You become a Mother Teresa or Bin Laden because of your pre-determined
genetic profile and the way your brain is wired. File Photo: Special
Arrangement
“But thatha (grandfather in Tamil), you must punish my brain, not
me,” responded my eight-year-old grandson, on being reprimanded for a
socially unacceptable behaviour. A few weeks earlier, I had explained to
him, the intricacies of brain cartography and how today, we can
“localise” and explain the many facets of behaviour. Out of the mouths
of babes, comes the truth. Touché – a Frenchman would have remarked.
You become a Mother Teresa or bin Laden because of your pre-determined
genetic profile, the way your brain is wired and neurotransmitters jump
across synapses. Rapists and hardcore criminals will seek clemency, as
sophisticated neuroimaging has revealed functional and even structural
‘aberrations' in the brain. Jumping out of your jeans lies in your
genes! It is the hippocampus in my brain which is responsible for my
behaviour, not me!
Worldwide, for decades the judiciary has accepted the principle of mens-rea —
the act does not make a person guilty, unless the mind is also guilty.
What is the mind? Where is the mind? Ever since Homo sapiens became a
biped and stopped swinging from tree to tree, he has often introspected
on “Who am I.” Great thinkers of yesteryear, be it Adi Sankara or
Socrates, postulated the existence of the “mind” and the “soul.” Without
today's brain mapping tools, René Descartes had enunciated the concept of Cogito ergo sum — I think therefore I am.
If everything we do is physically caused by our brains, which in turn
are a product of our genes and our life experiences, how can we be held
responsible for our actions? Sophisticated electrophysiology can pick up
electrical activity in nerve cells, even as a thought process is being
initiated. Normally, when the thought could lead to an anti-social act,
inhibitory impulses ensure that it is aborted. What if my inhibitory cortex
is less well-developed — am I responsible for this? Coca-Cola has a
team of neurophysiologists working on neuromarketing — studying what
exactly happens in the brain, when a desire for a product is kindled.
With reverse engineering can they ignite this pathway, so that their
return on investment quadruples? Will HR of the future use brain imaging
correlates of personality, intelligence, mental health vulnerabilities,
attitudes toward ethnic groups, predilection for violent crime as part
of their selection process?
If someone picks up someone else's belonging and can't remember, can
proof of Alzheimer's disease exonerate him of the alleged crime? In the
next decade, can sophisticated brain mapping findings be invoked, as
mitigating circumstances to explain aberrant behaviour? How does society
“punish” my abnormal neurotransmitter levels, the aberrant tracts and
circuits in my behavioural brain, so elegantly displayed in colour in a
fMRI tractogram? Is this the cause or result of my behaviour? Who am I?
Mapping
Like Google Earth, brain cartographers are mapping areas responsible for
concentration, fear, anxiety, perseverance, learning, memory, appetite,
pleasure and sex. The hippocampus, a crescent-shaped collection of
neurons deep in the brain, is the chief coordinator for memory — the
amygdala, an almond size cluster of nerve cells, stores memories of
fear; the basal ganglia retain memories of habits and physical skills.
Is this me? Is human love, the agony and ecstasy we feel, only an
electrical outburst of a circumscribed set of neurons? To explain me
(the mind) as the functions of 1300 grams of a semisolid gelatinous
mass, a palpable physical entity appears too naïve? Am I just a sum
total of hope, despair, genius, dull mediocrity? Am I electrical
impulses zapping from one brain cell to another, helped along their way,
by a myriad of complex chemicals? How juvenile! Am I not something
beyond the merely physical, something ethereal that is closer to a
spiritual concept of the soul? How melodramatic! The truth, as all great
truths are, though currently evading us, is probably somewhere in
between.
Epilogue: “Arvind, you are right, but since I do not how to punish only
the nerve cells responsible for your action, I am reproaching them
through you — no games and TV today, and next time don't be a smart alec
— you cannot get away with this specious argument!
(The author is a Chennai-based neurosurgeon and telemedicine specialist. Email: drganapathy@apollohospitals.com)
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