagers, with a range of achievement levels and between the ages of 12 to 16, over a period of four years. They found that individual scores fluctuated dramatically during those teenage years, sometimes up to 21 points. On the other hand, the scores of all the teenagers averaged together stayed consistent throughout the years, with half the subjects’ IQ scores increasing and half decreasing. Using fMRI scans, the researchers reported in their study that these dramatic shifts were “mirrored by changes in density of nerves and other cells in parts of brains, suggesting drifts are real changes in ability, not varying concentration, mood or motivation”. Though the scans did not show major changed in the frontal brain, which controls advanced mental skills, changes in other parts of the brain correlated with the score changes. The shift in verbal IQ scores which test “memory, vocabulary, arithmetic and general knowledge” were mirrored by changes in the left motor cortex–the “home of speech”, while shifts in non-verbal IQ scores which test “problem-solving and the ability to spot patterns”, were mirrored by changed in teh anterior cerebellum–the area of the brain controlling hand movements. The researchers believe these changes are “just the tip of the iceberg” of the changes that take place in the fluctuating teenage mind.

While the team is unsure about exactly what factors affected the IQ changes in their study (rate of brain change, educational factors, etc.), cognitive psychologist Dr. Robert Sternberg explains in Young’s article that mental faculties and capabilities can change the way muscles can change with exercise: “People who are mentally active and alert will likely benefit, and the couch potatoes who do not exercise themselves intellectually will pay a price.” While certain children may be predisposed to higher or lower IQ scores to start with, it is not necessarily an absolute reflection of future adult educational and occupational status, as previously believed. The degree of dramatic change in the IQ scores of the teenagers in the study have also sparked questioning on whether this change is present in adults and on exactly when mental development ends.

All these questions are relevant in the debate over sentencing, particularly in regards to the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally retarded. The Supreme Court ruled against the death penalty for those 18 and younger in Roper v. Simmons and for those with mental retardation, an IQ score of 70 and under, in Atkins v. Virginia. The ambiguity of when the mind stops developing and the new study regarding the variability of IQ scores in conjunction with the lack of consistency between different cycles of IQ tests really causes one to question the fairness of using rigid cut off points for death penalty sentencing. While with the current limited knowledge, understandably this system may be our closest attempt at fairness, it is still important to recognize that a number tells us much less than we think.

Further Reading:

McCall, Robert. “Childhood IQs as Predictors of Adult Education and Occupational Status” <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/197/4302/482.abstract>

Ramsden, Sue. “Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain”<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10514.html#/acknowledgments>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/19/teenagers-iq-scores-adolescence

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/985

Cognitive Impairments of DWI Offenders

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Accounting for 32% of all traffic deaths in 2009 in the United States, the consequences of drunk driving are measured not only in economic and health costs, but in lives. As a result, the government and many non-profit organizations, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), have an expressed interest in preventing individuals from driving while impaired by alcohol (DWI). While the threat of punishment, such as stiff fines, the loss of license privileges, and incarceration, as well as education and awareness programs are usually enough to deter individuals from driving while impaired by alcohol, there is still a sub-group that chooses to take the risk regardless and engage in irresponsible driving. Researchers in the field of substance abuse have increasingly looked towards neuroscience to better understand these offenders by determining what neural factors might be involved in the decision to drive while impaired. This knowledge can also help researchers understand DWI recidivism and develop appropriate, effective techniques to help prevent it.

DWI convictions are remarkably useful opportunities for researchers to identify individuals with a high-risk of recidivism and create a treatment plan appropriate to the individual. While DWI offenders are incredibly diverse, there are several correlating factors that often occur in DWI offenders and recidivists. Factors include severe alcohol abuse (binge drinking), alcohol dependence, the male sex, greater hostility, sensation seeking and psychopathic deviance, more frequent engagement in other risky driving behaviors, more psychosocial dysfunction and disrespect for laws, sanctions and legal authorities, and a family history of alcoholism. The cognitive ability to ‘regulate behavior, exercise appropriate decision making in potentially risky contexts and learn from the past experience is essential to safe driving’ and DWI offenders often exhibit significant cognitive impairment in one or more cognitive areas. Brown et all suggest that these cognitive deficits may have arisen as consequences of alcohol abuse, alcohol-related physical trauma, or even genetic origins that predisposed individuals have their neurodevelopment disrupted with alcohol consumption. DWI offenders are more likely to have impairments to memory, executive functioning, successful goal-directed behavior, and anticipation of consequence of actions, and decision making. They have found several neurotransmitter system effects such as lower platelet MAO level, dysregulation in HPA axis function, and higher basal plasma cortisol levels that are related to the factors of DWI recidivism. Still they are quick to point out that the pathways that link cognitive functioning to ‘specific behavioral outcomes’ such as a DWI are extremely complex and multidirectional, and susceptible to environmental influence and that the link between neurocognitive indicators are merely theoretical at this point.

Still, while not entirely useful in ‘prediction’ yet, neurocognitive indicators can help identify and divide individuals as part of specific offender subgroups which could lead to better tailored clinical intervention. This could mean appealing to an offender’s ‘personal-motivation schema’ rather than a ‘social norm-based motivational representation’ or remediation that provides short-term incentives for positive behavior to appeal to those who are more prone to seek immediate gratification. This type of customized deterrence of DWI may actually have a chance to reach offenders which have proved to be impervious to other methods of prevention and should be explored further.

Further Reading:

Brown, Thomas G., et al “From the Brain to Bad Behaviour and Back Again: Neurocognitive and Psychobiological Mechanisms of Driving While Impaired by Alcohol.” Drug and Alcohol Review 28.4 (2009): 406-18.

Morgenstern J, Bates ME. “Effects of executive function impairment on change processes and substance use outcomes in 12-step treatment.” J Stud Alcohol 1999;60:846– 55.

Nochajski TH, Stasiewicz PR. “Relapse to driving under the influence (DUI): a review.” Clin Psychol Rev 2006; 26:179–95.

Putting Pedophilia Under a Brain Scanner

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As in the 2003 case of the “sudden pedophile”, where a normal 40-year old man developed lewd sexual behavior and pedophilia as a result of an egg-sized brain tumor pressing on his right frontal lobe, pedophilia has increasingly been shown to be a product of brain function rather than just amoral behavior under free will. While some find the idea of non-volitional pedophilia difficult, there is no doubt that there is a strong interest for society to better understand the brain’s role in pedophilia. Not only a significant social taboo, pedophiles also have the potential to pose a serious threat to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. This dangerousness, has sparked researched behind the mind and now the brain of the pedophile.

Included in this field is a new study by a group of researchers affiliated with the Section of Sexual Medicine of the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel which has determined patterns in hemodynamic brain responses of pedophiles to sexual stimuli. The researchers compared the brain responses of 24 self-identified pedophiles from an anonymous treatment clinic with 32 male controls. Using fMRI, the researchers observed brain responses of the subjects when shown pictures of naked men, women, and children. The results show that pedophiles’ brains react differently to pictures of naked children than the control subjects. Upon plotting the neural scans along age and sex axes, the pedophile and control scans also formed two distinct clusters (see graph). Using these statistical trends, the researchers were able to place subjects in the proper group more than 90% of the time. Interestingly, the neural scans graph also showed differences between heterosexual and homosexual brains.

While this study will be invaluable to better understanding how the pedophile brain operates and can give insight on where it “went wrong”, there are serious implications to using the research to detect pedophilia-inclined brains. Predisposition to pedophilia does not necessarily mean one will manifest pedophilia, much less criminally act upon ones pedophilic urges. In the same way that sexual preferences are predisposed by the brain, pedophiles may not have a choice in the way they feel. In the end, just as in the realm of the law, pedophilic attraction in not a crime, but rather whether it is acted out upon.

Further Reading:

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-catch-predator-with-brain-scanner.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/10/05/can-brain-scans-detect-pedophiles/

Ponseti, J., Granert, O., Jansen, O., Wolff, S., Beier, K., Neutze, J., Deuschl, G., Mehdorn, H., Siebner, H., & Bosinski, H. (2011). Assessment of Pedophilia Using Hemodynamic Brain Response to Sexual Stimuli. Archives of General Psychiatry DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.130

Magnets, the Ultimate Truth Serum

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The ability to understand and differentiate between truth and lies has always been of great interest to the legal community and justice system. The earliest research emphasized detecting lies through outward manifestations, such as the polygraph test developed by Harvard psychologist William Mouton Marston and the ‘Guilty Knowledge Test’ by David Lykken. Since then, neuroscience has greatly expanded knowledge in the field of lie detection and allowed scientists a more accurate inside look. In the 1960’s Columbia University researcher Samuel Sutton discovered a wave pattern, the P300, that occurs as a response to visual stimuli the subject has distinctly seen before. In the 1980’s, Dr. Peter Rosenfeld applied this research to Lykken’s Guilty Knowledge Test and was able to use recordings of the brain’s electrical activity to unearth neurological proof of the recognition of incriminating images and so-called ‘guilty knowledge’. fMRI has also been extremely instrumental in mapping different brain activity patterns that occur during simulated deception and truth-telling.

Today, the newest addition to the field of neurological truth-seeking goes beyond just recognition of deception. Following a long series of research into the “natural propensity to lie spontaneously during situations in which deception has no consequences”, Inga Karton and Talis Bachmann of the University of Tartu published their findings in July 2011 in which they suggested that a person’s willingness to lie can be manipulated by magnets. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt specific parts of the brain, they discovered that electromagnetic waves directed at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) increased the subject’s tendency to lie while waves directed at the right DLPFC reduced it. This could potentially be partially explained by right DLPFC’s role in cognitive control. When inhibited, subjects are less likely to control their responses, and their automatic responses are more likely to be truth.

Karton and Bachmann’s discovery could certainly be an extremely helpful aid in the legal system for getting the truth from suspects or defendants. Still, like the use of brain scanning data as legal evidence, it is likely to prove extremely controversial. Many scientists still believe the research behind the evidence is still uncertain and does not meet the standard set by the court. Also, there are serious implications that come with manipulation of brain especially when it comes to invasion of privacy. As for now, Bachmann suggests their electromagnetic manipulation only be used on willing subjects.

Further Reading:

Costandi, Mo. “A Brainwave for Catching a Criminal?” The Guardian. 21 Sept. 2010. Web. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/sep/21/brainwave-crime-criminals>.

Costandi, Mo. “Willingness to Lie Manipulated with Magnets” The Guardian. 28 Sept. 2011. Web. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2011/sep/28/1?INTCMP=SRCH>.

Jaffe, Eric. “Detecting Lies.” The Smithsonian. 1 Feb. 2007. Web <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lie.html>.

Karton, I. & Bachmann, T. (2011). Effect of prefrontal transcranial magnetic stimulation on spontaneous truth-telling. Behavioural Brain Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2011.07.028

Psychopathic Bosses

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Inspired by criminal psychologist Robert Hare’s research about psychopaths and subsequent development of the Psychopathy Checklist, author Jon Ronson explores the practical application of the checklist in the corporate world. Though currently used primarily by parole boards, prisons, and hospitals to test for psychopathy in criminals, Ronson suggests that the checklist can also be applied to executives in the business world. Ronson tests the idea that the very traits that make psychopaths dangerous also make them good executives and that some of the best CEO’s are actually psychopaths. This issue is particularly significant as Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, suggests that these powerful leaders are responsible for initiating much of the economic injustices, exploitations, wars, and corporate cruelty of the world today.

As part of one of his case studies, Ronson approached Al Dunlap, onetime CEO of Sunbeam. As CEO, Dunlap was responsible for bringing the share price of the company up from $12.50 to $53 in a time-span of three years. In the process, he fired half of Sunbeam’s 12,000 employees and shut down several plants, earning him the nick-name of “Chainsaw Al”. In Ronson’s interview with Dunlap, Dunlap almost gleefully recounts occasions where he fired employees and executives, demonstrating an extreme lack of empathy for others. Confronted with the idea that he might be a psychopath, Dunlap explains away psychopathic behavior such as “Conning/manipulative”, “Lack of empathy”, and “impulsivity” as “leadership positives”. He even credits his inability to feel a deep range of emotions (“shallow affect”) as a positive, as it stops him from ‘feeling some nonsense emotions”.

Bob Hare’s test for psychopathy was created to identify psychopaths and foot them out. The applications of such a list on criminals is fairly obvious and can be useful.  Hare’s research showed that psychopaths have an apparent lack of integration between the amygdala, which is responsible for imparting emotional meaning to sense, and the frontal cotex, which is responsible for higher levels of cognition. As a result, they have a lack of fear and a diminished ability to learn from past consequences. Hare asks “what’s the point in threatening them with imprisonment if they break the terms of their parole? The threat has little meaning for them”. Still, in the case of psychopath CEO’, the question of what to do with them after being identified is even more convoluted. They often bring success, it is at the expense of others. In a utilitarian sense, it is truly a dilemma.

Works Consulted:

Ronson, Jon. “Your Boss Actually Is a Psycho.” GQ June 2011: 152-60. Print.

Ronson, Jon. The Psychopath Test: a Journey through the Madness Industry. New York: Riverhead, 2011. Print.

Physiological Responses to Pro-social behavior

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Though traditionally moral judgment has been part of the domain of philosophy, recent research has proven its connections to cognitive neuroscience. Researchers such as Greene have explored the factors that affect moral decision-making, and have demonstrated the importance of emotional interference. By dividing decision-making into separate categories, Greene was able to trace the greater activeness of parts of the brain associated with emotions when making moral-personal decisions versus moral-impersonal or non-moral.

Immordino-Yang of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute has furthered the knowledge on this subject with her discovery of the brain’s ability to stimulate physical sensations, “psycho-physical ‘pangs’ of emotion”, to promote pro-social, moral behavior. Immordino-Yang told stories that evoked ‘compassion and admiration for virtue’ to individuals and recorded the participant’s reaction to the story as well as physiological responses through brain scans. She found that respondent’s often felt physical manifestations of emotions, such as a ‘swelling’ feeling within them, and were encouraged to practice positive moral values in conjunction with these ‘pangs of emotion’. Immordino-Yang hypothesizes that these emotional feeling produced by the brain often prompts introspection which then promote pro-social moral choices. As a result, she suggests that pro-social behavior could be coded in the brain as a part of human survival.

Immordino-Yang’s research is thought-provoking, but with the variation of moral goodness between cultures, I would be interested in seeing whether the specific behaviors, in and of itself, elicit emotional responses, or rather the behaviors only elicit responses due to socialization and education. Also, If what she suggests about the coding of pro-social behavior is true, will we ever be able to map out a universal moral code based upon universally shared responses to certain behaviors or display of characteristics?

Further Reading:

University of Southern California. “Brain co-opts the body to promote moral behavior, study finds.” ScienceDaily, 8 Jul. 2011. Web. 14 Sep. 2011.

M. H. Immordino-Yang. “Me, My ‘Self’ and You: Neuropsychological Relations between Social Emotion, Self-Awareness, and Morality”. Emotion Review, 2011; 3 (3): 313

Greene, Joshua, et al (2001). “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment”. Science. Volume 293, No. 5537 (Sept. 14, 2001), pp. 2105-2108.