*brain

charliem - you've exactly hit on the problem with this "moral question", though in a way I believe most folks would never think of.

I remember the first time this I heard this about twenty years ago. My immediate reaction was yes on 1, no on 2, because if I flip the track switch there is an overwhelming likelihood the train will follow the secondary track and kill one person, but in the second scenario, there is no such guarantee. Every time I've pointed this out to the questioner, they try some hand-waving physics to convince me that it will work, but ultimately fail. And I'm convinced that the vast majority of people also understand this - that there really is no guarantee of derailing the train by pushing a fat person onto the tracks - and that is why most people respond the same way.

This is a very old "moral dilemma" question designed to elucidate human nature, but as charliem points out, it is completely false and thus completely invalid.

The questions are invalid in terms of interpreting the answers of respondents. On the other hand, using it as a means of probing the neurological basis of morality with fMRI is probably useful, since the relevant systems will likely be engaged regardless of the physical anomalies.

I could get behind psychology studies like this. Hooray for statistical significance.

I am tired of all these FMRI bullshit studies that make way too many assumptions about what's going on in the brain.

Hrm I find it rather odd that one side suspects it's cyanide, the other says it's not, yet nobody has explained whether or not the sufferers have been given blood tests, undergone MRI's and fMRI's to check for nerve lesions, unusual brain activity that may help pinpoint brain damage etc.

The doctor's results seem rather superficial as well, he said it's a psychiatric problem, but what is the underlying pathophysiology, has it been investigated?

No, I didn't forget agenesis of the corpus callosum. While partial absence is more common, agenesis is only present in 1/3 of cases and I can find no evidence that this is the case with the civil servant.

As usual, you conveniently misunderstand the arguments against your position. Firstly, you are the one claiming the brain is unimportant with regards to consciousness and that the case of the French civil servant is proof of this. This is clearly false, as he has all the biological faculties for not only consciousness but the faculties allowing him to lead a relatively normal life.

It's not clearly false, we don't have the medical information. But we do have evidence from other cases:

http://www.rense.com/general63/brain.htm

The subject on that page was said to be scoring 126 on IQ tests, and was about to have graduated with a degree in mathematics. He had virtually no detectable brain what so ever:

"Instead of two hemispheres filling the cranial cavity, some 4.5 centimetres deep, the student had less than 1 millimetre of cerebral tissue covering the top of his spinal column."

Secondly, the video makes no claim that someone without a textbook brain can't live a normal life. In fact the video is overwhelmingly of a larger scale - referencing humanity as a whole as opposed to individuals and individual brains. So his brain does not refute the claims of the video at all.

Lacking any hemispheres at all, how could anything in this video apply to that person? It clearly shows it up to be the fever dreaming of militant materialists.

Further, I would argue that my analogy of the circulatory system, while not perfect, makes the point I intended (which you conveniently ignore again). The heart sends and receives the blood, the brain sends and receives electrical signals and chemicals. Not only are these physical, but they can be measured. A conscious mind can be differentiated from an unconscious one with the use of medical equipment like electrocardiogram and MRI. Recent research has even come close to "seeing" conscious thoughts with fMRIs.

There are innumerable cases of people who reported being conscious during periods of unconsciousness. It is a false analogy because consciousness is not proven to be physical and is therefore not analogous to blood. Chemicals and electrical signals are also not proven to have anything to do with consciousness itself, especially considering people experience consciousness during brain death: http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a1.

As for your free will response, I'm not even going to bother. Free will can be explained, and explained away a hundred different ways. From Foucaultian post-modernism to Hobbes' determinism this is a problem that wont be resolved here to anybody's satisfaction.

If you want to concede the point, that is up to you. You'll note that I didn't ask you to explain it away, I asked what you believe.

>> ^Skeeve:
You forgot agenesis of the corpus callosum, which means it is only partially formed or completely absent. Which means that his brain operates much differently than normal (obviously).
I never said he couldn't have consciousness if his brain was jumbled up. I was saying that his brain does not have the structure described in this video. Since we know he was a normal guy able to hold down a job and have proper relationships, it refutes the assertions that it made.
No, I didn't forget agenesis of the corpus callosum. While partial absence is more common, agenesis is only present in 1/3 of cases and I can find no evidence that this is the case with the civil servant.
As usual, you conveniently misunderstand the arguments against your position. Firstly, you are the one claiming the brain is unimportant with regards to consciousness and that the case of the French civil servant is proof of this. This is clearly false, as he has all the biological faculties for not only consciousness but the faculties allowing him to lead a relatively normal life. Secondly, the video makes no claim that someone without a textbook brain can't live a normal life. In fact the video is overwhelmingly of a larger scale - referencing humanity as a whole as opposed to individuals and individual brains. So his brain does not refute the claims of the video at all.
Further, I would argue that my analogy of the circulatory system, while not perfect, makes the point I intended (which you conveniently ignore again). The heart sends and receives the blood, the brain sends and receives electrical signals and chemicals. Not only are these physical, but they can be measured. A conscious mind can be differentiated from an unconscious one with the use of medical equipment like electrocardiogram and MRI. Recent research has even come close to "seeing" conscious thoughts with fMRIs.
As for your free will response, I'm not even going to bother. Free will can be explained, and explained away a hundred different ways. From Foucaultian post-modernism to Hobbes' determinism this is a problem that wont be resolved here to anybody's satisfaction.

You forgot agenesis of the corpus callosum, which means it is only partially formed or completely absent. Which means that his brain operates much differently than normal (obviously).

I never said he couldn't have consciousness if his brain was jumbled up. I was saying that his brain does not have the structure described in this video. Since we know he was a normal guy able to hold down a job and have proper relationships, it refutes the assertions that it made.

No, I didn't forget agenesis of the corpus callosum. While partial absence is more common, agenesis is only present in 1/3 of cases and I can find no evidence that this is the case with the civil servant.

As usual, you conveniently misunderstand the arguments against your position. Firstly, you are the one claiming the brain is unimportant with regards to consciousness and that the case of the French civil servant is proof of this. This is clearly false, as he has all the biological faculties for not only consciousness but the faculties allowing him to lead a relatively normal life. Secondly, the video makes no claim that someone without a textbook brain can't live a normal life. In fact the video is overwhelmingly of a larger scale - referencing humanity as a whole as opposed to individuals and individual brains. So his brain does not refute the claims of the video at all.

Further, I would argue that my analogy of the circulatory system, while not perfect, makes the point I intended (which you conveniently ignore again). The heart sends and receives the blood, the brain sends and receives electrical signals and chemicals. Not only are these physical, but they can be measured. A conscious mind can be differentiated from an unconscious one with the use of medical equipment like electrocardiogram and MRI. Recent research has even come close to "seeing" conscious thoughts with fMRIs.

As for your free will response, I'm not even going to bother. Free will can be explained, and explained away a hundred different ways. From Foucaultian post-modernism to Hobbes' determinism this is a problem that wont be resolved here to anybody's satisfaction.
>> ^shinyblurry:

No, Dandy-Walker does not contradict everything taught in the video. He has (and others like him have) most of the same brain structures (especially the ones related to consciousness). For the most part, they are missing their cerebellar vermis, which controls and analyzes spatial motion. The parts that have something to do with consciousness are still there, and they are even in pretty much the same place as they would be otherwise.
You forgot agenesis of the corpus callosum, which means it is only partially formed or completely absent. Which means that his brain operates much differently than normal (obviously).
Even if the parts of their brain were jumbled up a bit, that doesn't mean they couldn't necessarily have consciousness. The body does some amazing things considering some of the biological errors that happen. People can be born with holes in their hearts, or on the wrong side of their body, and have perfectly functioning circulatory systems - that doesn't mean the circulation of their blood is transcendent from their circulatory system.
I never said he couldn't have consciousness if his brain was jumbled up. I was saying that his brain does not have the structure described in this video. Since we know he was a normal guy able to hold down a job and have proper relationships, it refutes the assertions that it made.
And there is no comparison between consciousness and the brain and the circulatory system and the blood. The blood is physical, consciousness cannot be measured.
This is a complete cop-out. I can say the same to you. If your god is
omniscient, then he knows what you are going to do before you do it.
Therefore you don't actually have free will because, no matter what,
you are going to do what god always expected you to do.
Are you suggesting what I said isn't true? If not, why? And, God knowing what I am going to do next does not limit my free will. I am not being prevented from making any choice, nor am I being forced to make one. Simply because God knows what I am going to do doesn't mean I had to make the choice I did.

What I do for a living and what I do in my bedroom are polar opposites...

>> ^AgentSmith:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.

...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.
This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

>> ^MonkeySpank:

I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.


...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.

This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.

@KnivesOut Exactly.

However, respecting the person is different from respecting their ideas. You can argue about ideas, but there is a certain type of logic that allows people to arrive at the belief system they have. It may be technically wrong, but that doesn't mean they're not emotionally and historically attached to them. Attacking their ideas is like attacking the way they became attached to those ideas, and that can be very upsetting to people.

The one thing Richard Dawkins keeps saying is that he thinks there will be a critical mass of non-believers at some point in the future...and that when we reach that point it will become much more socially acceptable and normal not to believe. I agree with that, and I think the best way to get to that point is to not make a war out of it. Just letting your friends and family know that you're not religious and you're perfectly happy about it is enough. That way, any of your family members who may be leaning that way will know they're not alone.

@SDGundamX

Some people are certainly happier practicing religious rituals, but I believe the mysticism attached to those rituals is the source of the problems religions cause. I think people benefit from prayer because it affects their brains in the same way meditation does. fMRIs have proven this recently.

Check out this Talk of the Nation (NPR) show from the other day...it's about Neurotheology...a.k.a. your brain on religion. Wish it was a video so I could sift it =(

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=12-15-2010

@cybrbeast:

I think you're mixing up the meaning of dominance. The paper you quoted use dominance in the context of which side of the brain has more activity as measured by EEG. Whereas in the vast majority of cases in neuroscience dominance refers to which side of the brain contains the language centers: Wernicke's and Broca's areas in the case of language dominance, and of course motor dominance in terms of handidness.

Anyways, thanks for the link. I have to say though, the paper you provided had a pretty poor experiment design. Ie: It had a small sample size, no control group, and some significant confounding factors (some of which are mentioned in the discussion) which is probably why the paper was published in s small journal like "Brain and Cognition". Seriously, biased experimenters asking all the questions WTF. In any case, it's interesting to see some evidence even if the evidence (in the paper you linked) is rather weak and quite old. It'd be nice to see a recent systematic review on the topic. Also, EEG readings are quite crude and it'd be interesting if someone can do some fmri studies and see exactly what parts of the brain are activated instead of the incredibly vague localisation to each hemisphere.

>> ^cybrbeast:
>> ^mentality:
The brain doesn't alternate dominance between the two halves or else you'd wake up one day left-handed and another day right handed. As Raaagh said, it'd be nice to see the study as this sounds like another case of the media and journalists coming up with false conclusions by mis-interpreting scientific data.
mentality, that's a baseless assumption that's completely wrong.
From: Asymmetrical Hemispheric Activation and Emotion - The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing
"Changes in nostril breathing efficiency, known as the nasal cycle, were first described by Kayser (1895) and have been well documented since (Keuning, 1968). The relative engorgement of nasal mucosa in each nostril changes over a period ranging from 25 to more than 200 min, resulting in a rhythmic shift of nasal dominance from left to right. Werntz et al. (1983) demonstrated a lateralized rhythm of cerebral hemispheric activation that is associated with the nasal cycle. The relative EEG activity in the left and right hemispheres shifts back and forth with a periodicity comparable to the nasal cycle. The phases of the cerebral and nasal rhythms are tightly coupled and there is a correlation of the dominant nostril with increased EEG activity in the contralateral hemisphere. In two-thirds of the subjects, the cerebral rhythm was an actual shift in dominance between the hemispheres. In the rest of the subjects, the relative changes were comparable but one hemisphere remained dominant throughout."
Also:
"Werntz, Bickford, and Shannahoff-Khalsa (1987) showed that this relationshop between increased air flow in one nostril and actication in the contralateral hemisphere is maintained during unilateral forced nostril breathing (UFNB). When either nostril was blocked so that subjects were forced to breath through the other, there was a shift toward relatively greater EEG activity in the hemisphere contralateral to the open nostril. When forced breathing was changed to the other nostril, the relative EEG activity between the hemispheres shifted as well."
which is why they used the tissues in QI.
Finally
"When the right nostril was dominant, subject performed relatively better on verbal tasks for which the left hemisphere is specialized and during left nostril dominance subjects performed relatively better on spatial tasks for which the right hemisphere is specialized."
I'll have to try that on my next exam

Its sounds to me like bogus, super-rounded fMRI data. What about when you're asleep? What about when you're doing intense physical activity? What about when you're listening to music? Difficult to do fMRI in each of these conditions.

All I'm saying is the point could have been made without the unsupported statistic.


>> ^handmethekeysyou:
Exclusively from the eyes, except for people with synesthesia...and people on acid.>> ^bamdrew:
visual info takes up 50% of brains resources? where the hell is that coming from

I wonder who came up with the "We only use 10% of our brain" concept, and how they justified it. It was definitely before fMRI was developed.

Apart from the fact that countermeasures are effective with a polygraph, there is no way one can detect "truth" if the subject truly beliefs what they say is true. Martha Farah has done a number of studies on false memories; neither a polygraph or fMRI lie detection is going to find the "truth" in these situations.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
>> ^jonny:
As you mentioned, the amount of evidence required to sustain a belief is partially dependent upon the nature of the belief. So, for instance, how much evidence do you require to believe that a painting is beautiful? Do you trust your own eyes when everyone else is telling you different?
That wouldn't require evidence at all. It's subjective opinion, or reactions inside my brain to what I'm seeing.

Beauty isn't entirely subjective. There are certain forms, combinations of sound, etc., that do have universal appeal. Golden ratio stuff for example.

I also accept the view that perception of beauty is indeed a real, material reaction, entirely non-supernatural in origin. Studies show this all the time, scientist can measure brain activity when showing different faces, pictures etc, and different parts of our brain "lights up", in the same way as when we taste things etc.

What fMRI actually measures is known as the BOLD response - Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent. It is thought to correlate well with neural activity, but there is some debate about that. (This may have been settled - it's been some years since I worked with fMRI.) More importantly, it's still only correlating some neural activity with a particular mental state. AFAIK, no one has ever conducted a study demonstrating a causal relationship between neural activity and particular mental states. The closest we've gotten to that is nerve stimulation during brain surgery. But that is very anecdotal.


Of course we dont know exactly how the brain does all this, but thats why we keep working on it, and its very exciting. But I do not see how all this relates to a divine presence. Infact, it shows the opposite.

The connection is the kind of evidence required to believe something and how we go about analyzing that evidence. I think I've pretty clearly shown that in many cases anecdotal or non-verifiable evidence is plenty good enough.


If you believe love to be some kind of spiritual "force", independent of our brains and all material existence, I suppose the same thing applies, when you feel love, it confirms for you the existence of these supernatural phenomena, including the ever-elusive "higher power".

This is really getting to the heart of it. I'm not suggesting that the possibility of a divine presence is in any way supernatural. It seems possible to me that divinity may be as much a part of the natural world as anything else. For me, divinity does not have to be a creator or controller of the universe, but is something that suffuses every part of it. That we don't understand by what mechanism that happens is incidental. It may be that we are incapable of doing so.

I expect you will respond by saying any such thing could not be divine, because that's how you define it. "Just what is it that you're talking about?" you might ask. It's basically impossible to put into words. It's like trying to describe the taste of steak using the menu. Or describing what the color red looks like. I can describe the wavelength of light and how that affects the neurons involved, but I won't have done anything to convey the mental state of perceiving red.

Initially, I had a similar reaction as Bidouleroux to how the question was framed - too many open variables to assess the situation. But I think that's part of it. There's always going to be unknown factors. Who knows - the fat guy could be the key to a lasting peace settlement between Palestinians and Jews, or maybe has the solution for a true Unified Field Theory. That's the point - you can't know these things in advance.

Ultimately, I agree with Kuga. It's homicide in both cases - someone dies as a direct result of your actions. It's kind of like the difference between strangling someone vs. shooting them (killing with your hands vs. pulling a lever). The question for me comes down to your personal belief structure. Most people will apply the "utilitarian" approach, i.e., saving the lives of 4 people is better than causing the death of 1. But again, most people can only take that so far, and struggle with becoming more "directly" involved.

(side note - I put this in the science channel because I was under the impression that the study used fmri to show the areas of the brain active in answering each situation (cingulate cortex?). This may not be the case. I'm still looking for references to this, but if anyone feels this doesn't belong in science in the mean time, go ahead and knock it out.)