Can you accurately judge the results of your actions? This is a big question in the legal system, when it comes to deciding whether you're guilty for a particular action -- and, if you're guilty, the size and type of your sentence. So the neuroscientist Abigail Baird lobbed a mind-bomb into the legal community last month when she presented a paper arguing that teenage criminals are considerably less able to judge the unpredicted consequences of their actions. As the New Scientist reports:
Freaky, eh? Neuroscience is one of the most insanely revolutionary areas right now -- challenging some of our most dearly-held Enlightenment ideas about personal agency, autonomy, and responsibility.
Though much of this also makes intuitive sense. It's long been a truism that younger people are more likely to experiment wildly with different behaviors, while older people are more conservative. That's what experience is, after all: A corpus of data sufficiently large that you can begin to find linkages and patterns unobservable in smaller data sets. Even if their brains are moving at a slower clock speed, older folks can draw inferences that can be much richer than those of younger people. The problem tends to be when older people cease to gather new data, and/or when the inferences they're drawing from already-gathered data produce conclusions that prevent them from even recognizing new data that lies before them. Then you turn into an old crank.
So I just skimmed the New Scientist article, but it seems the evidence might not match the conclusions:
"Brain scans taken during the test show that the prefrontal cortex was more active in the teens, suggesting they were making a greater effort to judge the results of each situation. The adults had more basal ganglia activity, pointing to a more automatic response..."
To me this implies that the teens are thinking it over more. They're actually mulling the risks and consequences, and considering the situation. Adults are leaping to a conclusion that they have previously decided is correct.
Maybe the teens aren't reaching the "correct" conclusion, but what does that mean? I know people who have swum with sharks when scuba diving; no, they weren't Great Whites in a feeding frenzy, but they were sharks and the most dangerous part of the activity was probably the risks associated with scuba diving in general.
When reading about cog. sci. or psych. experiments I often get the impression that the experimenters are making some pretty big assumptions about what is "safe" or "normal" or "preferable" for a "normal person".
Posted by: Will at December 28, 2004 4:00 PM
It seems to me that the neuroscience "grandaddy" of this type of research is "brain fingerprinting". (http://www.brainwavescience.com/HomePage.php)
This technology seems set to blow the doors off polygraph testing (long overdue) and potentially streamline criminal court cases, though the (alleged) benefits are certainly not without risk - namely another loss of privacy...
Posted by: brian at December 28, 2004 8:06 PM
I've interviewed the brain fingerprinting inventor a couple of times, and read the enormous FBI-commissioned report into the forensic viability of the technique, and indeed it's quite interesting -- and ahead of the pack in terms of its acceptance by the government!
But Will is, ultimately, right: Functional-imaging neuroscience is still pretty much in its infancy, as virtually any honest neuroscientist will tell you. That said, the results they're coming up with are certainly suggestive, if not definitive.
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:34 AM
Although I'm not a bona fide neuroscientist, I'm am one in training, so I feel compelled to comment on this. (translation: please excuse the rant).
I generally agree with Will. Although some people are making some gargantuan conclusions from neurosci/cog. sci studies, it is often the case that it is those conclusions that get covered (and distorted) by the popular media, whereas any serious scientist/academic is hardly phased by those conclusions (or chooses to make bizzarre conclusions of their own).
Since neuroscience is one of those cutting-edge fields and it does have the potential to change our Enlightenment ideas about how people think and act and their ultimate causes, a little knowledge can be very dangerous. There is a big difference between the descriptive theories (of how the brain IS doing things at certain times) versus the normative theories (how the brain OUGHT to be functioning at certain times).
I feel in the modern day the layman is replacing religion with science for his normative theories, and these cutting-edge fields (genetics, evolution, and neuroscience) have enormous potential to be distorted (much like religious doctrine is often distorted).
A technical note: I find the results a bit odd. Other studies often show that the very reason that teens participate in dangerous behaviour (crime, drugs, rogue politics) is that they have a underdeveloped pre-frontal cotex. It seems odd that they would have more prefontal activity over adults, when adults supposedly have a more highly developed prefrontal cortex. My suspicion is that it may be an experimental confound, perhaps due to other differences between the adults and teens in how they view the task.
Another hella good post though Clive.
Posted by: Steve E. at December 29, 2004 2:12 AM
Hella good rant Steve!
Way to hold it down for UofT.
While we're on the subject of pre-frontal cortex development, I'd love to hear thoughts from those in the know regarding the developmental issues (allegedly) faced by some famous feral children. I recall reading a book by Jay Ingram years ago called "Talk Talk Talk", in which he briefly summarized the story of Victor, found in France in 1800.
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=victor
I don't want to steer this thread too far off course, so don't feel obliged to respond if it's not relevent, but brain development seems to be a big component of what are now referred to as "the forbidden experiments".
Posted by: brian at December 29, 2004 9:44 AM
This is really an interesting discussion, and indeed, one of the most important ones of our time. Because as Steven Johnson noted in his excellent book Mind Wide Open, neurology has percolated out into the realm of pop culture -- as with teenage girls dissing each other as "bipolar", the pharmaceuticalization of modern mood-management, and, now, the emergence of brain-scanning frequently in sci-fi and detective/forensic TV shows and movies.
Which brings us to Steve's point: When pop culture gets its hands on science, it almost always distorts it beyond description. And insofar as journalism is actually part of pop culture, it too blows "discoveries" out of proportion. As all serious brain-scanning neuroscientists that I've interviewed agree, we're still just taking the first baby steps towards figuring out the most basic understanding of what's going on in the brain. We haven't got anything vaguely resembling a map of brain function, nor even any agreement about whether different functions are localized in concentrated spots or distributed or whatnot.
Having said that, the very concept that brain function can be observed in action is itself massively revolutionary (quite apart from the fact that we can't yet draw any precise inferences from observing said activity). Intellectually, it's really speeding up the final breakdown of the Cartesian mind/body duality, which has been eroding for a while now. And there are few areas where our ideas of intentionality, free agency and free will are more important than in the criminal justice system. I can see why these guys are getting so intrigued by it!
That's also why I've been fascinated by the growing number of conferences on "neuroethics" -- the philosophical questions that arise from neuroscientific understandings of human behavior. One could argue that the ethicists are jumping the gun, and pondering the implications of science that hasn't yet been verified. But to a certain extent, they almost have to get a jump on this, because human civilization got itself in plenty of jams in the 20th century by allowing scientific breakthroughs to outpace our ability to ponder their implications for justice, etc. In their own mulish, hyperbolic way, I think the oft-ill-informed reportage of daily papers is part of society trying to grapple with the implications of brain-scanning long before it's really arrived. That's always been the function of the best sci-fi and pop culture, too: Ruminating over the social effects of technologies and breakthroughts that don't yet exist.
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:45 PM
(BTW, when I said "Steve's point" above, I meant Steve E.'s excellent post -- not Johnson's book. When I re-read my posting I realized that was obsure.)
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:49 PM
Regarding journalism and cog. sci., one thing that often strikes me about articles discussing the brain is how frequently the experiment is explained in dualistic language. The idea that we have a little man in our heads who is looking out through our eyes and listening through our ears is really really hard for people to shake.
Many people, when hearing a report on some aspect of brain function, just want to add another layer between the little man and the outside world. "OK," they say, "teenagers have a more active prefrontal cortex when judging risk. But all that means is that the rulebook the little man uses inside a teenager's head is less developed than the rulebook the little man in my head uses."
In everyday conversation we use the wrong language to discuss the brain, and breaking that habit is really hard to do. I'm sure I make that mistake all the time.
Posted by: Will at December 29, 2004 2:49 PM
Putting aside the issue of individual culpability, what about what game theorists call a "moral hazzard," which would incurred by being more forgiving towards teens than towards adults?
Yes, as individuals, teens may be more prone to ignoring consequences than adults. Teens should therefore be kept out of situations that could lead to making decisions with catastrophic consequences.
But they are bad at self-monitoring you say? We are talking about reducing the incidents of behaviour in a population and considering individual self-consciousness and rationality are not necessary for achieving this end. If the rest of the population find ways to increase the likelyhood of punishment or correction for entering into situations with catastrophic consequences, the number of teens entering those situations will decrease and there will be a corresponding reduction in the incidents of those catastrophes.
Giving teens something positive to do with their time and reducing the potential for unsupervised decision making by, for example, stepping up anti-loitering, distrubing the peace, and curfew laws will both serve this aim.
The individual mentalities of teens don't enter into this solution.
However, if teens are conscious that punishments for the catastrophic consequences of their bad decisions are much lighter than those of adults, expect them to take adavantage of this.
The kids are all wrong, I say.
Posted by: Erik at December 30, 2004 1:46 PM
As usual, the comments on this post are exceptional. Now to put in my useless coment: Is the post title some obscure reference?
Posted by: Dennis T Cheung at January 2, 2005 8:00 PM
the johnny rotten lines:
"When there's no future
How can there be sin
We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in your human machine
We're the future you're future."
Posted by: christo at January 5, 2005 7:14 PM
Heh. Good catch on the citation.
Great comments all around here, folks. This is making my brain stretch.
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Posted by: mara at February 19, 2005 5:07 PM
So I just skimmed the New Scientist article, but it seems the evidence might not match the conclusions:
"Brain scans taken during the test show that the prefrontal cortex was more active in the teens, suggesting they were making a greater effort to judge the results of each situation. The adults had more basal ganglia activity, pointing to a more automatic response..."
To me this implies that the teens are thinking it over more. They're actually mulling the risks and consequences, and considering the situation. Adults are leaping to a conclusion that they have previously decided is correct.
Maybe the teens aren't reaching the "correct" conclusion, but what does that mean? I know people who have swum with sharks when scuba diving; no, they weren't Great Whites in a feeding frenzy, but they were sharks and the most dangerous part of the activity was probably the risks associated with scuba diving in general.
When reading about cog. sci. or psych. experiments I often get the impression that the experimenters are making some pretty big assumptions about what is "safe" or "normal" or "preferable" for a "normal person".
Posted by: Will at December 28, 2004 4:00 PM
It seems to me that the neuroscience "grandaddy" of this type of research is "brain fingerprinting". (http://www.brainwavescience.com/HomePage.php)
This technology seems set to blow the doors off polygraph testing (long overdue) and potentially streamline criminal court cases, though the (alleged) benefits are certainly not without risk - namely another loss of privacy...
Posted by: brian at December 28, 2004 8:06 PM
I've interviewed the brain fingerprinting inventor a couple of times, and read the enormous FBI-commissioned report into the forensic viability of the technique, and indeed it's quite interesting -- and ahead of the pack in terms of its acceptance by the government!
But Will is, ultimately, right: Functional-imaging neuroscience is still pretty much in its infancy, as virtually any honest neuroscientist will tell you. That said, the results they're coming up with are certainly suggestive, if not definitive.
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:34 AM
Although I'm not a bona fide neuroscientist, I'm am one in training, so I feel compelled to comment on this. (translation: please excuse the rant).
I generally agree with Will. Although some people are making some gargantuan conclusions from neurosci/cog. sci studies, it is often the case that it is those conclusions that get covered (and distorted) by the popular media, whereas any serious scientist/academic is hardly phased by those conclusions (or chooses to make bizzarre conclusions of their own).
Since neuroscience is one of those cutting-edge fields and it does have the potential to change our Enlightenment ideas about how people think and act and their ultimate causes, a little knowledge can be very dangerous. There is a big difference between the descriptive theories (of how the brain IS doing things at certain times) versus the normative theories (how the brain OUGHT to be functioning at certain times).
I feel in the modern day the layman is replacing religion with science for his normative theories, and these cutting-edge fields (genetics, evolution, and neuroscience) have enormous potential to be distorted (much like religious doctrine is often distorted).
A technical note: I find the results a bit odd. Other studies often show that the very reason that teens participate in dangerous behaviour (crime, drugs, rogue politics) is that they have a underdeveloped pre-frontal cotex. It seems odd that they would have more prefontal activity over adults, when adults supposedly have a more highly developed prefrontal cortex. My suspicion is that it may be an experimental confound, perhaps due to other differences between the adults and teens in how they view the task.
Another hella good post though Clive.
Posted by: Steve E. at December 29, 2004 2:12 AM
Hella good rant Steve!
Way to hold it down for UofT.
While we're on the subject of pre-frontal cortex development, I'd love to hear thoughts from those in the know regarding the developmental issues (allegedly) faced by some famous feral children. I recall reading a book by Jay Ingram years ago called "Talk Talk Talk", in which he briefly summarized the story of Victor, found in France in 1800.
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=victor
I don't want to steer this thread too far off course, so don't feel obliged to respond if it's not relevent, but brain development seems to be a big component of what are now referred to as "the forbidden experiments".
Posted by: brian at December 29, 2004 9:44 AM
This is really an interesting discussion, and indeed, one of the most important ones of our time. Because as Steven Johnson noted in his excellent book Mind Wide Open, neurology has percolated out into the realm of pop culture -- as with teenage girls dissing each other as "bipolar", the pharmaceuticalization of modern mood-management, and, now, the emergence of brain-scanning frequently in sci-fi and detective/forensic TV shows and movies.
Which brings us to Steve's point: When pop culture gets its hands on science, it almost always distorts it beyond description. And insofar as journalism is actually part of pop culture, it too blows "discoveries" out of proportion. As all serious brain-scanning neuroscientists that I've interviewed agree, we're still just taking the first baby steps towards figuring out the most basic understanding of what's going on in the brain. We haven't got anything vaguely resembling a map of brain function, nor even any agreement about whether different functions are localized in concentrated spots or distributed or whatnot.
Having said that, the very concept that brain function can be observed in action is itself massively revolutionary (quite apart from the fact that we can't yet draw any precise inferences from observing said activity). Intellectually, it's really speeding up the final breakdown of the Cartesian mind/body duality, which has been eroding for a while now. And there are few areas where our ideas of intentionality, free agency and free will are more important than in the criminal justice system. I can see why these guys are getting so intrigued by it!
That's also why I've been fascinated by the growing number of conferences on "neuroethics" -- the philosophical questions that arise from neuroscientific understandings of human behavior. One could argue that the ethicists are jumping the gun, and pondering the implications of science that hasn't yet been verified. But to a certain extent, they almost have to get a jump on this, because human civilization got itself in plenty of jams in the 20th century by allowing scientific breakthroughs to outpace our ability to ponder their implications for justice, etc. In their own mulish, hyperbolic way, I think the oft-ill-informed reportage of daily papers is part of society trying to grapple with the implications of brain-scanning long before it's really arrived. That's always been the function of the best sci-fi and pop culture, too: Ruminating over the social effects of technologies and breakthroughts that don't yet exist.
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:45 PM
(BTW, when I said "Steve's point" above, I meant Steve E.'s excellent post -- not Johnson's book. When I re-read my posting I realized that was obsure.)
Posted by: Clive at December 29, 2004 1:49 PM
Regarding journalism and cog. sci., one thing that often strikes me about articles discussing the brain is how frequently the experiment is explained in dualistic language. The idea that we have a little man in our heads who is looking out through our eyes and listening through our ears is really really hard for people to shake.
Many people, when hearing a report on some aspect of brain function, just want to add another layer between the little man and the outside world. "OK," they say, "teenagers have a more active prefrontal cortex when judging risk. But all that means is that the rulebook the little man uses inside a teenager's head is less developed than the rulebook the little man in my head uses."
In everyday conversation we use the wrong language to discuss the brain, and breaking that habit is really hard to do. I'm sure I make that mistake all the time.
Posted by: Will at December 29, 2004 2:49 PM
Putting aside the issue of individual culpability, what about what game theorists call a "moral hazzard," which would incurred by being more forgiving towards teens than towards adults?
Yes, as individuals, teens may be more prone to ignoring consequences than adults. Teens should therefore be kept out of situations that could lead to making decisions with catastrophic consequences.
But they are bad at self-monitoring you say? We are talking about reducing the incidents of behaviour in a population and considering individual self-consciousness and rationality are not necessary for achieving this end. If the rest of the population find ways to increase the likelyhood of punishment or correction for entering into situations with catastrophic consequences, the number of teens entering those situations will decrease and there will be a corresponding reduction in the incidents of those catastrophes.
Giving teens something positive to do with their time and reducing the potential for unsupervised decision making by, for example, stepping up anti-loitering, distrubing the peace, and curfew laws will both serve this aim.
The individual mentalities of teens don't enter into this solution.
However, if teens are conscious that punishments for the catastrophic consequences of their bad decisions are much lighter than those of adults, expect them to take adavantage of this.
The kids are all wrong, I say.
Posted by: Erik at December 30, 2004 1:46 PM
As usual, the comments on this post are exceptional. Now to put in my useless coment: Is the post title some obscure reference?
Posted by: Dennis T Cheung at January 2, 2005 8:00 PM
the johnny rotten lines:
"When there's no future
How can there be sin
We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in your human machine
We're the future you're future."
Posted by: christo at January 5, 2005 7:14 PM
Heh. Good catch on the citation.
Great comments all around here, folks. This is making my brain stretch.
Posted by: Clive at January 8, 2005 12:49 AM
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