On Neuroscience and its impact on society…
Being a researcher in Neuroscience, I have always thought that the brain is a fascinating system to study. Emotions, thoughts, senses, we now know that everything going on around your body is fully and without any doubts controlled by this one and a half kilo organ.
This simple statement, which is the result of several centuries of research in the field have enormous consequences on aspects like ethics, religion and our self-consciouness.
Before going in the details, I want you to know that I am completely open to discussion and ready to peacefully argue about all that it is gonna get out of my mind.
Anyway, let me explain my point of view and why I think we underestimate the incoming role of Neuroscience in our society.
One of the thing which can be a big surprise for a new guy coming in the field is that most of the neuroscientist now thinks that everything is simply chemical and electricity. There is now a certain agreement that all that you commonly use to describe someone: personality, emotions, fear, thoughts, is encrypted, somewhere chemically in the brain. So in short the concept of a soul which could live apart from the body has more or less completely disapear among the experts.
Now I think a good example will show you how we came to this materialistic idea.
Before being one really famous figure in Neuroscience, Phineas Gage was an ordinary railroad worker in the nineteenth century until he survices one really peculiar accident: an iron rode went through the frontal part of his cortex (as you can see on the picture). But, unfortunately for Phineas, this become really interesting when you learn that his personality changed a lot. From an industrious worker, he became a surly, combative man, quite different from the person he was before. This case, now in every neuroscience handbook, clearly showed how personality can be localised in a certain part of the brain. This example and tons of others convinced us of the fact that, if there is a soul, it’s engraved in chemicals.
However, if you leave the close circle of scientists, if it’s not for religious reasons, you will see that most people refuse such an idea. Neuroscience is already pretty much unpopular because it tries to answear questions that we don’t want to face.
I could write down a simple list :
- If my personality is fully chemicals and electricity, where is my own freedom?
- When I die, all of this brain activity just go down and disapear? Well, then, it means that I simply disapear in a snap?
- So we can change someone personality using a few chemicals?
- What is Love then, a few drops of NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) secreted in the blood for about one year, and which make you brain goes crazy?
- What about a criminal? Should we consider something is malfunctioning in his brain?
All of those question are related to the freedom one. Everytime I start chatting about Neuroscience, all of those questions scare.
Sooner or later, we will start to answear them. It will be probably sooner than we expect: Neuroscience is now receiving massive funding because of the growing old population in western world and the importance of Alzeihmer and Parkinson diseases.
But people are not ready because it touches our very own privacy, our very own freedom.
June 26th, 200710:37 pm at
There have been several people in my life whose personalities have changed - sometimes drastically - due to life situations that had absolutely nothing to do with brain injuries.
I would argue that having an accident like that would cause most people to change their personality in some way - and I imagine many would change in precisely the way described. What else happened around this incident? You mention it was in the 19th century. Were they able to remove the rod? Was he compensated? Was he disfigured? Did his wife leave him?
Becoming angry/surly seems VERY likely when presented with ALL the facts.
Has this been compared to similar personality shifts that had nothing to do with physical changes?
Has this been compared to a sizable sample of people having the same area of the brain damaged? Do they all have the same personality shift? Or is it much more random and thus not likely a direct correlation? What about in other cultures?
Saying his personality changed in a particular way solely because of the accident damaging a specific portion of the brain seems to me like the worst kind of science: isolating one piece of information and using it as the basis of an entire theory.
June 27th, 200711:06 am at
Very constructive comment. I understand your point and maybe I will try to develop more mine in another post (after coming back from holidays) as you legitimately ask for details. I didn’t intend to resume one century of research in Neurosciences there but just mentioned how we started to look at the brain a certain way. The very exemple I quoted is still debated but the ideas it raised are now more than accepted (I think) since there is a lot more than a simple piece of evidence. I hope I will convince you in my next post.
August 6th, 200710:22 pm at
I never believe in “soul”, because my family is anti-religion for a long time now, because we are “rationnalist”
But still, I remember Descartes “I think so I am” (cogito ergo sum), and that’s right : if all my thoughts are just chemical and electric, there is something missing for me. But I can live with. I still believe, that I’m free, so I can change those chemical molecules and electric current to become and make what I want.
I have more “metaphysical” problem is when comes the “solutions & treatment”. To treat Alzeimer, you think we can find some chemical acting directly in brain. It sound nice but … we will also change personality.
So in my cartesian way of thinking, you wanted to cure your grand-mother, and you actually “produce” someone else : marvelous !
And the worst things come later, when everybody (or just a few) are convince by this fact. Scientist will create doping chemical, electric treatment, and so on. Actually, you can already buy “memory improvment drugs”, but they are relatively unsafe or just socially bad accepted.
We already know some other psychotrops (hashich, cocaine, opium ….) with their drawbacks.
Perhap’s we will find more “tuneable chemicals”, “miracle potion” and then ? we will live 100 years with all our brain but dependant of the potion. Perhaps not adicted, but if you succeed to solve a problem (like “how to debug windows”) with “clever portion”. The day after, when you will face the same problem, you will remember : “I know the solution, just take ‘clever potion’ “. And your entire life becomes dependant of the “potion”.
That’s for “chemical solutions”. We can also invent a “surgery solution” like : “you are too violent, we have to cut neurone #ZA459 and neurone #Thierry2, and you will become relax” ! (just pay 1000$ to solve your personality problems !). Please, don’t invent this one also.
in 2 worlds : I think neuro-technologies as dangerous as clonage.