When their craving network is active it's all the way over here, and when their suppressing network finally wins then it's all the way over here. And what they're training to do is figure out how to move that needle. You're strengthening up those connections between the prefrontal cortex and these other areas that are involved in the craving. You're strengthening it up by practicing, and so when your next out of the scanner and somebody offers you crack cocaine, you still want it, you still got those systems that really crave that, but you at least have the cognitive tools now to be able to tip the battle so that it goes the other way, so that you can resist it. Narrator: Eagleman says we have to consider the many biological factors that can influence our brains and our behaviour.
He points to a simple genetic marker that some people possess that is associated with a greater probability they will commit a crime. Consider this: If you are the carrier of a particular set of genes, you are four times more likely to commit violent crime, you're three times more likely to commit robbery, five times more likely to commit aggravated assault, you're eight times more likely to get arrested for murder, and thirteen times more likely to be arrested for sexual assault. Almost everybody in prison is a carrier of these genes, and over 98% of people on death row carry this set. Now, we summarize this set of genes as the Y chromosome, and if you are a carrier, we call you a male, and this means that we can't assume that everybody is coming to the table equally equipped in terms of their drives and behaviours, genes matter. The important part about the Y chromosome is that on average males are more aggressive than females, but it does not mean that if you look at any particular male you're going to have a prediction that this person is gonna end up on death row just because they're male, same thing with any particular gene. Why is that the case? It's because life's very complicated, and the genes are only a little piece of the story. Narrator: Along with your genetic makeup, the other piece of the story that strongly influences your behaviour is the environment you grow up in. (child's laugh) Sometimes people have a debate about nature versus nurture, and the fact is that's a completely dead question in neuroscience because it's always both. What happens is your environmental experiences work with your genes, work with the constraints that you have to shape you in a particular way. Once you arrive in the world, you land into a certain family of origin, in a certain neighbourhood, in a certain culture, a certain time in history, and all of these experiences shape what your brain becomes in concert with the genetics that you happen to have. And what this means is that brains go off in very different developmental trajectories, so right from the beginning brains are moving off and becoming very different from one another. Narrator: So, if your genes and environment shape your brain and behaviour, is it still your fault if you commit a crime? Well, according to experimental psychologist Joshua Greene of Harvard University, there's no simple answer. Greene studies moral judgement. He says neuroscience is redefining the whole idea of responsibility and how the legal system deals with crime and punishment. One way to think about this is to imagine engineering a person designed to be bad... ...choosing just the right genes, just genes from the normal population that make it very likely that someone's going to commit crimes, and you put somebody in an environment that makes it very likely that the person is going to grow up to be a criminal. When you raise people with these genes and in this kind of environment, they end up engaging in criminal behaviour, right. There are practical reasons why you might want to punish the person, but the question is do you feel that this person really deserves to suffer, or do you feel that this person was a victim of a horrible unethical lab experiment where this person was grown to be unethical this way? (smash) Another question is why should we think any differently about real criminals and real criminal behaviour? Everybody's a product of their genes. Everybody's a product of their environment.
2 Comments
7/6/2022 11:21:50 pm
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AuthorLinda Peterson is a founder of Gambling Blog. She writes articles on gambling topics for popular websites, such as Casinoslots Gambling Directory. Linda is from Las Vegas. Gambling is in her blood. ArchivesCategories |