Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
research monographs
The Bisected Brain
The Integrated Mind (with Joseph LeDoux)
textbooks
Fundamentals of Psychology
Functional Neuroscience (with Diana Steen and B. T. Volpe)
Psychology
Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience
(with R. B. Ivry and G. R. Mangun)
e d i t e d s c h o l a r ly wo r k s
Handbook of Psychobiology (with Colin Blakemore)
Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience
Perspectives in Memory Research
Neuropsychology: Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology (Vol. 2)
Extending Psychological Frontiers: Selected Works
of Leon Festinger (with Stanley Schachter)
The Cognitive Neurosciences
The New Cognitive Neurosciences
Cognitive Neurosciences III
D E D I C AT I O N
Acknowledgments
Preface
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xiii
Contents
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37
55
71
87
103
120
145
163
Endnotes
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Index
195
Acknowledgments
duce human cognition and self-awareness, must begin to address larger issues even though the ones we are working on are
large enough. The journey was long and required the help of
many ne and talented people, from the curious undergradustudents and postdoctoral fellows and, nally, ones professional
colleagues. Oh yes, I should never forget my talented family.
First the students. Back in the winter of 2002 my seminar on
brain science started to examine practical social and ethical issues that grew out of understanding the basics of brain development, brain aging, brain enhancements, the brain basis for
forming beliefs, and many other issues. Rich discussions gave
birth, ultimately to many of the ideas I have tried to capture in
this book. I am in their debt.
Subsequently, two Dartmouth students who had not taken
that course also became interested in ethical issues as viewed
from neuroscience. Jacob Waldbauer and I addressed the issue
of free will in the legal setting. He went off to work at Stanford
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than stimulate further research when people think that scientific discoveries will lead to practices that are deemed unethical. Such fears include concerns that researchers on aging
want to create eternal life, or that stem cell researchers are destroying potential human beings, or that preimplantation genetics is a return to Hitler. I wanted to debunk these fears, and I believed that by examining what we know from neuroscience I
could prove that certain ethical choices were warranted.
In fact, the scientist in me found this wasnt always the case.
While science has much to teach us, there are cases in which
the lessons of neuroscience point one way and I found myself,
often irrationally, leaning another. Take the example of research on aging and euthanasia. While euthanasia might seem
the logical, scientic answer to dealing with a person who no
longer has any capacity for mental cognition or conscious life as
a result of, say, dementia, I nd myself unable to accept the idea
that it is an acceptable solution in such cases. Is this how my
colleagues feel who, unlike me, oppose stem cell research?
Where do the hard-and-fast facts of neuroscience end, and
where does ethics begin? The place where these two elds intersect is the subject of this book. While my editorsand readersmay want me to rmly answer many of the neuroethical
questions I raise, I will not always be able to do that. What I
hope to do is to dene what is known, explore implications, and
reveal my own leanings based on my scientic experience. But
as I have discovered in thinking about this book, I have a sense
of ethics that is independent of rational science, and I hope not
only to explore where these two paths diverge but ultimately to
examine what that intrinsic set of ethics may be in all of us.
Could there be a universal ethic?
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have all the answers, but I hope to provide a few, and to provoke
Life-Span Neuroethics
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chapter one
e n t r a l t o m a n y o f t h e b i o e t h i ca l i s s u e s of
our time is the question, When should society confer
l i f e - s pa n n e u r o e t h i c s
This issue shows us how the eld of neuroethics goes beyond that of classic bioethics. When ethical dilemmas involve
the nervous system, either directly or indirectly, those trained in
the eld of neuroscience have something to say. They can peek
under the lid, as it were, and help all of us to understand what
the actual biological state is and is not. Is a brain present? Is it
functioning in any meaningful way?
Neuroscientists study the organ that makes us uniquely humanthe brain, that which enables a conscious life. They are
constantly seeking knowledge about what areas of the brain
sustain mental thought, parts of mental thought, or no thought.
So at rst glance, it might seem that neuroethicists could determine the moral status of an embryo or fetus based on the presence of the sort of biological material that can support mental
life and the sort that cannotin other words, whether the embryo has a brain that functions at a level that supports mental
activity. Modern brain science is prepared to answer this question, but while the neurobiology may be clear, neuroethics runs
into problems when it tries to impose rational, scientic facts on
moral and ethical issues.
The Path to Conscious Life
As soon as sperm meets egg, the embryo begins its mission:
divide and differentiate, divide and differentiate, divide and differentiate. The embryo starts out as the melding of these two
cells and must eventually become the approximately 50 trillion
cells that make up the human organism.1 There is no time to
loseafter only a few hours, three distinct areas of the embryo
are apparent. These areas become the endoderm, mesoderm,
and ectoderm, the initial three layers of cells that will differentiate to become all the organs and components of the human
body. The layer of the ectoderm gives rise to the nervous system.
c o n f e r r i n g m o r a l s tat u s o n a n e m b ryo
base of the portion of the embryo called the neural tube eventually gives rise to neurons and other cells of the central nervous
system, while an adjacent portion of the embryo called the neural crest eventually becomes cells of the peripheral nervous system (the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord). The cavity of
the neural tube gives rise to the ventricles of the brain and the
central canal of the spinal cord, and in week 4 the neural tube
develops three distinct bulges that correspond to the areas that
will become the three major divisions of the brain: forebrain,
midbrain, and hindbrain. The early signs of a brain have begun
to form.
Even though the fetus is now developing areas that will become specic sections of the brain, not until the end of week 5
l i f e - s pa n n e u r o e t h i c s
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and the result is a stew of passions, beliefs, and stubborn, illogical opinion. Based on the specic question being asked, I myself
have different answers about when moral status should be conbiomedical research, I nd the fourteen-day cutoff employed by
researchers to be a completely acceptable practice. However, in
judging a fetus one of us, and granting it the moral and legal
rights of a human being, I put the age much later, at twentythree weeks, when life is sustainable and that fetus could, with
a little help from a neonatal unit, survive and develop into a
thinking human being with a normal brain. This is the same
age at which the Supreme Court has ruled that the fetus becomes protected from abortion.
As a father, I have a perceptual reaction to the Carnegie developmental stages of a fetus: the image of Stage 23, when the
fetus is approximately eight weeks old, suggests a small human
being. Until that stage, it is difcult to tell the difference between
a pig embryo and a human embryo. But thenbingoup pops
l i f e - s pa n n e u r o e t h i c s
the beginning shape of the human head, and it looks unmistakably like one of us. Again, this is around eight weeks, more than
two thirds into the rst trimester. I am reacting to a sentiment
that wells up in me, a perceptual moment that is stark, dening,
and real. And yet, at the level of neuroscientic knowledge, it
could easily be argued that my view is nonsensical. The brain at
Carnegie Stage 23, which has slowly been developing from
roughly the fteenth day, is hardly a brain that could sustain any
serious mental life. If a grown adult had suffered massive brain
damage, reducing the brain to this level of development, the patient would be considered brain dead and a candidate for organ
donation. Society has dened the point at which an inadequately
functioning brain no longer deserves moral status. If we look at
the requirements for brain death, and examine how they compare with the developmental sequence, we see that the brain of
a third-trimester baby, or perhaps even a second-trimester baby,
could be so analyzed. So why would I draw a line at Carnegie
Stage 23 when the neuroscientic knowledge makes it clear that
the brain at this stage is not ready for prime-time life?
I am trying to make a neuroethical argument here, and I cannot avoid a gut reaction. Of course, it is my gut reaction, and
others may not have it at all. In recognizing it within me, however, I am able to appreciate how difcult these decisions are for
many people. Even though I cant imagine, and do not have, a
gut reaction to seeing a fourteen-day-old blastocyst, an entity the
size of the dot of an i on this page, that dot may serve as a stimulus to the belief system of those who hold that all fertilized eggs
are worthy of our respect. Still, I would argue that assigning
equivalent moral status to a fourteen-day-old ball of cells and to
a premature baby is conceptually forced. Holding them to be the
same is a sheer act of personal belief.
c o n f e r r i n g m o r a l s tat u s o n a n e m b ryo
There is, they argue, no clear place to draw a line after the earliest formation of the organism, and so there can be no stark division between the moral standing of nascent human life and that
of more mature individuals.
From Monitoring Stem Cell Research,
the Presidents Council on Bioethics, 2004
Obviously there is a point of view that life begins at conception. The continuity argument is that a fertilized egg will go on
to become a person and therefore deserves the rights of an individual, because it is unquestionably where a particular individuals life begins. If one is not willing to parse the subsequent
events of development, then this becomes one of those arguments you cant argue with. Either you believe it or you dont.
While those who argue this point try to suggest that anyone who
values the sanctity of human life must see things this way, the
from the Catholic Church, the American religious right, and
even many atheists and agnostics. On the other side, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, many Christians, and other atheists and agnostics
do not believe it. Certain Jews and Muslims believe that the embryo deserves to be assigned the moral status of a human after forty days of development. Many Catholics believe the same,
and many have written to me expressing those views based on
their own reading of church history.
When we examine the issue of brain death, that is when life
ends, it also begins to become clear that something else is at
work here: our own brains need to form beliefs. If we examine
how a common set of accepted rational, scientic facts can lead
to different moral judgments, we see the need to consider what
inuences these varying conclusions, and we can begin to extri-
fact is that this just isnt so. This view comes, to a large extent,
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human being.
During a discussion of stem cell research that took place
while I was serving on President Bushs bioethics council, I
search to a Home Depot. You dont walk into a Home Depot and
see thirty houses. You see materials that need architects, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to create a house. An egg
and a sperm are not a human. A fertilized embryo is not a humanit needs a uterus, and at least six months of gestation and
development, growth and neuron formation, and cell duplication to become a human. To give an embryo created for biomedical research the same status even as one created for in vitro fertilization (IVF), let alone one created naturally, is patently
absurd. When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the
paper is not 30 Houses Burn Down. It is Home Depot Burned
Down.
Many other compelling arguments about the course of the
natural reproductive process should cause one to doubt that
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moral status of the embryo. Both these cases raise another ethi-
13
ated in a petri dish for the purpose of harvesting stem cells for
studies and, ultimately, if research that has recently been
thwarted is successful, for use in the treatment of such diseases
being. Does this clump of cells deserve the protections of a human being? Stem cell researchers adhere to a cutoff of fourteen
days, before which they do not consider life to have begun. The
embryo has not begun to develop a nervous system, the biological structure that sustains and interprets the world in order to
generate, maintain, and modify the very concept of human dignity.
An intention argument can also be made for spare embryos
created from IVF. Parents undergoing fertility treatment may
create many embryos so as to ensure one viable embryo that
takes hold when implanted. It is not the intention of the parents
that every embryo created be a child. After natural sexual intercourse, an estimated 60 to 80 percent of all embryos generated
through the union of egg and sperm spontaneously abort
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many without our knowledge. So if we use IVF to create embryos and then implant only a select few, arent we doing what
nature does? We have simply replaced natures techniques with
modern scientic techniques for selecting the strongest embryos.
Do extrauterine embryos deserve the moral status of a human being? Do they even deserve to be considered the same as
implanted embryos? I say not. It seems to me that the intentions
of parents or donors to either create a human baby or not create
a human baby must have some role in the potentiality argument. In other words, if we create cells for research purposes,
and never intend to create a human, or if a parent creates embryos so that one can take, do we have a moral responsibility
to grow those other embryos into human beings? Of course not.
Intention is an interesting ethical concept that we seem to
understand intrinsically. We see it everywhere; save for cases of
recklessness and negligence, intention is a clear marker of guilt
in our legal system. Crimes are weighed, guilt is determined,
and punishment is meted out based on intention: charges of
manslaughter and murder in the third, second, and rst degrees are all determined by the level of intention of the killer.
The same goes for determining whether crimes are misdemeanors or felonies.
Is intention, which appears to be a guiding principle of
ethics, hard-wired into our brains? Research on the theory of
mind suggests that it is. In fact, intention may be one of the
dening characteristics of the human species. A crucial part of
being human is to have a theory about the intentions of others
in relation to oneself. If I have a theory about how I relate to you
and you to me, a huge part of it is based on what I view our intentions toward each other to be.
Knowing thisthat our brains are wired to form inten-
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may have intended for you to become a doctor. Should you feel
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marker is the formation of the nervous system; however, different dates are argued for this, from the formation of the primitive streak (fourteen days) to the ability to respond to noxious
stimuli (twenty-three weeks).
As I mentioned earlier, fourteen days is the age many neuroscientists accept as the beginning of human life worthy of moral
status because it marks the beginning of brain formation. Many
neuroscientists and some bioethicists believe that distinctively
human life begins later, when the brain starts functioning, because consciousness depends on the brains ability to operate. Of
course, there is already a slight hitch in that argument. If human
life begins at consciousness, we must rst dene consciousness.
Is it the point at which a fetus has a nervous system, the potential for a brain? Is it the point at which the brain is fully formed
in the fetus? Or is it ten years into Freudian analysis? Here is
where neuro logic falls short yet again. Despite all the groundbreaking research that has been done in neuroscience, and all
the discoveries that continue to be made on how the mechanics
of the brain work, we still have no real understanding of what
exactly secures consciousness in an adult. We can agree that a
massive cerebral hemorrhage leading to coma results in the
lack of a conscious state. We know that there is no self-conscious
state in those with advanced Alzheimers. We know that we continue to develop levels of self-consciousness throughout life
from infancy to adulthoodand that this is traceable not only to
education but also to underlying brain development. We can
show in clever studies that the brain of a six-week-old baby is
conscious of complex concepts. And weve all observed that babies can be aware of a parent entering a room, and of loud
sounds. But the consciousness we observe in a six-minute-old
baby is certainly different from that of the person reading this
book.
c o n f e r r i n g m o r a l s tat u s o n a n e m b ryo
A tradition in medicine is to treat all human tissue with respectwhether working with cadavers in medical school or
handling cells on a slide in a biology lab. I believe in this. But I
do not believe it extends to granting any human cell the same
moral status as a human being. You may be looking with respect at a tissue under the microscope but not considering it
sort of a human. It is necessary, therefore, to establish a
marker for granting the human embryo an intermediate moral
status. Critics say that choosing a date or a developmental
marker is a capricious way to determine the beginning of life.
But I would argue that beginnings and ends to life are more often capricious than logical. It is the same as determining brain
Perspectives
17
death, but on the other side of lifes scale. We must make the decision, because not to make it is illogical.
The moment life began for any individual is a simple issue
fair, in that we are looking at a person and assessing when his or
her life began. Again, a house may have been conceived at
Home Depot, but a Home Depot is not hundreds of houses. The
choice of a time at which to assign moral status to an embryo or
fetus is much more complicated. Looking at it from the neuroscience perspective, if we believe life begins with a sentient being, we push the beginning of life ahead much further than do
those who consider that life begins on a cellular level. My son
would argue that it doesnt begin until youve made your rst defensive tackle; but certainly the argument can be made that even
a ve- or six-month fetus cannot survive on its own, because its
nervous system is not fully developed.
Clearly, I believe that a fertilized egg, a clump of cells with
no brain, is hardly deserving of the same moral status we confer
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chapter 2
Ignorance of mortality is a comfort. A man dont have that comfort, hes the only living thing that conceives of death, that knows
man sometimes he can keep a tight mouth on it .l.l.
Big Daddy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams
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We have more and more stories like this because not only
are we living longer, but we are living long enough to experience, either rsthand or through caregiving, the troubling realities of watching a body stay healthy while a mind deteriorates.
Dementia, in all its forms, can create occasionally amusing stories. But as anyone knows who has had a loved one suffering
from dementiaor its most severe form, Alzheimersit is
painful to watch someone lose mental faculties.
The absence of cognitive power in an otherwise healthy
adult is disturbing. The person we once knew becomes not just
forgetful but seemingly lost in another time or world, no longer
able to carry out the daily necessities of living. He or she seems
to regress before our eyes, unable to go to the toilet alone or to
eat unassisted. While it is delightful to watch a child develop
and learn skills, there is no joy in watching someone regress.
Most painful is that a person undergoing this decline seems to
have a diminishing recognition of others as well as, in the advanced stages, a diminishing awareness of the loss of abilities.
It is as if self-consciousness goes when the brain loses mental
faculties, perhaps as a sort of defense mechanism. I touched on
the question in Chapter 1: Can neuroscience tell us at what moment self-consciousness ends? Not yet, and maybe never, but
there are some questions we can grapple with.
Many thorny neuroethical issues arise when it comes to aging, but as far as Im concerned, one issue is a waste of time: the
concern over aging research and the prolonging of the life span
as a way to seek immortality. Beyond Therapy, a report issued by
the Presidents Council on Bioethics, contained a chapter on aging that charged that researchers had primarily this goal. Greatly frustrating several of us on the committee, the chapter characterized a bioethical issue as the risk that the individual
benets of prolonging the life span would turn into society-wide
t h e ag i n g b r a i n
Tragedy of the Commons, in which the sought-for gains to individuals are undone or worse, owing to the social consequences
of granting them to everyone. Contemplating these concerns in
advance forces us to consider carefully the sort of world we
wish to build, or to avert.1 This is tilting at windmills. If our
forefathers had stood on the shores of England contemplating
all of the things that could go wrong if they were to get on a boat
and try to settle in a new land, wed all still be speaking the
Queens English. Science is forward motion and discovery. Humans adapt to new information and knowledge, and the beauty
of our brains is the capacity for rational thought and deductive
reasoning, which will allow us to put that knowledge to good
use. The best aging research is motivated by the desire that
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people lead a healthy mental and physical life until death occurs. It is not motivated by the naked desire simply to prolong
physical life.
with declining mental health looms large for the younger, active mind. As Tennessee Williams points out, to be human is to
live with the awareness that we will die. Fear of mortality can
serve a purpose when it makes us embrace life and squeeze all
we can from it. But for the most part, fear of aging has given
rise to a multibillion-dollar industry: antiwrinkle creams, gyms,
and plastic surgery to fend off the effects of time. Many argue
that our youth-obsessed culture has no respect for how its elders look or what they say. Who would want to grow old gracefully in such a culture, let alone face some of the ungraceful optionsassisted living, incontinence, and dementia?
Fear of growing old may be a natural fear, an extension of
the fear of mortality, but neuroscience suggests another perspective. When it comes to the brain, what we dont have, we
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t h e ag i n g b r a i n
ing life.
How Aging Works in the Brain
Neuroscientists attempt to understand why some people remain cognizant into their eighties and nineties while others develop dementia or Alzheimers disease has taught us much
about the normally and abnormally aging brain. It turns out that
huge genetic components and lifestyle issues are involved in
healthy aging. Every adults brain is in some stage of deterioration. It is the differing rates of decline that lead to differences in
mental capacity during aging.
Normal Aging
ness, and what that knowledge means for decisions about end-
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puter connected to a high-speed Ethernet, while a neuron without myelin is like a computer connected to the Internet via a
landlineand we all know the frustration of going from DSL to
dial-up.
But why do all these changes occur? What causes aging in
the brain? We have some well-supported hypotheses that fall
into two categories: error theory (over time, errors in our
genes, damage to our cells, and other deleterious effects add up
to aging) and programmed theory (our genes are programmed
to age). Normal aging is most likely explained by a mixture of
both. Either way, there can be little doubt that genes play a large
role in the aging process, and no amount of exercise, tofu, or
other panaceas will ward off for long the genetic blueprint under
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that wreak havoc with the cells in our brain and the rest of our
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t h e ag i n g b r a i n
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with disorientation of the mind. But what was the former presi-
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scious, aware that its mother has walked into a room. Yet the
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It is not how old you are but how you are old which matters.
Chinese proverb
t h e ag i n g b r a i n
host of ethical issuesjust as does the moral status of a developing embryo. One can see the same kind of question arising
regarding the disease of aging brains: Once conferred, should
moral status ever be withdrawn? In our era, we know that it is
our brain that sustains, manages, and generates our sense of
self, of personhood, our sense of others, and our humanness.
The brain is a complex organ, like the heart, kidneys, and liver.
But when we think of those organs, we dont get romantic or
concerned about them as entities unto themselves. When they
become diseased, we want new ones and place our names on
transplant lists. Assuming it were not impossible, would we
want to have brain transplants to save demented, deteriorating
brains?
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paired. This simple fact makes it clear that you are your brain.
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Brain Enhancement
pa r t i i
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chapter three
Two Yalies have decided to have a baby. They consider in vitro fertilization (IVF) because a new assay can optimize their
rally. They didnt get into Harvard, and they want to give their
child a better chance by selecting the best of each of their
genes. It is not out of the realm of possibility; they may be able
to do just that within the next fty years.
Who among us would not do whatever we could to ensure
our children were perfect? Who wouldnt want their kids to be
like those in Garrison Keillors fantasy world of Lake Wobegon,
where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking,
and all the children are above average? In America we are all
raised with the deep belief that anything is possible and children can become anything they put their minds to. We all hope
to provide a good home, loving parenting, quality schooling,
sound nutrition, the right toys, and a stimulating environment,
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brain enhancement
hoping the right environmental factors will help shape the baby
brain. While there is little question that proper attention to childrens education can play a key role in their development, a desire is growing to use advances in reproductive technologies to
pick a better, smarter embryo from the start.
The specter of designer babies is unsettling on one level, but
old hat on another. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists
have been studying mate selection for years. People seek the
smartest, most beautiful mate possible. We like blonds, or we
dont; we like tall and lanky or heavyset, or smart, or cheerful,
or dark and mysterious, or anything else. By realizing what our
preferences are, and by sorting through everyone we meet with
these criteria before deciding with whom we will conceive a
child, we already engage in serious genetic screening. Indeed,
this natural sort of genetic screening is powerful and has
been going on since the beginning of mankind.
Yet the modern technique of IVF, which allows for sex and
trait selection, changes all of this. We move from selection by
interpersonal preference to manufacturing and product development. Parents can now pick one embryo over another, with
the hope that their choice has maximized their chances for a
dream child. No more Fordsonly BMWs. Right now, anyone
can use Google to search for IVF, nd dozens of clinics, search
their sites for traits offeredsuch as education level, hair color,
and heightand then come up with eggs with the desired set of
characteristics. In short, any number of practices are in place
right now that have as their objective the betterment or enhancement of our offspring, either directly or indirectly. Add to
this the possibility that we might use modern techniques to
change the very genetic structure of a chosen embryo, and the
problem appears to grow.
Should parents be allowed to genetically engineer their chil-
we dissect it, the question really has three parts: First, is it scientically possible to select for intelligence genes? Second, if
it is possible, are genes really the be-all and end-all predictor of
a person? And nally, should we be calling the shots in the petri
dish or letting nature take its course? The problem is, most people jump to debate the nal question without considering the
implications of the answers to the rst two.
So lets begin with the question, Is it possible? Steven Pinker and Michael Sandel, both of Harvard, debate regularly on
the likelihood, advisability, and practicalities of enhancement
through genetic selection with PGD (pregenetic diagnosis) and
other means. Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist, and Sandel,
a moral and political philosopher, are the perfect match. Nei-
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brain enhancement
ic discovery.
Of course, that is not to say we shouldnt consider a defensive approach, considering certain possible ill effects before
new biomedical discoveries are put into practice. It is only to assert that to squelch scientic advancement before it happens,
out of fear, is a mistake. As for the specic questions about genetic selection and hyperagency, if selecting for intelligence,
temperament, and other psychological factors is on the horizon,
we should begin now to think about the social implications of
having such power. I begin with the facts and ctions of this
topicwhat is real, what is probable, and what is unlikely.
Probabilities of Preimplantation Genetics
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analysis were carried out in the United States. PGD, the process
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brain enhancement
Currently, PGD is mainly used by couples seeking information on chromosomal abnormalities; the genes responsible for a
host of diseases, including Huntingtons and myotonic dystrophy, can now be detected. About 20 percent of these cases concern the identication of such Mendelian disorders as TaySachs and cystic brosis. Many couples prefer to use PGD
rather than amniocentesis or other methods, to avoid terminating a later pregnancy.
Many of the abnormalities screened for are sex-linked disorders that may be known to run in the couples families. One of
the rst tasks of the procedure has therefore been to screen sets
of embryos for females if the family had, say, X-chromosomelinked diseases such as adrenal leukodystrophy. Thus it is no
surprise, perhaps, that PGD can be used to select for sex, and
the ethics of using it in this way is one of the hottest debates in
the eld. Using PGD to detect horrendous disease seems acceptable to most of us. While large numbers of people resist any
tampering with any embryo, avoiding giving birth to a child
with a lethal gene is generally viewed as a laudable goal. It is
when PGD is used for parents mere personal preference that
ethicists and people of many different moral persuasions become concerned. But I am getting ahead of the story. Science is
making still other things possible.
Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, believes the possibility of using PGD to identify more complex,
polygenetic diseases is only ve to seven years away. Collins observes that one of the ways to do it is by comparing the DNA of
people who harbor a particular disease with that of people who
dont. By comparing a certain chromosomesay, chromosome
7one could perhaps nd a difference in gene expression in
only one base pair out of a thousand.
What is so riveting about this possibility, says Collins, is that
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This means that when you look at a segment of a chromosome, you are looking at a basically unbroken segment that
came from our common ancestors. This fact becomes very useto looking at all 10 million SNPs presents itself. One can establish a gold standard of segments or stretches of DNA that represents the whole genomethese are the hapmaps, stretches of
DNA where the SNPs correlate with each other.
Francis Collins, who reviewed these developments recently
at one of our bioethics council meetings, went on to observe:
But it will become almost immediately tempting to use the information anyway, even if you dont understand the biological
basis, because having learned in a research study that this particular haplotype is correlated with this particular phenotype,
you could then imagine applying that prospectively.
And thats another reason, I think, why PGD applications of
traits will get talked about in ten years, because even though we
wont understand the biology, well have the genetic ability to
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ment accounts for a substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits.
The rst law. In the studies that determined the rst law, a
behavioral trait ranged from IQ to aggressiveness to the number of hours of TV watched per day to the amount of cigarette
smoking, and so on. Research found all these behavioral traits
to have some heritability. In fact, this rst law even accounts for
heritability of such behavioral traits as high school graduation
rate, criminal conviction, and divorce.6 Behavioral traits studied
by geneticists can be loosely grouped in three categories: cognitive abilities, personality, and psychopathology7all having
some heritability.
But whether our Yalie couple can truly rely on their DNA to
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get a smarter embryo is doubtful. One of the most widely studied behavioral traits is general cognitive ability, or IQ. An elegant analysis of more than 111 genetic studies of familial re10,000 pairs of twins, revealed the heritability of IQ to be about
50 percent.8 The IQ of identical twins was the most highly correlated (.86), and the correlation of parents IQs with those of
their adopted children was the lowest (.20).
Other cognitive abilities, such as verbal ability and spatial
ability, show a strong genetic inuence, similar to that of IQ.9
Developmental comparisons yield the nding that the heritability of general cognitive ability increases from infancy (20 percent) to childhood (40 percent) to adolescence (50 percent) to
adulthood (60 percent).10 In other words, the older you get, the
more your IQ resembles that of your biological parents. The
nding that heritability increases with age stands in stark opposition to the common notion that environmental inuence increases throughout life.
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sic temperaments guide how they might feel, which in turn be-
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shared environments, an unexplained variance of about 50 percent remains for differences in behavioral heritability among
siblings.18 The part of the environment shared among siblings
does not matter (the second law), but what does seem to matter
is the part of the environment not shared between siblings.
Here, the peers of one child in a family may be positive, but
those of another are not, and these two situations have a huge
effect on the development and maturity of each child. Evidence
supports this claim by showing that peoples accents almost always resemble those of their childhood peers and not those of
their parents. Children of immigrant families usually acquire
not only the language of their adopted homeland but also the
culture.19 Studies also show that childhood smoking and criminal tendencies depend far more on the inuence of peer groups
than of parents.20
Still, peer groups alone do not account for the 50 percent of
variance in behavioral outcomes. Indeed, one study suggests
that the nonshared environment accounts for only 2 percent of
that variance.21 So what would account for the other 48 percent?
Erik Turkheimer and Mary Waldron of the University of Virginia
propose that it is the unsystematic, idiosyncratic and serendipitous events such as accidents, illnesses or other traumas.22
Steven Pinker believes that the unexplained variance may be
due to chance events in brain assembly and fatein the sense
of uncontrollable fortune.23 How are the Yalies going to control
that? They cant. As the bumper sticker says, Shit happens.
So, overall, the interaction between genes and environment
makes us what we are. Genes are the scaffolding, but the ne
detail is tuned by interaction with the environment; a pure genetic description of the human species does not describe a human being. So even if we can select genes for an embryo, a human beings complex level of organization is as distinct from
and sperm.
Should We Do It?
Here we are at the heart of the ethical question, with some
of the information necessary to make an informed decision. The
stunning advances in genetics, and with hapmaps and other
techniques, indicate that genetic enhancement will be possible
relatively soon. If we were able to insert a gene that produced a
more intelligent human being, or simply identify and select the
embryo with the best genes for intelligence, would there be ethical reasons not to do so? We might, like Pinker, simply believe
it will never come to pass. Many reasons, ranging from the
specics of neural development to distaste for unnatural
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110.9, in Delhi, India 116, in China 117, in Cuba 118, in the Caucasus nations of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, the sex ratio
has reached as high as 120.24
In China, for example, it is projected that if the current sex
ratio holds, there will be 15 million more men than women of
marriageable age in twenty years. The concern is that when sex
ratios are this unbalanced, the larger social effect may be a
more aggressive society. Without the socializing inuences of
marriage and family, the men left out in the cold could turn
their frustration to other, perhaps violent pursuits. Thus, what
starts as an individual decision, a preference for males, winds
up a social concern.
We are social animals. We have gured out how to live,
evolve, and prosper within the constraints of a natural world.
The seemingly innocent changing of sex ratios affects our social
organization and our minds, so that the larger social implications of what one might have thought was a purely personal
ethical issue become apparent. It is a horrible thought, but it
may be that we no longer have the freedom to make such personal judgments when such a huge public cost may result. It is
sort of the biomedical equivalent of being environmentally sensitive. It doesnt matter if one sailor throws garbage off a yacht.
But it matters big-time if a million yacht owners do it. The modern sailor has learned this and rarely, if ever, throws trash into
the ocean.
Still, applying this sort of social awareness to problems like
sexual selection is fraught with dangers. Personal autonomy
and choice in birth decisions are also moral and ethical issues
in imagining a public policy on such matters. Yet a sensible response seems to be emerging from the professional communities that manage this aspect of our reproductive technologies.
Interestingly, many physicians and health care providers have
their own rules. They are making the rules as they go along,
with no real guidance other than their own sense of ethics. Microsort, for example, a small biomedical company that provides
sperm through new techniques that give a high probability of
one sex or the other being produced, will not provide its services for rst-born children, although it will for second-born children, using the rationale of family balancing.
Rules like these are sensible and show that we do respond to
new technologies and abilities with a reasonable approach. But
more signicantly, we see that those closest to new technologies
immediately respond with good sense. The greater social good
prevails. This becomes even clearer when you consider the
larger issue of sexual selection and the current social response
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to biasing births toward males throughout the world. Private decisions compound and produce a public problem. What seems
like a personal decision on sexual selection turns out to have a
turbed and we begin to modulate our private decisions.
Perspectives
In an essay in the Atlantic Monthly, Sandel quotes James
Watson, the molecular biologist and codiscoverer of the structure of DNA: If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease, he recently told the Times of London. The lower 10 percent who really have difculty, even in elementary school,
whats the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, Well,
poverty, things like that. It probably isnt. So Id like to get rid of
that, to help the lower 10 percent. Overall, Watson believes
that genetic enhancements should be a matter of free choice. As
Sandel writes, A few years ago Watson stirred controversy by
saying that if a gene for homosexuality were discovered, a
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large social impact. When that occurs, our social sense is per-
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woman should be free to abort a fetus that carried it. When his
remark provoked an uproar, he replied that he was not singling
out gays, but asserting a principle: women should be free to
abort fetuses for any reason of genetic preferencefor example, if the child would be dyslexic, or lacking musical talent, or
too short to play basketball.25
Not only do we have one of the worlds leading biologists advocating the use of genetic technologies for almost any reason
possible, so long as it is the mothers choice, but we have the active use of sex selection in nations throughout the world
something that I have no doubt will become routine at the chic
clinics of the worlds afuent, for a growing number of reasons.
In other words, a form of eugenics is back, the chilling
process of shaping and choosing the genetic future. The modern
argument is that although the Nazis gave eugenics a bad name
by imposing their genetic ideas, if such choices can be made
freely, we should move ahead to design our own future. After all,
such an option is our own invention, humans using their brainpower to see into the future and to make some choices about
what we should have, as ways of dealing with disease and improved design. One of my former mentors, Robert L. Sensheimer, the distinguished molecular biologist and former chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, commented
over thirty-ve years ago, The old eugenics would have required a continual selection for breeding of the t, and a culling
of the unt .l.l. The new eugenics would permit in principle the
conversion of all the unt to the highest genetic level. 26
Sandel has commented on all of this, and none of it pleases
him. He sees life in a much larger context, the context of an
evolved society that has produced many of its ner, more appealing aspects by dealing with and accommodating the imperfect, the awed, the unexpected. He likes to quote the theolo-
confer on their children, the unbidden and the transformative. Unbidden love is the kind conferred no matter what the
baby is or becomes. Transformative love is the kind parents
provide to help their children be the best they can be. By moving to a model whereby children are mere products of design,
the essential concept of unbidden love falls by the wayside.
I share a certain amount of the caution Sandel urges upon us
as we stumble forward to the future. Massive social experiments, supposedly based on sound science and understanding
of human nature, have profoundly failed, from Communism to
Nazism. Tampering with the evolved human fabric is playing
with re, to be sure. And yet I also rmly believe we can handle
it. In the end, we humans are good at adapting to what works,
gian William May, who talks about the two kinds of love parents
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what is good and benecial, and, in the end, jettisoning the unwise, the intemperate, the silly and self-aggrandizing behaviors
that will always be present in certain proportions in our species.
with the advent of genetic engineering weve become involved
in some kind of massive dehumanizing effort. But what is it to
dehumanize? We are talking about a practice that exists only
because of the very nature of being human: to discover, to
think, to gure out new ways to do things. How, then, can using
this very human skill, using the brain, the thing that makes us
human, be accused of dehumanizing? Isnt it the ultimate human skill? Or is genetic engineering more like the atomic
bomb? Sure we humans built it, but we humans are dead set on
never using it again.
We are capable of great intellectual work, and of taking action. We discover new things all the time, and once they present
themselves to us we adapt to the new information, consider the
repercussions, and move on. In my view, the fear of hypera-
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chapter four
Imagine that it is 2008 and youre watching a Final Four college basketball game. Three seconds are left on the clock, and
Joe is taking a penalty shot. Super Joe has transplanted genes
that provide him superior cardiac capabilities, and a motor cortex, which controls his hands and arms, that was articially enlarged with pharmacological agents. He is considering not a
Nike sponsorship but offers to wear the logos of Wyeth and
HoffmannLa Roche, touting the benets of their neuroenhancing drugs. The game is basically over because Super Joe makes
the shot 99.9 percent of the time.
Who would you rather have the opportunity to make the winning shotNatural Joe, who has the DNA his parents provided
him and practices his heart out twelve hours a day but only
makes the shot 80 percent of the time, or an enhanced Super
Joe? Will we be rewarding skills developed by determination
and hard work or by genetic manipulation and enhancement?
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the process and undercuts the whole point of the activity. Somehow, enhancing a physical skill has more of a social impact than
enhancing a mental skill. If we allow physical enhancements,
whole logic of competition would be neutralized. It would become a freak show.
So something else seems to be at work when we talk about
enhancing the body as opposed to the mind. Its okay to help
failing memory or even to enhance normal memory: this is simply tending to the infrastructure of mental life, not changing
mental life itself. Granted, we dont question exercising to stay
in shape and have a healthy cardiovascular system. Yet tampering with the body to produce skills beyond the normal bodily capacities strikes us as unfair and as cheating. One has only to
read the news accounts of the 2004 Olympics to see the universal rejection of the idea. We won fair and square! is the cry of
sports fans and most athletes everywhere.
To further explore the ethics of physical enhancements, it is
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important to understand the neuroscience behind certain expert skills. The battle for fairness in acquiring new motor skills,
whether for athletics or music or dance, has always been
viewed against the backdrop that some people are naturally
better at sports, music, or dance. Some would say Michael Jordan was born to be as good as he is. Sure, he practiced, but he
started with a higher skill level. It was in his genes. Other psychologists maintain that practice will ameliorate deciencies
due to genetic forces. Now, however, as if that wasnt bad
enough, along come new ways to advance training, to make superstars as the result of research on the brain. Pop a pill and
then practice and you will both be better and acquire the desired skill faster. Whats wrong with that? If no health risks are
associated with the treatment, why not live better through
chemistry? It doesnt have to be in your genes. With the pill, or
the more extreme gene transplant, you too can now be a
Michael Jordan!
Neuroscientic work is clearly revealing a number of mechanisms that explain how learning and performance are both
generated and facilitated in the brain. With knowledge of these
mechanisms, it becomes easy to imagine how they could be manipulated and biased through pharmacological interventions to
help enhance normal practice.
Before reviewing the new drug-training combinations that
might make it easier for Johnny to learn to be a quarterback,
lets examine the role extensive practice can have in turning
third-string Johnny into rst-string Johnnywithout drugs. It is
important to grasp the complex and important way practice interacts with the developing as well as the fully developed brain.
Well also look at even stronger claimsclaims that a good psychologist and a lot of training can turn anyone into anything. As
you will see, some scientists believe there is no need to cheat
Hall, even if you began the race well behind the genetic starting
line.
Practicing Your Way to Expertise
Becoming an expert athlete or musician takes hours of practice no matter what else you bring to the task. Being an accomplished basketball or violin player are states of mind and body
that seem truly special and unique. But is it just the amount of
practice that separates the good athletes and musicians from
the great ones? Or are there some inherited traits inuencing
either body or brain that predispose certain people to athleticism or musical skill?
Richard Ivry of the University of California at Berkeley is a
the system with drugs. Practice alone may get you to Carnegie
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The study of eminent performers across many careers leads to the startling conclusion: Elite performance results from intense, demanding
practice, and those who excel are more willing than their peers to engage creatively in this regimen for countless hours. It is their drive that
produces talent. If young Michael Jordans interests had been taken up
with physics at a young age, I have little doubt that he would have succeeded admirably in that eld. A Nobel Prize might have been the alternative to his six championship trophies.
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view to me:
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skill level in the task at hand. This goes for anything from playing the piano to rolling cigars. The more you practice, the better
you are, and it is practice that predicts expertise.
While these studies are impressive, they have a basic aw, a
aw that repeats itself in so much research: a confusion of correlation with causation. According to Ericssons reports, children who practiced the piano more throughout life wound up
better at it; but it might well have been the case that the children practiced more because they were better at it in the rst
placetherefore they found it more reinforcing to practice.
This self-selection of groups makes it difcult to understand
these issues in a causative context. It is likely the case that innate capacities and practice work in some kind of combination.
One recent study underlines this point beautifully. Many expert musicians have absolute, or perfect, pitch, which allows
them to correctly name the note (for example, A-sharp or C) of
any tone they hear, or to sing the specic tone when asked to
spontaneously produce that note. When the brains of musicians
with absolute pitch were imaged, researchers found the greatest activation in an area called the left planum temporale. The
fascinating aspect of absolute pitch is that it appears to have
both a developmental and a genetic basis. The development of
absolute pitch depends on a critical period; if musical instruction does not begin early (before the age of 7), absolute pitch is
unlikely to develop.1 A study by Siamak Baharloo and his colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco conrmed this idea but also showed that early onset of musical
training does not guarantee the development of absolute pitch.
Baharloo and his colleagues argued that concomitant genetic
factors were also necessary for absolute pitch to develop. In
2000, Baharloo reported that absolute pitch runs in families and
is likely passed down through genes.2 Thus it seems that perfect
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the genes Stern was given, when combined with hours of practice, allowed him to become expert. Is the site of the genetic
component an altered brain region, something different and
brain that could better process music, or a body with more dexterous ngers? Did Jordans genes give him a brain with better
spatial abilities, or a body with bigger muscles with more red
blood cells? Is the extra edge possessed by Stern and Jordan
found in the brain or in the body, or in some combination of the
two?
Clearly, practice plays a huge role in becoming an expert at
anything. Yet if other factors inuence the basic biology of a person, then its possible to think about how pharmacological
agents could work at the brain sites responsible for the biological edge a person might possess. That, I think, is what we are
facing, and not only does it raise the specter of a never-ending
competitive arms race that would undercut the very value of
learning these skills, but it also leads us into the uncharted wa-
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ters of possible deleterious long-term consequences to the physical nervous system. Lets see how this would play out in athletics.
An elite athlete is one who is able to excel above the rest because of superior training and innate ability. Many great athletes have reached their elite status at least in part because of
their genetic good fortune in having a larger amount of fasttwitch muscle ber, abnormal leg-to-torso ratio, larger or
smaller body size, or red blood cells with an increased ability to
carry oxygen. There is well-recognized evidence that superathleteslike Lance Armstrong, the ve-time winner of the Tour
de Franceas opposed to just good athletes, are physically
unique.3 Not only does Armstrong have the right muscle composition, he most likely has a different upper-to-lower bone length
ratio in his legs, allowing him to bring greater torque to each
pump of his feet and thereby propel his bike a little faster. Also,
he most likely has a different brain. Elite athletes might have
superior spatial abilities, for example, and specialized brain areas for coordinating body movement with greater easewhich
might also contribute to their superior performance.
No one really laments the great biologically enhancedthat
is, naturally enhancedathletes, who seem to have a head start.
In some sense they are biological anomalies, almost freaks. Yet
since there are many of them, let them battle it out. Great athletes who achieve success more through practice battle out their
expertise at another level. That is where we are now.
We also now know that expert musicians wind up with
uniquely organized brains. It is believed that age of onset of
musical training, duration of training, type of instrument
played, and genetic factors all inuence the structure and organization of the brain of the expert musician. What we dont
know is whether the differences that appear on the brain scans
music.
Musicians spend hours practicing their instruments, and
that practice engraves itself into the brain.4 The somatosensory
cortex codes for information about each part of the body, including each nger, much like the motor cortex does. The difference
is that while the motor cortex codes for information about the
musculature of each part of the body, the somatosensory cortex
codes for information about the tactile and other sensations
from the skin of each part of the body, as well as for the sensations from the internal organs. The area of the somatosensory
cortex that codes nger information in musicians is enlarged for
the specic ngers they use to play their instruments.5 Brain imaging shows that the area of the cortex that corresponds to the
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order to maximize cortical plasticity, thereby enabling a possible enhancement of overall motor skill. This would truly be a
dangerous game. While there is no question this sort of mechanism would work, the possible long-term consequences of such
drug use would have to be carefully studied. What could occur
at the underlying cellular level with respect to permanent and
possibly deleterious change is not known.
It should also be pointed out that these studies are under attack, that other leading neuroscientists do not believe these
mechanisms underlie the behavioral changes seen with extensive practice. Thats okay. That is what science is all about:
check, double-check, triple-check until agreement is nally
reached. What we do know is that structures in the brain will be
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lows that neuroscience will gure out how to tamper with those
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chapter five
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s h a p i n g t h e s m a r t b r a i n w i t h d ru g s
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achieved by a pill? In some way we were cheated by Mother Nature if we didnt get the superior memory system, so for us to
cheat her back through our own inventiveness seems like a
Memory may be viewed as less threatening to our sense of
self than our intelligence. But what is intelligence? Can it be
changed with a pill? Any child or teacher can tell you that some
people are smarter than others, but what is the difference between the brain of a Caltech student and the brain of your average Joe? If we can gure that out, is it ethical to turn average
Joes into geniuses? One could argue that evolutionary theory
suggests that if we are smart enough to invent the technology to
increase our brain capacity, we should be able to use it. It is the
next step in the survival of the ttest. We all attempt to nd a
mate who is the smartest, richest, most attractive, and most engaging we can ndthis is sexual selection at work. Yet no matter whom we end up with, we turn in the millions to products
and services provided by the culture to enhance ourselves and
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s h a p i n g t h e s m a r t b r a i n w i t h d ru g s
Already available, or making their way through the FDA approval process, are several cognitive enhancers, or smart
drugs (also called nootropes,1 from the Greek noos, for mind,
and tropein, for toward), that reportedly improve memory.
Whenever a study shows that a certain chemical produces even
a moderate increase in memory in an animal population
(whether fruit ies, mice, or humans), one of two things happens. If the drug or chemical is not on the market, a drug company quickly pops up to create a new nootrope to exploit the
nding. If the drug is already on the market but is used to treat
a known diseasefor instance, Alzheimers or attention decit
hyperactivity disordera huge surge takes place in off label
Memory Enhancers
75
use (that is, for a purpose other than its intended use).
Dr. Eric Kandel at Columbia University won a Nobel Prize
for his research on learning and memory in the sea slug
tion between two neurons) by several meanswhen the
synapse is made more efcient, the number of neurotransmitter
receptors is increased, the synapse surface area is increased, or
more synapses are created. He found that these changes occur
when a protein called CREB is activated. Later, CREB was
shown to play a role in memory formation in Drosophila (fruit
ies) and in mice. With these discoveries came the birth, in
1998, of Kandels New Jerseybased company, Memory Pharmaceuticals, which hopes to create a drug (one of the most promising of which is MEM 1414) that will increase the amount of
CREB in the human neuron and thus facilitate the formation of
long-term memories.2 At least one other company (Helicon
Therapeutics) hopes that CREB will also be found to increase
memory formation in humans.3 If clinical trials go well, MEM
1414 could be on the market sometime after 2008.4
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remembered their training better, as evidenced by their improved performance on the maneuvers they had learned
specically their approach for landingand on their response
to stressful emergency situations. The possibility exists that
donepezil could become a Ritalin for college students. I believe
nothing can stop this.
Off-label use of Ritalin reminds us that the unintended use
and misuse of drugs is a constant. Trying to manage it, control it,
and legislate it will bring nothing but failure and duplicitya
fact of life that needs to be aired and that our culture should develop an attitude about. Aricept (the commercial name for donepezil) works, caffeine works, Ritalin works. Individuals will use
such drugs or not use them, depending on their personal philos-
ed the pilots and found that those who had taken the donepezil
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whose neurochemical concentrations are at optimal levels? Another hurdle for these drugs is that while they may aid in memory enhancement, they could cause deleterious effects. Some
accounts of mice with altered, smart brains, for instance,
show that the mice are not only more receptive to learning but
also more sensitive to pain.
Pursuing Intelligence
Putting aside for the moment that memory skills go hand in
hand with measures of intelligence, making people smarter
able to resolve complex issues and ideas with greater ease and
facilitysomehow seems more problematic. Can we really populate the world with only doctors, lawyers, CEOs, and philoso-
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phers? Do we want or need a nation full of Harvard undergraduates? On the surface it seems like a horrible thought and
utterly insane. But the basic science suggests that this is not farDening what it means to be smart is a task that has frustrated psychologists for years. Our current measures of intelligence
are only as good as the tests we create. IQ and SAT tests, while
good indicators of academic success, are far from perfect indicators of success in the real world. Generally these tests of intelligence (especially the IQ test) measure peoples analytical
skills, verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working
memory, and processing speed. This type of intelligence is called
psychometric intelligence, and while it is not the only type of intelligence (some people believe in multiple intelligences,
which even include athletic ability),8 it is testable and so remains
one of the primary ways we gauge intelligence.
In 1904, Dr. Charles Spearman, an English psychologist, reviewed the literature of the nineteenth century on intelligence
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fetched.
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and found that people who performed well on one test of intelligence seemed to perform well on all tests of intelligence. They
consistently received high scores on tests that evaluated any of
a multitude of intelligences, including verbal comprehension,
perceptual organization, working memory, and processing
speed. Spearman theorized the existence of a general intelligence, which he termed g, that is used to process intelligence
in many domains (verbal, perceptual, memory-based, and so
forth) and thus makes some people good at nearly all tests of intelligence.9 Many tests since 1904 have conrmed and supported Spearmans idea of a general intelligence, and the current
consensus among scientists and psychologists is that a g factor
accounts for a very large amountabout 50 percent, though
some reports have said as much as 70 percentof the variance
in scores on intelligence tests.10
Recently geneticists have discovered that even such abstract
qualities as personality and intelligence are coded for in our genetic blueprint. Studies of the genetic basis of g are just beginning, and because g is most likely built from the inuences of
many genes, the hunt for those genes will be a long one. However, a recent study has already found that a gene on chromosome 6 is linked to intelligence.11
Genetic brain mapping has been developed to search for
genes involved in intelligence. This type of study looks at the
structural features (size, volume, and so on) of the brains of
many individuals, including twins, familial relations, and nonrelated individuals. By scanning all these brains in an MRI machine and then looking at the differences between them, researchers have been able to determine which areas of the brain
are most under the control of genes (for example, which are
most similar between a pair of twins or between a mother and
daughter). These studies have emerged only in the last three to
s h a p i n g t h e s m a r t b r a i n w i t h d ru g s
areas are most heritable, they will be able to gure out which
genes are responsible for those brain areas. With this sort of reverse mapping, geneticists should be able to learn more about
the genetics of intelligence.
These recent brain-mapping studies reveal that 94 percent
of the volume of the brain is heritable.12 Certain areas in the
brainincluding the frontal, sensorimotor, and anterior temporal regionsare under genetic control, with the middle frontal
region showing a highly determined genetic structure heritability of 90 to 95 percent. Studies also show that the patterns of the
raised convolutions called gyri that give the brain a sort of ngerprint are not much inuenced by genes. Similarly, the hippocampus (the brain structure that is involved in converting
four years. Geneticists hope that once they know which brain
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the areas of the brain that are apparently most under the inu-
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sity searched for one area of the brain that is activated when
smart people perform a multitude of tasks that put demands on
their intelligence and would thus be responsible for g, they
found that the lateral part of the frontal lobe (on both the left and
right sides) may be the resting place of general intelligence.15
While undergoing positron-emission tomography (PET) scans,
Duncans subjects selectively activated the lateral frontal cortex
during several intelligence tests. Some researchers are skeptical
of the importance of Duncans study, saying it is suggestive at
best, because we do not yet fully understand what the frontal
lobes do.16 But his ndings undoubtedly solidify the fact that we
have entered a new era in scientic historyan era that allows
neuroscientists to investigate individual differences in intelligence, an investigation previously left to the eld of psychology.
Accordingly, a robust literature has recently arisen, reporting neural investigations into individual differences in intelligenceamong these, studies of Albert Einsteins brain. One
study of the cerebrum of this great scientist, generally considered to be one of the smartest men of all time, showed that an
area of the frontal region of his brain17 (on the left side only)
had more neurons than glial cells (which provide structural
support, among other functions) than was true in a control population.18 Could it have been these extra neurons that helped
him come up with the theory of relativity?
Further support for the role of the frontal lobe in intelligence comes from the observation that people with frontal lobe
damage usually score twenty to sixty fewer points on IQ tests
than the normal population; these people also have decits in
what is called uid intelligence. Fluid intelligence refers to the
type of intelligence that decreases with age and includes abstract reasoning, accurate responses during time constraint,
use of novel materials, and processing speed. Similarly, people
s h a p i n g t h e s m a r t b r a i n w i t h d ru g s
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out, much work must then be applied to the solution, and the
smartest people in the world rarely say that the work applied to
solutions is easy. They worked hard to achieve insight and solutions. So we may all get faster at guring out new problems, but
it is not clear what it would mean to get smarter. Smarter is frequently just another word for faster.
Whatever develops, we can count on one universal: cognitive enhancement drugs will be developed, and they will be
used and misused. But just as people dont drink all the liquor
in their liquor cabinet, just as most people dont alter their
mood with Prozac, and just as we all reorient our lives in the
face of unending opportunities to change our sense of normal,
our society will absorb new memory drugs according to each
individuals underlying philosophy and sense of self. Self-regulation of substances will occur; those few who desire altered
states will nd the drug, and those who dont want to alter their
sense of who they are will ignore the availability of the drug.
The government should stay out of it, letting our own ethical
and moral sense guide us through the new enhancement landscape.
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determined? Is the free will we seem to experience just an illusion? And if free will is an illusion, must we revise our concepts
of what it means to be personally responsible for our actions?
These dilemmas have been haunting philosophers for decades. But with the advent of brain imaging, neuroscientists are
exploring these questions, and, increasingly, the legal world is
demanding answers. Defense lawyers are looking for that one
pixel in their clients brain scan that shows an abnormality, a
predisposition to crime or a malfunction in normal inhibitory
networks, thereby allowing for the argument, Harry didnt do
it. His brain did it. Harry is not responsible for his actions.
There is evidence that certain brains are more aggressive
than others. Whether through neurochemical imbalances or le-
these questions: Are the thoughts that arise from our mind also
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the brain has already done its work. When we become con-
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grammed to be what we are [by our genes] then [our] traits are
ineluctable. We may, at best, channel them, but we cannot
change them either by will, education or culture.2 Some prosomeone has the gene for Huntingtons disease, he or she will
almost certainly contract the diseasegood living, good medicine, healthy food, loving families or great riches can do nothing about it3), but many of our traits are not entirely encoded in
our genes. Our environment and chance also play a role in determining our traits and behaviors.
While genes build our brains, it is our brains, actively making millions of decisions per second, that ultimately enable our
cognition and behavior. So it would seem that if we are to look
at the issue of free will today, the brain is the place to look. Is
the brain a deterministic organ, genetically hard-wired to carry
out actions over which we have no control? Or is the brainthe
home to the mind, the ghost in the machinesomething capable of free will?
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the actuality of free will. Libet argued that because the time
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ly aware of its actions. Each neuron in the inferior parietal lobule has a receptive eld that prefers one area of the visual
world over all others. For example, when a monkey xates on a
around on the wall, there will be one single placesay, ve
inches over and ve inches up from the xated spotwhere the
neuron sends, or res, signals at a higher rate than anywhere
else. Any time the bar of light is in that zone, the cell res signals like a machine gun, but it stops ring when the bar of light
is outside the zone, outside the neurons receptive eld.
Through a long series of experiments, these neuroscientists
showed that the neurons know a great deal about their receptive elds. They found that the neurons in this area of the brain
change their ring patterns depending on the size of the reward
likely to be given, which shows this part of the brain plays a
critical role in deciding whether or not to act. The neurons are
not passively attending to a specic part of the visual world;
rather, they appear to be tied to the purpose of the movement
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and may actively aid in the decision process. All of this happens
long before there is even a hint that the animal is deciding what
to do. The automatic brain is at work once again.
Many experiments underline how the brain gets things done
before we know about it. Another example is derived from my
own research.9 Our brains are wired in such a fashion that if
you x your gaze on a point in space, everything to the right of
the point is projected to the visual areas in the left side of the
brain, and everything to the left of the xation point is projected
to the visual areas in the right side of the brain. The two sides of
the brain, however, are connected through the large ber tract
called the corpus callosum.
When we present the word he to the left of your xation
point and the word art to its right, you perceive the word heart.
This integration is achieved without your conscious awareness.
Electrophysiological recordings carried out in my lab in collaboration with Ron Mangun and Steven Hillyard helped us decipher how this is accomplished in the brain and shed light on
another example of how the brain acts and makes decisions
well before we are aware of our deciding, or integrating he with
art.
Electrical potentials in the brain evoked by stimuli presented to a subjects senses can be measured by using event-related
potentials. This procedure enables one to track, over time, the
activation pattern of neurons in the cortex of one side of the
brain and their cross-hemispheric connections through the corpus callosum to the opposite side of the brain. We found that after a stimulus (for example, he) is presented to the left visual
eld, the right visual cortex quickly activates (the opposite is
true for stimuli presented to the right visual eld). About 40
milliseconds later the activity begins to spread to the left hemisphere, and after another 40 or so milliseconds the information
my brain made me do it
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the substance abuse.15) Raine found that people with APD had a
reduced volume of gray matter and a reduced amount of autonomic activity in the prefrontal areas of their brain, as compared with both control groups. The ndings indicate a structural difference (in the amount of gray matter in the prefrontal
lobe relative to the rest of the brain) between the brains of
criminals with APD and the brains of the normal population.
This also suggests that the volume difference in gray matter
may lead to the difference in social behavior between the two
groups.
Further support for this theory comes from the case study of
a boy who displayed characteristics of APD from a young age.
When playing Russian roulette, the boy shot himself in the head
cern brain differences associated with APD alone, and not with
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and damaged his medial prefrontal cortex.16 Amazingly, he survived, and those who knew him well before the injury reported
little or no change in his personality following the brain damfrontal cortex was not working properly (possibly due to a reduced volume of gray matter), and the continuation of the behavior problems postinjury indicates that damage to the already
malfunctioning medial prefrontal cortex had little or no effect
on the childs behavior.
It is possible that these people do not inhibit their impulses
even though they could (and therefore should be held responsible for their actions). Further research will be needed to determine how much prefrontal damage or gray matter loss is necessary for the cessation of inhibitory function in the brain (and
thus perhaps for the mitigation of responsibility). Neuroscientists must realize, however, that when considering the specic
example of violence in the brain, the argument might be made
that for any given brain state the correlation of nonviolent be-
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havior could be just as high as the correlation of violent behavior. Specically, most patients who suffer from Gage-type lesions involving the inferior orbital frontal lobe do not exhibit
antisocial behavior of a type that would be noticed by the law.
Even though a patients spouse may be able to sense changes in
the patients behavior, the patient is still constrained by all the
other forces in society, and the frequency of antisocial behavior
is no different from that in the normal population. The same
fact is true for people with schizophrenia. The rate of aggressive criminal behavior is no greater among them than among
the healthy population. If people with Gage-type lesions or with
schizophrenia are no more likely to commit violent crimes than
anyone else, it seems that merely having one of these brain disorders is not enough to remove responsibility.
These facts, however, leave pure determinists unimpressed.
Their position is based in the theory of causation, and because
they believe all actions have denable inputs, they also believe
that our current shortcomings in understanding causation are
just thatshortcomings. There is other evidence, however, for
the existence of free will in a deterministic world.
The prevalence of mechanistic descriptions of how the physical brain carries out behavior adds fuel to the general idea of
determinism, but philosophers and scientists alike have argued
that the concept of free will can exist, even if one assumes the
brain is as mechanical as clockwork. These views challenge the
idea that using the explanation of mechanism leads to exculpation.
In 1954, A. J. Ayer put forth the theory of soft determinism.
He argued, as had many philosophers, such as David Hume,
that even if determinism exists, a person can still act freely.
Ayer posits that free actions result from desires, intentions, and
decisions without external compulsion or constraint. He makes
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Perspectives
Scholars have thought of many clever ways to address the isview, ghosts in the machine, emergent properties of complex
systems, logical indeterminacies, and other characterizations
miss the fundamental point: brains are automatic, but people
are free. Our freedom is found in the interaction of the social
world.
Lets reconsider Harry and his crime of murder. Under our
legal system, a crime has two dening elements: the actus reus,
or proscribed act, and the mens rea, or guilty mind. For Harry to
go to jail, the prosecution has to prove both beyond a reasonable doubt. In general terms, the courts and the legal system
work hard to determine the agency of the crime. Where they
want help from neuroscience is to determine whether Harry
should be held personally responsible. Did Harry do it, or did
his brain? This is where the slippery slope begins, because, in
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Does she love me? Does she not? Is this guy going to offer me
more for my car or less? Have I done enough work for my boss
or not enough? Is he going to run to the left or right? Is she
blufng with the two 8s? Not a waking minute goes by when
we, the social animal, are not trying to gure out the intentions
of others. Figuring out the thoughts and feelings of others has
been the subject of extensive research for years.
More recently, the searchlight is swinging wider: There are
cheaters. Who are they? Some people are on the ropes. How do I
respond? Am I empathetic or hostile? These issues have received new attention because of some seminal and imaginative
work carried out in the last decade by the Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma. Working
with monkeys, Rizzolatti and his colleagues discovered what
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All of us are trying to read the minds of others all the time.
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ings of prejudice. All of us are full of prejudices we try to suppress or deny. New brain technologies can peek into a brain and
see that a white Yale undergraduates emotional brain circuits
do not respond to a known black face such as that of Martin
Luther King, Jr., but do activate in response to an unknown
black face. Using fMRI, Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues at
Yale found that the amygdalaa part of the brain associated
with emotion, emotional learning, and emotional evaluation
was activated when white Americans viewed unfamiliar black
faces, but not when they viewed the faces of familiar, positively
regarded blacks like Michael Jordan, Will Smith, and Martin
Luther King, Jr. The researchers concluded from their study
that amygdala and behavioral responses to black-versus-white
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are really telling us. It appears that a process in the brain makes
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other story from the same facts: the neurons discharge in re-
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spoken word. With certain tests, the brain can be asked questions that a person refuses to address and can give away answers based on what the person either previously experienced
or is now feeling. As with DNA, will such data be required? Will
issues of cognitive privacy be challenged by the courts the way
DNA testing has been challenged? When does societys right to
know ones mental state run up against the right to privacy?
I think a dangerous card is going to be played in upcoming
years, and its one that should not be played in the courts. Sophisticated peoplelawyers, writers, perhaps even some mental health professionals, but few, if any, neuroscientistswill
claim that neuroscience can read minds reliably. When interpretations of physical tests are reported by either the prosecution or the defense, it will seem that a representation of a pattern of brain activity corresponds to an inevitable action.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Positive DNA matching virtually assures that a particular
person was or was not involved in a crime. Reading states of
mind, however, is a different matter. Lawyers love physical evidence and juries believe in it. The jury found John Hinckley, Jr.,
insane in part because a Harvard psychiatrist pointed to a CT
scan showing enlarged third ventricles in Hinckleys brain and
argued that this meant he suffered from schizophrenia. But possessing a thoughteven a schizophrenic thoughtdoes not
mean you are doomed to act on that thought; too many variables lie between thought and action.
The Neurobiological Road to Lie Detection
Deception, or intentional misleading from the truth, has
only recently become a topic of neuroscientic inquiry, though
it has long been of psychological interest. In 1996, V. S. Ramachandran reported his research on patients who had right-
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not familiar with those pictures. This could be evidence that the
person was not present at the crime scene and thus did not
commit the crime. Similarly, if a detainee looks at pictures of an
al Qaeda training camp that could be recognized only by someone who had been trained there, the P300 responses could indicate whether he is familiar with the camp and therefore has ties
with that organization.
CKA was developed in the 1980s by Dr. Lawrence Farwell,
who calls his method brain ngerprinting and has formed a
company to market it. He took the data on the P300 response acquired by several experimenters over a twenty-year period and
developed the technique to create a new type of lie detector,
which came to the attention of the FBI. In 1993, in collaboration
scene and get a P300 response that would indicate the suspect is
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with the FBI, Farwell used his brain ngerprinting to correctly identify eleven FBI agents and four impostors by measuring
their P300 brain responses to images that would have been faFarwell and an FBI special agent, Sharon Smith, reported ndings of a similar study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Forensic
Science. The study sought to determine whether or not each of
six subjects had participated in an event by testing whether he
or she recognized objects from that event. Even though the subjects were told to try to conceal their knowledge, the researchers were able to determine with 99.9 percent statistical
condence in ve cases and 90 percent condence in one case
whether or not the subject had participated in the event.
The CIA is now using this technique, though we do not know
to what extent.9 And in 1998, Farwells technology provided police in Missouri with evidence to support the prosecution of
James Grinder in a 1984 rape and murder, though the technology was not presented in court.10
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Similarly, the Web site of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and
Ethics warns readers that brain ngerprinting threatens important personal liberties in proposing what could eventually be
governmentally instituted mental surveillance.15
Bold claimsboth for what CKA could accomplish and for
the harm it could dogo far beyond what neuroscience knows.
This technology might well provide valuable information, but
not necessarily information about the mind. It is not a mindreading device. Further, we have no right to take information
on brain waves and weave from it a story and theory about a
persons thoughts and intentions. At best, a story woven with
brain waves is circumstantial evidence or hearsay, and it is misusing science to spin theories from it in courtrooms. Neuroscience does not yet have incontrovertible evidence of how
thoughts are represented in EEG scalp recordings, let alone in
the brain, and it may well be that while all thought is generated
in the brain, we may never be able to read those thoughts.
Face and Emotion Recognition Technology:
Can a Computer Read Your Mind?
Trying to read mental states with fMRI always raises a big
practical issue. An MRI scanner is a multimillion-dollar roomsize machine. Are we really going to have brain scanning technology so cheap and portable that it would be feasible to use in
a real-life situation? It is not likely, even though the idea persists. In recent years this obstacle has prompted very clever
people to come up with other ideas on how to read minds. Terry
Sejnowski, a leader in the subeld of neuroscience called neurocomputation, is working on a computervideo camera combination that will be able to detect minute face movements to de-
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ed by personalized advertisements catering to our moods. Several ethical dilemmas emerge here. First, is deployment of such
technology a violation of our right to privacy? With it, companies will be able to collect data not only on our buying patterns,
as grocery, drug, and clothing stores do now, but also on our
emotional states. Do we have a right to keep that information to
ourselves? Furthermore, how will we give our consent for
mood-detecting technology to be used on us? Should the ATM
ask our permission to scan our emotions, or do we automatically consent to it just by using a cash machine?
Where did all this come from, and who ever said it was a
good idea? If 10 percent of all of the foregoing ideas come to
pass, national data banks will be full of information about your
every emotion under a variety of circumstances. And if that information exists in a national database, it will be available to
others. There isnt a human being alive who doesnt harbor antisocial thoughts from time to time, but in the interest of civility
we try to inhibit (or at least mask) such thoughts. Most of the
time, our actions and behavior after such thoughts are totally
normal and unobtrusive. Imagine how an ATM mood record of
someone accused of a crime might be used, even though it most
likely would have no bearing on the persons real state of mind
once out of view of the machine.
Obtaining images of our mental states in the new high-tech
world raises profound issues. Our innermost identity is being
robbed and externalized for the marketplace. Do we really want
this to occur?
It is arguably the case that our concern for the right to privacy has come too late. While many of the aforementioned technologies are still being developed, databases that track our behavior, our buying patterns, our medical records, and our
billing preferences are in place and at work. From the cookie
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to mind states, I believe that brain-based lie detectors and pharmacologically coerced mental states need to be kept out of the
courtroom, because mind reading technologies do not, in fact,
read the mind. They are just another set of data to be interpreted contextually. Neuroscience reads brains, not minds. The
mind, while completely enabled by the brain, is a totally different beast.
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t h e b r a i n p r o du c e s a p o o r au t o b i o g r a p h y
home in Sharon, Vermont. Every year I get out the bush hog and
go to work, driving over the knee-high grass, up and down the
elds. Now, there is danger lurking under the grass, some deep,
hidden holes that put the tractor at risk of tipping over and
causing me great injury. Yet, after the rst exploratory effort
some eight years ago, I learned where every one of these holes
is, and eight years later, I stop at each and slowly navigate
around the danger. The point is, the brain is built for organic
things such as remembering where real harm can come to you
in real physical space. If someone had stopped me at each of
those holes during the rst year and said, We now want you to
remember this phone number, I would never have retained
that information unless I practiced and practiced it. Our brains
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dont like learning modern-day cognitive information. No wonder they make mistakesand lots of them.
Sir Frederic Bartlett, perhaps the premier British psycholoory is a social or cultural phenomenon and not an exact event
burned into the brain with exquisite accuracy. This view, which
has much support, does not mean that human memory is completely faulty and without meaning. Modern research steers us
nearer to the idea that we have good memories for the gist of an
experience and poor memories for details.
Yet even these gist memories can sometimes get us into
trouble. We all have countless false memories that we dont
even know about. How many times have you had someone recall an interaction, a conversation, even a party that you have
no recollection of? Even more disconcerting, have you ever
been utterly convinced of one version of events and had someone insist on a completely different version? We usually have
great condence in our memorieseven in our memories of
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gist of the last century, was one of the rst to believe that mem-
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is not necessary for our memory to be perfect. We need not remember the exact details of the encounter we had with a big
black bear, for example; instead, we must remember the gist of
When I see a big bear I should not provoke it, or it will hurt me
again. In other words, storing the crucial parts of experience
may be the reason our memory evolved to better remember the
gist of events rather than the intricate details.
A Place for Neuroscience in the Courtroom
As we learn more and more about the impurities of our remembered past, the stark truth that our brains are not tape
recorders is revealed, with implications everywhere, especially
in courts. Eyewitness testimony is a staple of the judicial system. Most people imagine memory to be like a huge warehouseone can comb through it, nd the exact stored memory
from the past, and report on it. Although science is learning that
memory is not organized like that, many of our social institu-
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tions still labor under the old theories about memory. Lawyers
relying on eyewitness testimony, and the police who collect testimonies surrounding a case, know that witnesses can inadvertently distort the accuracy of the past, but tend to treat this as
the exception, not the norm. The day is approaching when the
failure to handle such testimony as by nature awed will be
considered unethical.
I have often thought that our species lack of capacity for
resonant memory serves most people well. We make countless
decisions all day long in a wide range of situations. If each new
decision required airtight logic and proof of the effectiveness of
a foregoing decision, we would be automaton-like and not
adaptive to new challenges. Of course, in many disciplines, academic and otherwise, this is the whole idea behind study and
educationstriving to making those decisions more rmly
linked to previous conclusions. This is why it is hard to keep a
long, complex logic and a derived set of principles in mind
when trying to formulate a new thought. The load on our memory system becomes huge. Normally, we develop a proximate,
largely ad hoc theory to deal with a new situation. We see how it
works in the moment, and then go on to the next one. In this
sense we are all utilitarian ethicists, situational in the extreme.
What keeps us from being totally random is, I think, an internal
corea barometer of what is more right than wrong. We always
appeal to that, and it inuences the nal course of action.
Many studies of memory conrm that understanding the gist
and reporting the details are two different processes altogether.
Once we recognize this, the way testimony is used in a courtroom may change forever. Furthermore, once the variations on
how memory betrays us are understood, new techniques for acquiring testimony should be used.
Sometimes the cost of memory distortions is greater than that
t h e b r a i n p r o du c e s a p o o r au t o b i o g r a p h y
test. For example, a woman is raped in her home and, after she
gives very specic details about his face, the rapist is identied
as Donald Thompson. The woman reports nearly 100 percent
condence that she has correctly identied the perpetrator. But
when the police investigate Thompsons alibi, they nd it to be
impeccablehe was being interviewed on TV at the exact time
the rape occurred. Later, police realize that the victim had been
watching that TV interview when her assailant attacked, and her
memory misattributed Thompsons face to the rapist.
This true story is one of many in which the false memory of
a witness has caused problems for the justice system. The Oklahoma City bombing investigations were hampered when a
worker in the body shop where Timothy McVeigh took his van
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falsely remembered seeing another person with McVeigh. Acting on this information, the police spent many man-hours
searching for John Doe no. 2, only to eventually conclude that
before McVeigh came in alone, and had mixed up the separate
circumstances.3 More recently, memory errors stymied the 2002
Washington, D.C., sniper investigation. Several witnesses mentioned seeing the snipers in a white truck, but when police later
caught them, they were in a blue car they had been using all
along. The false memory was traced back to these events: First,
a witness saw a white truck near the snipers blue car and mistakenly remembered the snipers being in the white truck. Picking up on the witnesss report, the media reported that the
snipers had been seen in a white truck. Later witnesses recalled
a white truck because the media had been reporting on it for
several days and their memory was distorted by their expectation that a white truck was involved rather than a blue car.4
Here again the truth about how our memory works is re-
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the mechanic had seen two people come in earlier that morning
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words are blocked more often than others.8 Proper names, for
instance, are particularly prone to blocking, and neuropsychological data indicate that a particular part of the brain may be
responsible for this phenomenon.
But why does blocking occur? Some researchers believe its
possible that when you are trying to think of a word (for example, cucumber) and you instead recall a related word (say, zucchini), the related word inhibits or blocks the target word.9
Then, when you stop thinking of zucchini (or whatever is blocking the target word), you will have a sort of spontaneous recall,
and cucumber will nally pop into your mind. One experiment
showed that when subjects studied word pairs (like red/blood
and food/radish) and were then tested on their memory, recall-
on, but not when you want to? Studies show that certain types of
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sleep was activated in the subjects mind, causing him to mistake the internal thought (conscious or not) of the word sleep
for actually having heard the word. This is a good example of
how our brain makes inferences about the information it receives, distorting the information before it is even stored.
Many factors affect the rate of false recalls in variants of the
DRM paradigm. For instance, the greater the number of related
words presented in the list, the greater the chance of false recall
of the critical lure. Divided attention also increases the likelihood of false memories of critical lures. Transience, too, has the
effect of increasing the recall of critical lureswhen the time
between presentation and recall is increased.15
Misattribution is probably the most signicant memory
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Witnesses who actually saw only part of an alleged perpetrators face often remember seeing the entire face, their brain
lling in the missing parts, or their imagination completing
the image in their minds eye.17 Many studies on this phenomenon support the fact that such lling in leads people to mistakenly claim they saw all the facial information when, in fact, they
did not.18 In one study, researchers attempted to understand
how witnesses could best identify faces theyd seen: Is correct
recall improved by seeing the face as viewed originally, even if
it was occluded by disguise or object? Or are witnesses more reliable when viewing the whole, unobstructed face, which may
be more like the face they imagined in their minds eye? The
answer was clear. The most accurate face recall occurred when
the face of the alleged perpetrator was viewed during testing
exactly as the viewer saw it in the initial episode, when the face
was encoded. This nding has implications for police lineups. If
a witness can correctly remember the alleged perpetrators face
in a mask, or with a disguise, all the people in the lineup should
be disguised in a manner as close to the original as possible. In
testing, when faces are depicted in the same disguised manner
as they were originally seen, subjects can identify perpetrators
just as accurately as if they had seen them with an undisguised
facewith an accuracy of about 80 percent.
Suggestibility: Suggestibility refers to peoples tendency to
incorporate information given by others into their own memory
of events. Suggestions can come from friends, family, investigators, and even the media. While suggestions are not always malicious, they can have a large effect on the reliability of our
memories.
Elizabeth Loftus has spent a great deal of time studying the
effects of suggestibility on peoples memories. Her studies highlight just how inuential this memory delusion can be. Her rst
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asks, What kind of gun did the robber have? and all of a sudden a revolver is planted in your memory of the robber, who actually had a knife. The manner in which questions are asked, the
number of times misleading information is presented, and the
age of the witness (children and the elderly are more sensitive to
suggestion)all inuence the accuracy of memory recall in eyewitnesses. Furthermore, cues that might be thought to separate
true from false memoriessuch as the condence or amount of
detail with which the witness remembers a piece of informationdo not correlate with the actual validity of the memory.20
Bias: Our own conscious or unconscious feelings, stereotypes, and biases can affect how we encode information and
what information we retrieve from memory. In his chapter on
the memory delusion of bias in The Seven Sins of Memory,
Daniel Schacter describes ve types of bias. Three of these biases (consistency, change, and egocentricity) are interesting and
worth mentioning, but two in particularhindsight and stereotypeare noteworthy with respect to the criminal justice system.
Consistency bias refers to our tendency to consider beliefs
and feelings that we currently hold as being similar to or consistent with beliefs we had in the past. For instance, we might
remember our past political views as being more like our current ones than they actually were. Sometimes, however, it is
more convenient and satisfying to believe that we have changed
more than we actually have. An example of change bias would
be exaggerating how much we have actually changed when we
go on a diethow much weight we have lost, how much we actually exercise. Egocentricity bias is a self-enhancing bias that
causes us to believe our own intuitions and memories more
than those of others, to think of ourselves as more honest, truthful, successful, attractive, and so forth, than we may actually be.
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opinion.
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side of his brain. Remember that neither side of the brain knew
what the other one saw. Then I asked the patient to choose one
object with each hand that most closely matched the scene he
saw. The patient chose a rooster with his right hand, which is
largely controlled by the left side of the brain, to match the picture of the chicken claw his left brain saw. He chose a snow
shovel with his left hand, which is largely controlled by the
right side of the brain, to match the picture of the snowy house
shown to the right brain. As the patient did this, he was confronted with the fact that each hand had chosen a different object. Therefore his left brain (which processes language and
deals with constructing verbal information, but never saw the
picture of the snowy house) offered an explanation: he must
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the present moment.30 Thus our concept of self is an everchanging one that will most accurately represent our current
feelings and beliefs about ourselves. It will not accurately repyears past. But this is probably a healthy thing. We do grow wiser as we grow older, so it is only tting that we forget those days
when we were not so wiseor at least remember them only insofar as they are useful now. Memory is not so much a mechanism for remembering the past as a means to prepare us for the
future. Some of my best memories are false ones.
Daniel Schacter has brilliantly articulated the many ways
our memory fails us. We lose the tags, the context of an original
event, and when we recall a past event we introduce the memory to another set of contextual tags. Thus reencoded, it becomes
further distanced from the reality of the recalled event. In short,
the memory gloriously changes color and meaning as surely as
the leaves of an October fall in Vermont. There is no stopping
the process.
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resent the way we felt about ourselves in the days, weeks, and
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pa r t i v
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chapter 9
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ies, and we were fast out of the blocks in considering the hot-
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are preachers.2
Our species can develop beliefs at lightning speed. We create them almost as a reex. We now know that the left hemisphere of the brainthe one that attaches a story to input from
the worldcreates these beliefs. We also know the many ways
the strength of a belief can be manipulated: it can be placed in
conict, followed by resolution; it can be subjected to reinforcement and repetition; and emotional tags can be attached to it, or
it can be diluted with competing ideas. And given that we know
these things about beliefsthat most are interpretations based
on the knowledge available at the time they were formed, and
that they nonetheless seem to stick in the mindhow can we
manage to take seriously so many current religious and politi-
are slower to change their views in the face of new data than
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cal beliefs? The ethical and moral systems that emerge out of
traditional religions and political systems frequently have common views on right and wrong. But perhaps the reason they do
lifes challenges, and that we attribute a morality to these reactions after the fact. Is a moral deep structure, to use the ethicist Ronald M. Greens phrase, driving not only certain common
values but also the need to create the cultural edices of religion?
In the next chapter I will get into what the common moral
spark might be and how it might work. But for now, it is important to understand how beliefs are formedat least as I see it.
How Our Brain Creates Belief: The Brains
Left-Hemisphere Interpreter
Our brain is not a unied structure; instead it is composed of
several modules that work out their computations separately, in
what are called neural networks. These networks can carry out
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language is stored and where the word walk was not presented)
quickly created a reason for the action: I wanted to go get a
Coke.
Even more fantastic examples of the left hemisphere at work
come from the study of neurological disorders. In a complication
of stroke called anosognosia with hemiplegia, patients cannot
recognize that their left arm is theirs because the stroke damaged the right parietal cortex, which manages our bodys integrity, position, and movement. The left-hemisphere interpreter has
to reconcile the information it receives from the visual cortex
that the limb is attached to its body but is not movingwith the
fact that it is not receiving any input about the damage to that
limb. The left-hemisphere interpreter would recognize that
ing. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where
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damage to nerves of the limb meant trouble for the brain and
that the limb was paralyzed; however, in this case the damage
occurred directly to the brain area responsible for signaling a
formation to the left-hemisphere interpreter. The interpreter
must, then, create a belief to mediate the two known facts I can
see the limb isnt moving and I cant tell that it is damaged.
When patients with this disorder are asked about their arm and
why they cant move it, they will say Its not mine or I just
dont feel like moving itreasonable conclusions, given the input that the left-hemisphere interpreter is receiving.
The left-hemisphere interpreter is not only a master of belief creation, but it will stick to its belief system no matter what.
Patients with reduplicative paramnesia, because of damage to
the brain, believe that there are copies of people or places. In
short, they will remember another time and mix it with the
present. As a result, they will create seemingly ridiculous, but
masterful, stories to uphold what they know to be true due to
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problem in the perception of the limb, and it cannot send any in-
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the same organism, and letting the oocyte nurse the inserted
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theory about the nature of the world. One has to begin to think,
it seems to me, that religions, while possibly originating from a
common moral core we all possess, are interpretations built on
surrounding cultural realities.
Are Religions Just Another Belief System?
Religious beliefs have been around for a very long time. As
long as humans have roamed the earth, they have had beliefs
about the world and an afterlife. The Incans, the Egyptians, the
Greeksevery major civilization past and present has a strong
belief system, often including the worship of one or more gods.
Scholars once theorized that advances in the rational understanding of the world would inevitably diminish the inuence of
the last, vexing sphere of irrationality in the human culture: religion.6 But in an age of science and reason, religion is very much
alivewith as many as two to three new religious movements
being founded every day, for a current total of about 10,000 religions in the world (according to the World Christian Encyclopedia).7 And since 1993, the depiction of religious symbols and
spirituality on national television has risen by 400 percent.8
What could be going on here, at a time when most of the educated world realizes that religious ideas are explanatory systems, stories generated by social groups to help explain the felt
state of individual people? All members of the human species
tend to feel and to react in predictable ways to situations that
create the background for a moral choice. Marc Hauser at Harvard University has done some intriguing studies that support
this idea. He created a Web site with a moral reasoning test that
he calls the Moral Sense Test. The test includes listening to seven moral dilemmas and then answering whether it would be
morally acceptable for a person to carry out a described action.
Here is an example of one of the dilemmas:9
Oscar is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the
train that is approaching is out of control. Oscar sees what has happened:
the driver of the train saw ve men walking across the tracks and slammed
on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now
rushing toward the ve men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to
get off the track in time. Fortunately, Oscar is standing next to a switch,
which he can throw, that will temporarily turn the train onto a side track.
There is a heavy object on the side track. If the train hits the object, the object will slow the train down, thereby giving the men time to escape. Unfortunately, there is a man standing on the side track in front of the heavy object, with his back turned. Oscar can throw the switch, preventing the train
from killing the men, but killing the man. Or he can refrain from doing this,
letting the ve die.
Oscar
Is it morally permissible for Oscar to throw the switch?
Yes
No
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the seizures. The late Norman Geschwind, who was a neurologist at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, described the characteristics of Geschwind syndrome, as it has come to be called.16 There
are ve clear traits: 1) hypergraphia, the tendency to write compulsively and copiously; 2) hyperreligiosity, the tendency to be
extremely religious, with a great concern for morality, sometimes leading to multiple religious conversions; 3) aggression,
usually transient and not leading to violence; 4) stickiness, or dependence on others, or clinginessfor example, being unable to
end a conversation; and 5) altered sexuality, either increased or
decreased, but to an extreme.
Some very famous people have had TLE with Geschwind
syndrome, and many more are believed to have had the disor-
to the temporal lobe of the brain, which is also the likely cause of
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der. Vincent van Gogh was diagnosed with TLE and demonstrated every symptom of Geschwind syndrome. He wrote lettersoften more than ve pages longto his brother two or
ed to his hypergraphia, evidenced by the fact that his output increased as his TLE became worse.17 As a young man, he became a missionary of the Protestant faith, wore rags, and
punished himself by refusing to eat. He also had mystical visions, including one of a resurrected Christ.18 The great
painter also had frequent attacks of rage, one of which caused
him to chase his friend Paul Gauguin in an attempt to kill him.
Later, when the episode subsided, Van Gogh cut off his ear, feeling it was the source of the voices telling him to kill his friend.
Van Gogh was certainly emotionally dependent on his brother,
Theo. When Theo became engaged, Van Gogh wrote of his inability to be happy for him because of his sadness for himself,
and of his feelings of abandonment. The artist was also very dependent on Gauguin, who lived in his guest house for some
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three times a day. His numerous paintings may have been relat-
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with excess uid around his brain and .l.l. as a child he had
ts, which may have been seizures. Others whose lifes stories
contain evidence of epileptic seizures include Moses, the Budine, and Teresa of Jesus.
To some, the possibility that great religious gures might
have been inuenced by epileptic experiences negates the reality of the religious beliefs that resulted from them. Yet to others,
the resulting revelations are no less expressive of truth than
Dostoevskys novels or Van Goghs paintings. Evidence does
exist of an organic basis for instinctive reactions that give rise to
beliefs about a moral order resulting in a religious experience.
However, some would argue that this is merely the way by
which a spiritual God interacts with us mortal beings.
Geschwind himself realized the importance of studying TLE
for the greater understanding of the working of the mind; he
wrote, Personality changes in temporal lobe epilepsy may well
be the most important single set of clues we possess to deci-
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chapter ten
Ever-advancing human knowledge seeps into the assumptions of everyone on earth whether they like it or not. From
concepts of a gene, a brain, the Internet, the good life. Afuent
cultures and democracies gain from all this knowledge, even
though the lessons of modern knowledge about the nature of
the world may produce conicts with some traditional beliefs.
That is what is happening on the surface. Underneath these
material gains is another, psychological reality. Modern knowledge is on a collision course with the ubiquitous personal spiritual belief systems of one kind or another that are held by billions of people. Putting it in secular terms, no one has told the
kids yet there is no Santa Claus.
We are big animals, and only 5,000 generations ago there
were just 10,000 of us roaming the world. Our genes stem from
those 10,000 people and are 99.9 percent the same. Ever since
that time, we have been busy cooking up cultures and stum163
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bling forward. Anyone who does not appreciate this fundamental fact of modern life is either clinging to heartfelt beliefs about
the nature of life and the history of the world, or is quite simply
out of the loop. This is the single most disturbing reality of modern-day citizenship and our notion of shared values.
Received wisdomthe thoughts of the giants of human historyis stunning, captivating, and intelligent. But for the most
part it is based on rst guesses, as we know from current scientic and historical information. Aristotle, Socrates, Hume,
Locke, Descartes, Aquinas, Darwin, Hobbesall put forward
explanations of human nature that still resonate today. Their
thinking about approaches to life are brilliant schemas for how
the world must be, based on the information made available to
them at the time, and are the products of clear-thinking people.
Religious movements throughout human history produced
moral codes and interpretations and stories about what it
means to be humanindeed, what it means to exist at all. All
are part of our rich past. The harsh, cold fact, however, is that
these rich, metaphoric, engaging ideaswhether philosophical
or religiousare stories, although some are based on more evidence than others. Even if you do not believe or accept this as a
given, you should be aware that this is what every modern-day
secular university is teaching, either implicitly or explicitly.
What is more fascinating to me is that even though new data
provide scientic and historical bases for new views about nature and our past, people can still disagree about whether there
even is a human nature. As Steven Pinker recently remarked before the Presidents Council on Bioethics, In much of the 20th
Century, there was a widespread denial of the existence of human nature in Western intellectual life, and I will just present
three representative quotations. Man has no nature, from the
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form of a rule .l.l.3 Highest among these are that all societies
believe that murder and incest are wrong, that children are to
be cared for and not abandoned, that we should not tell lies or
break promises, and that we should be loyal to family.
Wilson rejected the idea that morality is purely a social constructthat we are constrained by the need to behave a certain
way because of external factors: For there to be a contract,
whether to create a state or manage and exchange, there must
rst be a willingness to obey contracts; there must be in
Durkheims phrase, some non-contractual elements of contract.
Wilson may have been prescient. A series of studies suggesting that there is a brain-based account of moral reasoning have
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burst onto the scientic scene. It has been found that regions of
the brain normally active in emotional processing are activated
with one kind of moral judgment but not another. Arguments
sions and their sameness or difference are now quickly and distinctly resolved with modern brain imaging. The short form of
the new results suggests that when someone is willing to act on
a moral belief, it is because the emotional part of his or her
brain has become active when considering the moral question
at hand. Similarly, when a morally equivalent problem is presented that he or she decides not to act on, it is because the
emotional part of the brain does not become active. This is a
stunning development in human knowledge because it points
the way toward guring out how the brains automatic response
may predict our moral response.
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that have raged for centuries about the nature of moral deci-
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temporal sulcus are believed to be responsible for theory-ofmind processes. Finally, abstract moral reasoning, brain imaging is showing us, uses many brain systems.
The dilemma in abstract moral reasoning studies most often
presented by researchers to volunteers is the trolley problem,
one version of which I described in Chapter 9. In this version, a
trolley is hurtling down a track, headed straight for ve people.
You have to decide whether to let it hit the ve people or, up
close and personal, throw a person standing next to you onto
the tracks to stop the trolley from hitting the other ve.
Most people claim they wont throw the nearby person in
front of the trolley. At the same time, they will pull a switch and
divert the train to another track, which will spare the ve people even though the switched train will run into and kill a single
person. So the question is, Where do these gut reactions come
from? Is there a neural basis for these two prevalent responses?
Have they been honed through evolution?
Joshua Greene, a neurophilosopher from Princeton, raises
another two commonly used examples. Say you are driving
along in your new car and you see a man on the side of the
road. He has been in an accident and is bloody. You could take
him to the hospital and save his life; however, you would get
blood all over your new car. Is it morally okay to leave him
there? Or take another scenario. You receive a request in the
mail saying that if you send in $100, you will save the lives of
ten starving children. Is it okay to not send in the money?
In analyzing these kinds of dilemmas, Greene and his colleagues found that while the choices are the same on the surfacedo nothing and preserve your self-interest, or save lives at
little cost to yourselfthe difference is that the rst scenario is
personal whereas the second is impersonal. As already mentioned, Greenes studies found that judgments of personal dilem-
t owa r d a u n i v e r sa l e t h i c s
brain activity in areas associated with emotion and moral cognition. Why is this? From an evolutionary perspective the theory is
that the neural structures that tie altruistic instincts to emotion
may have been selected for over time because helping people
immediately is benecial. Gut instinct, or morality, is a result of
processes selected for over the evolutionary process. We have
cognitive processes that allow us to make quick moral decisions
that will increase our likelihood of survival. If we are wired to
save a guy right in front of us, we all survive better. In the case of
the money contribution, long-distance altruism just isnt as necessary; out of sight, out of mind. There is no dire need.
This brings us back to the central issue of whether moral
truths are really universal truths, or whether they are merely
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opinions, individual gut instincts. When making moral judgments, are we perceiving external truths or expressing internal
attitudes? The new brain imaging results are highly suggestive
dilemmas. It is as if all the social data of the moment, the personal survival interests we each possess, the cultural experience we have undergone, and the basic temperament of our
species all feed into the subconscious mechanisms we all possess and out comes a response, an urging for either action or inaction. This is the moral spark Wilson was talking about. This is
the glue that keeps our species, over the long haul, from destroying itself.
Marc Hauser has addressed this issue, as we saw in Chapter
9. He reasoned that if moral judgments were derived from rational processes, one would predict that people from different
cultures, of different ages and sexes, would respond differently
to a common challenge. He also reasoned that they would have
readily available and articulate justications for their decisions.
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scious of this set of rules, or even of using them; they are just
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t owa r d a u n i v e r sa l e t h i c s
tend to respond to the sense of touch, taste, pain, fear, joy, and
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Preface
1. Sare, W. (2003). The Risk That Failed, New York Times, July 10.
Endnotes
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endnotes
endnotes
8. Bouchard, T. J., Jr., and M. McGue (1981). Familial Studies of Intelligence: A Review, Science 212 (4498): 10551059; see also Plomin,
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14. Gottesman, I. I., and J. Shields (1982). Schizophrenia: The Epigenetic Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
15. Rice, J., T. Reich, N. C. Andreasen, J. Endicott, M. VanEerdewegh, R. Fishman, R. M. Hirschfeld, and G. L. Klerman (1987).
The Familial Transmission of Bipolar Illness, Archives of General Psychiatry 44 (5): 441447.
16. Lesch, K.-P., D. Bengel, A. Heils, S. Z. Sabol, B. D. Greenberg, S.
Petri, J. Benjamin, C. R. Muller, D. H. Hamer, and D. L. Murphy (1996).
Association of Anxiety-Related Traits with a Polymorphism in the Serotonin Transporter Gene Regulatory Region, Science 274: 15271531.
17. See note 1.
18. Turkheimer, E. (2000). The Laws of Behaviour Genetics and
What They Mean.
19. Kosof, A. (1996). Living in Two Worlds: The Immigrant Childrens Experience (New York: Twenty-First Century Books), cited in
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate.
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13. Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (1994). Genes, Environment and Personality, Science 264: 17001701.
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endnotes
endnotes
durance that was eleven times greater in those with the II geno-
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endnotes
endnotes
185
185
186
endnotes
endnotes
Return of Phineas Gage: Clues About the Brain from the Skull of a Famous Patient, Science 264 (5162): 11021105.
14. Damasio, A. R. (2000). A Neural Basis for Sociopathy, Archives
of General Psychiatry 57: 128.
15. It should be noted that some critics of the ndings of this study
question whether Raine et al. (Raine, A., T. Lencz, S. Bihrle, L. LaCasse,
and P. Colletti [2000]. Reduced Prefrontal Gray Matter Volume and Reduced Autonomic Activity in Antisocial Personality Disorder, Archives
of General Psychiatry 57: 119127) were really able to weed out the effects of substance abuse by means of their control group. These critics
suggest that a more cautious conclusion would state that APD combined with [substance use] is associated with pre-frontal cortical volume reductions. For more on this critique, see Seifritz, E., K. M.
Dursteler-MacFarland, and R. Stohler (2001). Is Prefrontal Cortex
Thinning Specic for Antisocial Personality Disorder? Archives of Gen-
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eral Psychiatry 58: 402 (comment on Raine, A., et al. [2000] [see above]).
For a response, see Bigler, E. D., A. Raine, L. LaCasse, and P. Colletti
(2001). Frontal Lobe Pathology and Antisocial Personality Disorder,
Archives of General Psychiatry 58: 609611.
17. Ayer, A. J. (1954). Freedom and Necessity, in Philosophical Essays, A. J. Ayer, ed. (London: Macmillan).
18. Waldbauer, J. R., and M. S. Gazzaniga (2001). The Divergence
of Neuroscience and Law, Jurimetrics 4: 357 (Symposium Issue).
19. Ibid.
187
16. Bigler, E. D., et al. (2001). Frontal Lobe Pathology and Antisocial Personality Disorder.
188
endnotes
endnotes
sell_ussc_merits.htm.
22. Annas, G. J. (2004). Forcible Medication for Courtroom CompetenceThe Case of Charles Sell, Legal Issues in Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine 350: 22972301.
189
189
190
endnotes
13. Koriat, A., M. Goldsmith, and A. Pansky (2000). Toward a Psychology of Memory Accuracy, Annual Review of Psychology 51: 481
537.
14. Begg I. M., R. K. Robertson, V. Grupposo, A. Anas, and P. R. Needham (1996) The Illusory Knowledge Effect Journal of Memory and
Learning and Language 35: 410433.
15. See Koriat, A., et al. (2000). Toward a Psychology of Memory
Accuracy, and Roediger, H. L., and K. B. McDermott (2000), Tricks of
Memory, Current Directions in Psychological Science 9, 123127, for
discussion. See Roediger, H. L., and K. B. McDermott (1995), Creating
False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists, Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 21: 803
814, and Deese, J. (1959) On the Prediction of Occurrences of Particular Verbal Intrusions in Immediate Recall, Journal of Experimental
Psychology 58, 1722, for original papers on the DRM paradigm.
16. Figures from Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory,
p. 92.
17. Foley, M. A., and H. J. Foley (1998). A Study of Face Identication: Are People Looking Beyond Disguises? in Memory Distortions
and Their Prevention, M. J. Intons-Peterson and D. L. Best, eds. (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum), p. 30.
18. Ibid., p. 32.
19. See ibid., p. 112, for a description of a similar study, in which
people recalled (after being asked a suggestive question) seeing
footage of a plane crash when none had ever been recovered.
20. Koriat, A., et al. (2000). Toward a Psychology of Memory Accuracy, p. 504.
21. Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory, p. 147.
22. Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley), p. 21.
23. See also Banaji, M. R., and R. Bhaskar (2000). Implicit Stereotypes and Memory: The Bounded Rationality of Social Beliefs, in Memory, Brain, and Belief, p. 150ff.
24. Ibid., p. 151.
25. Conway, M. A., S. J. Anderson, S. F. Larsen, C. M. Donnelly, M. A.
Daniel, A. G. McClelland, R. E. Rawles, and R. H. Logie (1994). The
Formation of Flashbulb Memories, Memory and Cognition 22 (3):
326343; see also Guy, S. C., and L. Cahill (1999). The Role of Overt Re-
endnotes
191
191
192
endnotes
endnotes
23. Azari, N. P., et al. (2001). Neural Correlates of Religious Experience, European Journal of Neuroscience 13: 16491652.
193
10491050.
28. Blanke, O., S. Ortigue, T. Landis, and M. Seeck (2002). Stimulating Illusory Own-Body Perceptions, Nature 19 (6904): 269270.
26.
2. Ibid., p. xii.
3. Ibid., p. 18.
4. Casebeer, W. D. (2003). Moral Cognition and Its Neural Constituents, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4: 840847.
5. Ibid.
6. Greene, Joshua (2003) From Neural Is To Moral Ought: What
Are The Moral Implications of Neuroscientic Moral Psychology?, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 4 847850.
7. Gallese, V., and A. Goldman (1998). Mirror Neurons and the
Simulation Theory of Mind-Reading, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2:
493501; Goldman, A. (1989). Interpretation Psychologized, Mind and
Language 4: 104119.
8. Ibid.
9. Gordon, R. See www.umsl.edu/~philo/Mind_Seminar/New%20
Pages/ subject.html.
193
194
endnotes
10. Batson, C. D., and J. S. Coke (1981). Empathy: A Source of Altruistic Motivation for Helping, in Altruism and Helping Behavior: Social Personality and Developmental Perspectives, J. P. Rushton and R. M.
Sorrentino, eds. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum), pp. 167211. Also, Cialdini,
R. B., S. L. Brown, B. P. Lewis, C. Luce, and S. L. Neuberg (1997). Reinterpreting the Empathy-Altruism Relationship: When One into One
Equals Oneness, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73:
481494; and Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development:
Implications for Caring and Justice (New York: Cambridge University
Press).
11. Hateld, E., J. T. Caccioppo, and R. L. Rapson (1994). Emotional
Contagion (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 17.
12. Lanzetta, J. T., and B. G. Englis (1989). Expectations of Cooperation and Competition and Their Effects on Observers Vicarious Emotional Responses, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56:
543554.
13. Simner, M. L. (1971). Newborns Response to the Cry of Another Infant, Developmental Psychology 5: 136150.
14. Rizzolatti, G., and L. Craighero (2004). The Mirror Neuron System, Annual Reviews in Neuroscience 27: 169192.
15. Ibid., citing Baldissera, F., P. Cavallari, L. Craighero, and L.
Fadiga (2001). Modulation of Spinal Excitability During Observation of
Hand Actions in Humans, European Journal of Neuroscience 13:
190194.
16. Allott, R. (1991). The Motor Theory of Language, in Studies in
Language Origins, vol. 2, W. von Rafer-Enel, J. Wind, and A. Jonker,
eds. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), pp. 123157.
17. Ramachandran, V. S. Mirror Neurons and Imitation Learning as
the Driving Force Behind the Great Leap Forward in Human Evolution, Third Edge. See www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/
ramachandran_p1.html.
B
Barlett, Sir Fredric, 121
Beliefs and believing, 145162
see also Religious factors; Selfperception; Social issues
bias, 135, 142
cloning, 145, 150151
embryonic development, 8
fear, xviixviii
formation by brain, 9
gender factors, xviii, 122, 146, 156
interpreter, left hemisphere,
148151 (passim), 156, 160
neuroscience vs bioethics, x,
xivxvii, xix, 4
racism, 106107, 135136
stem cell research, 145, 150
Beyond Therapy, 20
Boyer, Pascal, 155
Brain, as autobiographer, see Autobiographer, brain as; Beliefs and
believing; Self-perception
Bush, George W.,
Presidents Council on Bioethics, x,
xii, xvxvi, 9, 1516
C
Casebeer, William, 168
Center for Cognitive Liberty, 114
Children
see also Infants
genetically engineered, 39
pregenetic diagnosis (PGD), 42,
4952
sex selection, 38, 39, 4951
195
195
Abortion, 4
genetic preference, 52
spontaneous, 1314
Supreme Court decision, 117
Absentmindedness, 126, 128
ACE, 2526
Acetylcholine, 24
Aged persons and aging, see Elderly
persons
Allot, Robin, 176
Allport, Gordon, 135136
Alzheimers disease, 20
see also Dementia
brain death dened, 28, 2930
demography, 26
drug treatment of, 75, 76
progress of, 27
risk factors, 26
Animal models
decision making, 93
drugs to enhance training, 66
drugs to enhance memory, 7576,
7879
mirror neurons, 103104
Antisocial thoughts, see Crime and
criminals, thought
Apolipoprotein E, 2526
Arts and artistic endeavor, x
musicians, 59, 61, 6264, 6667
temporal lobe epilepsy and religious belief, 157159
Athleticism, see Sports, enhancements for
Autobiographer, brain as, 31,
120142
see also Beliefs and believing; Selfperception, Social issues
Index
196
index
Classen, Joseph, 65
Cloning, xvii, 12
beliefs regarding, 145, 150151
Conception , 17
sexual intercourse and, 1314
Cognition and behavior
see also Alzheimers disease;
Beliefs and believing; Crime
and criminals, thought;
Dementia; Free will; Intelligence; Knowledge; Memory
absentmindedness, 126, 128
aging brain, 20
evil, xvii
privacy and, 103119 (passim)
study at hand, methodology, ix
Cognitive development, 16, 1933
see also Children; Death, brain;
Elderly persons; Embryos;
Fetus; Hemispheres; Infants;
Intelligence
aging brain, 2223, 2425, 31
drug enhancements of the brain,
xvii, 77, 84
evolution, xvii
split-brain surgery, impacts of, 22
Collins, Francis, 43
Computer technology
beliefs, gambling via, 146
emotional recognition database,
116
imaging, adjunct of mind reading, 114117
lie detection, 110
myelination loss as metaphor, 25
Crime and criminals, thought,
87102
antisocial personality disorder
(APD), 9597
brain imaging, 89, 107, 109113
free will and, x, 14, 88102 (passim)
racism, 105106, 136
sex ratio imbalances, result of, 50
terrorism, xiii
Council on Bioethics, x, xii, xvxvi,
9, 1516, 20, 145
universal ethics, 164
Culture, 10
see also Religious factors
aging, attitudes toward, 21
beliefs, self-perception, 151152
death, dened, 11
D
Dana Press, xxi
Death, brain, xiii, 5, 8, 9, 10
Alzheimers disease and, 28, 2930
denitional issues, 10, 11, 2830
euthanasia, xvi, 32
Uniform Denition of Death Act,
10
Decision making, see also Beliefs
and believing; Free will
beliefs, 146
crimes, intentionality, 14, 89, 94
hyperagency, 54
memory, role of, 124
time factors, 9293
universal ethics, 170172
Denitional issues
aging, normal vs abnormal, 25
death, brain, 10, 11, 2830
intentionality, 1415
memory, long- vs short-term, 24
neuroethics, xiv, 4
racism, 105106
Dementia, xvi, 16, 20
see also Alzheimers disease
demography, 26
Dennet, Daniel, 125
Desimone, Robert, 66
Development, see Cognitive development
Diseases and disorders
see also Alzheimers Disease;
Dementia
brain damage, 8
criminal insanity, 88, 9598
drug treatment, hazards, 68, 77
Huntingtons Disease, 26, 42, 91
memory disorders, drug treatments, 7172
Parkinsons Disease, xvii, 13, 26,
67
pregenetic diagnosis (PGD),
3945, 52, 54
schizophrenia, genetics, 46, 98
split-brain patients, 22, 136137,
148149, 156
study at hand, methodology, xv
index
F
Faith, see Beliefs and believing
Farwell, 111
Fear, xvii, xix
aging, 21
Fetus, 4, 6, 7, 8
see also abortion
Free radicals, 25
Free will, 92
see also Beliefs and believing;
Crimes and criminals, thoughts
antipsychotic drugs administered
involuntarily, 117118
antisocial thoughts/behavior, x,
14, 88102 (passim)
embryos, 14
intentionality dened, 1415
stem cell research, 13
study at hand, methodology, x, ix
time factors, 9293
197
Emotion
brain anatomy, 105
decision-making, 90
memories, unpleasant, 78, 118
natural vs drug-induced skill, 56
parental, 55
privacy and, 108, 116
racism, 107, 135136
recognition and recognition technology, 104, 105, 107, 114117,
173
simulation, 104
Enhancements, brain
see also Drug enhancements of the
brain, training
body vs mind
study at hand, methodology, ix
Epilepsy, temporal lobe and religious belief, 156162
Ericsson, Anders, 5960
Ethics, universal, see Universal
ethics
Euthanasia, xvi, 28
Nazi policy, xvi, 32
Evolution, xix
eugenics, 38
memory, 79, 123
mind reading, 104
study at hand, methodology, xvii
universal ethics, 171
197
198
index
G
Gage, Phineas, 96, 98
Gastaut, Henri, 175
Gender factors
see also Sex selection; Sexual
intercourse
beliefs, xviii, 122, 146, 156
decisions made while aroused, 90
work selection bias, 75
Genetics
see Evolution
aging, 25
Alzheimers disease, 27
artists, 61
cloning, xvii, 3, 12
criminal thoughts and behavior,
88, 91
embryos, moral status conferred
on, 18
enhancement via, 3755
athletes, 44, 58, 6162
DNA evidence, 107, 108
Human Genome Project, 42
Huntingtons Disease, 26, 42, 91
nature-nurture question, 3738,
4449, 55, 62
Parkinsons Disease, xvii, 13, 26,
67
pregenetic diagnosis (PGD),
3945, 52, 54
preimplant genetics, Nazi theory,
xvi
right-hemisphere strokes, 108109
stem cell research, xvi, 9, 1213
aging brain, remediation, 22
beliefs regarding, 145, 150
Glimcher, Paul, 93
Gould, Stephen, 91
Grafton, Scott, 66
Greely, Hank, 105
Greene, Joshua, 170, 172
Grinder, James, 111
Guilty Knowledge Test, 109
H
Hauser, Marc, 152, 71
Hemispheres, brain
belief formation, 147152
decision making, 94
intelligence, 82
interpreter, left hemisphere,
148151 (passim), 156, 160,
172, 174
memory, 136137
nature-nurture, 60
right-hemisphere strokes, 108109
split-brain patients, 22, 136137,
148149, 156
temporal lobe epilepsy and religious belief, 157162
Hilyard, Steven, 94
Hippocampus, 24, 76, 86
Historical factors
see also Cognitive development;
Time factors
aging population, 21, 25, 69
beliefs inuenced by, 154
general intelligence, 7980
insanity defense, decisions, 100
memory research, 131
Nazi eugenics policy, 52, 53
Nazi euthanasia policy, xvi, 32
religious movements, 9
universal ethics, 164
Hitler, Adolf
eugenics, Nazi policy, 52, 53
euthanasia, Nazi policy, xvi, 32, 53
Huntingtons Disease, 26, 42, 91
I
Imaging, scanning
animal studies, training enhancement through drugs, 66
antisocial personality disorder
(APD), 96
computer technology, adjunct of
mind reading, 114117
criminal thought, 89, 107, 109113
intelligence, 83
memory, 24
mind reading, 104
musical ability, 6364
racism, 107
universal moral reasoning,
168172, 175177
Infants, 67, 16
moral status, 3
Intelligence
see also Beliefs and believing,
Free will
brain imaging, 83
drug enhancements, 5657, 71, 76,
77, 7984
genetics, 49, 51, 8083
nature-nurture, 4546
pregenetic diagnosis, 4344
index
K
Kandel, Eric, 75
Kass, Leon, xiii
Knowledge, xviii, 4
aging brain, 21
Guilty Knowledge Test, 109
Kurzban, Robert, 105106
N
Nature-nurture question, 3738,
4449, 55, 62
criminal thoughts, 88
O
Organ transplants, xiii
brain, personality transplant, 31
Magnum, Robert, 94
May, William, 53
199
Law
see also Crime and criminals,
thought
insanity defense, decisions, 100
memory in courtroom testimony,
87, 106107, 124127 (passim),
129, 132, 135, 139140
misattribution, 126127, 129130,
131, 134
Supreme Court,
abortion, fetus as moral individual, 7
Charles Thomas Sell v. the
Unites States of America,
117118
Roe v. Wade, 117
Uniform Denition of Death Act,
10
Lazetta, John, 174175
Lester, Toby, 154
Libet, Benjamin, 9293
Locke, John, 93
Loftus, Elizabeth, 132134
Lying and lie detection
computer technology for detection, 110
neurobiological methods of detection, 108119
privacy and, 103, 108
terrorist suspects, 111, 112
199
200
index
R
Raichle, Marcus, 66
Raine, Adrian, 9697
Ramachandran, Vilayanur, 93,
108109, 177
Religious factors, 9
as belief systems, 152155
cloning and stem cell research,
146
eugenics, 5253
euthanasia, 3233
fear, xviiixix
historical perspectives, 9
religious right, 9
self-perception, personal development, xiv
temporal lobe epilepsy and religious belief, 156162
universal ethics, 164, 165
Research methodology, see Methodology
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, 103104
Russell, Bertrand, 11
S
Sare, William
neuroethics, dened, xiv
Sandel, Michael, 3940, 5153
Schacter, Daniel, 128, 134, 141
Schizophrenia, genetics, 46, 98
Sejnowski, Terry, 114, 115
Self-perception
see also Autobiographer, brain as
beliefs, cultural, 151152
brain transplant, 31
dementia, impact of, 20
T
Tay-Sachs disease, 41, 42
Terrorism, xiii
lying among suspects detected,
111, 112
witness memory errors, 125
index
V
Vonnegut, Kurt, 6970
W
Waldbauer, Jacob, ix
Watson, James, 5152
Will, see Free will
Wilson, David, 154155
Wilson, James, 166
Y
Yesavage, Jerome, 76
Ziemann, Ulf, 66
Time factors
see also Memory
abortion, spontaneous, 1314
aging and time memory, 24
cognitive ability, 45
embryonic development, 4, 56, 7,
12, 16, 18
fetus as moral individual, 7, 8
free will, decision making, 9293
infant development, 16
intelligence speed of processing,
8384
memory decay, 128
memory persistence, 137
pregenetic diagnosis (PGD), 41
stem cell harvesting, 1213
twinning, 12, 1516
Training, see Education and training; Enhancements, brain
Transplants, see Organ transplants
Townsend, Rebeca, xi
Twins, 12, 1516, 45, 47
201
201
202
index
a n t i s o c i a l t h o u g h t s a n d t h e r i g h t t o p r i vacy
203
203
204
f r e e w i l l , p e r s o na l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y, a n d t h e l aw
a n t i s o c i a l t h o u g h t s a n d t h e r i g h t t o p r i vacy
205
205
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