12 ms·

A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret

97 points by Aaronontheweb 16y ago

oditogre 16y ago
Interesting, but as the article says, it's a young field. Far too young to draw any meaningful conclusions, but...certainly interesting.
DavidSJ 16y ago
Reminds me of Minority Report.
- pyre 16y ago
  It only depends on how you look at it. Someone born with any disability has the cards stacked against them, but it doesn't necessarily define their entire life. People just tend to focus on it because it's a huge 'difference' that they, themselves, don't have to deal with.
- sesqu 16y ago
  Much more like Gattaca, in my opinion. Minority Report was about fate and crime, whereas Gattaca was about potential (and the implications for fate and crime).
pyre 16y ago
I found the conclusion of the article to be a bit much. The entire article reads as a science/human interest piece on this guy, and then the conclusion is, "Should we feel empathy towards murderers and rapists due to neuroscience?"
- ekanes 16y ago
  I don't think he means empathy as in "well, guess we can't fault them for their behaviour, so let's let them go" but rather that they got a bad roll of the dice, and that sucks, (but we have to lock them up or control them anyhow...) A different but illustrative analogy is a dog who's been abused, or chained in a small yard, and that dog attacks a small child. I will have empathy towards that dog, and I'll still want it destroyed. Empathy and societal self-preservation can both exist simultaneously.
  - pyre 16y ago
    When I read it, it came across to me as scare-mongering that we'll be "letting all of these murderers and rapists loose" because the court won't hold them accountable due to neuroscience, which seemed to come out of no where at the end of the article. That's why I found it to be so out of place.
    - GFischer 16y ago
      Maybe it was editorialized into the article? It doesn't seem to be a quote from Fallon himself, but more an outlook by the article's author (Barbara Bradley Hagerty). A Google search of her finds some very negative detractors: http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley-hagerty.htm http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley... Though it's mostly ad-hominem, it does quote a verifiable lapse of journalistic ethic: "a report on the Christian Science Church, in which she did not disclose that she was herself a former member of the Church"
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
adbge 16y ago
It makes sense that one who felt a certain sense of curiosity about the act of being a serial killer would work in a field that studies them. The conclusion that the researcher and his subjects share certain traits is, to me, hardly surprising. I wonder if the researcher's brain scan is a product of his environment or an inevitable genetic conclusion.
- dmix 16y ago
  > I wonder if the researcher's brain scan is a product of his environment or an inevitable genetic conclusion I also often wonder if small governments are better for society than larger governments. While its common for people to take sides on those matters, it's likely the answer is somewhere in between the two.
  - SamReidHughes 16y ago
    No, it's likely the answer is not somewhere in between the two. The fact that people arguing different sides, if they're interested in convincing others, will moderate their opinion, and that they'll also have their opinion moderated by the prevailing opinions of society, isn't even the cause of this -- but it does make it worse. Take, for example, estimates of a physical constant. Suppose two people independently estimate a constant. The probability that they'll miss on the same side of the true value is at least 0.5. If the probability of an arbitrary person underestimating the constant is x (and the probability of getting it correct is 0, since it's a real number and there is a continuum of choices), then the probability of both missing on the same side is x^2 + (1-x)^2, which is greater than or equal to 0.5. Now take those two people and have them talk to one another. If one of them convinces the other their measurement method is more accurate, both will end up agreeing on the same estimate, and thus both will miss in the same direction. It's very unlikely that somebody will look at another person's estimates and reasons for them, and then decide to change their estimate away from that person's. So when they communicate, it's even more likely that the truth will not be in between their estimates. This effect is much worse with politics, where people tend to avoid conflict and everybody grows up in a similar culture. There is a famous graph somewhere with monotonically increasing estimates of a physical constant over time. Imagine that here. Now consider politics. Suppose you've got a bunch of people with different kinds of opinions. It might be the case that, over time, the objective truth (when there is one) influences their opinions. Does this increase the probability that the truth is in the middle? It might decrease the variance of their opinions -- with evidence about the truth, they'll end up believing something closer to it. For example, I'd say that evidence about the truth has caused people to have more accurate opinions about the effect of political parties claiming to be Marxist. However, they're still equally capable of overestimating or underestimating the truth. What conditions might cause the truth to be likely to be in the middle? One would be where the truth is something people can get an approximate idea of, except that the variance in the people's circumstances will make them likely to miss in opposite directions. I suppose this is the kind of situation people often imagine. There's two assumptions here: that the influence of their circumstance outweighs the accuracy with which people generally could have estimated the truth, and that their circumstances would pull them away in opposite directions. Right now you could compare big government conservatives versus big goverment liberals. Is the truth in the middle there? What about slave-owners versus abolitionists who wouldn't dream of letting their daughter marry a black man? Is the truth in the middle there? And people who think only male landowners should vote versus people who think all males should vote? Given people's tendency to have opinions almost identical to their neighbors', it's likely the correct answer, for whatever answerable question is being asked, is far outside the contemporary political spectrum. Or are we the chosen generation, right about everything?
amichail 16y ago
Don't liberals hold contradictory views with respect to this issue? On the one hand, they believe in civil liberties. On the other hand, they also believe in science. These two things tend to clash and will do so more frequently in the future as scientists learn more about the brain.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mquander 16y ago
  With respect to what issue? We already have laws for dealing with mentally ill criminals.
  - amichail 16y ago
    What if science gets very good at predicting who will commit crimes? Would you still value civil liberties then?
    - mquander 16y ago
      Absolutely. I value living with relative freedom in a surprising world more than I value safety or justice. I feel compelled to point out that few humans would consider it ethical to punish someone for something they haven't done. I'm sure you don't consider it ethical, either, so I don't see what the point of this line of reasoning is. In addition, this has nothing to do with the article, which makes no claim to prophecies or predictions.
      - amichail 16y ago
        Why is it ethical to punish someone after they have committed a crime if they had little say in the matter? In both cases, some method should be used to ensure that a crime does not happen (e.g., using mandatory medication, isolation, etc.).
        16y ago
neurotech1 16y ago
My biggest concern is that he's focusing on one part of the brain, there are several other parts of the brain, such as the right parietal-temporal area that result in sociopathy and impulse control problems.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dopamine 16y ago
It is interesting that the author describes three ingredients for psychopathic behavior, and that he was missing the third: abuse during childhood. In rats, the quality of maternal care was shown to cause long-lasting effects in the brains of the offspring, particularly in areas that respond to a neurotransmitter called oxytocin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin Rats that receive high levels of maternal care when pups have higher sensitivity to oxytocin in certain brain areas. This is significant because oxytocin is implicated in prosocial behaviors, such as pair bonding and maternal behavior. Recent experiments with humans showed that the inhalation of oxytocin increases people's ability to trust and empathize with others. So, my guess is that a 'normal' oxytocin system might be able to counter the negative antisocial effects of the first two ingredients described in the article. The author might want to take a look into his own oxytocin system next.
- nopassrecover 16y ago
  Wonder if oxytocin is regulated enough to stop car dealers and pick up artists from wearing it as cologne. Also can you source the inhalation comment? The wikipedia article is contradictory e.g. "(for injected cows) It is a mistaken notion that oxytocin produces extra milk. Although it increases milk flow, it can also cause painful contractions in the animal's uterus"
  - dopamine 16y ago
    Here are the research articles about the effects of oxytocin on human social behavior: Trust: http://www.socialbehavior.unizh.ch/static/home/heinrichs/downloads/Oxytocin_Increases_Trust_in_Humans_Nature.pdf http://www.socialbehavior.unizh.ch/static/home/heinrichs/dow... Empathy/generosity: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2040517/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2040517/ Both studies use intranasal inhalers to deliver oxytocin to the subjects. I doubt that you would be able to deliver sufficient quantities by wafting it in the air. If anything, it would have a stronger effect on the stop car dealers and pick up artists themselves, so THEY would trust YOU more :) About the wikipedia article: when I mentioned the effect of oxytocin on maternal behavior above, I didn't mean specifically on breastfeeding or lactation, but on the general care that is given by mothers to their pups (such as grooming, bringing them to their nest, etc.).
ggchappell 16y ago
We've seen articles before here (I think it was HN) that dealt with psychopathy. But those, if I remember correctly, focused on the lack of a conscience, noting that some psychopaths are violent, and others are not, while all have little regard for their impact on others' lives. I wonder how these two concepts connect up. I seem to remember that tests for the other version of psychopathy were entirely behavioral in nature. This guy talks about genes and brain scans, but he is interested primarily in tendencies toward violence and murder. So, are we talking about the same thing here, or not?
- awongh 16y ago
  Yeah, some things I've read have linked psycopathy with an inablity to feel empathy, and what makes someone a killer is also having poor impulse control. I feel like to a certain extent that lack of empathy would help your career quite a bit (like if you were a Berkeley professor) I'd like to know if this guy exhibits any of the other behavioral traits associated with psychopaths.....
c00p3r 16y ago
some genetic frontal lobes deficit or just Asperger's syndrome + childhood abuse + violent environment = psychopath. That's why no one count psychos in Russia. ^_^
abeppu 16y ago
I'm hoping that parts 2 & 3 will explore the other responsibilities of the orbitofrontal cortex, and flesh out the discussion a bit more. It's been a while since I took cognitive neuroscience, but I remember this area also being involved with decision making, and balancing risk and reward. He didn't become a murderer, but from the discussion so far, I'm guessing he also didn't become a drug addict, or a compulsive gambler.
mtr 16y ago
He also gave a TED talk on this very subject: http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/psychopathic_ki.php http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/psychopathic_ki.php
chopsueyar 16y ago
"You start to look at yourself and you say, 'I may be a sociopath.' I don't think I am, but this looks exactly like [the brains of] the psychopaths, the sociopaths, that I've seen before." That is exactly what a sociopath would say to an NPR reporter.

97 points by Aaronontheweb 16y ago

Interesting, but as the article says, it's a young field. Far too young to draw any meaningful conclusions, but...certainly interesting.

DavidSJ 16y ago

Reminds me of Minority Report.

pyre 16y ago
It only depends on how you look at it. Someone born with any disability has the cards stacked against them, but it doesn't necessarily define their entire life. People just tend to focus on it because it's a huge 'difference' that they, themselves, don't have to deal with.
sesqu 16y ago
Much more like Gattaca, in my opinion. Minority Report was about fate and crime, whereas Gattaca was about potential (and the implications for fate and crime).

pyre 16y ago

I found the conclusion of the article to be a bit much. The entire article reads as a science/human interest piece on this guy, and then the conclusion is, "Should we feel empathy towards murderers and rapists due to neuroscience?"

ekanes 16y ago
I don't think he means empathy as in "well, guess we can't fault them for their behaviour, so let's let them go" but rather that they got a bad roll of the dice, and that sucks, (but we have to lock them up or control them anyhow...) A different but illustrative analogy is a dog who's been abused, or chained in a small yard, and that dog attacks a small child. I will have empathy towards that dog, and I'll still want it destroyed. Empathy and societal self-preservation can both exist simultaneously.
- pyre 16y ago
  When I read it, it came across to me as scare-mongering that we'll be "letting all of these murderers and rapists loose" because the court won't hold them accountable due to neuroscience, which seemed to come out of no where at the end of the article. That's why I found it to be so out of place.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    Maybe it was editorialized into the article? It doesn't seem to be a quote from Fallon himself, but more an outlook by the article's author (Barbara Bradley Hagerty). A Google search of her finds some very negative detractors: http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley-hagerty.htm http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/05/21/outing-barbara-bradley... Though it's mostly ad-hominem, it does quote a verifiable lapse of journalistic ethic: "a report on the Christian Science Church, in which she did not disclose that she was herself a former member of the Church"

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

adbge 16y ago

It makes sense that one who felt a certain sense of curiosity about the act of being a serial killer would work in a field that studies them. The conclusion that the researcher and his subjects share certain traits is, to me, hardly surprising. I wonder if the researcher's brain scan is a product of his environment or an inevitable genetic conclusion.

dmix 16y ago
> I wonder if the researcher's brain scan is a product of his environment or an inevitable genetic conclusion I also often wonder if small governments are better for society than larger governments. While its common for people to take sides on those matters, it's likely the answer is somewhere in between the two.
- SamReidHughes 16y ago
  No, it's likely the answer is not somewhere in between the two. The fact that people arguing different sides, if they're interested in convincing others, will moderate their opinion, and that they'll also have their opinion moderated by the prevailing opinions of society, isn't even the cause of this -- but it does make it worse. Take, for example, estimates of a physical constant. Suppose two people independently estimate a constant. The probability that they'll miss on the same side of the true value is at least 0.5. If the probability of an arbitrary person underestimating the constant is x (and the probability of getting it correct is 0, since it's a real number and there is a continuum of choices), then the probability of both missing on the same side is x^2 + (1-x)^2, which is greater than or equal to 0.5. Now take those two people and have them talk to one another. If one of them convinces the other their measurement method is more accurate, both will end up agreeing on the same estimate, and thus both will miss in the same direction. It's very unlikely that somebody will look at another person's estimates and reasons for them, and then decide to change their estimate away from that person's. So when they communicate, it's even more likely that the truth will not be in between their estimates. This effect is much worse with politics, where people tend to avoid conflict and everybody grows up in a similar culture. There is a famous graph somewhere with monotonically increasing estimates of a physical constant over time. Imagine that here. Now consider politics. Suppose you've got a bunch of people with different kinds of opinions. It might be the case that, over time, the objective truth (when there is one) influences their opinions. Does this increase the probability that the truth is in the middle? It might decrease the variance of their opinions -- with evidence about the truth, they'll end up believing something closer to it. For example, I'd say that evidence about the truth has caused people to have more accurate opinions about the effect of political parties claiming to be Marxist. However, they're still equally capable of overestimating or underestimating the truth. What conditions might cause the truth to be likely to be in the middle? One would be where the truth is something people can get an approximate idea of, except that the variance in the people's circumstances will make them likely to miss in opposite directions. I suppose this is the kind of situation people often imagine. There's two assumptions here: that the influence of their circumstance outweighs the accuracy with which people generally could have estimated the truth, and that their circumstances would pull them away in opposite directions. Right now you could compare big government conservatives versus big goverment liberals. Is the truth in the middle there? What about slave-owners versus abolitionists who wouldn't dream of letting their daughter marry a black man? Is the truth in the middle there? And people who think only male landowners should vote versus people who think all males should vote? Given people's tendency to have opinions almost identical to their neighbors', it's likely the correct answer, for whatever answerable question is being asked, is far outside the contemporary political spectrum. Or are we the chosen generation, right about everything?

amichail 16y ago

Don't liberals hold contradictory views with respect to this issue? On the one hand, they believe in civil liberties. On the other hand, they also believe in science. These two things tend to clash and will do so more frequently in the future as scientists learn more about the brain.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mquander 16y ago
With respect to what issue? We already have laws for dealing with mentally ill criminals.
- amichail 16y ago
  What if science gets very good at predicting who will commit crimes? Would you still value civil liberties then?
  - mquander 16y ago
    Absolutely. I value living with relative freedom in a surprising world more than I value safety or justice. I feel compelled to point out that few humans would consider it ethical to punish someone for something they haven't done. I'm sure you don't consider it ethical, either, so I don't see what the point of this line of reasoning is. In addition, this has nothing to do with the article, which makes no claim to prophecies or predictions.
    - amichail 16y ago
      Why is it ethical to punish someone after they have committed a crime if they had little say in the matter? In both cases, some method should be used to ensure that a crime does not happen (e.g., using mandatory medication, isolation, etc.).
      - 16y ago

neurotech1 16y ago

My biggest concern is that he's focusing on one part of the brain, there are several other parts of the brain, such as the right parietal-temporal area that result in sociopathy and impulse control problems.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

dopamine 16y ago

It is interesting that the author describes three ingredients for psychopathic behavior, and that he was missing the third: abuse during childhood. In rats, the quality of maternal care was shown to cause long-lasting effects in the brains of the offspring, particularly in areas that respond to a neurotransmitter called oxytocin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin Rats that receive high levels of maternal care when pups have higher sensitivity to oxytocin in certain brain areas. This is significant because oxytocin is implicated in prosocial behaviors, such as pair bonding and maternal behavior. Recent experiments with humans showed that the inhalation of oxytocin increases people's ability to trust and empathize with others. So, my guess is that a 'normal' oxytocin system might be able to counter the negative antisocial effects of the first two ingredients described in the article. The author might want to take a look into his own oxytocin system next.

nopassrecover 16y ago
Wonder if oxytocin is regulated enough to stop car dealers and pick up artists from wearing it as cologne. Also can you source the inhalation comment? The wikipedia article is contradictory e.g. "(for injected cows) It is a mistaken notion that oxytocin produces extra milk. Although it increases milk flow, it can also cause painful contractions in the animal's uterus"
- dopamine 16y ago
  Here are the research articles about the effects of oxytocin on human social behavior: Trust: http://www.socialbehavior.unizh.ch/static/home/heinrichs/downloads/Oxytocin_Increases_Trust_in_Humans_Nature.pdf http://www.socialbehavior.unizh.ch/static/home/heinrichs/dow... Empathy/generosity: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2040517/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2040517/ Both studies use intranasal inhalers to deliver oxytocin to the subjects. I doubt that you would be able to deliver sufficient quantities by wafting it in the air. If anything, it would have a stronger effect on the stop car dealers and pick up artists themselves, so THEY would trust YOU more :) About the wikipedia article: when I mentioned the effect of oxytocin on maternal behavior above, I didn't mean specifically on breastfeeding or lactation, but on the general care that is given by mothers to their pups (such as grooming, bringing them to their nest, etc.).

ggchappell 16y ago

We've seen articles before here (I think it was HN) that dealt with psychopathy. But those, if I remember correctly, focused on the lack of a conscience, noting that some psychopaths are violent, and others are not, while all have little regard for their impact on others' lives. I wonder how these two concepts connect up. I seem to remember that tests for the other version of psychopathy were entirely behavioral in nature. This guy talks about genes and brain scans, but he is interested primarily in tendencies toward violence and murder. So, are we talking about the same thing here, or not?

awongh 16y ago
Yeah, some things I've read have linked psycopathy with an inablity to feel empathy, and what makes someone a killer is also having poor impulse control. I feel like to a certain extent that lack of empathy would help your career quite a bit (like if you were a Berkeley professor) I'd like to know if this guy exhibits any of the other behavioral traits associated with psychopaths.....

c00p3r 16y ago

some genetic frontal lobes deficit or just Asperger's syndrome + childhood abuse + violent environment = psychopath. That's why no one count psychos in Russia. ^_^

abeppu 16y ago

I'm hoping that parts 2 & 3 will explore the other responsibilities of the orbitofrontal cortex, and flesh out the discussion a bit more. It's been a while since I took cognitive neuroscience, but I remember this area also being involved with decision making, and balancing risk and reward. He didn't become a murderer, but from the discussion so far, I'm guessing he also didn't become a drug addict, or a compulsive gambler.

mtr 16y ago

He also gave a TED talk on this very subject: http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/psychopathic_ki.php http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/psychopathic_ki.php

chopsueyar 16y ago

"You start to look at yourself and you say, 'I may be a sociopath.' I don't think I am, but this looks exactly like [the brains of] the psychopaths, the sociopaths, that I've seen before." That is exactly what a sociopath would say to an NPR reporter.