Conceptions about pedophiles have been changing rapidly, and pedophilia has recently become a topic of increased awareness and concern. Not only do television shows expose pedophiles, but there are new sexual offender disclosure laws, websites that track convicted sexual offenders, and more investigations of pedophilia, especially after the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Yet children still remain vulnerable to sexual offenders regardless of their public façade.

The increasing attention on pedophilia has caused many Americans to question what this disorder entails, its characteristics, and what type of treatment should be sought for abusers. What is pedophilia? Do people choose to be pedophiles or are they born that way? This post will address these questions.

Pedophilia

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines pedophilia as recurrent sexually arousing fantasies, impulsive desires, or behaviors involving sexual acts with a child and that occur over a period of at least six months. In most cases, the pedophile is at least sixteen years of age and at least five years older than the child. Those who suffer from pedophilia have a compulsion to abuse young children.

Categorizing Pedophiles

Pedophiles can be classified in several ways. Pedophilia can be characterized as either exclusive or non-exclusive. Exclusive pedophiles are attracted only to children. They show no interest in sexual partners who are not prepubescent children. This desire prolongs even when they are not in the presence of children. Non-exclusive pedophiles are attracted to both adults and children. A large percentage of male pedophiles are homosexual or bisexual in orientation to children, meaning they are attracted to male children or both male and female children (Schiffer, 2008).

Many people assume that only males are pedophiles. However, case studies on pedophilia have demonstrated that female pedophilia does exist (Chow, 2002). Although this is a rare phenomenon, females who meet the DSM-IV criteria for pedophiles display similar cognitive distortions to that of males, such as irrational thoughts. Some differences, however, do exist among males and females. Females who exhibit pedophilia tend to suffer from psychiatric disorders or substance abuse problems. Also, there is a higher correlation between sexual abuses as a child with females compared to males.

What Causes Pedophilia?

The etiology of pedophilia can be attributed to both biological and environmental factors. Case studies indicate that cerebral dysfunction may be a contributing or dominant factor of pedophilia (Scott, 1984), including problems with self-control, extreme urges, and cognitive distortions. Many experts also believe that disorders for sexual preferences emerge from childhood experiences during critical periods in human development (DiChristina, 2009). In many cases, child sex abusers suffer from traumatic experiences during their childhood.

More specifically, pedophiles tend to also have been molested as children. As children, they lacked the ability to control the situation. By sexually assaulting children, pedophiles attempt to re-live the trauma they experienced and they learn how to master it. A complete role reversal gives them the upper hand and prevents them from being victimized. Overall, through the impact of cerebral dysfunction and traumatic development, the sexual urges and desires for children can become ingrained within a person’s nervous system.

Role of the Brain

There is significant evidence that indicate structural abnormalities in the brains of pedophiles (Schiffer, 2008). Abnormalities occur when the brain is developing and can be on-set through certain experiences, such as sexual abuse as a child. Abnormalities in the brains of pedophiles may result in compulsion, poor judgment, and repetitive thoughts.

These abnormalities in the brains of pedophiles are caused by early neurodevelopmental perturbations (Schiffer, 2008). The use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRIs) and positron emission tomography scans (PET) has revealed that the abnormalities of pedophiles exhibit appear in the frontal and central regions of the brain. In particular, there is a decreased volume of gray brain matter in the central striatum. As a result, the nucleus accumbens, orbital frontal cortex, and the cerebellum are all affected (Schiffer, 2008).

These areas of the brain play an important role in addictive behavior. The accumbens is the central mediator of reward signaling and expectation. The striatum and orbito frontal cortex control this reward system. As a result, this contributes to the etiology of pedophilia because a reward deficiency complication disturbs the neurotransmission of dopamine involved in compulsive and addictive behaviors.

Due to the frontotemporal dysfunctions, pedophilia shares neural characteristics with psychiatric disorders that fall in the range of the obsessive-compulsive (OC) spectrum. These impulsive disorders include pathological gambling, kleptomania, and even Tourettes syndrome. While some debate this claim (Schiffer et al., 2007), there is substantial evidence for the existence of physiological and genetic overlaps. In particular, studies have shown that alterations in the frontostriatal circuitry are a major abnormality leading to obsessive-compulsive behavior. Pedophiles tend to act inappropriately and exhibit poor judgment because they lack the ability to control their impulses.

These structural alterations underlie the antisocial behaviors exhibited by someone with pedophilia. Pedophiles are burdened with repetitive thoughts and urges. Consequently, they seek to fulfill these desires through behavior that is socially unacceptable and at times, even illegal. Most pedophiles express shame and guilt after partaking in their immoral behavior because their neurological dysfunctions deal strictly with urges and not emotions (Schiffer et al., 2007).

Is There a Cure?

Pedophilia, like many types of disturbances or diseases, does not have a complete cure. The sexual urges associated with pedophilia may never permanently disappear, and a person’s sexual preference and orientation can be difficult to completely re-orient. At present, treatment primarily focuses on preventing further offenses rather than changing sexual orientation.

Yuli Grebchenko, MD, has done extensive research on pedophiles. He noted that pedophilia is a life-long disorder and stated that, “It needs lifelong treatment” (Lamberg, 2005). Recent studies have demonstrated that psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy can be combined to bring about the most effective treatment to someone suffering from pedophilia (Kersebaum, 2007).

Therapy includes discussing traumatic events, especially those from the childhood of an abuser. Therapy also seeks to help patients identify situations that may tempt them to engage in harmful behaviors toward children. During therapeutic treatment, therapists may try to correct a patient’s cognitive disorder, which may include misperceptions that the child enjoyed the abuse.

The three standard pharmacotherapy treatments for pedophilia are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH), and leuprolide acetate (LA) (Briken, 2003). These pharmacotherapy treatments target certain hormones and chemicals in the body, but have varying side effects. SSRIs are effective in less severe cases and patients often experience only sexual side effects (Kraus, 2007). In more serious cases, LA can reduce testosterone to extremely low levels along with pedophilic urges. While LA treatment is somewhat dangerous, it has been found to be very effective (Schober, 2005). The newest treatment drug, LHRH, reduces neural responsiveness to visual sexual stimuli and has very little side effects (Briken, 2003).

Today’s World

Most people are in denial that pedophilia exists in their community or home. Pedophiles, however, will go to great lengths to continue their compulsive behavior. They will volunteer in church youth groups, coach youth athletic teams, and find other ways to associate with potential victims. Many times, they place themselves in positions where they can easily meet children.

The Internet has become a common hunting ground to prey on children. Today more and more kids are using Facebook accounts. While Facebook acts as a social network to help link people together, the ability to create a profile displaying one’s personal information may indirectly be helping pedophiles find their next victim. Pedophiles can then befriend children and manipulate, trap, and lure their victims into a false sense of trust. Some pedophiles may pretend they are someone else, such as a classmate. Others develop friendship with children and then arrange meeting times and places so they can act upon and fulfill their sexual desires (Deirmenjian, 2009).

The Catholic Church frowns upon certain sexual behavior. Yet, priests were recently discovered to have engaged in sexual behavior with children. A great deal of hypocrisy surrounds the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Over the course of the past two decades, the Church has struggled with confronting sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and religious orders against children. In many cases, the clergy suffered from pedophilia. These priests sexually abused minors, primarily male altar servers, and exerted power over these boys.

The children who fell victim to the clergy were easily accessible, vulnerable, and unthreatening. These priests who engaged in sexual behavior with youth should be held responsible for their actions. The Church should come forward and acknowledge this type of inappropriate behavior. They should take the proper steps to correct this type behavior and have their pedophilic priests seek treatment for their disorder.

Conclusion

Pedophilia is a complex disorder with many underlying factors. These range from dysfunctions in the development of the brain to particular traumatic experiences, such as sexual abuse or rape as a child. Despite no cure for pedophilia, measures can be taken to help people with this disorder control their urges and behavior. Society needs to be more aware of this disorder and its prevalence in everyday life. So while not all people who engage with children are pedophiles, the prominence of pedophiles across many facets of life is much greater than we think.

Works Cited

Briken, P. “Pharmacotherapy of Paraphilias with Long-Acting Agonists of Luteinizing Hormone-Releasing Hormone.” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 64.8 (2003): 890-7.

Chow, Eva W. C. “Clinical Characteristics and Treatment Response to SSRI in a Female Pedophile.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 31.2 (2002): 211-5.

Deirmenjian, JM. “Pedophilia on the Internet.” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 47.5 (2002): 1090-1092.

DiChristina, Mariette. “Abnormal Attraction.” Scientific American Mind, 20.3 (2009): 76-81.

Kersebaum, Sabine. “Correcting Pedophilia.” Scientific American Mind 18.1 (2007): 62-.

Kraus, C. “Selective Serotonine Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) in the Treatment of Paraphilia – A Retrospective Study.” Fortschritte Der Neurologie Psychiatrie 75.6 (2007): 351-6.

Lamberg, Lynne. “Researchers Seek Roots of Pedophilia.” JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, 294.5 (2005): 546.

Schiffer, Boris. “Reduced Neuronal Responsiveness to Visual Sexual Stimuli in a Pedophile Treated with a Long-Acting LH-RH Agonist.” 6.3 (2009): 892-4.

Schiffer, Boris. “Brain Response to Visual Sexual Stimuli in Homosexual Pedophiles.” Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience 33.1 (2008): 23.

Schiffer, Boris et al. “Structural Brain Abnormalities in the Frontostriatal System and Cerebellum in Pedophilia.” Journal of psychiatric research 41.9 (2007): 753-62.

Scott, Monte, James Cole, Stephen McKay, Kenneth Liggett, and Charles Golden. “Neuropsychological Performance of Sexual Assaulters and Pedophiles.” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 29.4 (1984): 1114.

Schober, Justine M. “{L}Euprolide Acetate Suppresses Pedophilic Urges and Arousability.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 34.6 (2005): 691-705. Web.

It had a great line-up: Steven Rose, Douglas Hofstader, Maxine Sheet-Johnson, Timothy Ingold, and a host of Danish scholars whose work we can now all expore. The three days of the conference each addressed a different theme: Brain Plasticity, Awareness and Intentionality, and Beyond Dualisms.

You can read the Introductory Statement on the conference. Here’s one paragraph from the end:

Neuroscience seems to have learned from its critics. Reductive and neurocentric positions have to give way to the ideas that the plastic brain is capable of learning for life, and that both bodily movement as well as social activity leaves clearly formed traces in the development of the brain. Whenever we pray, learn to ride a bicycle, or read a book, the brain changes. The brain is not destiny. Are there no limits, human and neurobiological, to how much we can learn and to the extent that upbringing might effect changes in the brain?

The best thing is that you can get the videos from all the talks. So here is Steven Rose on The Future of the Brain – Promises and Perils of the Neurosciences (preceed by an intro to the conference), Jesper Morgensen on Any Limits to Neuroplasticity?, and Tim Ingold on The Social Brain.

You can access the entire program and all the videos at the Great Expectations conference website.

“Although many aspects of social behavior are learned, one of the striking things we’re going to hear about is that some aspects of social behavior are determined by individual genes that have profound effects on how we act, whether we bond together as individuals, degrees of aggression, and other things.” (Eric Kandel, Nobel Laureate, Columbia University)

If you missed last night’s episode catch it again tonight on Bloomberg Television® at 8PM and 10PM ET, or listen to the interview simulcast on Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberg Radio is broadcast on 1130AM in the New York Metropolitan area and is available on XM and Sirius. There’s also a version online, but because my Internet connection is so slow right now, I can’t really watch it: go to http://www.charlierose.com/ if you want to check it out.

A transcript of the discussion can be found here.

PARTICIPANTS

Cornelia Bargmann is the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor, head of the Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at Rockefeller University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a behavioural geneticist who works on Caenorhabditis elegans, little tiny bacteria-eating worms. You can you can read more about Bargmann at The Scientist or see her 2005 biography at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

Giacomo Rizzolatti, originally from Kiev, is Professor of Physiology and Head of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Parma (his biography at Parma also has links to some of his recent publications). He’s famous for the discovery of mirror neurons in macaques, and has a slew of honours and recognition for his ground-breaking work.

Gerald Fischbach

Kevin Pelphrey is Harris Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry at Yale University, and uses neuroimaging to study child development, especially social cognition and emotional regulation, in both normal and autistic spectrum children.

Eric Kandel is founding Director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recipient for his research on the neurology of memory storage. He’s done research on a range of topics, from the neuroanatomy of the primitive sea slug Aplysia to the role of the hippocampus in memory formation.

Here’s Kandel’s autobiography from the Nobel Prize website; it’s a great read, not just for science, but also for the sheer drama of Kandel’s extraordinary life story:
There’s also a nice interview, Speaking of Memory: Q&A with Neuroscientist Eric Kandel, on the Scientific American website where he specifically talks about the sciences and humanities cooperating:

On the Charlie Rose website, they list the future episodes as:

February 23: The Developing Brain
March 23: The Aging Brain
April 20: The Emotional and Vulnerable
May 25: The Anxious Brain
June 22: The Mentally Ill Brain
July 20: The Disordered Brain
September 28: The Deciding Brain
October: The Artistic Brain
November: The New Science of the Mind

I’m sure that these dates might get pre-empted for other things, but at least it’s great to have a sense of the whole series, and to see serious researchers getting a chance to talk about new findings in the brain sciences.

In general, the discussion is interesting and wide ranging (I’m taking this from the transcript), but not overly deep as you’d expect. I like the show, but blogging is not terribly well served just by saying that you agree with something, so I’m going to focus a little on a few minor issues with what’s going on. In particular, I want to talk about one exchange that occurs towards the end of the transcript.

On aggression

Specifically, I want to highlight a rather lengthy exchange on ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in humans. Bear with this – I’m going to intermingle my own commentary with the transcript a little, but I want to capture the slow shift in the subject.

Cornelia Bargmann

CORNELIA BARGMANN: So it’s really, it’s thinking about this — you know, human aggression is much more complicated than animal aggression, again. But you have to recognize when you’re working with biology and when you’re working against it. And there are situations where aggression is going to be much more common than others.

Since aggression is designed around a limiting resource, when resources are limited, there’s going to be more fights. There’s going to be more conflict, and that’s just going to be a basic rule no matter where you are.

Another thing we’ve learned from animal studies is how greatly aggressive behaviors are modified by stress. So your brain under stress is a completely different brain.

CHARLIE ROSE: More likely to be aggressive?

CORNELIA BARGMANN: Much more likely to be aggressive, much less likely to sort of remember properly what your place in the hierarchy is, and much more likely to lead to conflicts in the future.

So these kinds of understandings of biology can help you to evaluate what the causes of aggressive behavior might be and how you can go about creating situations where those are more or less likely to occur.

Okay, let’s pause for just a moment. Bargmann is, of course, correct in everything she’s saying here, but the way it’s getting put together is interesting, and perhaps a bit misleading.

First, she states that human aggression is really complicated, but then goes on to say that you ‘you have to recognize when you’re working with biology and when you’re working against it.’ The implication is that there is this ‘biology’ which has a pattern to it, and you can only work ‘against biology’ if you like to waste your time. My point would be that the simple assertion that there is ‘biology’ that you’re either working with or against conceals a terribly complicated process with highly variable outcome, emergent properties, and psychological effects like desensitization which mean that there’s no single ‘biology’ to work with or against.

She brings up the case of stress, and it’s a great example of exactly this sort of process, how people habituate to certain levels of stress, how the nervous system recalibrates itself after trauma, and how there’s no single biology to be working with or against. I KNOW that Bargmann gets this, she even brings up the wholesale changes brought about by stress, and I sympathise with her attempt to push back against those forms of psychology that are ignorant completely of biology, but the problem is that what she goes on to describe is not just ‘biology’ at all.

The stress-related difficulties in remembering hierarchy are precisely bio-social-behavioural, only understandable if you take an integrative approach. For example, some of the confrontations that are causing the stress are not just fighting, they are competitive social displays – threat behaviours – that themselves need to be learned and understood as well as experienced in social interaction to have their effects.

So I agree with Bargmann completely that understanding the ‘biology’ is crucial, but it’s just as crucial to understand the social interaction and communicative dimensions of the stressors. And just as likely that the ameliorative therapy, especially in humans, is going to involve social and cognitive dimensions, such as learning to interpret ‘threatening’ stimuli in a new context. We’ve got a language problem, and this is precisely why I think we need to work hard to put in place new frameworks for talking about neuroanthropology that don’t just try to drag in the old terminology, but hope it will have no detrimental effect on the conversation; we need new skins for new wine. But so far, I’m still on board with the discussion, still happy, still following along, ‘yeah… yeah… okay…’

Eric Kandel

CHARLIE ROSE: And at some point you get into the very controversial area and what people will suggest that the reason for some aggressive behavior or some obscene behavior had something to do with biology rather than — and that’s where the morality and ethics and science — am I right or wrong?

ERIC KANDEL: Absolutely.

Hmmmm… not sure that I follow this. Either Charlie is suggesting that it’s human nature to commit certain aggressive or ‘obscene’ behaviour, or he’s arguing that it’s some particular individuals’ ‘biology’ that causes them to commit these behaviours. I can at least agree that this is ‘controversial’ and that it involves ‘morality and ethics and science’ – that’s for damn sure. So when I read this in the transcript, my eyebrows are starting to climb up. Just where are we going here?

CORNELIA BARGMANN: But humans are complicated. We start from children, we learn throughout our lives what the right way is to act within our environment. We’re educated for many years until we encounter each other.

And we learn that the football field is an acceptable place to give aggression under well-defined circumstances with protective headgear. And we learn other situations are incorrect situations in which to display them.

GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI: I don’t deny the aggression and everything you said about it in biology. But I think we are born to be good, as a matter of.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s the point I wanted to get to.

Okay, now I’m really screwing up my brow and wondering how we get here. I actually think Bargmann’s point is pretty important, especially for understanding groups of people who engage in levels of aggression that might make the observer uncomfortable. We need to understand internal definitions and standards of violence, thresholds, social protections against excessive violence – otherwise we wind up with the unproductive assumption that violence always begets greater violence, which is not empirically sound nor is it terribly useful as a suggestion, as it means we point at well-regulated contact sports and assume that they lead to assault, sexual violence, and other unacceptable interpersonal violence.

Born to be good?

But what really gets me to start questioning what’s going on is Rizzolatti’s assumption that we are ‘born to be good.’ Look, I’m as optimistic and sunny-side-of-the-street as anyone, but ‘born to be good’? In what sense is that empirically founded and what planet do you have to live on for this statement not to seem patently absurd?

Giacomo Rizzolatti

GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI: I think we are born to be good, because, for example, when we see somebody in pain, we have exactly the same feeling as if we had been in pain ourselves. In other words, we have a mechanism which elicits the same reaction when we are in pain or disgusted because of nature or when we see somebody else in the same condition.

So seeing him in pain is as if I was in pain. So we have this link between emotion, mine and the others, which practically means it’s necessary that the other are happy. When the other are happy, I’m happy. If he is happy I’m happy. So that’s the kind of nature of biological link that we’re born with.

Then of course during life there are many conditions in which this could not be. We can be trained to become not good. But I think we have been born not like (inaudible) — we are born to be good. And then there’s the society and stress and all the difficulty which Cory mentioned which make us to be bad.

Okay, wait, wait, wait…. Is Rizzolatti saying that, when I see somebody with burns, it’s like I’m burning, too? No, he can’t be saying that; that’s absurd. He’s seen an injured person and not become incapacitated, right? He might even have considered the possibility that someone could observe neutrally another person in pain, or even take some sort of pleasure in it. I can’t have read that right. Let me reread that….

‘…when we see somebody in pain, we have exactly the same feeling as if we had been in pain ourselves…’ ‘So seeing him in pain is as if I was in pain…’ ‘…link between emotions…’ ‘…practically means it’s necessary that the other are happy…’ ‘…society and stress and all the difficulty which Cory mentioned which make us to be bad…’ …yup. He said it.

Ho boy. Where do I go with this? Has he ever watched a very small child do something cruel to another child, or to the family dog? Maybe it was society that trained them to do cruel things to the family pet at an early age? Seriously, he’s been around children, right? And he still thinks that human beings are innately good, empathetic and incapable of observing neutrally someone else in pain?

Look, we all know that this is not an either/or situation. In fact, crying children do provoke other children to cry, but we don’t know that it’s because the sleepy child innately causes other children to feel their pain. Likewise, we have all seen situations where children demonstrate enormous sympathy; but we’ve also likely seen them demonstrate extraordinary callousness, not just because society has warped and twisted their innately good mirror neuron-filled souls… errr, brains.

I’m one of those people who think that mirror neurons are very interesting, but I’m not persuaded of the innatist argument that Rizzolatti is putting forward here, that the presence of mirror properties in a mature brain necessarily means that those mirror properties are a) present in infants, b) determined entirely by genes and internal determination, and c) even necessarily a trait of all humans (see the discussion of autism, for example, which might be either a syndrome that includes unusual development of mirror neurons or – more likely, in my opinion – another developmental property that either snuffs out mirror properties by denying reinforcement or impedes the formation of mirror properties, or both).

Kevin Pelphrey

ERIC KANDEL: Giacomo makes a very good point. Reinhold Niebuhr, the great protestant theologian, once said “The capability of people for good makes democracy desirable. The capability for evil makes democracy necessary.”

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI: That is a very good point.

ERIC KANDEL: Social custom often determines how we behave. The capabilities for good may in fact be the predominant built-in mode, but we can be corrupted.

Alright, alright, wait a minute. Let me get this right: because our brains have mirror properties, our brains determine that we are innately good but capable of evil, so therefore democracy is both desirable and necessary? Apparently the presence of mirror neurons also does not impede dexterity in mental leaping.

And I’m not even going to try to draw together tightly the Rizzolatti mirror neurons to Reinhold Niebuhr Protestant theology to social determination model that Kandel deftly sketches out in the space of about twenty seconds or less. I just can’t keep up.

The bottom line is that, well, it’s f****** hard to get from neurological properties to normative political philosophy, and you can look like a pretty big goofball, even if you’re very smart, if you just swing for the fences. You can try – the presence of a limbic system, sometimes called the ‘reptilian brain,’ means we’re really lizards deep down; Jim Morrison was the ‘Lizard King’; therefore, our natural government as humans is musiocracy with a single messianic rocker to lead us.

I’m being facetious, but the point is quite simple. No single brain system characterizes human character completely, and no matter how compelling the neuroimaging data, it cannot logically tell us that human character is ‘naturally’ anything other than the variety that we see. If someone tries to use brain scans to tell us that humans are other than they appear, they are arguing upstream. And more than this, even if we do get an accurate picture of human neurological character, that still does not necessitate any particular political system as being both more desirable and necessary than any other. The simple range and variety of political systems over the last 14,000 years or so, since humans started to form groups larger than foraging bands, suggests that human nature is compatible with a wide spectrum of political systems, for better or worse.

Concluding on a bizarre note

In general, I thought that the discussion was pretty good, although the use of some terms that seem to line up according to old models of nature vs. nurture – talking about the ‘genetic’ components of disorders against their ‘developmental’ dimensions, for example – makes it hard for some of the points not to seem ambivalent. That is, sometimes one of the commentators will say that he or she wants people to understand the biological dimensions of a disorder or issue (presumably because they are arguing against a perspective that says these disorders are purely autobiographical or rooted in a non-biological ‘mind’), but then the same person will flip around and say that plasticity or development or experience is crucial (presumably to counteract either genetic determinism or pessimism about these disorders as inevitable). It gets pretty confusing, as the language seems to imply one perspective on causation or the other, and the reality is that contributing factors arise from multiple causes.

But there’s lots of nice points; I especially liked how Gerald Fischbach highlighted similarities – not just differences – between behaviours of children with autism spectrum disorders and ‘normal’ kids, how certain kinds of insistence, resistance to change, and body movements are considered normal, and the extreme version is a modification of the pattern, not something entirely out of the ordinary.

The discussion does get a bit garbled, however, when Fischbach introduces twin data. In twin studies, there’s almost always the assumption that any difference between twins and normal siblings (or between identical and fraternal twins) must necessarily be genetic, but the reality may be more complex. For example, both twins may possess an identical gene that still doesn’t cause a disorder unless it interacts with something in the environment. In the case of autism, the assumption that it is genetic comes up against some quite difficult-to-explain trends, such as the increasing prevalence of the disorder. Even the genetic contributor that gets cited — de novo copy number variants — is not exactly inherited genetic trait, but often an effect of the aging of the individual on sperm and eggs. So, even though it’s in the DNA, it’s as developmental as it is inherited.

But the real strangeness comes at the very end, when the discussion returns to the idea that people are ‘born to be good,’ an idea which I clearly think is a bit problematic. At the end of the discussion, Rose asks each participant what she or he hopes the audience will take away from the episode.

Most of the responses are a bit ambivalent. Gerald Fischbach, for example, wants to emphasize ‘there’s an element of indeterminism here and of learning and plasticity and a great deal of hoping in learning the biological mechanisms, because the real hope is they will be able to be used to alter pathological states,’ but then goes on to say that genetics and biology ‘influence these important social, cognitive phenomena.’ Kevin Pelphrey wants to emphasize a ‘developmental perspective on all this’: ‘So the reason why autism is such a profoundly difficult thing to understand is development. We’re talking about a neuro-developmental disorder, and things are changing constantly, and you take all of that into account.’ Giacomo Rizzolatti wants to know the neural mechanisms underlying ‘theory of mind.’

But things really get going when Eric Kandel offers the following as his ‘take away’ point for the discussion:

ERIC KANDEL: I think there are two themes that struck me that have come out of this discussion. One is how important it is for biology for our understanding of using a number of different experimental approaches, including different organisms varying in complexity from worms to non-human primates to people. I think this is essential, this comparative approach that is critical to understanding behavior, number one.

Fantastic! Yes! Here, here! Multiple methods, comparative approach, non-human contrasts… all excellent. Oh, wait, he’s going to continue…

And number two, given the fact that we are born to do good, as Giacomo would have us believe, but we’re capable of evil — to understand better how one flips from one to the other, and to see a way where we can prevent this tribalism from becoming a dominant force. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had some biological insight into how to contain that?

Some ‘biological insight’ into how to ‘contain’ the flipping from good to evil, and a way to prevent ‘tribalism’ through biology? Hmmmm… where are you going with this? Can we identify the gene for potential for evil and give parents likely to have evil children counseling against it? Could we identify populations with potential for tribalism and be really, really nice to them, or have social mixers with other groups to stop the tribalism in its tracks?

Or by talking about ‘preventing’ tribalism from becoming a dominant force in the context of a biological discussion, could we possibly conceive of a biological intervention into the process, like slipping Happy Laughy juice, say some serotonin uptake inhibiter and a bit of liquid MDMA? Or perhaps anti-tribalism patches that deliver the ‘evil switch’ inhibiter drug at safe, low levels to those with a potential to make the switch…

Again, I’m being facetious, but the point is that biology doesn’t get you everything, and even if you understand the neurobiological dimensions of stress and aggression, and perhaps even the genetic roots of ‘evil’ (alright, maybe not), you still have to understand sociology, history, and even communications technology to understand ‘tribalism.’ The excitement of finding out stress processes in the brain, for example, doesn’t make obsolete research about workplace dynamics, holistic therapy, class-linked conflict, and other stressful facts. In fact, knowing the neurological dynamics may not help much at all to design effective therapies, which would instead be evidence based using tried and tested methods of discerning effective strategies.

On the other hand, Fischbach ends his comments on a really interesting note, pointing out, indirectly, the necessity of old fashioned psychology, psychiatry, social sciences and the like, even with the advent of advanced imaging techniques…

GERALD FISCHBACH: Yes. And so Charlie, I think this also a theme throughout every session of the program, that basic science has taught us a lot about human disorders or predicaments. But conversely, it’s the human predicament that has taught us enormously about science of the brain.

We talked about this in the very, very first show, and nowhere is that illustrated more profoundly than in autism and related developmental disorders. Autism runs the spectrum between normal behavior and the other end of the spectrum, really compromised, severely compromised individuals.

That was a nice note to end on, I felt, a generous gesture toward the wide breadth of effective research techniques for learning more about how the human brain functions. Though I may have my criticisms, I finished up reading with a very positive sense of the effort.

On the whole, I liked the program. It was great for a general audience but still seemed to have some intriguing ideas woven in and out, even for the specialist (well, except or the evil switch discussion). I would have liked to actually watch it, but I’m partially to blame for having used up our monthly allotment of high speed internet connection at home: I downloaded some free software to draft my conversion of our garage into my office…

By Greg Downey and Daniel Lende

Neuroanthropology places the brain and nervous system at the center of discussions about human nature, recognizing that much of what makes us distinctive inheres in the size, specialization, and dynamic openness of the human nervous system. By starting with neural physiology and its variability, neuroanthropology situates itself from the beginning in the interaction of nature and culture, the inextricable interweaving of developmental unfolding and evolutionary endowment.

Our brain and nervous system are our cultural organs. While virtually all parts of the human body—skeleton, muscles, joints, guts—bear the stamp of our behavioral variety, our nervous system is especially immature at birth, our brain disproportionately small in relation to its adult size and disproportionately susceptible to cultural sculpting. Compared to other mammals, our first year of life finds our brain developing as if in utero, immersed in language, social interaction, and the material world when other species are still shielded by their mother’s body from this outside world. This immersion means that our ideas about ourselves and how we want to raise our children affect the environmental niche in which our nervous system unfolds, influencing gene expression and developmental processes to the cellular level.

Increasingly, neuroscientists are finding evidence of functional differences in brain activity and architecture between cultural groups, occupations, and individuals with different skill sets. The implication for neuroanthropology is obvious: forms of enculturation, social norms, training regimens, ritual, and patterns of experience shape how our brains work and are structured. But the predominant reason that culture becomes embodied, even though many anthropologists overlook it, is that neuroanatomy inherently makes experience material. Without material change in the brain, learning, memory, maturation, and even trauma could not happen. Neural systems adapt through long-term refinement and remodeling, which leads to deep enculturation. Through systematic change in the nervous system, the human body learns to orchestrate itself as well as it eventually does. Cultural concepts and meanings become anatomy.

Although every animal’s nervous system is open to the world, the human nervous system is especially adept at projecting mental constructs onto the world, transforming the environment into a sociocognitive niche that scaffolds and extends the brain’s abilities. This niche is constructed through social relationships, physical environments, ritual patterns, and symbolic constructs that shape behavior and ideas, create divisions, and pattern lives. Thus, our brains become encultured through reciprocal processes of externalization and internalization, where we use the material world to think and act even as that world shapes our cognitive capacities, sensory systems, and response patterns.

Our ability to learn and remember, our sophisticated skills, our facility with symbolic systems, and our robust self control all mean that the capacity for culture is, in large part, bought with neurological coin. This dynamic infolding of an encultured nervous system happens over developmental time, through the capacity of individuals to internalize both experience and community-generated tools, and then to share thoughts, meanings and accomplishments. Thus, a central principle of neuroanthropology is that it is a mistake to designate a single cause or to apportion credit for specialized skills (individual or species-wide) to one factor for what is actually a complex set of processes.

Most academic research implicitly or explicitly utilizes a reductive cause-effect approach; in popular understandings of the brain, the tendency to single out causal factors is even more prevalent. Rather than one set of genes or an overarching system of meaning, humans’ capacity for abstract thought emerges equally from social and individual sources, built of public symbol, evolutionary endowment, social scaffolding, and private neurological achievements. In neuroanthropology, the goal is not simply to juxtapose a simplistic critique against a one-side initial account, but to attempt a much more holistic, synthetic exploration of how various elements in these dynamic relations interact to produce cognitive functions.

Neuroanthropology: Areas of Application

Neuroanthropology has four clear roles: (1) understanding the interaction of brain and culture and its implication for our understanding of mind, behavior, and self; (2) examining the role of the nervous system in the creation of social structures; (3) providing empirical and critical inquiry into the interplay of neuroscience and ideologies about the brain; and (4) using neuroanthropology to provide novel syntheses and advances in human science theory.

The interaction of brain and culture is neuroanthropology’s core dynamic, exploring the synthesis of nature and nurture and cutting through idealized views of biological mechanisms and cultural symbols. Using social and cultural neuroscience in combination with psychological anthropology and cultural psychology, neuroanthropology builds in-depth analyses of mind, behavior and self based on an understanding of both neurological function and ethnographic reality. This research creates robust analyses of specific neural-cultural phenomena, recognizing that each may demonstrate a distinctive dynamic; for example, neuroanthropological investigation reworks our understanding of human capacities like balance (often assumed to be something innate), studies how practices like meditation shape and piggyback upon neural functioning, and examines the interactive nature of pathologies like addiction and autism.

Neuroanthropology has profound implications for our understanding of how societies become socially structured. Inequality works through the brain and body, involving mechanisms like stress, learning environments, the loss of neuroplasticity, the impact of toxins, educational opportunities (or their absence) and other factors that negatively shape development. Neuroanthropology can play a fundamental role in documenting these effects and in linking them to the social, political and cultural factors that negatively impact on the brain. At the same time, technological and pharmacological interventions are playing an increasing role in managing behavioral disorders, often with great profit for companies, while cognitive enhancement drugs, brain-computer interfaces, and neuro-engineering will surely be used in ways that create new separations between haves and have-nots. Finally, societal appeals to “hard-wired” differences remain a standard approach by people in positions of power to maintain racial, gender, sexual and other inequalities; a deeper understanding of the complex origins and unfolding of key neural and physiological differences undermines accounts that assume these distinctions are inescapable. At the same time, neuroanthropology points to new ways to think about how people become talented and ways to understand intelligence, resiliency, social relations and other factors that shape success in life.

In societies across the globe, the brain now acts as a central metaphor, a substitute for self, a way to explain mental health, a short-hand for why people are different. In reaction, critical approaches have looked at the interpretation and use of brain imagery, psychoactive pharmaceuticals, public presentations of neuroscience research, and related social phenomena. Meanwhile, the pace of neuroscience research, and innovations in associated technologies, has been breathtaking. One aim for neuroanthropology is to make sense of these three related but often conflicting factors in ways that provide grounded research and critical insight into what the realities of brain and self actually are. Neuroanthropology will play a central role in mediating between the claims of different sides with the expertise gained from empiricism as well as the theoretical and critical framework gained from the combination of neuroscience and anthropology. This aspect of neuroanthropology is an absolute necessity given the convergence of these three recent historical phenomena – accelerating research, social reworkings, and intellectual interrogation of both.

Neuroanthropology makes direct contributions to theory development. At the most basic level, it provides a broad umbrella to integrate concepts across academic fields. Embodiment, for example, is an idea explored from basic neuroscience, psychology and cognitive linguistics to anthropology and philosophy. Neuroanthropology provides the conceptual and methodological tools to work through what we mean by such a broad-ranging idea.

Neuroanthropology also has direct implications for anthropology and neuroscience. It demonstrates the necessity of theorizing culture and human experience in ways that are not ignorant of or wholly inconsistent with discoveries about human cognition from brain sciences. Rather than broad-based concepts like habitus or cognitive structure, neuroanthropology focuses on how social and cultural phenomena actually achieve the impact they have on people in material terms. Rather than assuming structural inequality is basic to all societies, neuroanthropologists ask how inequality differentiates people and what we might do about that.

Similarly, on the neurological side, the principal theories of brain development, neural architecture and function remain tied to a biological view of proximate mechanisms and evolutionary origins. Yet it is abundantly clear that many neurological capacities, such as language or skills, do not appear without immersion in culture. Neuroanthropology highlights how that immersion matters to the brain’s construction and function. For example, neuroanthropology can take a basic idea like Hebbian learning — “what fires together, wires together” — and examine how social and cultural processes shape the timing, exposure, and strength of activity, such that the coordinated action of brain systems emerges through cultural dynamics. Neuroanthropology opens up a vibrant new space for thinking about how and why brains work the ways they do.

Neuroscientists and Anthropologists as Partners

By placing the focus on the individual’s nervous system and its relation to the world, neuroanthropology asks challenging questions of scale and depth for both neuroscientists and anthropologists, demanding both groups stretch beyond accustomed frames. For neuroscientists, seriously considering human diversity may require changes in research methods, in such basic processes as averaging and amalgamating imaging data, removing outlying data points (some of the most interesting individuals), and in finding test subjects. It can help cultural neuroimaging researchers to develop a much more sophisticated understanding about what results of comparative brain scan of Asians and Western Europeans might mean and why seeing doesn’t always translate into cultural believing. Thus, neuroanthropology offers to neuroscientists more sophisticated ways of thinking about neural environment, based upon over a century of debate about the nature of cultural variation and how to conceptualize patterns of behavior.

The same thought and subtlety that goes into understanding the relations among parts of the brain and body can be extended to consider how elements of the cultural and social environment are tied into specific brain functions, illuminating some of the specific ways that mind can become extended through cultural leveraging. That is, simply adding ‘culture’ as a single population variable fails to really illuminate the dynamic, inconsistent processes through which neurological potential is channeled by specific cultural institutions or practices. Because the nervous system is embedded within the world, shot through with the environment down to its cellular structure, integrative models of its development must include interacting elements from both inside and outside of the skin.

Although brain scientists have reached out to other interlocutors, we believe that anthropology is an especially strong potential partner. The influence of culture, social interaction and behavior patterns are immediate and susceptible to direct research, often more so than evolutionary theories about brain architecture origin. In addition, ethnographic research offers concrete evidence of how social and cultural dimensions of the environment might affect cognitive function, and illustrates the range of neuroplasticity in developmental outcomes well beyond what most experimental protocols consider. Anthropologists explore naturally-occurring experiments in which the nervous system is developed over a lifetime in diverging directions.

For anthropologists, neuroanthropology entails a return to integrative research after decades in which many biological and cultural anthropologists have seen each other as the primary opposition. The anthropological study of the nervous system calls on anthropologists to make good on our promises of holism. Psychological anthropologists have called for a greater focus on elements of neuroanthropology — affect, memory, neural-based models of cognition, biocultural integration — but a wholesale shift requires anthropologists to maintain a simultaneous consideration of what may have previously been apportioned to different specialties in the field. The nervous system inherently spans boundaries between specialized knowledge of such areas as evolution, child development, physiology, perception, phenomenology, behavioral research, biology and culture. Although some researchers might pull back from considering biology out of a fear of reductionism, the nervous system resists obstinately any simplistic explanation, throwing up counter-examples such as varying degrees of mental modularity, cognitive heterogeneity, and complex mixtures of neuroplasticity and innate endowments shaped by evolution.

With rare exceptions, anthropologists have not participated extensively in the growing movement toward cultural neuroscience. The time is ripe for this engagement: brain scientists are no longer content to just treat cultural difference as a demographic variable, and anthropologists are no longer so afraid of ‘universalizing’ or ‘psychologizing’ that they cannot get involved in this expanding area of research. Anthropologists offer to brain scientists more robust accounts of enculturation to explain observable differences in brain function, a range of resources for extending neurological accounts beyond the individual human organism. Neuroscience research offers to anthropology a more nuanced way of linking universal human tendencies and cultural particularity, and in grounding one foot of the holistic study of human subjects firmly in biology.

Neuroanthropology is a sustained effort, not to mine brain sciences opportunistically, but to engage continually in interrogating the brain sciences to enrich holistic anthropology, while also contributing to the unfolding of cultural neuroscience. Neuroanthropologists will have to keep abreast of new research techniques and findings, and to be willing to modify, expand, or shed outright our theories if they are unsupported by data. Anthropology has tended to be a theoretically heterodox field, producing more than its fair share of paradigms for understanding human social life, so neuroanthropologists should have abundant resources on which to draw, as long as we are willing to range far and wide for our intellectual frameworks, including into the past paradigms of relevant fields.

Unlike some people working in this area, the organizers of this conference do not believe that only one research method will contribute to neuroanthropology, nor that this emerging field of thought will become dominated by a single account of how the brain functions. The brain itself is baroque, fashioned over evolutionary time out of a host of modules and functional units that are still incompletely integrated. Every type of neurological activity does not obey the same rules, nor are they equally susceptible (or immune) to self-reflection and conscious thought. Some cognitive capacities are characterized by deeply-ingrained stereotypical species-general responses; other functions are remarkably plastic, even susceptible to substantial revision and conscious redirection. No one simple theory can explain how every system works so we should recognize that enculturation will vary even among the regions and networks within the brain. If an account of one system remains consistent with its functioning while defying expectations arising from other systems, this is as likely to be a product of the brain’s heterogeneity as it is a reflection of differences in research methods or approaches.

Enough over-arching theories have foundered on human neural heterogeneity to offer ample warning: neuroanthropological theory will have to be partial and incremental rather than overly generalizing and prematurely sweeping. That is, no single enculturation process affects all brain areas equally, so no single account of the relation between brain and culture is likely to prove compelling in all cases. We propose an evidence-based theoretical eclecticism, recognizing that some of our disagreements are likely to arise from the fact that we theorize from different case studies in neural acculturation.

We also see neuroanthropology’s role as a constructive contributor to integrative brain science, not just policing its borders or offering constant critical scrutiny. Certainly, critique has its place, but without helping to produce better paradigms or suggestions for improvement, critique simply leaves conscientious researchers without positive alternatives to the practices that warrant criticism. Full engagement must include constructive proposals for improving both brain science and anthropological research.

Thinking through Human Problems

Neuroanthropology stakes out a new space for research. In examining the interaction of biology and culture, neuroanthropology considers how activities, contexts, and experiences are crucial to forming what it means to be human and how humans are similar and different around the world. Rather than conceiving of subjectivity as a text to be interpreted and the brain as composed of hard-wired circuits or innate modules beholden to selfish genes and evolutionary algorithms, neuroanthropology posits that subjectivity and the brain meet in the things that people do and say and the ways we interact with one another and the environment. Thus, it does not limit itself to psychology, which has a predominant focus on internal states, often separate from the body, physical activity, and the specifics of interaction with cultural environments. Moreover, neuroanthropology does not limit itself to Western notions of mind, self or consciousness, which can dominate discussions in some academic settings.

The inherent variety among different brain systems means that conscious reflection and experience-based accounts have a crucial relation to many of the phenomena we study. Experience-based ethnographic descriptions can offer valuable insights into brain functioning. At times these descriptions can help illuminate the influence of context and experience; at other times, neuroanthropological accounts may highlight the limits of conscious awareness and demonstrate the self-deceptions inherent in some kinds of neurological functioning. For this reason, neuroanthropology brings an ethnographic sensibility to brain research, including a willingness to take into consideration native theories of thought and individuals’ accounts of their own experience. Thus, careful ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and the analysis of indigenous worldviews will always be central to the neuroanthropological synthesis

At the same, researchers must explore automization, endocrinology, emotion, perception, and other neural systems that contribute to patterns of variation but are not entirely susceptible to reflection. For example, practices of child rearing and early formative experiences are clearly influenced by cultural ideologies about how children should be nurtured, but many of the organic mechanisms through which these ideologies take hold of individuals and affect their long-term development may be unknown, even invisible to the participants.

For a long time, anthropologists have focused on culture as a system of symbolic associations, public signs, or shared meanings. But from the perspective of the nervous system, patterns of variation among different groups may include significant non-conscious, non-symbolic traits, such as patterns of behavior, automatized response, skills, and perceptual biases. This neuroanthropological framing opens more space for considering why all types of cognition may not operate in identical fashion, and how non-cognitive forms of neural enculturation might influence thought and action. Given this type of functioning, neuroanthropologists will have to return to an older notion of ‘culture,’ one that considers capabilities, habits and other forms of collective action (and not just meaning). While it can prove useful to speak principally of ‘culture’ as shared representations, we also must recognize that ‘cultural variation’ will include other sorts of patterned, shared conditionings of the nervous system.

For this reason subjects’-eye-view accounts are critical to neuroanthropology in a way that they might not be to other cognitive theorists. First, we recognize that theories about how the mind works or what it needs are themselves part of the developmental environment in which the brain is formed. Even if these ideas don’t accurately represent actual neural function, they do influence the brain-culture system, and can have an impact on the way the brain works even if that is in a way utterly unintended by those who hold the ideas. That is, whether indigenous theories of thought are accurate, they are part of the ecology of brain conditioning.

Second, consciousness itself is part of complex neural systems, adding degrees of self-regulation, restraint, learning, monitoring, cuing, and a host of other capacities. How people understand and experience their own thought is part and parcel of neural activities, although not necessarily an all-encompassing awareness or even the most important part of that function. Yet most of our cultural and neural functioning is submerged, only accessible to consciousness with extraordinary effort and special techniques, if it is accessible at all. Thus, research techniques should focus on capturing both our conscious awareness of why we do what we do and the inherent processes that shape the flow and outcome of that doing.

Third, we would point out that cognitive science itself is a hybrid, composed of researchers working in a range of fields from philosophy and psychology to neurophysiology, artificial intelligence and robotics. Different types of neurological functioning are susceptible to different types of research and demand varying degrees of analytical flexibility, including modeling and simulation. Although neuroimaging has made remarkable strides in recent decades, even its practitioners recognize that it must combine with other sorts of fields and data in order to draw robust conclusions beyond the narrow confines of experimental protocols.

Fourth, cultural resources like subtle differences in language may support distinctive phenomenological insights into the human nervous system. That is, other cultures may notice things about the human nervous system that our own communities have not observed, thematized, or codified. For example, the cognitive neuroscience of highly skilled communities or specialists who refine certain brain functions, such as meditation, perceptual skills, or high performance cognitive abilities in areas like mental calculation, recall or spatial navigation, have demonstrated marked empirical differences in brain function in imaging studies. But something similar might happen as well in indigenous folk theories of thinking or other neural functions, and we lose a vital resource if we do not ask ourselves how ethnographic communities come to their own ideas about the mind and experience.

When anthropologists and other ethnographers have engaged with cognitive science, they have made remarkable contributions. Neuroscientists with anthropological inclinations have made similar important advances. But overall the traffic has been too little in both directions, and the contributions made have been piece-meal rather than systemic or sustained. The brain sciences need the research and insights that anthropologists have developed in order to seriously explore the wide variation in human cognitive and neural functioning. Anthropology must move beyond critique and engage with these fields in a constructive mode in order to answer basic questions about culture, inequality, and human difference. Together, we can help construct the frameworks that allow the best of diverse research on the brain and human nature to be shared across disciplinary lines.

The potential gains are enormous: a robust account of brains in the wild, an understanding of how we come to possess our distinctive capacities and the degree to which these might be malleable across our entire species. The applications of this sort of research are myriad in diverse areas such as education, cross-cultural communication, developmental psychology, design, therapy, and information technology, to name just a few. But the first step is the one taken here – by coming together, we can achieve significant advances in understanding how our very humanity relies on the intricate interplay of brain and culture.

Greg Downey is senior lecturer in anthropology at Macquarie University. Daniel Lende is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

This essay on Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now? is the conference statement for The Encultured Brain: Building Interdisciplinary Collaborations for the Future of Neuroanthropology.

by Drew Matott and Drew Cameron

Jake was fond of saying that even though he had become dumber, he wasn’t quite dumb enough. He knew that the improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq had mangled his body, brain and self.

Jake (a pseudonym) lost 30 IQ points due to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) from that IED blast. According to the military, he was still smart enough to function and hold down a job, so they didn’t plan to include TBI in his disability rating.

He fought them on this, just as he fought them on the decision not to amputate his leg. After countless surgeries and rehabilitation techniques, his leg was almost useless, allowing him maybe 30 minutes of use before it started rebelling against its reconstructed form. The pain that caused was excruciating; he simply couldn’t use it more.

Eventually Jake won his battle to lose his leg. It was the best thing that happened to him during the year I got to know him while doing my dissertation fieldwork at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. (yes, that Walter Reed).

Dealing with, or writing about, TBI is rarely as clear as an amputation. The same is true of TBI’s nearly constant companion, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). TBI and PTSD are not injuries that you can see, unlike a lost leg. Despite the high numbers of TBI and PTSD cases from Iraq and Afghanistan, the relationship of these conditions to more obvious forms of combat trauma remains a fraught one: Witness the debate about PTSD and the Purple Heart.

Most people think that the Purple Heart, that most iconic of military honors, is awarded to American military members injured in combat. As with most issues military, it is not quite that simple.

In 2008, after months of consultation, the decision was made not to award the Purple Heart to those suffering from PTSD because, in part, the medal “recognizes those individuals wounded to a degree that requires treatment by a medical officer, in action with the enemy or as the result of enemy action where the intended effect of a specific enemy action is to kill or injure the service member.” PTSD doesn’t count.

Though the decision was officially framed in rather bureaucratic terms, the debate which surrounded it raises much deeper issues about the nature of trauma. Thinking through these issues has led me to think about the Cartesian split between the (internal) mind and the (external) body and the nature of trauma inside and out.

From one perspective, TBI is trauma itself. It is the physical result of the brain being banged around inside the skull or otherwise damaged. But its symptoms – being ‘dumb’, acting out, short term memory loss – are the kinds of things we normally associate with an interior self.

To complicate matters further, in the soldiers I worked with, TBI was accompanied by visible injuries, sometimes to the head, sustained during the same event. Jake, for example, had nearly his whole scalp peeled from his skull along with his helmet. But this actually had nothing to do with his TBI, which was caused by the force of the IED blast itself.

This gives TBI a slightly strange status on the physical-mental continuum that you can see in things like the RAND study on Invisible Wounds which consistently pairs mental health issues and TBI, thus linking them together while still setting TBI apart. So does all of this make TBI any more or less bodily? Any more or less interior?

PTSD, on the other hand, is the reaction to trauma. It is linked to the memory of, and psychological response to, a physical event or threatened physical event. This would seem to put it squarely on the mental end of the continuum. Yet most recent innovations in the treatment of PTSD have focused on the bio-chemistry and physicality of the brain.

Such a ‘physical’ approach has its benefits. For example, most of the soldiers I worked with were highly resistant to talk and other ‘interior’ kinds of therapy while they relished the idea of treatments which work on the mind through the body. Medication does that, but so do things like Virtual Reality Exposure therapy. (For more background on the causes and treatments for PTSD in soldiers, see Erin Finley’s terrific posts here and here).

And while we tend to think of PTSD as a psychological reaction to a particular traumatic event, in my fieldwork it was more often the result of a whole slew of experiences which had very much to do with the body, sights, sounds, smells, and corporeal feelings of discomfort, pain, heat, exhaustion, sleeplessness. These same bodily sensations constitute in part the experience of PTSD, meaning that while diagnoses or theorizations of PTSD may focus on the mind, the subjective experience of it is very much in the body.

Even when we recognize that the mind and the body are connected, as we do in the realms of psychopharmacology, most people generally subordinate one to the other and deny their unity. We do that by relying on Cartesian dualism, by splitting the self into body and mind and then mapping the two parts onto the outside and inside. By marking the bodily self as the province of medicine and the mind as the province of psychiatry, we deny a more complete understanding of the subjective experience of trauma.

Jake’s amputated leg, his short term memory loss, his insomnia, his problems with linear thought, his 30 missing IQ points, his headaches, these are all part of his transformed self and way of being in the world. Though it may be required, in certain clinical settings, to typologize these pieces of him, to call them symptoms and assign them to various qualitative and quantitative categories, as anthropologists we are relatively free of these paradigmatic constraints. Our discipline is essentially an empathetic one and when working with people who have endured certain kinds of trauma, we ought to do our best to maintain the integrity of their experience. After all, haven’t they been ripped apart enough?

Zoë H. Wool is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Toronto. You can reach her at zoe.wool@utoronto.ca

Looking for a “Neuro Revolution”? Zack Lynch wants to offer you one in his new book.

With a title like Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World and the author celebrated as a leading technology consultant and market researcher in marketing blurbs, readers might expect the author’s opinion to be based on the state of the art of neuroscience. However, frequent mistakes and shortcomings in his presentation of the scientific findings and methodology seriously call into question whether Lynch is the right person to sketch a possible “neuro future” and to address the prospects and limitations of neurotechnology.

The first surprise comes on page 3, where Lynch describes his first experience with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, one of the most frequently-used research tools in contemporary cognitive neuroscience. He explains that “the machine’s computer had recorded and analyzed data about how those loud thumping noises had bounced back from the structures under my skin.” To uninformed people, the noise of high-field MRI scanners will indeed be one of their most salient features. However, it is a mere epiphenomenon subject to the sophisticated technology necessary to change strong magnetic fields in short intervals. The technique itself is based on inaudible electromagnetic waves (like those emitted by a cellphone) to investigate brain structure and function.

Out of the many other examples one could give for Lynch’s superficial misrepresentation of neuroscience, two cases related to important publicly discussed applications of neuroscience are presented here to demonstrate a lack of expertise.

First, when discussing the issue of psychopharmacological enhancement, he refers to “a 2005 survey of more than ten thousand college students” (p. 184). Although the author does not give the reference to this “survey” so that an interested reader might check his claims or read the study himself, a researcher familiar with the debate can guess from his description which academic source is meant (McCabe and colleagues, Non-medical use of prescription stimulants among US college students…, Addiction 99, pp. 96-106).

First of all, the survey was carried out in 2001, and published only in 2005, which one can already read in the study’s abstract. Admittedly, this is just a minor point. What is more serious, however, is Lynch’s presentation of the outcome: “On some campuses more than 25 percent of students had used the pills”, he writes (p. 184). This is literally wrong, because at only one single campus of more than a hundred investigated colleges did researchers find numbers even as high as 25 percent – not more. The vast majority of colleges scored between zero and five percent.

When researchers find such an extreme outlier, it is common to question the validity of this individual measurement. Imagine a blind man were to shoot 119 times (that was the number of colleges investigated in the study) at a target; if he hit the bull’s eye once, how representative were that finding of his overall performance? And how honest would a report focusing on the single hit be?

On average, only four percent of the students stated that they had used such stimulants throughout the last year (i.e. at least once). Lynch commits another mistake when he writes that “between 4 and 7 percent of them had tried attention-deficit-disorder drugs for either all-night cramming sessions or to do better on their exams” (p. 184). The researchers of that survey actually had not asked the students for the motives of their behavior. By contrast, they found out that stimulant abuse was correlated with the consumption of other drugs like alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, ecstasy, and cocaine, which suggests that many students had used the stimulants for “recreational” purposes, since some stimulants can also induce a “high”. This finding is already presented in the study’s half-page abstract. But Lynch just continues with “informal research”, quoting a nameless professor, one of his “experts”, stating extremely high numbers of stimulant abuse among her students (p. 184).

Second, Lynch devotes much space to the topic of MRI-based lie detection which already created at least two business spin-offs trying to market the technique: Already his description of polygraphy, the tool psychologists are developing since almost 100 years to detect deception, appears as outdated (p. 26f.). He seems to know nothing of the recent advances in that field which were enabled by digital technology. Nevertheless he holds the position that MRI-based methods fare much better. His opinion is based on one single study of Daniel Langleben’s, which Lynch refers to incorrectly, and neglects all of the experiments which were published after 2002. This is unfortunate since these experiments are superior to his example, because they are ecologically more valid and, for instance, employ a mock-crime task instead of Langleben’s abstract playing card paradigm (e.g. Kozel and colleagues, Detecting Deception Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Biological Psychiatry 58: 605-613).

To Lynch’s credit, he later summarizes that “more testing must be completed before any commercial firm can claim that it’s offering a valid truth-detection test” (p. 34), which is true. It would have been nice, though, if he had explained why “No Lie MRI”, the company he reports about, states a contradicting claim on its web page, calling its technology the “first and only direct measure of truth verification and lie detection in human history” already on its entry page.

Unfortunately, the book does not fare better in its discussion of the ethical aspects related to neurotechnology. Although Lynch refers to incidents where governmental institutions had abused human subjects in the past, for example, when investigating the effects of LSD or high radiation in uninformed persons (p. 174), he does not make a suggestion how they could be prevented from similar abuse of potentially forthcoming neurotechnology developed to manipulate memories or to even control people’s minds. Actually, the author is very enthusiastic about such opportunities in “neurowarfare” (chapter eight) where he celebrates the possibility that neuroscience might soon allow to manipulate an enemy’s mind. If such a means existed, its potential for abuse are great. What the book lacks in terms of ethical considerations, Lynch compensates with his creativity to invent new concepts. Referring to “neuroarchitects”, “neuroenablement”, “neurofinance”, “neurocompetition”, “pleasureceuticals”, to give just a few examples, he demonstrates his creativity. This neuro-ful, sorry, colorful vocabulary marks his major contribution to the discussion of neuroscience, alongside his general and superficial praise of forthcoming neurotechnology.

Unfortunately, the book is not suitable to readers who want to verify its claims themselves or who want to learn more about the original studies. Lynch frequently hides his knowledge behind anonymous “experts”, “neuroscientists”, or “researchers” (e.g. p. 20, 21, 22, 33, 37, and so on), making it almost impossible to check their validity. If he nevertheless gives a reference, it is most likely not a scientific study, but a journalistic report published in sources like the New York Times or Scientific American. Readers already familiar with such reports thus will learn hardly anything new from “The Neuro Revolution”.

Scholarly speaking, Zack Lynch’s lack of scientific understanding, his lack of familiarity with the state of the art of neuroscience, and his neglect of the ethical where societal and military applications are impending, disqualify his book as the basis of informed decision making about the prospects, limitations and perhaps even dangers of future discoveries in neuroscience.

Editor’s Note: Stephan Schleim is at the University of Bonn. He also blogs for the German-language site Brainlogs. His most recent post is Psychiatrie-Bibel unter Beschuss. Last year he covered The Critical Neuroscience conference in Montreal in English.

Barry Bonds elevated his game to the next level with “the clear” and “the cream”, shattering legendary records in the process. Are scientists, students, and other academics about to do the same?

While stars such as Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi continue to defend themselves against their alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs, a new debate over the use of a different kind of performance-enhancing drug has begun to rage in the scientific world.

Cognitive enhancers like Adderall and Ritalin have commonly been used as a treatment for behavioral disorders such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. However, these drugs are now becoming popular “performance enhancing” substances for healthy individuals trying to gain a competitive edge by boosting their overall cognitive function.

Henry Greely, a Stanford Law Professor, advocates for unrestricted availability of these drugs, claiming the enhancers will level the “cognitive playing field” and spark a new era of increased innovation. But Greely and other advocates fail to recognize the severe personal and societal consequences that such availability would generate, looking instead to a pharmaceutical solution that would, in the end, cause more problems than it would solve.

How They Work

Ritalin and Adderall have been on the market since the 1960s to treat conditions like ADD and ADHD (Center for Substance Abuse Research, 2005). While the specific mechanisms of these disorders have yet to be fully elucidated, cognitive enhancers have been successful in controlling or mitigating symptoms in patients. Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (dextroamphetamine) both inhibit dopamine reuptake, allowing dopamine signals to remain active for longer periods of time (Jones, Joseph, Barak, Caron, & Wightman, 1999). Provigil (modafinil), an alternative to the potentially addictive dopaminergic drugs, operates in similar fashion, but instead blocks reuptake of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine.

The increased neurotransmitter activity induced by these drugs stimulates many areas of the brain (see right), including the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for a person’s ability to focus and strive toward a specific goal. This stimulation theoretically counters fragmented synaptic signaling in the brain, one suspected cause of ADD and ADHD.

While these drugs increase focus and concentration for people with attention disorders, they can also increase prefrontal cortex stimulation among people without such disorders (Devilbiss & Berridge, 2008). The increased ability to focus and concentrate on specific tasks is clearly of great social utility. These benefits, however, are not without negative consequences; numerous side effects including hallucinations, headaches, nausea, and depression have been documented.

How They Are Being Used

A growing number of healthy Americans are using cognitive enhancers in an attempt to gain a mental edge in our competitive society. The popularity of these drugs is rapidly increasing in many areas of society and has become particularly prevalent among corporate executives, academics, and college students.

An article in the January issue of TIME Magazine describes a high-level executive who uses Adderall to “continue the lightning pace and constant multitasking his job requires” (Szalavitz, 2009). Since receiving the prescription from his doctor, he says he has been better able to maintain his high level of performance, a development he attributes to his use of cognitive enhancing drugs.

The TIME article also addresses the rising use on college campuses (Szalavitz, 2009). Studies have found that 7% of college students have used a cognitive-enhancing drug for non-medical purposes, and on some campuses up to 25% of students have used enhancers to aid studying. Unsurprisingly, usage rates are higher at prestigious institutions, where students feel the need to keep pace in an overly-competitive academic atmosphere. Taking a cognitive enhancer the night before a final can help you focus for an extra hour or two, and many students believe that hour may mean the difference between an A and a B.

Improving academic achievement, however, is a complex issue—popping pills may not be the cure all for low grades. Studies have shown the association between sleep and learning; shorting on sleep to study may still lead to lower grades even with cognitive enhancers (Curcio et. al, 2006).

Among the scientists polled in a Nature study conducted in 2008, nearly 20% reported having used cognitive enhancing drugs for non-medical purposes (Maher, 2008). The most popular motivation was the desire to increase concentration, with other reasons including increasing focus, counteracting jet lag, and other miscellaneous responses. Interestingly, over half of the respondents reported experiencing negative side effects yet still continued taking the drugs.

Arguments FOR Use with the General Population

Stanford Law Professor Henry Greely is a leading proponent for making cognitive enhancers available to the general population. In his hotly-debated article in Nature, he argues that research into the benefits of the use of cognitive enhancers among the healthy population should be explored. Greely claims that the term “enhancement” has been marred by its comparison to athletics, saying “better-working brains produce things of more lasting value than longer home runs” (Greely, 2008).

In one of his main points, Greely argues that using a cognitive enhancer is analogous to any other practice intended to improve mental function, such as sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Just as these practices provide cognitive enhancement, so would the use of drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, and Provigil. These drugs have the potential to be very beneficial, and “we should welcome new methods of improving our brain function,” says Greely.

Greely further contends that cognitive enhancers may potentially “level the playing field,” allowing disadvantaged students to overcome educational gaps. Take the example of standardized tests like the SAT, which many colleges like Notre Dame use in evaluating applicants. These tests have been shown to be statistically biased against African Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities (Freedle, 2008). It is possible that the use of cognitive enhancers could help them overcome this bias, promoting greater acceptance rates of minorities at prestigious universities. Used in this way, the drugs would be elevated beyond the individual desire to gain a competitive edge, and be employed as a tool to remove educational barriers, a significant cause of socioeconomic inequality.

Research focusing on the use of cognitive enhancers by healthy individuals is sparse. Greely recommends that studies in the area of cognitive enhancement be developed in order to build a knowledge base concerning usage patterns, benefits, and associated risks of these drugs. These studies could then be employed in developing an informed legal policy aimed at preventing coercion and mitigating the potential for abuse.

In a recent New Yorker article entitled Brain Gain, Margaret Talbot presents a more moderate defense for the legalization of cognitive enhancers. Talbot compares the use of cognitive enhancers to elective cosmetic surgery—both are personal choices, with inherent risks and benefits, designed to enhance particular attributes.

While not as far reaching as Greely’s assertions, Talbot’s arguments against a ban on cognitive enhancers focus on practicalities; cognitive enhancers are already in wide circulation and are being used responsibly among academic and business professionals. While cognitive enhancer use may not be ideal, Talbot argues that people should be allowed, after being informed of the risks and benefits, to make their own decisions about enhancement of their minds and bodies.

Argument AGAINST Use with the General Population

While many support Greely and Talbot’s positions, they are not without opposition. Our arguments against popular use of cognitive enhancers stem from ethical, medical, and social concerns. We believe that promotion of cognitive enhancers in the manner described by Greely is irresponsible and neglects the more fundamental issues at the root of the problems he addresses. Talbot, while more moderate than Greely, still fails to consider the social and cultural consequences of widespread usage.

Among the many troubling aspects of cognitive enhancers are the potential negative side effects. Little is known about the long term effects of these drugs, and many of the documented short term side effects would likely affect healthy users as much as those with disorders. Imagine getting a headache from taking Provigil when you are trying to prepare for an exam the next day. In this case, the drug you are using to improve your cognitive ability is ultimately hindering it.

More serious side effects such as depression and insomnia, while not fully understood, can cause severe harm to someone who would not have otherwise developed these conditions. The striking recent instance (April 22) of a young boy hanging himself while taking ADHD meds and other incidents like it raise significant questions about the safety of these drugs, especially among people for whom the drug is a luxury and not a necessity.

Also, because Ritalin and Adderall act on the mesolimbic dopamine system, the pathway commonly associated with addictive substances such as cocaine, users run the risk of developing a dependency or becoming addicted (Volkow, Fowler, & Logan, 2009). Addiction is a high price to pay for using a drug that provides limited benefits.

Of further concern is the likely inevitable consequence that widespread use of cognitive enhancers would lead to intense social pressure and even forms of coercion. It is already clear that some executives feel these substances are necessary to remain competitive. More students at competitive universities would likely be pressured to use these drugs when they see other users getting better marks. General availability of cognitive enhancers in our society could easily make these drugs a necessary component for success rather than an optional boost.

Furthermore, the disparity that Greely proposes would be overcome by cognitive enhancers may instead be exacerbated. The financial means that are required to obtain these substances restricts their availability to those who can afford them. Look back at the earlier example of ethnic minorities using cognitive enhancers to improve SAT scores. Traditionally these minority groups are also economically disadvantaged and would lack the means necessary to acquire these drugs.

The real benefactors from widespread availability would be the rich, who already perform better on standardized tests. Promoting the use of cognitive enhancers would likely serve to widen the already significant divide between socioeconomic groups. Reducing the disparity within a population cannot be accomplished by using cognitive enhancers; the drugs would only reinforce the present socioeconomic barriers.

Talbot, on the other hand, places too much emphasis on personal freedom as a justification for legalization, glossing over the social and cultural implications sure to follow from widespread usage. Within her own article she recounts the story of a poker millionaire who made his fortune with the help of cognitive enhancers. His use of these substances was an isolated personal choice but had social consequences as well, allowing him to gain an unfair competitive advantage over the other players.

Justifying cognitive enhancement in the academic and business worlds on the basis of individual freedom ignores the social consequences of unfair neurological advantages in the extremely competitive context of these cultures. Cognitive enhancer legalization cannot be framed in a purely individual context; legalization will have widespread social consequences.

Conclusion

Greely and others are right in asserting that the debate over cognitive enhancers is not entirely analogous to baseball’s steroid scandal. Cognitive enhancers do provide significant long term mental benefits and arguably some social benefits. However, as we have argued, these benefits are outweighed by the physical side effects and social ramifications that such use would entail.

Moreover, any suggestion that these drugs could level the playing field fails to account for the complexities inherent in such problems. Issues like educational disparity and social pressure to boost achievement demonstrate these complexities and are fundamentally socioeconomic and cultural problems. Throwing drugs at these issues will not bring resolution. Rather a cultural- and sociological-based approach is best suited for this task. While we recognize the benefits of these cognitive enhancers, their use should be restricted to the treatment of cognitive disorders.

Bibliography

Center for Substance Abuse Research. (2005, May 2). Ritalin. Retrieved April 10, 2009, from http://www.cesar.umd.edu/cesar/drugs/ritalin.asp

Curcio, G., Ferrara, M., & De Gennaro, L. (2006). Sleep loss, learning capacity and academic performance. Sleep Medicine Reviews , 323-337.

Devilbiss, D. M., & Berridge, C. W. (2008). Cognition-Enhancing Doses of Methylphenidate Preferentially Prefrontal Cortex Neuronal Responsiveness. Biological Psychiatry , 626-635.

Freedle, R. O. (2008). Correcting the SAT’s Ethnic and Social Class Bias: A Method for Reestimating SAT Scores. Harvard Educational Review , 1-43.

Greely, H. (2008). Towards responsible use of cognitiveenhancing. Nature , 702-705.

Jones, S. R., Joseph, J. D., Barak, L. S., Caron, M. G., & Wightman, R. M. (1999). Dopamine Neuronal Transport Kinetics and Effects of Dopamine. Nournal of Neurochemistry , 2406-2414.

Maher, B. (2008). Poll Results: Look Who’s Doping. Nature , 674-675.

Szalavitz, M. (2009, January 6). Popping Smart Pills: The Case for Cognitive Enhancement. Time.

Tansey, B. (2008, December 8). Experts urge wider use of brain-boosting drugs. San Francisco Chronicle.

Volkow, N. D., Fowler, J. S., & Logan, J. (2009). Effects of Modafinil on Dopamine and Dopamine Transporters in the Male Human Brain: Clinical Implications. Journal of the American Medical Association , 1148-1154.

Vegas baby, Vegas!

So you’ve finally made it out to Sin City, setting aside a few hundreds dollars to gamble. Maybe even a thousand. You’re hoping to get lucky and have some fun. A few hours and a half-dozen drinks into your weekend, you find yourself at the craps table, dice in hand. You’re feeling good, ready to turn your recent down streak into big bucks. Where does that leave you?
Right where the casino wants you.

The game is rigged. Everyone loses money eventually, if not immediately. But just like gamblers grab hold of that lever and pull, society has stepped up to the gambling craze. And now gambling is pulling people for all they’re worth: emotionally, mentally and, most notably, financially.

This post will look more closely at casino’s techniques to draw gamblers back to the slot chairs and the tables, focusing on both physiological aspects and engaged decision making. Ultimately, these observations will demonstrate that casinos create more than entertainment; they develop an entire compulsive experience.

The Gambler’s Rush

The casino’s greatest asset might be the very personal, very intense rush that gamblers experience as they step up to the blackjack table or slot machine, hoping to strike it rich. This characteristic “rush” or “high” stems from the series of steps and actions that are involved in addictive behavior. Stimulation from the surrounding atmosphere and the thrill of a big risk drives the “high”. Ultimately, the “rush” from gambling can be as intense as a drug fix.

Dealing Emotions

Excitement, making a quick buck, or even the possibility of financial independence is enticing. From experience, most people know that emotions are difficult to control. From a neurological standpoint, the amygdala is situated in the limbic system and is one main centers of emotion (pdf) in the human brain. Other parts of the brain, like the prefontal cortex, display less activity (pdf) during the act of gambling.

The response of the limbic system in producing emotion has been supported in studies conducted with pathological gamblers (individuals that exhibit persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior). A 2003 psychiatric study (pdf) compared the responses of pathological gamblers and control subjects to videotapes depicting happy, sad, and gambling content. Participants rated their emotional and motivational responses in addition to the brain imaging.

For gamblers, the gambling references elicited urges and temporary changes in brain activity patterns in frontal, paralimbic, and limbic brain structures. This evidence points toward a connection between gambling and the limbic system in producing a “high” from an emotional response.

Furthermore, when viewing gambling cues, pathological gambler subjects also showed relatively decreased activity in brain regions associated with impulse regulation. The urges of the gamblers to use (or in this case to go gamble) indicates a signal to engage, not to regulate. Thus, the emotional response that gambling can elicit along with the suppression of impulse control make the gambling rush one fiscally dangerous “high.”

Engaging the Senses

Gambling also engages the senses. Neural pathways extend from sensory locations to the appropriate association areas in our brains. These areas integrate visual, auditory, somatic, and other stimuli into our perception of the world around us. This interpretation of sensory stimuli means that perception is not always reality.

More often then not, the perceived stimulus is different from the actual stimulus. For instance, the multitude of lights and colors seen within the casino are received on photoreceptors as light waves of different frequencies. Ultimately gamblers perceive them as several colors, not waves of energy. In addition, the soothing sounds that are on repeat in the casino hit the ear as pressure waves, quickly interpreted into sound waves.

What we’re getting at is that the atmosphere, which includes the lights and repetitive music, helps in shaping the intended activities and emotions that the casinos want their participants to have. The brain controls emotions, perception, and rational thought. The casino industry uses tactics which seek to manipulate each of these functions, often with devastating results.

So the question is, how do they do it?

Casinos: Experience and Decision Making

With countless algorithms, computer-programmed slot machines, bright lights and enough cameras to protect a small country, casinos work hard to make sure that your gambling experience is both highly predictable and highly profitable. For them.

While the “tricks of the trade ” that casinos use to keep gamblers betting are well-documented (such as absence of clocks or natural lighting, complementary drinks and endless amenities), one of the more intriguing focuses of the casino atmosphere is its encouragement of engaged decision-making. As discussed by William Eadington (1999, pdf), casinos go to great lengths to convince gamblers that they are making rational, reasonable choices with their money while betting.

Eadington provides the example of an amateur craps player who spends three days in a casino, and bets on 1,000 rolls of the dice. Taking the odds of craps into account, the probability that they will be ahead after 1,000 of these craps bets is just 33% (a fact that casinos are well aware of). Casinos must work against the often steep odds that gamblers face in order to keep them gambling. For Eadington, casinos must work to encourage gamblers’ beliefs that they are making smart decisions with their money. To this end, casinos use methods such as slot machines with progressively growing jackpots to promote the illusion that “big money” is just one roll of the dice or pull of the lever away for gamblers.

MIT Professor Natasha Schull describes the casino as a site of “intensified technological stimulation” (pdf), a place where gamblers, amateur and compulsive alike, can lose themselves in their gambling experience. Casinos perpetuate this sensorial gambling experience, as it allows gamblers to enter into what Schull calls a “zone” state, enabling them to “forge an insulated, autonomous space of play in which they can set and reset their own bet level, rhythm, and pace.” According to Schull, the ideal customer is someone who stays until they lose all their money – it’s called “player extinction.”

Once gamblers enter this zone, they can bet for hours without interruption or consideration of the economic value of their decision-making. In order to convince their patrons that they are engaging in productive profit-seeking methods, casinos place a heightened emphasis on engaging gamblers, and making gambling an exceptionally sensorial experience.

Now that you’re in the “zone,” you have everything under control and the jackpot money is yours for the taking…or so you think.

The Illusion of Control

Players literally “hold the cards” in games such as blackjack and poker, providing them the feeling that they have a certain amount of control over events that are, in fact, governed by the laws of mathematics. Just picture the craps player blowing on dice for luck.

Casino chips, for example, are almost laughable in their simplicity. They allow gamblers to part quickly and painlessly with an abstract form of their money. Yet the chips themselves make gambling a corporeal experience – something you touch and control, an idea that sites like Full Tilt Poker actively promote.

Chips must be traded in for cash in order to have any worth in the world outside the exciting casino. Although a seemingly basic task, walking through the casino for a chance to exchange chips may lead to one more game, especially when that certain glowing, beckoning slot machine catches the gambler’s eye. Clearly, casinos use this and other methods to maintain a cycle of continuous, fast-paced gambling while trying to minimize the noticeable effects of losing money for their customers.

In 1975 psychologist Ellen Langer captured the essence of this sort of phenomena when she defined the theory of the illusion of control (Langer 1975). The theory of illusion of control is “an expectancy of a personal success probability that exceeds the objective probability of the outcome.” Langer proposed that this type of overconfidence is likely when an event that is at least partially determined by chance is characterized by factors that normally lead to enhanced outcomes under skill-based situations, such as choice, stimulus or response familiarity, competition, and active involvement.

Applying this theory to casinos, the illusion of control is likely when an individual plays games which are at least partially determined by chance (poker, craps, slots, etc.) and are also characterized by choice (“Hit me!”), competition (beating the dealer), and active involvement (rolling the dice or pulling the lever).

The choice, competition, and active involvement that casinos offer boost an individual’s perceived control over an outcome. According to Langer that leads to an “unrealistic subjective probability of success.” Furthermore, the larger the role that skill can play in determining the outcome (“knowing” how to bet, or performing “winning” rituals) the more pronounced this illusion of control becomes.

In 2006 Langer’s theory was applied to a study done in a natural setting in Reno casinos. In this study, patrons of Reno casinos were observed placing craps bets on their own and another patron’s dice rolls. The hypothesis was that subjects would play riskier by placing higher bets and more “difficult” bets on their own rolls (when they would be under the illusion of control). The results of the study, as well as work on the gambler’s fallacy of the “hot hand” (pdf), help support the Langer hypothesis. The illusion of control is well at work in casinos, and gamblers are most likely losing more money the more they feel like they can affect the outcome.

Against the Odds

But casinos do more than keep you glued to the tables; they set you up to lose. This house advantage grows more likely and inevitable the longer one gambles – it’s the House Edge. Although a gambler may have a “lucky” win, continuing to gamble makes loss almost unavoidable. The techniques of casinos acknowledge this, encouraging gamblers to keep gambling.

From Craps to Keno to Roulette, the house always has an edge that grows more evident as their techniques keep gamblers from leaving the casino. Slot machines, for instance, remain one of casinos most popular draws and clearly demonstrate the manner in which casinos make money. A quarter slot machine, innocently taking only small change from gamblers at a time, results in about a $360 loss within 10 hours. Other popular casino games also post statistics that favor the house.

Clearly, gamblers normally end up paying the casinos instead of hitting the jackpot. It proves easy to look at these numbers when outside of a casino and belittle those who see gambling as a chance to win big. However, when placed in the casino atmosphere, the thrill of entertainment and the seemingly endless possibilities encourage gamblers to go for that one “last” game.

Maybe you could become a millionaire against the odds. But, once removed from the stimulation of casinos, it becomes much easier to acknowledge that the house ultimately wins.

Casinos play the odds, people play the games. In the end, that means the casinos play the people.

For more information:

Getting Help for a Gambling Addiction

The National Council on Problem Gambling

Problem Gambling – A Canadian Perspective

Problem Gambling Guide

Wikipedia – Problem Gambling

Gambling Industry

Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation

Casino Watch

Gambling Industry Association

American Gaming Association

Responsible Gambling Council

Research

E-Gambling (Journal of Gambling Issues)

Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming

Cambridge Health Alliance Division of Addictions

National Center for Responsible Gaming

Gaming Research Weblog

Video Resources (YouTube)

Winning at Slots
Winning at Roulette

Losing at Slots
Losing – “He took everything”

Excalibur Walk-in – see the casino layout

Compulsive Gambler’s Recovery Story – “You always lose more than you win”
Compulsive Gambler’s Story & Critique of Industry – “an ex casino gambling degenerate”

Martha Frankel and Getting hooked on online poker (podcast)

Darcia Narvaez is associate professor of psychology at Notre Dame and executive director of the Notre Dame Collaboration for Ethical Education.

Triune Ethics: The Neurobiological Roots of Our Multiple Moral Personalities

By Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D.

Triune Ethics is an interdisciplinary theory whose goals are to link moral psychology to affective neuroscience, help explain individual differences in moral functioning, and suggest some initial conditions for moral development. It is also an approach that can be linked to social relationships, conditions and situations, thus providing a biosocial view of moral action.

Three types of ethics can drive human morality, as I outline in this 2008 paper on neurobiology and our multiple moralities (pdf). These are based on different affectively-based moral stances that persons can take: one oriented to security (the Ethic of Security) and focused on self-preservation through safety, and personal and ingroup dominance. Another is oriented to emotional engagement with others (the Ethic of Engagement), particularly through caring relationships and social bonds. The third I call the Ethic of Imagination, which is focused on creative ways to think and act socially. While these labels are not all inclusive, they do seem to capture three different ways of co-existing with others in the social landscape.

Each ethic has neurobiological roots that are apparent in the biological structures and circuitry of the human brain. Triune Ethics theory derives its structure from MacLean’s (1990) Triune Brain theory which proposes three basic formations in the human brain that reflect ancestral relations to lower-order species. Anatomically and biochemically, the three formations reflect the evolution of reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals.

Although the theory is on its face simplistic in separating brain structures from one another, in fundamental ways animal and human research support MacLean’s basic theory (Panksepp, 1998). Accumulating research in affective neuroscience not only confirms the general thrust of MacLean’s triune brain theory, but points out the critical importance of early experience in gene expression in emotional circuitry (e.g., Champagne & Meaney, 2006), personality formation (Schore, 1992; 1994), and cognition (Greenspan & Shanker, 2004).

Animals have not only evolved brain functions that facilitate learning but have “psychobehavioral potentials that are genetically ingrained in brain development” as “evolutionary operants” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 55). These operants are inherited emotional command systems that help animals (and their ancestors) behave adaptively in the face of life challenges.

Three Moral Systems: Security, Engagement, Imagination

I propose that three distinctive moral systems have evolved from our ancestors, propel human moral action on an individual and group level, and have etiologies that are influenced by early and critical period experiences. According to MacLean (1990), the first formation is the reptilian or R-complex (shared with an extinct reptile, the therapsid), which resides at the base of the forebrain, seated on top of the motor cortex, and relates to several forms of behavior in mammals, including territoriality, imitation, deception, struggles for power, the maintenance of routine, and following precedent.

The Ethic of Security is based primarily in these instincts which revolve around survival and thriving in the moment. Subcortically-driven instincts for seeking (autonomous exploration) and emotional circuitry for fear and rage when autonomy or safety is thwarted are systems shared with all animals (Panksepp, 1998).

The security ethic is oriented to physical factors in two senses. First, it maintains physical survival through self-protection and exploration. Second, the security ethic is attendant to physical flourishing through status enhancement (hierarchy or pecking order) and ingroup loyalty (purity). Self-protective behaviors and values protect the life of the individual and the ingroup. One learns to secure oneself and one’s group against the competition or an “enemy”.

When the security ethic is explicitly triggered by personal or group threat, tribalism predominates, rivalry and the pecking order are stressed, and mob behavior can be set in motion (MacLean, 1990) as we become part of a super social organism:

“The superorganisim is often a vile and loathsome beast. But like the body nourishing her constituent cells, the social beast grants us life. Without her, each of us would perish. That knowledge is woven into our biology. It is the reason that the rigidly individualistic Clint Eastwood does not exist. The internal self-destruct devices with which we come equipped at birth ensure that we will live as components of a larger organism, or we simply will not live at all.” (Bloom, 1995, p. 325)

Prone to ruthlessness and attaining one’s goal at any cost, the security ethic reflects Simone Weil’s view, “Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.”

This ethical orientation fits with the received view of human nature, that we are violent, self-interested, and hierarchical, like our cousins, the chimpanzees. But the received view is veridical only under certain conditions, when ecological circumstances (person x situation interaction) increases perceived threats to “tribal’, “clan” “troop” or in-group safety. Triune Ethics accounts for this variation in “human nature.”

The second brain formation, identified by MacLean (1990) as central to mammalian functioning, brought about three signatory sets of behavior that did not exist in evolutionarily prior species: nursing and maternal care, audiovocal communication between mother and offspring, and play. What MacLean calls the neo-mammalian brain, the limbic system and related structures, is the seat of emotion, personal identity, the memory for ongoing experience, and the sense of reality and truth.

These form the foundation of the Ethic of Engagement. For example, play, found only in mammals, promotes harmony and sociality. Sexual functioning radiates from the earliest to the latest brain structures. In mammals, genital display is a precursor to determining cooperative or aggressive interaction, behavior that both Darwin and MacLean consider to be foundational for altruism.

According to Loye (2002), the capstone to Darwin’s theory of evolution was the emphasis on moral sensitivity as the most important driving force in human evolution. Finally published in 1974, Darwin’s private notebooks set forth a theory of moral agency as a culmination of his theory of natural selection (Loye, 2002). In these notes Darwin argues that “the moral sense” arises from the sexual, parental and social instincts that have evolved in mammals generally but especially in humans.

According to Darwin’s notes, the moral sense gives rise to the golden rule and the second commandment given by Jesus, to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ The Ethic of Engagement is rooted in these mammalian emotional systems that drive us towards intimacy. The functionality of these systems, however, are co-constructed by the environment during an extended childhood.

Within psychology the development of mammalian emotional systems in the first years of life are captured by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which is strongly influenced by ethological considerations. Attachment is fundamental to the functioning of the Engagement Ethic. Bowlby (1988, 1969) identified the hunter-gatherer context of our ancestors during the Pleistocene era as “the environment of evolutionary adaptedness,” when an infant’s processes for forming attachments and completing brain development evolved.

This is also where we can see the flourishing of evolved human morality that Darwin identified. Hewlett & Lamb (2005) summarize the type of child care in hunter-gatherer communities, most of which are peaceful (Knutson, 1968): “young children in foraging cultures are nursed frequently; held, touched, or kept near others almost constantly; frequently cared for by individuals other than their mothers (fathers and grandmothers, in particular) though seldom by older siblings; experience prompt responses to their fusses and cries; and enjoy multiage play groups in early childhood” (Hewlett & Lamb, p. 15). Brain-building experiences are embedded in attachment relationships (Schore, 1994). Recent research has shown that initial experiences with the caregiver are deeply imprinted in the brain, helping form the neurobiological structures for a lifetime (Weaver, Szyf, Meaney, 2002).

The damage caused by lack of proper infant nurturance is old but oddly forgotten news. It was initially tested in monkeys by Harlow (1958). Monkey infants reared without physical social interaction (touching, holding, playing) experienced brain damage and were violent and socially impaired as adults. These monkeys were not deprived of nourishment, nor of other social sensory stimulation—they could smell, see and hear other monkeys (sensory deprivation was systematically tested).

Children raised under similar conditions, as in orphanages, display the similar impaired behaviors (Spitz, 1965). In a study of Romanian orphans, when cuddled by their adoptive parents, they fail to generate the same soothing hormones as normal children when cuddled by their parents (Nelson et al). In these cases, the lack of physical touching and rocking by a caregiver has deleterious effects on brain development. Mason and Berkson (1975) found that a rocking artificial “mother” (a fur-draped plastic bottle on a rope) alleviated the depression and autistic-like behaviors that would otherwise develop in socially isolated monkeys. Inadequate care leads to deficiencies in the genetic expression, hormonal regulation and system integration that lead to sociality (Weaver et al, 2002).

Sadly, modern childbirth, childcare and social systems build brains that are incomplete resulting in, I propose, personalities that are less socially engaged. There may be a “goodness-of-fit” between expectable environments and optimal development. Darwin’s account of moral evolution appears to have been foiled by modern culture and societal practices.

According to MacLean (1990), the third brain area is the neomammalian, referring to the neocortex and thamalic structures to which the neocortex is connected. It reaches its greatest size and complexity in humans. Focused primarily on the external world, the neomammalian brain provides the capacity for problem solving, memory and deliberative learning.

The third ethic, the Ethic of Imagination, links more to these recently evolved parts of the brain, particularly the prefrontal lobes. The latter are the seat of executive functioning and are not fully developed until the early or mid-twenties (Giedd, Blumenthal & Jeffries 1999) and may be damaged by behavior choices made in the final phase of development during the college years (Bechara, 2005).

The Ethic of Imagination is the source of our deliberative reasoning and imagination, which respond to the intuitions and instincts of the other ethics, able to countermand instincts with “free won’t” (Cotterill, 1999). Although humans have evolved to favor face-to-face relationships and have difficulty imagining those not present (such as future generations), the prefrontal lobes provide a means for a sense of community that extends beyond immediate relations. Humans are at their most moral when the ethic of engagement is linked with the ethic of imagination.

Emotions and Moral Action

Throughout the brain, emotional systems are placed centrally in order to dynamically interact with more evolved cognitive structures and lower level physiological and motor outputs. As a result, there is no emotion without a thought and most thoughts evoke emotion. Further, there is no emotion without a behavioral or physiological outcome. “Emotive circuits change sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processing, and initiate a host of physiological changes that are naturally synchronized with the aroused behavioral tendencies characteristic of emotional experience” (Panksepp, p. 49).

According to a hybrid model of emotional functioning, many of the emotional component systems in the brain come together as a function of learning: “…emotions are learned states constructed during early social development from more elemental units of visceral-autonomic experiences that accompany certain behavior patterns” (p. 44-5, Panksepp, 1998). The basic neural-emotion systems “generate an animal’s egocentric sense of well-being with regard to the most important natural dimensions of life” (ibid, p. 48). These systems provide the animal with potential solutions to basic issues of survival (how do I stay intact? How do I get what I need? How do I keep what I need? How do I get and keep social supports?).

The three ethics are present in behavior, at least partially, from a young age, although deliberative moral reasoning lags far behind (this is not surprising since most of what we know is tacitly held; Keil & Wilson, 1999). Not only do the three ethics interact they each have a dispositional aspect (“trait-like”), based on developmental experiences, and a situational aspect (primed by context). So, for example, if childhood established healthy brain development (as manifested in secure attachment and functional empathy components), the person is able as a matter of course to reach out to others in empathy when they are in distress.

In contrast, a person can have a foundational sense of insecurity, based on early childhood experiences of unmitigated distress, that drives their view of the world, as in attachment disorders. This foundational sense of insecurity may thwart feelings of empathy. Moreover, when a family or culture is focused on threat, individuals and groups may focus on the security ethic, suppressing the engagement ethic.

From a personological viewpoint, Sylvan Tomkins (Demos, 1995) offered concrete depictions of biosocial effects on personality. He suggested that early socialization sets up life orientations that the individual subsequently applies to many domains throughout life. The “ideo-affective posture” developed from early experience represents a socialized “set of loosely organized feelings and ideas about feelings” (Tomkins, 1965, p. 74) which resonate with particular organized ideologies, attracting individuals to particular viewpoints. A warm, supportive childhood leads a person to orient either to an open, accepting posture (“humanistic”) while a harsh, restrictive childhood leads to a defended, rejecting posture (“normative”) towards people and towards life experiences in general.

Personality and Ethical Orientation

One might speculate on the characteristics of a person dominated by a particular ethic. A person dominated by the Ethic of Security likely has a “stressed brain” formation from trauma or neglect; poor attachment and bonding; lack of early embodied experience with reciprocity in social interactions; little sensorimotor memory for loving intimate interactions; compromised social abilities; domination by a defended, rejecting ideo-affective posture (Tomkins); some basic needs not fully or regularly met in childhood (e.g., Competence, Autonomy/Control, Belonging, Trustworthy world); and feelings of anger and contempt more accessible than positive feelings. Behavior is more ruthless and focused on self advantage covertly or overtly; they have a narrow ingroup orientation and value loyalty, hierarchy, control, purity (of self and of ingroup), freedom to seek (“liberty”). The engagement ethic is minimized and the imagination ethic is hijacked for security interests.

An interesting example of the security ethic in ascendance is a report that 90% of members of an evangelical congregation left after the pastor began to preach an inclusive rather than an exclusive message, saying that the whole world would be saved not just those of their brand of faith (National Catholic Reporter, 2005). When a security ethic is a cultural norm, inclusivity is an unwelcome message.

A personality dominated by the Ethic of Engagement has strong attachment; sensorimotor memory for reciprocity and emotional intersubjectivity; strong empathic responses in mirror neurons; an open, accepting ideo-affective posture (Tomkins); feelings of empathy more accessible than feelings of anger. Primary values include compassion and tolerance. The security ethic is minimized and the imagination ethic is used for sociable ends.

A personality dominated by the Ethic of Imagination, under a state of calm and engagement, considers outgroup members as deserving of full respect and rights, as well as empathy; is able to conceptualize alternative social systems, think impartially about moral problems and counteract harmful instincts and intuitions with “free won’t” (Cotterill, 1999). However when threat is high and engagement low, a personality dominated by the imagination ethic will likely focus on maximizing safety and dominance, be prone to negative attributions, focus on ‘being strong,’ avoid emotional expression and respond to his/her worst instincts and intuitions.

A particular ethic can be primed by the situation or other triggers. The engagement ethic may, for most people, require an environment characterized by safety, caring and belonging (indeed children in caring classrooms tend to be more prosocial) whereas the imagination ethic may also require surrounds that promote hope and transcendence. The prevailing ethic likely will influence sensitivities to stimuli, preferred reasoning, susceptibilities (fallacies), motivations and goal direction, shifting perceived social affordances.

Conclusion

In summary, I propose that there is a neurobiological substrate to moral personality evident from research on early epigenetic imprinting on brain structure and “wiring,” and the effects of emotional co-regulation or its absence (Greenspan & Shanker, 2002; Schore, 1992; 1994). The three neurobiological brain systems that underlie the three ethics may signal the features of development and lived experience that yield optimal functioning.

One might consider these three ethics as goals for human optimization. First, children develop a sense of security through intersubjectively-safe and nurturing rearing which designs a “morally-prepared” brain. Second, a child develops a sense of engaged enactive participation in social life, rooted in sensorimotor sensibilities for justice (Lerner) from extensive experiences of reciprocity and social exchange. Third, children are provided opportunities to engage the imagination for good ends. Caregivers provide in situ modeled and guided training of prosocial perception/action (enactive learning).

Each person is built from a myriad of intelligent systems, from the biochemical reactions of the limbic system, to the neuronal networks that compete to win when stimuli are processed. The virtuous person is able to coordinate and focus the systems. Exemplar moral personality may require more than these basic pieces, such as imagination beyond the everyday; deep attachment to an inspiring caring person (or divine being) translated to deep concern for others; and a sense of calm, certainty or faith.

Addendum

In Descent, Darwin identified the moral sense as the driving force of human evolution. But what is happening to human evolution now that evolutionarily-normative childbirth and child rearing no longer take place? Based on U.S. childrearing practices and on the neurobiological evidence even years ago, Prescott (1996) came to the conclusion that most children in the USA are susceptible to Somatosensory Affectional Deprivation (SAD), a condition related to depression, violent behavior, and stimulus seeking.

In fact, suicides and depression have increased dramatically in 5-14 year olds in recent decades. Youth violence is flaring up across the country in 2006. Drug use is rampant across age groups. Affectional bonds are frayed. For example, a 2006 study found that only half of those surveyed have a confidant (compared to 75% 25 years ago; MacPherson, Smith-Lovin, Brashears, 2006).

Affectional bonds are integral not only to a flourishing individual but to a flourishing society. As Prescott put it, “the influence of the environment seems to be imprinted on the structure of the brain, which, in turn, shapes the environment” (1996). Now we have evidence that this is indeed so (e.g., Weiner, Szyf, & Meaney, 2002). Szyf & Meaney have found differences in gene expression based on maternal care. Rats with high-caring (high licking) mothers had more active versions of a gene that encodes a molecule called glucocorticoid receptor protein. Glucocorticoid, a hormone produced in response to stress, needs to be switched off so the individual doesn’t get over stressed. The receptor protein in the hippocampus dampens further synthesis of the protein, but only in rats with high-caring mothers. Rats with little maternal care have a weaker feedback system, resulting in more anxiety and heightened responses to stress. These poor parenting styles are passed on from one generation to the next.

The natural flow of childhood established over thousands of years (e.g., natural childbirth, breastfeeding for several years, free play) has been deracinated by institutionalized medicine, consumerism, adult self-preoccupation and a culture of violence and fear– conditions that promote the security ethic and hijack the imagination to focus on survival and power, as in Dr. Strangelove, Orwell’s 1984 and Dos Passos’ USA. In the absence of intense social pleasure, individuals have learned to derive as much if not more pleasure from objects than from other people. A society of individuals who are emotionally and socially deficient will be hard pressed to empathize with distant others or imagine ways to get along with those who hold different worldviews. Instead they may think nothing of using violence to solve interpersonal and inter-societal problems.

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Gary Evans and Michelle Shamberg recently published a PNAS paper, Childhood Poverty, Chronic Stress and Working Memory (pdf). Here’s the abstract:

The income–achievement gap is a formidable societal problem, but little is known about either neurocognitive or biological mechanisms that might account for income-related deficits in academic achievement. We show that childhood poverty is inversely related to working memory in young adults. Furthermore, this prospective relationship is mediated by elevated chronic stress during childhood. Chronic stress is measured by allostatic load, a biological marker of cumulative wear and tear on the body that is caused by the mobilization of multiple physiological systems in response to chronic environmental demands.

The Evans and Shamberg paper has gotten prominent media attention. Over at Wired, Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain got an enormous number of diggs. Brandon Keim’s opening lines are, “Growing up poor isn’t merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.”

Jonah Lehrer wrote Stress, Poverty, Working Memory which includes this effective summary, “The scientists uncovered a statistically significant link: the longer children had been poor, the worse their working memory. Furthermore, levels of chronic stress seemed to be the causal factor.”

The Economist also covered the PNAS paper, and wrote about how stress does its damage. “Stress also suppresses the generation of new nerve cells in the brain, and causes the ‘remodelling’ of existing ones. Most significantly of all, it shrinks the volume of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. These are the parts of the brain most closely associated with working memory. Children with stressed lives, then, find it harder to learn.”

Lehrer, in his 2006 Seed article Reinvention of the Self about the work of primatologist/psychologist Elizabeth Gould, presents us with one of the main “take home” messages of work that links stress, poverty and development:

The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate’s particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain—and Gould’s team has shown that they do—then the playing field isn’t level. Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance.

This work by Evans and Shamberg is important, another step forward in showing that inequality matters and that it works through specific processes that directly shape individual development and function. But this line of work also has some limitations because it lacks a critical side – do we really need 500+ diggs to know that poverty is bad?

One piece that raises important critical questions is Michelle Chen’s The Impoverished Mind over at RaceWire. She writes, “Put simply, if your childhood is consumed by a constant struggle to survive day-to-day, your brain is less likely to develop the abilities you need to succeed tomorrow, compared to your economically better-off peers. This is empirical evidence that nature-versus-nurture is not an either or, but that social factors interplay with the brain’s biology throughout life.”

Then Chen goes further:

Empirical research on the connection between poverty and intellectual development can cut both ways—leading some to write off poverty as biological destiny, and others to look deeper into missed opportunities to lift youth over economic barriers… The policy implications for the growing body of achievement-gap research are [also] fraught with the same tensions straining other civil rights issues: how do you emphasize systemic impediments without pathologizing communities and cultures? How do you make the case for structural inequalities without fueling reactionary accusations of victimology?

Some of my own concerns focus on the biology side. Take a section from Lehrer’s Seed piece, “From the brain’s perspective, stress is primarily signaled by an increase in the bloodstream of a class of steroid called glucocorticoids, which put the body on a heightened state of alert. But glucocorticoids can have one nasty side-effect: They are toxic for the brain.”

Here stress “from the brain’s perspective” is taken to be entirely physiological. In general, stress is often made out to be psychobiological, an internal and individual state largely shaped by “fight-or-flight” ideas about activation of the stress system. As I’ve argued before, stress is actively social and intimately meaningful. These are not outside the perspective of the brain – they become part of how the brain functions. In this way stress becomes a process and not simply a state, either of mind or body.

But the more problematic area is that the brain becomes a fetish: Oh, see the neuroanatomical changes there, this stuff about poverty being bad for you must be true…

Recall the opening of the Wired piece, “Growing up poor isn’t merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains.” Here children become a mere token, placed to one side in favor of our new marker of individual self, the brain.

While I advocate for the role that brain processes can play in social theory, the sword cuts both ways. Referencing the brain as central mediator of poverty hides the truth, and distorts our understanding. To take a more extreme example to illustrate the same point, it’s like saying that slavery is both harmful to people and morally wrong because it impacts brains.

The brain becomes rather like property in this approach, something a person possesses and that poverty – somehow separate from the person, a naturalized thing that causes stress – negatively impacts. But that approach avoids the radical implications here on both sides.

First, that poverty literally can be anatomy, which means we need to fundamentally rethink the token brain metaphor and actual functioning of the brain. Second, that taking the neuroscience results seriously means that social environments, in all their complexity, become as important as any brain function. Indeed, many would argue that in this case, social inequality is more important than brain function, since it is what is driving the system.

To bring a critical approach into better view, I have found it useful at times to watch the following video of Paul Gilroy speaking on slavery, ignorance, and property. Rather than just working memory, Gilroy brings the larger picture into focus: “[We often] think that ignorance is a kind of vacuum into which truth can get stuffed at the right moment. And I think that we need a better account of the politics and the meaning of ignorance in our time than that. We need to think about ignorance in a different way. We need to think about ignorance as a systematic product.”

By excessively focusing only on the brain, we miss doing what Gilroy advocates for truly understanding ignorance and inequality — engaging in “critique of life as property, of humanity as property, of history as property.” We need to move beyond seeing the brain as a physical thing, similar to a book we can reference to say poverty is bad or a kind of currency that we carry around and barter to show off we’re smart and current. Or worse, something to manipulate through pharmaceuticals and computers and emerging types of neuroengineering. As Gilroy says, we need to become more critical while also realizing the dignity and meaning of people’s lives.