WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.200 Why am I not surprised that we've got a full house for Natasha Mitchell? 2 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:06.040 Drives of people turned away, I understand as well. 3 00:00:06.340 --> 00:00:11.220 I'm Peter Mayers, I'm a colleague of Natasha's, I work at ABC Radio National on the national 4 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:16.540 interest. A few years ago Natasha made the sensible move of shifting from the Sydney 5 00:00:16.540 --> 00:00:21.260 offices of Radio National to the Melbourne offices of Radio National. We had to put up 6 00:00:21.260 --> 00:00:27.920 some extra shelving for all her awards, but it has been great for us in Melbourne to have 7 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:32.540 Natasha as a colleague. I listen to an awful lot of radio, my family get a bit annoyed 8 00:00:32.540 --> 00:00:36.860 with me walking around always with an earphone in my ear, but I'm going to let you in on 9 00:00:36.860 --> 00:00:41.420 a secret. Often on the weekend I listen to classic FM or even the football instead of 10 00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:48.200 Radio National, just because my brain hurts, is a bit tired. But one program which I try 11 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:56.120 not to miss is All In The Mind, because it is consistently engaging, entertaining, challenging, 12 00:00:56.680 --> 00:00:57.160 informative. 13 00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:06.080 It's surprising, seamlessly produced as well to make a wonderful listening experience. 14 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:12.500 It is radio of the best kind, broadcasting of the best kind, broadcasting that makes 15 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:12.980 you think. 16 00:01:14.260 --> 00:01:19.040 So, I don't want to say any more about Natasha, you can read her history, her biography about 17 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:23.960 the circus and being an engineer and all those things in the program guide. And I'll invite 18 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:26.280 her to talk about why you are not your brain scan. 19 00:01:30.060 --> 00:01:30.460 Natasha 20 00:01:30.460 --> 00:01:36.220 Thank you Peter very much. Perhaps we can find out today why it is your brain hurts 21 00:01:36.860 --> 00:01:40.840 on a weekend. My brain hurts a lot too, maybe that's the case for all of us these days, information 22 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:45.820 overload. And thanks to the Adelaide Festival, it's hard not seeing you all, maybe we should 23 00:01:45.820 --> 00:01:48.200 have the lights slightly up. What do you think? 24 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:51.840 Yeah, can we? Just a tad, yeah that's better. 25 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:57.720 Yeah, okay, well that's alright, you can see that okay, can't you? Yeah, good. Well, and 26 00:01:57.720 --> 00:02:01.360 thanks to the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, I think this is one of Australia's absolutely 27 00:02:02.100 --> 00:02:06.460 best festivals for really digging deep and I guess that's what we try and do on Radio 28 00:02:06.460 --> 00:02:12.600 National. Today I thought I'd share something with you so intimate, so personal that I've 29 00:02:12.600 --> 00:02:16.680 really had to think about whether I want to expose this part of myself. It's a part of 30 00:02:16.680 --> 00:02:24.000 me that few people have seen, including myself, bizarre as that may seem. And this is particularly 31 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:27.700 bizarre because this is a part of me that may well be seen by others. But I think it's 32 00:02:27.720 --> 00:02:32.160 a part of me that may well define everything I do, how I see, how I react to the world. 33 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:39.600 Perhaps as many would have it, it is me. So in the interests of undressing in public and 34 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:49.980 in the spirit that we only live once, ta-da, me, all of me perhaps. The engine of reason, 35 00:02:50.120 --> 00:02:54.720 the seat of my soul, that's how Paul Churchland, the great philosopher, in fact his partner 36 00:02:54.720 --> 00:02:57.700 in life and work, Pat Churchland, was due to be here today. And I think that's a great 37 00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:01.320 thing to do here at the festival, sadly had to pull out. But he describes this, the engine 38 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:07.240 of reason, the seat of my soul, this couple of kilos of literally tofu textured tissue 39 00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:13.660 tucked inside my head. This is my organ of thought, the biological cauldron of all my 40 00:03:13.660 --> 00:03:19.920 dreams and desires, my wicked thoughts and wild fantasies, my loves and loathings. Actually 41 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:25.800 it's not that interesting being me, I wish it was. But this is the organ that drives 42 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:27.700 or perhaps I should say contains my spirit. And so I think that's a part of me that's 43 00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:33.340 taking the reins. My voting choices, my capacity to exercise free will, although that's debatable. 44 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:41.740 My ability to take responsibility for my actions. In there lies my moral sensibility, my buying 45 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:46.920 desires, I have few I should say. Probably a collection of personal baggage, which all 46 00:03:46.920 --> 00:03:52.280 of us have, maybe me more than most. A motley crew of talents and limitations. All my preferences 47 00:03:52.280 --> 00:03:57.220 are penned in there. The fact that I prefer my eggs runny, not too runny, and my bananas 48 00:03:57.220 --> 00:04:04.060 is not too ripe, my politicians and probably my men not too ripe or runny. Even the neuronal 49 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:10.300 imprint of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Lucanelli, is tucked away in those fleshy folds of tissue. 50 00:04:10.760 --> 00:04:17.620 Everything about the beast I call a me is all there, which is sort of a worry, really. 51 00:04:18.860 --> 00:04:23.960 And in fact, that's a cross-section, and I've got an animated version of this as well. So as you're 52 00:04:23.960 --> 00:04:28.880 moving through the cross-section of this scan, this is sort of, I don't think this is actually 53 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:32.680 the exact meridian line. I think it's sort of slightly to one side, because there's actually 54 00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:37.620 more fluid than there is a brain. When I looked at that, it got me a bit worried. 55 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:42.880 You couldn't have missed, though, that the bright lights of the brain scan, or in this case, 56 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:49.420 the muted grey tones, have certainly captured the popular imagination in recent years. TV screens 57 00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:53.760 and magazine covers are festooned with them, and with headings, 58 00:04:53.960 --> 00:05:03.700 like sarcasm brain areas discovered. Brain scans spot shifty looks. Is this your brain on God? 59 00:05:04.060 --> 00:05:11.800 Or brain's willpower spot found? Or, I love this one, brain scan spots women faking orgasms. 60 00:05:13.400 --> 00:05:16.840 And when I saw that one, I had to say, well, who needs a brain scan 61 00:05:17.780 --> 00:05:23.560 to work that out? Just recently, there was another one, 62 00:05:23.960 --> 00:05:27.760 another article in Esquire magazine, a real corker. This was the headline, 63 00:05:27.960 --> 00:05:33.820 Do I Love My Wife? An Investigative Report. And the subheading read this, 64 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:39.120 One married man, a machine that can read his mind, a head-to-head match-up between his wife 65 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:46.140 and Angelina Jolie. And it went on, sounds like no good can come of this, unless, of course, 66 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:53.020 he discovers the meaning of love. And if that didn't tempt you to want to read that article 67 00:05:53.020 --> 00:05:53.940 more, and I did, I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. 68 00:05:53.960 --> 00:05:54.080 I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. And I did. 69 00:05:54.080 --> 00:05:59.240 read that article further. It continued with, How do I love thee? I love thee with serotonin 70 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:05.160 produced by my rafe nuclei. I love thee with testosterone receptors deep in my hypothalamus. 71 00:06:05.200 --> 00:06:09.940 I love thee with dopamine that floods my primitive lizard brain. 72 00:06:11.620 --> 00:06:18.720 So there you have it. The media. And I'm part of it. We've also seen a whole new set of disciplines, 73 00:06:19.260 --> 00:06:23.580 you would have noticed, that are trying to mark out their own real estate in the brain. So you've 74 00:06:23.960 --> 00:06:26.220 neuro-economics, neuro-leadership, 75 00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:27.780 I thought that was a sort of interesting one, 76 00:06:27.860 --> 00:06:29.580 neuro-theology, neuro-marketing. 77 00:06:29.820 --> 00:06:33.060 There's even the push for a sort of neuro-warfare, 78 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:34.920 neuro-enhancement. 79 00:06:35.020 --> 00:06:38.240 An awful lot of people are jumping on the neuro-bandwagon 80 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:39.660 with the help of clever branding 81 00:06:39.660 --> 00:06:42.360 and the hope of a new airport bestseller 82 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:49.200 about what your brain can tell the rest of us about you. 83 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:53.200 Trying to keep an eye on the ethics of all this 84 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:54.620 and the implications of all this 85 00:06:54.620 --> 00:06:57.080 is the emergence of another field, 86 00:06:57.140 --> 00:06:59.100 which I find more interesting and more nuanced, 87 00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:00.620 and that's neuro-ethics. 88 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:05.040 It's not just journalists, I should point out, 89 00:07:05.080 --> 00:07:06.700 looking for a sexy story 90 00:07:06.700 --> 00:07:09.180 or sub-editors looking for a sexy headline 91 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:10.740 who have been seduced by the allure 92 00:07:10.740 --> 00:07:13.600 of the bright lights of the brain scan, 93 00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:16.500 though we might want to debate that in question time, 94 00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:19.500 but I'd suggest that scientists are just as seduced 95 00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:21.300 by their exciting tools, 96 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:23.180 and why shouldn't they be? 97 00:07:23.200 --> 00:07:26.260 I mean, we've all been lured, I think, by the possibility 98 00:07:26.260 --> 00:07:28.120 that if we know the workings 99 00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:30.500 of the hundred billion or so neurons in our brain, 100 00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:33.500 then surely we will really know ourselves. 101 00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:36.640 A set of fundamental truths about human nature 102 00:07:36.640 --> 00:07:37.840 will be revealed to us. 103 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:43.280 How and why we fall in love, fight, fantasise, get addicted, 104 00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:46.500 believe in gods, experience hallucinations, 105 00:07:47.160 --> 00:07:50.060 even why some of us like Vegemite over peanut butter. 106 00:07:50.900 --> 00:07:51.780 It's all there. 107 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:53.180 It's all there. 108 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:55.840 It's become a sort of game of pin the thought on the brain, I think. 109 00:07:56.600 --> 00:07:59.140 And if a hundred billion neurons sounds good, 110 00:07:59.260 --> 00:08:01.980 then there's a hundred trillion connections or so, 111 00:08:02.140 --> 00:08:04.500 plus or minus one or two, between them, 112 00:08:04.540 --> 00:08:07.160 which makes for an awful lot of neurological chatter 113 00:08:07.160 --> 00:08:09.160 and networks to try and unravel. 114 00:08:09.320 --> 00:08:10.500 That's the challenge for neuroscience. 115 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:13.640 I mean, despite the scale of the complexity, though, 116 00:08:13.720 --> 00:08:16.640 neuroscience is making extremely interesting head roads 117 00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:20.280 into how we think, how we act, how we perceive the world, 118 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:21.360 the nature of consciousness. 119 00:08:22.080 --> 00:08:23.000 That's a big one. 120 00:08:24.840 --> 00:08:26.960 Very interesting to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 121 00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:32.840 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 122 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:35.180 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 123 00:08:35.180 --> 00:08:36.480 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 124 00:08:38.560 --> 00:08:39.980 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 125 00:08:39.980 --> 00:08:43.140 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 126 00:08:43.140 --> 00:08:43.360 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 127 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:44.440 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 128 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:52.420 to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able 129 00:08:52.420 --> 00:08:58.600 feasible technologically or conceptually or more controversially beyond what's acceptable? 130 00:08:58.940 --> 00:09:03.500 That's a bit controversial for a science journalist to say. Are there things we don't want to know 131 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:08.080 about ourselves or we don't want other people, more importantly, to know about us? 132 00:09:08.540 --> 00:09:14.800 And certainly there's some concern here about the integrity, the future of our cognitive commons 133 00:09:14.800 --> 00:09:21.040 as brain scan technology becomes promoted as a sort of truth teller, a mind reader. 134 00:09:22.500 --> 00:09:28.500 There's a lovely book called Picturing Personhood, Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity by a chap 135 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:33.560 called Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Joe Dummett or Dummett, I can't remember 136 00:09:33.560 --> 00:09:38.500 the pronunciation. Anyway, I'm inclined to agree with him. He focuses more on PET scans, 137 00:09:38.660 --> 00:09:44.620 which is another technology that precedes fMRI really. And I agree with him though when he says 138 00:09:44.620 --> 00:09:51.020 this, the brain scans we encounter in magazines and newspapers, on television, in a doctor's 139 00:09:51.020 --> 00:09:57.760 office or in a scientific journal make claims on us. These colourful images with captions 140 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:05.040 describe brains that are certifiably smart or depressed or obsessed and we're placed in 141 00:10:05.040 --> 00:10:11.300 categories that the images offers. To which category do I belong, he asks? What brain type 142 00:10:11.300 --> 00:10:19.540 do I have? Or more nervously, am I normal? And Dummett urges us to really turn to the broader 143 00:10:19.540 --> 00:10:21.000 social and institutional context. He says, I'm not a brain, I'm not a brain, I'm not a brain, 144 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:21.360 I'm not a brain. And Dummett urges us to really turn to the broader social and institutional 145 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:29.980 forces to understand how it is that we look to the brain for an answer, to really understand 146 00:10:29.980 --> 00:10:36.960 those social and institutional forces that really push us to look to the brain and the brain scans. 147 00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:42.480 And there's been an extraordinary number of developments in the last few years. As the 148 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:49.560 drama of the US election was coming to a head at the end of 2007, a team of scientists led by 149 00:10:49.560 --> 00:10:50.960 Marco Ruzzi, who is the director of the Institute for Brain Science and Technology, 150 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:57.960 published the results of a study. Now normally scientists publish their results in peer-reviewed 151 00:10:57.960 --> 00:11:04.560 scientific journals. These guys published the results in an editorial in the New York Times. 152 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:09.960 Prime real estate, prime real estate for public discussion. And the heading was this, 153 00:11:10.020 --> 00:11:16.960 this is your brain on politics. And what they did with this study is they gave a questionnaire to 154 00:11:16.960 --> 00:11:20.380 20 voters, swing voters, undecided voters, and they popped them into, 155 00:11:21.040 --> 00:11:26.660 so a questionnaire about their voting preferences and their feelings about the various leaders. They 156 00:11:26.660 --> 00:11:32.740 then popped them into an fMRI brain scanner, a functional magnetic resonance imaging device. 157 00:11:33.140 --> 00:11:37.900 And then they showed these people a series of photos of the Democrat, Republican, and independent 158 00:11:37.900 --> 00:11:43.720 candidates. And they also showed them video excerpts of speeches by them, so slightly more 159 00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:49.280 animated presence. And here are some of the extraordinary conclusions that they presented 160 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:50.120 in this op-ed. 161 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:57.540 Voters sense both peril and promise in party brands. And they went on to say this, 162 00:11:57.640 --> 00:12:01.660 when we showed subjects the words Democrat, Republican, and independent, they exhibited 163 00:12:01.660 --> 00:12:09.160 high levels of anxiety in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating high levels of 164 00:12:09.160 --> 00:12:14.960 activity, I should say, in that part, which indicates anxiety. The two brain areas in the 165 00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:20.700 brain, two areas in the brain associated with anxiety and disgust, the amygdala and the 166 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:28.140 insula, were especially active when men viewed Republican. But all three labels elicited some 167 00:12:28.140 --> 00:12:34.800 activity in the brain area associated with reward, the ventral striatum, as well as other regions 168 00:12:34.800 --> 00:12:42.320 related to desire and feeling connected. I mean, you know, you stare at your toast in the morning. 169 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:47.440 You have a cup of tea, you'll probably feel a bit connected. You'll have some desire. You'll get a 170 00:12:47.440 --> 00:12:50.680 bit anxious about the next day. And the milk might be off, so you might have to drink a cup of tea. 171 00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:55.680 You might get disgusted. So, you know, so, I mean, that sounds like a woolly set of conclusions to me. 172 00:12:55.760 --> 00:13:04.420 They went on with this one. Emotions about Hillary Clinton are mixed. Yeah, and? And they said this, 173 00:13:04.520 --> 00:13:09.600 voters who rated Mrs. Clinton unfavourably on their questionnaire, so they didn't like her, 174 00:13:09.760 --> 00:13:14.960 appeared not entirely comfortable with their assessment. When viewing images of her, 175 00:13:15.040 --> 00:13:19.140 these voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, 176 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:25.480 centre of the brain, that is aroused when a person feels compelled to act in two different ways, 177 00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:29.820 but must choose one. So they're fraught. And it looked as if, they said, 178 00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:35.020 they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton. 179 00:13:37.320 --> 00:13:43.040 And then this is another conclusion they had about the president, the now president. Mr. Obama was 180 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:50.260 rated relatively high on the pre-scan questionnaire, yet both men and women exhibited less brain activity, 181 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:55.520 while viewing the pre-video set of still pictures of Mr. Obama than they did while looking at the 182 00:13:55.520 --> 00:14:01.900 other candidates. So less was going on in their brains. Among the male, they might have been asleep, 183 00:14:02.180 --> 00:14:07.460 no, maybe not, they'd know that. But among the male subjects, the video of Mr. Obama provoked 184 00:14:07.460 --> 00:14:12.920 increased activity in some regions of the brain associated with positive feeling. But in women, 185 00:14:12.980 --> 00:14:20.640 it elicited little change. Our findings suggest that Mr. Obama has yet to create an impression on some swing voting. 186 00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:27.600 All this from a series of brain scans, and of course, history tells a story there, and Mr. Obama, 187 00:14:27.900 --> 00:14:34.120 I think he got a fair bit of the swing vote, didn't he? Hello, Mr. President. Well, a few days later, 188 00:14:34.200 --> 00:14:42.640 a letter signed by 17 rather aggravated, pissed-off scientists was published in the New York Times as a 189 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:48.300 follow-up. And they said that there were real problems with this study, obviously. As cognitive 190 00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:50.680 neuroscientists, they said, who used the same brain-based method of using brain-based method of 191 00:14:50.680 --> 00:14:55.720 brain imaging technology, we know that it is just not possible to definitively determine whether a 192 00:14:55.720 --> 00:15:01.920 person is anxious or feeling connected simply by looking at the activity of a particular brain 193 00:15:01.920 --> 00:15:08.160 region. Brain regions are typically engaged by many mental states and a one-to-one mapping 194 00:15:08.160 --> 00:15:15.660 between a brain region and a mental state is not possible. And they said this, we're very excited 195 00:15:15.660 --> 00:15:19.700 about the potential use of brain imaging techniques to better understand the psychology 196 00:15:19.700 --> 00:15:25.820 of political decisions, but we're distressed by the publication of research in press that's not 197 00:15:25.820 --> 00:15:31.260 undergone peer review and that uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions about 198 00:15:31.260 --> 00:15:36.660 topics as important as the presidential election. I think that's a nice response. 199 00:15:37.780 --> 00:15:43.260 The plot thickened. And I've got to say, the New York Times editorial really is prime real 200 00:15:43.260 --> 00:15:49.540 estate in the media. It just spun out across the nation and across the 201 00:15:49.540 --> 00:15:56.060 entire known universe that you can use brain scans to politically poll, in a sense. 202 00:15:56.820 --> 00:16:02.080 Sort of rather expensive way of doing it. The plot thickened because as it turns out, 203 00:16:02.080 --> 00:16:06.160 it's not just anxiety and fear, and I'm sure there might be some neuroscientists in the audience that 204 00:16:06.160 --> 00:16:10.540 can add to this, but it's not just anxiety and fear that can activate the amygdala, 205 00:16:10.660 --> 00:16:16.100 but positive emotions can too. So another neuroscientist has suggested that the amygdala 206 00:16:16.100 --> 00:16:19.520 may not be responding because someone is feeling anxious about the amygdala. 207 00:16:19.540 --> 00:16:24.800 The Republican candidate, Nick Rommey, per se. It could be just that they're responding to his 208 00:16:24.800 --> 00:16:30.900 attractive head of hair. And so that was an interesting spat amongst the neuroscience 209 00:16:30.900 --> 00:16:36.440 community in the public. Neuroimaging is an interesting tool for exploring aspects of belief, 210 00:16:36.560 --> 00:16:39.900 political preference and behaviour, but it doesn't look like brain scans are going to 211 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:48.000 replace the pollsters or the political pundits anytime soon. But could they replace the polygraph, 212 00:16:48.560 --> 00:16:49.420 the lighter? 213 00:16:49.540 --> 00:16:56.640 You know, unlike polys, lawmakers are starting quite vigorously to pay attention to brain research. 214 00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:03.320 And we know that the polygraph is a dubious technology at best. So when scientists reported 215 00:17:03.320 --> 00:17:08.200 that they'd found what looked like the neurocorrelates of telling porkies of deception, 216 00:17:09.300 --> 00:17:16.800 a company called No Lie fMRI jumped on the bandwagon. And it's a great marketing ploy. 217 00:17:16.860 --> 00:17:19.200 They jumped on the bandwagon. You can look them up. No, 218 00:17:19.540 --> 00:17:26.060 liefmri.com. And they launched. And what was their claim? That fMRI is the new lie detector 219 00:17:26.060 --> 00:17:31.160 because your brain never lies. You might. Your brain won't. The technique, they say, 220 00:17:31.260 --> 00:17:37.360 bypasses any conscious cognitive processing and gets to the truth of the matter. And scientists 221 00:17:37.360 --> 00:17:42.140 were involved in the launch of this company. And already earlier this year, the defence in a child 222 00:17:42.140 --> 00:17:49.120 protection case sought to admit scans by No Lie fMRI as evidence. This was a case where a minor had 223 00:17:49.120 --> 00:17:54.580 allegedly been sexually abused by a custodial parent. So was the parent lying or the child? 224 00:17:55.120 --> 00:18:01.920 So half-baked technology or science was used in a very severe case. I don't know what the outcome 225 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:08.340 of that was. And the idea is that when you put people in a brain scanner, when they lie in a 226 00:18:08.340 --> 00:18:13.040 brain scanner, the theory goes that it takes more cognitive effort to lie than to tell the truth. 227 00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:18.580 And that this effort is reflected in parts of the brain involved in, say, heightened attention, 228 00:18:19.120 --> 00:18:25.100 in monitoring errors and conflicts, and in controlling behaviour. Suffice to say, 229 00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:31.880 a lot of scientists were a lot dubious. But the potential role of brain scans in the courts and 230 00:18:31.880 --> 00:18:37.800 in the legal setting is igniting some feisty questions like, Your Honour, I didn't commit 231 00:18:37.800 --> 00:18:43.360 the crime. My brain made me do it. Or am I culpable or is my malfunctioning brain the 232 00:18:43.360 --> 00:18:49.100 problem? Are there, and this is perhaps more concerning, criminal brains? Are there psychopathic 233 00:18:49.120 --> 00:18:56.400 brains? People are already doing genetic work to look at psychopathy or sociopathy in children. 234 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:04.760 So, I mean, when a scientific field develops and matures, and the novelty of its new toys, 235 00:19:04.820 --> 00:19:09.000 like the brain scans, have subsided a little, it starts to scrutinise itself 236 00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:14.520 more thoughtfully. And that leaks out into the public via, I guess, the work that we do as 237 00:19:14.520 --> 00:19:18.780 science journalists. And that's what's happening now, I think, in the neurosciences. So last year, 238 00:19:19.120 --> 00:19:23.900 a quite technical and lengthy paper was published in Nature, which attracted a lot of attention with 239 00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:30.140 the title, What Can We Do and What Can't We Do with fMRI? And another really interesting study 240 00:19:30.140 --> 00:19:36.580 titled, The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations, got everyone talking too. It turns 241 00:19:36.580 --> 00:19:41.280 out that study was very interesting, more sort of psychological study, that we're quite literally 242 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:48.820 blinded by the bright lights of the brain scans. And we buy the neuro spin when brain scans, 243 00:19:49.120 --> 00:19:53.660 presented with results. So in this study, Yale researchers offered people explanations 244 00:19:53.660 --> 00:20:00.740 for the results of a series of psychological experiments. And on the whole, people steered 245 00:20:00.740 --> 00:20:07.960 away from irrelevant or bogus explanations. But if there was a brain scan, well, if the explanation 246 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:15.700 included the words, brain scan studies show, with the anatomical parts of the brain named, 247 00:20:15.780 --> 00:20:18.940 irrelevant parts, I might add, to that irrelevant. 248 00:20:19.120 --> 00:20:24.460 So if you had an explanation, people bought it, including neuroscience students. The only 249 00:20:24.460 --> 00:20:31.740 people that didn't were professors in neuroscience. So, phew. And that's given rise to what are 250 00:20:31.740 --> 00:20:35.980 called a whole sort of movement of neuro-commercans, they call themselves. And so there's some 251 00:20:36.580 --> 00:20:42.120 great blogs out there that keep me on my toes. There's the neuro-journalism mill, and they 252 00:20:42.120 --> 00:20:46.960 claim to separate the wheat from the chaff in neuro-journalism reporting. It's hysterical. 253 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:48.980 It's a bit self-righteous, and it gets my 254 00:20:48.980 --> 00:20:54.260 my goat sometimes, but it's very useful and I recommend it. So things are shifting. And I have 255 00:20:54.260 --> 00:21:03.120 to say, I was awed. I mean, it's a bit bizarre to think that that's me, really. And here I am, 256 00:21:03.160 --> 00:21:10.600 looking back at myself. And yeah, bizarre. And I was awed, but I was sort of underwhelmed as well 257 00:21:10.600 --> 00:21:17.260 when I saw this a few years back. After reporting on brain scan research for quite some years, 258 00:21:17.260 --> 00:21:22.860 I thought I'd better actually have one. So I climbed inside a big tube magnet of an fMRI, 259 00:21:23.020 --> 00:21:29.000 late one night in Boston, where I was living a couple of years ago, as part of a study by 260 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:35.160 leading vision researcher Nancy Kamwisher. She's a great neuroscientist who really engages publicly 261 00:21:35.160 --> 00:21:42.860 and sceptically in how her work is reported. Being a science journalist, though, I read 262 00:21:42.860 --> 00:21:47.060 the consent form with just that little bit more detail, because 263 00:21:47.260 --> 00:21:49.320 You know, what if they found something nasty in my head, 264 00:21:49.380 --> 00:21:50.900 like a whopping great brain tumour 265 00:21:50.900 --> 00:21:53.380 that just hadn't sort of presented itself yet? 266 00:21:53.400 --> 00:21:55.800 And scientists sort of euphemistically call this 267 00:21:55.800 --> 00:21:57.600 an incidental finding. 268 00:21:59.120 --> 00:22:02.280 I mean, this was, you know, a fun visual exercise 269 00:22:02.280 --> 00:22:04.320 I was signing up for, not a death sentence. 270 00:22:05.020 --> 00:22:06.420 Anyway, who's had a brain scan? 271 00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:07.400 I'm interested to know. 272 00:22:08.100 --> 00:22:09.640 I mean, it's a distressing experience 273 00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:11.540 if you're actually having a brain scan 274 00:22:11.540 --> 00:22:14.020 because something's not right. 275 00:22:14.420 --> 00:22:17.040 But it's a very claustrophobic experience, isn't it? 276 00:22:17.580 --> 00:22:18.020 Awful. 277 00:22:18.660 --> 00:22:19.880 Never have another one. 278 00:22:19.960 --> 00:22:21.320 Had three, never have another one. 279 00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:22.440 It's noisy. 280 00:22:23.620 --> 00:22:25.540 In this case, it was late at night. 281 00:22:25.620 --> 00:22:26.540 I was tired. 282 00:22:26.980 --> 00:22:29.680 I couldn't see the images I was being tested on very well. 283 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:30.460 Things were fuzzy. 284 00:22:30.560 --> 00:22:31.240 I was fuzzy. 285 00:22:31.340 --> 00:22:33.660 The data probably was fuzzy as a result as well. 286 00:22:33.800 --> 00:22:35.620 Here I was, my brain on show. 287 00:22:35.740 --> 00:22:38.480 I was having to dazzle them with my cognitive talents 288 00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:39.740 and brilliance, 289 00:22:39.740 --> 00:22:41.700 and then I started getting existential about that. 290 00:22:41.740 --> 00:22:43.560 Then I started getting existential about 291 00:22:43.560 --> 00:22:44.860 whether they might pick up 292 00:22:44.860 --> 00:22:46.460 that I'm getting existential about that. 293 00:22:46.460 --> 00:22:48.120 And before I know it, 294 00:22:48.160 --> 00:22:51.640 it was just this big metamental loop that I was in. 295 00:22:51.780 --> 00:22:53.260 And so that was the result. 296 00:22:53.840 --> 00:22:56.560 And I think I was expecting something more solid. 297 00:22:58.660 --> 00:23:00.060 Actually, I'll admit it's something 298 00:23:00.060 --> 00:23:01.380 a bit more intelligent looking. 299 00:23:02.420 --> 00:23:05.080 Or maybe I should have been expecting something like that. 300 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:09.480 It's what I feel like sometimes. 301 00:23:10.300 --> 00:23:12.900 Or maybe I should have been expecting something like that. 302 00:23:14.560 --> 00:23:15.220 Or that. 303 00:23:16.560 --> 00:23:17.540 Or woolly-headed. 304 00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:18.860 Or maybe even this. 305 00:23:20.760 --> 00:23:21.720 Isn't that gross? 306 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:23.720 I think that's been digitally enhanced. 307 00:23:24.020 --> 00:23:25.760 What is an fMRI scan? 308 00:23:26.380 --> 00:23:27.980 Actually, I'll just get that one off. 309 00:23:28.120 --> 00:23:28.300 Oh! 310 00:23:30.540 --> 00:23:32.280 That's what I feel like on a bad day. 311 00:23:33.020 --> 00:23:34.060 Or maybe that. 312 00:23:35.600 --> 00:23:36.560 Jelly, jelly. 313 00:23:38.460 --> 00:23:41.340 What is an fMRI scan actually measuring, though? 314 00:23:41.400 --> 00:23:43.600 Functional magnetic resonance imaging 315 00:23:43.600 --> 00:23:45.780 has only been with us for a few decades. 316 00:23:45.780 --> 00:23:48.020 And this was a technology 317 00:23:48.020 --> 00:23:50.360 that finally we didn't have to destroy the brain 318 00:23:50.360 --> 00:23:52.600 or put a scalpel into it 319 00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:54.100 to really get inside it 320 00:23:54.100 --> 00:23:56.720 and see it in action, non-invasively. 321 00:23:56.980 --> 00:23:58.340 So F for functional 322 00:23:58.340 --> 00:24:01.740 means you can actually literally see the brain in action, 323 00:24:01.820 --> 00:24:04.140 doing stuff, a cognitive task or something. 324 00:24:04.900 --> 00:24:06.780 And a magnetic resonance imager 325 00:24:06.780 --> 00:24:09.860 is literally a big tubular magnet, 326 00:24:09.940 --> 00:24:11.360 a strong magnetic field, 327 00:24:11.540 --> 00:24:13.660 which is why you've got to take off all your bits of metal. 328 00:24:13.720 --> 00:24:14.820 And if you've got a heart pacemaker, 329 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:15.720 you'd best not. 330 00:24:15.780 --> 00:24:16.280 You'd best not have one. 331 00:24:17.760 --> 00:24:18.780 And so when you have a thought 332 00:24:18.780 --> 00:24:20.340 or you're doing a mental task, 333 00:24:20.520 --> 00:24:22.780 neurons fire in the networks, 334 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:25.260 the parts of the brain or networks of the brain 335 00:24:25.260 --> 00:24:27.880 that are involved in engaging with that thought. 336 00:24:28.100 --> 00:24:30.140 And firing neurons take a lot of energy. 337 00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:33.200 And they need oxygenated blood 338 00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:35.380 to flow to those parts of the brain 339 00:24:35.380 --> 00:24:37.060 that are having to do the work. 340 00:24:37.220 --> 00:24:38.560 And that's what happens. 341 00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:41.760 And the magnetic properties of this oxygenated blood 342 00:24:41.760 --> 00:24:43.060 are picked up. 343 00:24:43.220 --> 00:24:45.760 And so it's not directly... 344 00:24:45.780 --> 00:24:46.140 It's not directly proportional. 345 00:24:46.620 --> 00:24:49.060 You know, it's actually measuring the flow of blood 346 00:24:49.060 --> 00:24:51.900 to the part of the brain that is active. 347 00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:54.140 And after considerable computing power, 348 00:24:54.340 --> 00:24:56.560 math, stats, subtractions and additions, 349 00:24:56.980 --> 00:24:58.740 numerical slicing and dicing, 350 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:00.540 hey, presto, you get a brain. 351 00:25:01.640 --> 00:25:03.300 But, and it's a big but, 352 00:25:03.540 --> 00:25:05.140 don't be fooled by what you see. 353 00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:08.180 You know, brain scans are constructed. 354 00:25:08.780 --> 00:25:10.560 They're jigged, they're rejigged. 355 00:25:10.560 --> 00:25:11.820 A whole range of things, 356 00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:13.220 like the shake of your heartbeat, 357 00:25:13.340 --> 00:25:14.040 your breath, 358 00:25:14.860 --> 00:25:15.640 other electro... 359 00:25:15.780 --> 00:25:16.940 electromagnetic noise 360 00:25:16.940 --> 00:25:18.600 are subtracted out of that raw data 361 00:25:18.600 --> 00:25:20.000 to make meaning of the data. 362 00:25:20.220 --> 00:25:21.680 And that's just for a start. 363 00:25:21.840 --> 00:25:23.780 When you see a colourful brain scan in a magazine, 364 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:25.800 it's generally not the data of one brain, 365 00:25:25.960 --> 00:25:28.280 but a number of brains averaged together. 366 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:31.660 In fact, what a brain image represents visually 367 00:25:31.660 --> 00:25:32.840 is, in fact, a difference 368 00:25:33.500 --> 00:25:35.180 between two mental states. 369 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:37.480 So the brain doing an activity, 370 00:25:37.540 --> 00:25:39.240 like looking at a politician's photo, 371 00:25:39.860 --> 00:25:42.520 and the brain in a sort of equivalent 372 00:25:42.520 --> 00:25:44.820 at-rest state, a control state, 373 00:25:44.920 --> 00:25:45.760 like staring at a... 374 00:25:45.780 --> 00:25:46.740 a blank screen. 375 00:25:46.900 --> 00:25:48.380 There's a comparison going on 376 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:50.820 between two sets of brain states. 377 00:25:50.940 --> 00:25:51.740 And what you see is 378 00:25:51.740 --> 00:25:53.660 really just a sort of representation 379 00:25:53.660 --> 00:25:55.700 of statistically greater activity. 380 00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:56.760 You know, when you see those 381 00:25:56.760 --> 00:25:59.000 sort of colourful spots on those scans going, 382 00:25:59.080 --> 00:26:00.420 this is the God spot. 383 00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:01.860 That's what you're seeing. 384 00:26:01.960 --> 00:26:02.800 It's a statistic. 385 00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:04.880 We're not actually seeing 386 00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:06.760 the mental activity of one brain at all. 387 00:26:06.960 --> 00:26:10.020 And those fluorescent colours that you see, 388 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:11.680 well, that's manufactured too. 389 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:13.680 It's not to say it's wrong, 390 00:26:13.840 --> 00:26:15.180 but that's just a representation. 391 00:26:15.780 --> 00:26:16.620 It's a representation of activity. 392 00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:18.120 And I actually once saw 393 00:26:18.120 --> 00:26:20.580 a fantastic presentation given at MIT 394 00:26:20.580 --> 00:26:23.860 where those colours, 395 00:26:25.160 --> 00:26:26.040 what they looked like 396 00:26:26.040 --> 00:26:28.080 when a journal paper was first submitted 397 00:26:28.080 --> 00:26:28.720 for publication. 398 00:26:30.360 --> 00:26:32.640 And then what the sort of iterations 399 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:33.960 that went through 400 00:26:33.960 --> 00:26:36.320 the editorial process of peer review 401 00:26:36.320 --> 00:26:38.200