Brains On Purpose™

Brain wars caused by book of the same title

The battles of the materialists, the reductionists, against those who believe that we are more than our brains go on and on. And on. Just this week, I see in the Guardian "The brain… it makes you think. Doesn't it?"

In Salon, we can follow an ongoing "discussion" between PZ Myers and neuroscientist Mario Beauregard about the latter's new book Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives. Salon ran an excerpt from Brain Wars titled "Near death, explained." Myers followed with "Near-death, distorted." This weekend we will see a response from Beauregard which I will link to here when it is posted. Later added: Click to read Beauregard's response. Added April 30, 2012: Myers's response to Beuaregard, also at Salon as of May 1.

If you want to read a well-written book about the non-materialist position, Brain Wars is excellent. In addition to drawing on his professional experience, Dr. Beauregard has researched his topic well. He persuasively makes the point that our lives are not determined by our brains and its chemicals. This message gives one more hope than provided by the determinism of the reductionists—and reminds us of our responsibility to make good decisions. Read the book.

Note: Mentioned in both Myers's and Beauregard's pieces is the story of Kimberly Clark and Maria. Before you decide what you think happened, I recommend you read "Who Will Watch the Watchers?" (Michael Prescott).

Teaching kids about the brain: Foresight or flapdoodle? (Question applies to adults, too)

A new article in the New York Times about a school founded by an alternative theater troupe has resulted in some interesting responses; for example, on Twitter: click here or here or here or here or here. The school incorporates practices they claim are brain-based. I guess only time and some rigorous research will tell if the approach is effective in helping kids learn and achieve.

From "Making Education Brain Science":

[Y]oung children at the Blue School learn about what has been called “the amygdala hijack” — what happens to their brains when they flip out. Teachers try to get children into a “toward state,” in which they are open to new ideas. Periods of reflection are built into the day for students and teachers alike, because reflection helps executive function — the ability to process information in an orderly way, focus on tasks and exhibit self-control. Last year, the curriculum guide was amended to include the term “meta-cognition”: the ability to think about thinking.

...

For all the attention brain science is receiving in schools, experts say it is too soon to know whether its application will lead to improved academic outcomes. And some researchers say that while they embrace new ideas — especially around self-control — they personally prefer a more traditional approach to pedagogy.

“The older approach has led to some very good outcomes,” said Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University and co-author of “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain,” a child development primer for parents.

With brain science achieving much more time in the public spotlight, including in the arena of conflict resolution, some of the techniques and theories seeping out of research labs will be be bogus and some will be bona fide. Just a few years from now, we'll know more about what truly helps kids—and adults. In the meanwhile, as I have often warned, be careful, be conservative, be cautious.

In any popular application of neuroscience, you will find people who are careful, conservative, and cautious about what they say, and you will also find the people skilled at marketing. The latter group

A backlash against the brain?

Excerpt from "Neurons v Free Will" (The Economist):

There are now hopeful signs of what might be called a backlash against the brain. Hardly anybody doubts that the grey matter in our skulls underpins our thoughts and feelings, in the sense that a working brain is required for our mental life. This is not a new, or even a modern, idea: Hippocrates proclaimed as much in the fifth century BC. But there is a growing realisation among some neuroscientists that looking at flickers of activity inside our heads can be a misleading way to see how our minds work. This is because many of the distinctively human things that people do take place over time and outside their craniums. Perhaps the brain is the wrong place to look if you want to find free will. This is a theme of recent books by Michael Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Raymond Tallis, a retired British doctor and neuroscientist. As Dr Tallis puts it in his “Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity”, trying to find human life in the brain is like trying to hear the rustle of a forest by listening to a seed.

Click to read the rest.

 

Virtuous Tweeting: Do you really, really, really want to send that "science" Tweet?

Why do people pass on items before scrutinizing them? Some members of my Tweeter gang regularly Tweet press releases from such sources as Science Daily as if they were news. Then these Tweets are reTweeted and the peeping and chirping and crowing of Tweety birds grows louder and louder.

In a post from Arstechnica, the practice of treating such aggregators as PhysOrg and Science Daily as news was criticized:

[I]n a large number of contexts, these two sites are treated as credible sources of scientific information. Items posted there make frequent appearances on social news sites, and a number of people I've talked to have been shocked to discover that the majority of the sites' content is nothing more than rebranded press releases.

Ultimately, the job of editing and of peer review is to help ensure that only scientifically valid data and ideas end up in the literature. The job of the press should be to ensure that the public only receives reports of equal quality (or better, since the press can act as an additional layer of filtering). Unfortunately, with the rise of the press release, and of aggregators that disguise press releases as news content, the public is not being well served in this regard.

I have not forgotten a Tweet from Todd Stark last month in which he responded to this problem and wrote:

Aggregator problem reinforces the need to understand and filter before passing on. A new virtue for the 21st century!

A new virtue. I like that suggestion. Wouldn't it be nice if people did some digging prior to Tweeting? Even chickens don't eat

Good review of the tome MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY, an antidote to left-brain, right-brain mythology

If you go to your local bookstore, you'll see that a lot of junk science about the left and right hemispheres of the brain is still being published. That's why I was so glad to learn a bit over a year ago about a terrific book that gets the science right.

I have blogged more than once about this book titled The Master and His Emissary (links to those posts below), and have recommend it many, many, many times. A new review of the book has just been published in Los Angeles Review of Books and I wanted to make sure you saw it if you have any interest in brain hemispheres.

From "Oppositional Thinking: On reconciling the two hemispheres of the brain":

...In the 1970s and 1980s, the “split brain” became a hot topic in neuroscience, and soon popular wisdom produced a flood of books explaining how the left brain was a “scientist” and the right an “artist.”

Much insight into human psychology can be gleaned from these popular accounts, but “hard” science soon recognized that this simple dichotomy could not accommodate the wealth of data that ongoing research into hemispheric function produced. And as no “real” scientist wants to be associated with popular misconceptions — for fear of peer disapproval — the fact that ongoing research revealed no appreciable functional differences between the hemispheres — they both seemed to “do” the same things, after all — made it justifiable for neuroscientists to put the split-brain question on the back burner, where it has pretty much stayed. Until now.

Links to previous posts on the book:

• Are you involved in half-brained mediations? Let's promote full-brained conflict resolution
• Review of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
• About the vast left-brain conspiracy and those driven to ecstasy by all things neuro
• The brain and culture: "The mind's great conflict spills over onto the world stage"

Valentine's Day news: Love is more than just chemicals in the brain--P.S. So is conflict

Understanding love by taking a look at the brain is a bit like understanding a car's driver by looking under the hood of the car he's driving. Such an attempt at comprehending love would be ultimately futile. It's not cognizant of the human spirit. Not wise. Not accurate.

Unfortunately some conflict professionals are now reducing conflict to the brain, too. They say something like, "The brain does 'A' so you should counter with move 'B'." Conflict and love are not that simple; we are more than the organ in our skull. They are not like chess games played on the board of the brain.

I knew when I saw a deeply reductionist notion of love titled "the brain in love" (Delancyplace.com) that it would not sit well with my favorite non-reductionist neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz. Smiling to myself, I sent the over-the-top-materialist post to him. Here's what Jeff wrote:

Now if hearing all this makes you nauseous, that's related to activity in a small area of you brain called the area postrema.  Interestingly, drugs that block dopamine will tend to decrease the nausea. And if you're left with a strong sense of "hey, there's got to be a LOT more to love than this," CONGRATS!  You're part of the hopefully not-too-rapidly-diminishing remnant of sane people who realize YOU ARE NOT YOUR BRAIN.

To learn more about the difference between the mind and the brain and how we are so much more than our brain, read one of the books Jeff has written: You Are Not Your Brain or The Mind and the Brain. If you are tempted to believe that your romance is governed by your oxytocin, better read one of these books quickly, before February 14.

Love is more than just an emotion resulting from some chemicals your brain. To think love is brought to us by chemicals removes not only the romance but the poetry and the humanity. Let's make February 14th a day of deep appreciation, devotion, and affection, not of a bromidic and limited inner neuro-pharmacy.

Note (added February 8, 2012): Another person who thinks love arises from the brain: "Author Horstman draws on neuroscience to explore love" (Marin Independent Journal). Excerpt:

"Everything happens in the brain. It's your biggest and strongest sex and love organ," says [Judith] Horstman.

Clearing up confusion: The amygdala is not the same as the reptile brain & it's probably not reserved for fear

The amygdala gets lots of attention in conflict resolution circles these days, but not all of what is said is accurate. For example, the amydala's role in fear seems often to be the sole focus. Therefore, I was very glad to see Wray Herbert write a post refining the idea of the role of the amygdala beyond just being the "fear center."  From "Fleeing the Brain’s Fear Center" (Association for Psychological Science blogs).

Cunningham and Brosch conducted a thorough review of the vast literature on amygdala function, and their analysis also reveals a lot of individual variation in amygdala activity. Some subjects respond more to positive and negative stimuli than to neutral stimuli; others mostly to negative stimuli; and still others to positive information. In other words, amygdala activation may not have the same meaning for everyone; it may instead reflect the psychological state of the individual. The amygdala appears initially to evaluate the relevance of stimuli, and then to tune the individual’s overall cognitive and emotional response.

These varying responses may reflect personality to some degree. ...

...

All of these recent findings, taken together, call into question the whole idea of brain modules that govern specific, universal emotions like fear, sadness, disgust and surprise. The new and more dynamic view of the amygdala—and the brain—raises doubts about such an emotional taxonomy. ...

I urge you to read the whole post, which includes an interesting section on racial prejudice.

I believe what we can say about the amygdala is that it

"Neuroscience, Normativity, and Retributivism"

Abstract:

Advocates for the increased use of neuroscience in law have made bold and provocative claims about the power of neuroscientific discoveries to transform the criminal law in ways large and small. Perhaps the boldest and most provocative of these claims are made in an influential article by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen. They claim that neuroscience will reveal that criminal defendants are not morally responsible for their actions and that this revelation will thereby undermine retributivist justifications for criminal punishment. In the process of resolving previously intractable debates between consequentialism and retributivism, neuroscience will also, they contend, resolve age-old debates about free will. In this essay, we discuss several serious problems with their argument. We maintain that no neuroscientific discoveries will lead to the sorts of changes predicted by Greene and Cohen and, even if they did, those changes would not be the product of neuroscientific insight but result from unwarranted and problematic inferences which ought to be resisted.

Click to download the rest of "Neuroscience, Normativity, and Retributivism" (SSRN-THE FUTURE OF PUNISHMENT, Thomas Nadelhoffer, ed., Oxford University Press, Forthcoming-U of Alabama Public Law Research Paper No. 1968552).

"We are people, not brains": Is the "uncritical use" of neuroscience "oozing" into mediation?

If you follow my blogs, you know I have for years been decrying the people who tell us that knowledge of the brain can solve conflicts. Sure, knowing how the brain works can be helpful in some—probably not many yet—broad and not-always-fully-understood ways.

Should conflict professionals learn about the brain? Of course. However, in some circles, the application of neuroscience to conflict resolution has gone into the zone of fiction to a degree that should cause head shaking.

A new book seems to present assistance in getting sober from the neuroscience intoxication that has seeped into corners of the conflict resolution community. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain will be keeping me occupied during any free time over the Thanksgiving holidays. I have been anticipating the book since hearing its author Dr. Michael Gazzaniga speak last May.

Reading a review of the book today increased my anticipation. From "Rethinking Thinking" (Wall Street Journal):

Many aspects of everyday human consciousness elude neural reduction. For we belong to a boundless, infinitely elaborated community of minds that has been forged out of a trillion cognitive handshakes over hundreds of thousands of years. This community is the theater of our daily existence. It separates life in the jungle from life in the office, and because it is a community of minds, it cannot be inspected by looking at the activity of the solitary brain.

Yes, I agree! But, alas, Raymond Tallis, the author of the article, writes so much better than I do.

I have also blogged about neurolaw here and at idealawg. On that topic, Tallis writes:

Are you involved in half-brained mediations? Let's promote full-brained conflict resolution

Western societies have largely lost the ability to think in images rather than words.-Ian Robertson

Is your conflict resolution process full of words, words, and more words? Then it is probable that large amounts of wisdom, creativity and innovation are absent. Full-brained mediators, and parties, know to use something more than words: Vivid thinking.

The new book Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work by Dan Roam is one of several books in which smart authors tell us that we need more than words to really, truly, deeply understand a problem—and its solutions. From an interview of Roam (Blogging about Business):

"Vivid Thinking" is a mnemonic. Vi-V-id stands for Visual-Verbal-Interdependent thinking. It is a simple idea that says we haven’t really thought through an idea until we have both talked about it and looked at it, and that we can’t really explain an idea until we can both write about it and draw it. Vivid thinking does not accept that an either/or verbal-vs-visual approach ever fully illuminates an idea; on the contrary Vivid Thinking demands that we must exercise both our verbal and visual minds in concert if we really wish to understand an idea. Talk + look; write +draw = Vivid.

Another wonderful book on welcoming both the verbal and the visual is neuroscientist Ian Robertson's Opening the Mind's Eye: How Images and Language Teach Us How To See. (Click to watch a talk by Robertson talking about brain function, and peruse a worth-the-read interview with him about the role of experience in sculpting our brains.)

Verbal and visual are related to our brain hemispheres. Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, says the division of the brain into left and right hemispheres is "something neuroscientists don't like to talk about anymore" because the popularization of it in the latter part of the last century led to theories and statements that were "entirely false." Click to watch a very clever animation in which he talks about what we do and do not know about the divided brain. Here is another video in which he also talks about the divided brain.

It is not that there is no difference between the right and left hemispheres of the brain; it is just that we are arriving at a new level of understanding and sophistication about the differences. Most self-help books of the 20th century are not good sources. I recommend you learn from Robertson and McGilchrist.

Verbal, visual, left brain, right brain. Do you want all of your clients' minds and brains involved, as well as all of yours, when conflict is being addressed? If so, I invite you to explore some of the above resources.

There are many ways to engage the full brain. Two methods are graphic recording (example on iPad) and graphic facilitation. I have been experimenting with the former and will be learning the latter soon. Why? Because we need to use new methods in this new century to take advantage of our new knowledge about the brain.

I owe it to my clients to engage in full-brained mediation. I will be blogging about other methods in the coming months. (Here's one previous post about using images as well as words in mediation, and another.)

It is important to be diligent in evaluating what you hear and read. Remember when we all thought that communication was 55% body language, 38% tonality, and 7% words? Then we wised up to the Meharabian Myth and realized we needed to be more discerning about what he hear from speakers and trainers, and read from self-professed experts.

I suspect that non-verbal communication is about to undergo new rigor of examination; see my post "In Reading Facial Emotion, Context Is Everything" (Clue to why non-verbal-communication dogma is often wrong).

Be careful out there. Myths, urban legends, and falsehoods abound. The truth as we know it thus far is available but we need to be mindful and to engage critical thought in our search. May your mediations be based on the brain, the full brain and nothing but the truth.

Note: I will continue to add resources related to using the whole brain here on this post. Please check back. And let me know if you have any suggested resources. Thank you.

Note (added May 16, 2012): Click to watch "Dr. Iain McGilchrist on The Divided Brain" (Gardiner Museum in Toronto on March 5, 2012).

Everybody's talking about the word—Emerge, emerge, emerge, emerge's the word*

A word recently has been in my thoughts; that word spends a lot of time in my mind. In fact, I had been seriously toying with the idea of honoring one of the letters in CARVE, acronym for key parts of my dispute resolution model, by letting it stand for the word.

Then when I heard the word a number of times last week at the annual Association for Psychological Science, the matter was decided, the deal was done. Emergence is a very popular topic right now, deservedly so, and that's what the "E" in CARVE now stands for.

I had been thinking about emergence because it describes well the criticism and impatience I have with much of what is being said by popularizers about neuroscience, including some of the people talking about the brain and its role in conflict resolution. Their approach to neuroscience is reductionist, and goes something like this: We know "A" about the brain and so this happens, and we know "B" about the brain and so that happens. Because of "A," people do this, and because of "B," people do that. If only it were that simple! And if only we knew as much about "A" and "B" as these people put forth with such certainty.

Emergence adds another layer of complication with which we must contend and wrestle: another layer, another twist, about which we may or may not learn as more about the brain is discovered. Using our example of "A" and "B", emergence simply means that "A" and "B" together may create "C" and that "C" may not be predictable or intended or consistent. It is not as simple as 2 + 3 = 5; more like 2 +3 = 7 today, and 4 tomorrow, and nothing on Wednesday.

Let's look at what a couple of the speakers at the APS conference had to say.

Use fMRI to measure the usefulness of conflict resolution programs? Me, I don't think so!

This guest blog post at Scientific American hovers nicely along the continuum between breezy and meaty. Its author Kristina Bjoran is a student in MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing; she has written  a brief overview of some of the disagreements in the world of neuroscience. It is a good read for anyone interested in the brain and conflict resolution.

Excerpt:

If [Emile Bruneau] succeeds in quantifying empathy, then perhaps, he says, there will finally be a way to measure whether or not conflict resolution programs are working. If a participant in such a program has "greater" empathic activity in his brain after a program, then, obviously, it’s working. If not, adjustments to the program would have to be made.

I don't think a brain scan will ever be able to gauge the efficacy if a conflict resolution program or technique, at least not in the foreseeable future. But not everyone agrees on the potential of brain scans.

Ten years ago, cognitive neuroscience was skeptical about trying to localize any kind of social process in the brain. The endeavor has been likened, by the harshest of critics, to a new wave of phrenology, the pseudoscientific idea that bumps on a skull indicate some kind of "brain map." The skeptics argue that such behaviors and processes, like empathy, can’t be pinpointed to one specific place—the processes