In praise of women

A friend recently wrote to me, to enquire what I thought about an article which has apparently appeared recently and which describes differences between male and female brains. Apparently when females undertake judgments of beauty, both of their cerebral hemispheres are engaged whereas in males it is the right hemisphere alone that is engaged.

I have not been able to trace this article but recall having seen another article along somewhat similar lines many years ago, which again purported to show that, in females, both hemispheres are engaged when undertaking certain tasks whereas males use one hemisphere alone for the same task.

Interesting.

One conclusion from such studies is that male and female brains are different, which of course in a sense they are.

Another conclusion is that women need both hemispheres to do what men can do with one hemisphere.

To which I would like to add a speculation: that women do many things better than men, precisely because they use both hemispheres and are thus more engaged with the task.

If my speculation has any merit, then it makes sense to engage women a lot more in many areas of our lives than we actually seem to do, even in the most advanced societies. It is in any case their right, since they gain to lose as much as men when wrong decisions are made.

Consider our present economic plight. I have seen a most interesting documentary produced by PBS.org. It is in five parts and is entitled Frontline: the Meltdown. It is well worth watching.

One of the striking things to emerge from this documentary is that there is only one woman among the leading personalities who have dealt with economic crisis, one woman alone (I exclude the women who were being interviewed about their views). The documentary does not make this point, but it became obvious when I viewed it.

One woman alone!

I wonder. If the effort had been more equitably distributed between men and women, and above all if there had been more women in powerful economic and financial positions, would we be in such a mess today?

Would women be quite so reckless in promoting debts which they know can never be repaid? How many, I wonder, of those who purchased mortgages which they knew they could never repay were women? I bet a minority. Would they have accepted complicated economic formulations prepared by mathematicians who do not understand economics and accepted by economists who do not understand mathematics?

Women, on the whole, have a better instinct to preserve and stabilize and hence their judgment in these matters is often better, unlike men who can be, and often are, reckless in these same matters. There lies one difference between men and women and the advantage lies with women.

Margaret Thatcher always insisted on running the economy as she would run the household as a housewife. Never spend beyond your means. I don’t think that male economists over the past 15 years would think like that. They certainly haven’t acted like that.

If such differences are traceable to differences in brain organization, then why not use that to advantage? In any case, given that women suffer as much as men from the economic downturn, and probably a lot more, why not at least make them share in the decisions? It is, I think, scandalous, that they have such a minor representation in deciding our affairs, especially our economic affairs.

And here is my favourite quote of the week. It comes from Paul Volcker. He is quoted as saying “Even the experts [economists] don’t know quite what’s going on”!!!

Did they ever?

And of course, the overwhelming majority of “experts” who got us into this mess are men.

Neuroeconomics…and greed

I am a fan of the discipline that has become known as neuroeconomics. It has enlisted gifted neurobiologists and is probing highly interesting questions such as the neural parameters of decision making, the representation of reward and the relationship of neurotransmitter activity to reward expectation. I am sure that it will continue to give us many insights into brain organization.

Yet there is a cardinal area which it seems not to have explored so far, namely greed. Greed is currently on everyone’s lips, for it is principally greed that has brought us to the current economic crisis, not economic policies; or, if it is economic policies, then it is economic policies governed by greed. It is a word on everyone’s lips except the economists.

Greed is defined in Webster’s dictionary as inordinate and reprehensible acquisitiveness. This is a neurobiologically interesting, and almost certainly wrong definition. To the practitioners of this greed, there is nothing reprehensible in what they have done or are doing. To those brilliant strategists who advised that a policy of selling mortgages to those who are unable to repay makes sound economic sense, there was nothing reprehensible in their advice. To those inept economic policy-makers, there is nothing to be ashamed of or to regret in what these policies have brought about, the ruin of many families and businesses. To those bankers who, brandishing the begging bowl for economic bailouts from governments, are now re-brandishing the begging bowl ever more insistently for bonuses, there is no feeling of shame, nor are they ashamed of the luxurious beachside conferences arranged in elegant resorts to discuss their bankrupt policies.

Nor is greed limited to them. It also characterizes, for example, those who signed on to mortgages which they knew they could never pay back.

Why should this be so?

I believe that like love and hate, greed probably has neural correlates; it is likely that, as with hate, the degree of activity in relevant brain area(s) will be found to correlate with the intensity of greed experienced. Greed is also probably regulated by neurotransmitters and the receptors for them. It almost certainly depends upon a host of other, as yet unknown, factors as well. But there is one neurobiological prediction that I want to make about greed now – namely that it de-activates those areas of the brain, if any, that control shame and regret and, up to a point, judgment as well.

We have found that the frontal cortex (along with some other cortical areas) is de-activated in those who are passionately in love. It is for this reason, that those in love tend to be less judgmental about their lovers. It is also probably for this reason that it is pointless to try to convince one who is deeply and passionately in love about the folly of their action. Hence, in Pascal’s words, “The heart has its reasons, which reasons knows nothing about”.

And this brings me back to greed. President Obama has now joined the swelling number of people who are angrily condemning the greed of bankers and the incessant demand for bonuses from those who have brought us to this economic abyss. These cries mean nothing to the greedy; they are of no avail. They do not see the shame and have no regrets. This is because, I conjecture, greed also inactivates those parts of the brain that control shame and regret. But, when inactivated, neither shame nor regret are felt. The greed system of the brain then operates uncontrolled according to its own laws, which is that of acquisitiveness, but one which is never seen as reprehensible. Hence the inadequacy of the dictionary definition.

Like love, greed also has its reasons, which reason knows nothing about.

I shall be interested to see if my predictions about greed and the brain come true.

In defense of Senator McCain

This morning I heard an interview with an economist on the World Service of the BBC. He told us that no one knows the extent of the liabilities that the banks have and no one really has a clear solution to the economic problems. Asked if President Obama has the right strategies for solving the economic problems, he replied that “he has the right strategists”,

And then this jibe…

“Unlike Senator McCain who did not even know that there are economic strategists” or words to that effect.

Well, are there any?

If there are, are they anything but strategists in name?

They do not know the liabilities, they did not foresee the extent of the economic disaster, and they do not have the solutions.

So, is Senator McCain not right when he professes not to know that there are any economic strategists?

Given the mess that these so-called economic strategists have got us into, the wonder is that anyone believes that there are economic strategists.

There may be many criticisms that could be leveled against Senator McCain.

This is not one of them.

Creativity and the richness of brain concepts

In two recent blogs, I argued that self-censorship, whether known or unknown, is an unwelcome brake on creativity; it stifles self-expression and hence prevents a work from reaching the heights of great art. But, as I have argued in my recent book Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, it is not the only impediment. I view all art as an effort to translate brain concepts into a work. These brain concepts are synthetic ones – the result of many experiences. But a single work of art, or even a series of works, more often than not cannot translate these synthetic concepts adequately. Yves Saint Laurent once said (I think to Christian Lacroix) that he suffered greatly when creating. He is not alone in that. Most artists do the same and say as much.

One, very common, way of avoiding this difficulty is to abandon all attempts at creating a work; another is to leave it unfinished. But Balzac in particular highlights a third way, which also ends in failure. In his The Unknown Masterpiece (Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu), he writes of a painter who progressively destroys a painting through the richness of concepts in his brain, by trying to put too much into the work. When he finally allows others to see the painting, on which he has been working secretly for 10 years, they see nothing but “a mass of confused colours contained within a multitude of bizarre lines”. Of it Balzac wrote that it was about “a work and its execution strangled by the great abundance of the creative principle”, which I translate into the richness of the synthetic concepts in the brain.

It ends, of course, with the suicide of the artist, just as in Zola’s novel, The Masterpiece (L’Œuvre), the painter Lantier commits suicide because of the richness of concepts in his brain.

It is interesting to note that both Cézanne and Picasso greatly admired Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece. Picasso was so taken by it that he purchased (or rented) the apartment in Paris in which it was set. Of the principle character in the short novel (Frenhofer), Cézanne said, “Frenhofer, c’est moi”.

The novels of Balzac and Zola constitute, in this context, very interesting neurobiological documents. But they do not address, and neither has neurobiology to date, the mechanisms that drive an artist to want to create, often desperately. It is an extremely interesting problem for neurobiology, which stands to gain a great deal from learning about the problem by studying what the great creative artists have had to say about it.

Artistic creativity and the brain

I wrote a blog in May in which I discussed the improvisations of the jazz pianist, Tord Gustavsen. In it, I put forward the view that great artistic achievements must be free of all censorship, and above all self-censorship which, I imagined, may possibly be imposed by activity in the frontal lobes of the brain. In this context, I was very interested to read about an imaginative experiment in a recent paper by Charles Limb and Allen Braun, published in PLoS One. They studied the activity in the brain of professional jazz pianists while they (the pianists) were improvising. There is much of interest in this paper, but here I concentrate on one result which I found especially exciting in view of what I said in my earlier blog. Limb and Braun found that there was extensive de-activation in the frontal cortex as well as in those areas of the brain that are thought to regulate emotions. The authors write that the frontal areas that were de-activated in their study are thought to be important for the conscious monitoring, evaluation and correction of behaviour:

“The [frontal cortex] may be involved in assessing whether such behaviors conform to social demands, exerting inhibitory control over inappropriate or maladaptive performance”

And there you have it!

Any artistic achievement that is tailored to conform to social demands rather than to the real, uninhibited, feelings of its creator, is destined not to reach the heights of achievement, or even fail. It is only when an artist is dis-inhibited that he or she can reach the heights of artistic achievement.

This is perhaps what Wagner and Schopenhauer meant when they said, in a somewhat clumsy way, that an artistic work must “flow from the sub-conscious”, which I interpret to mean without self-censorship. This is perhaps what Proust also meant when he wrote in his Contre Sainte Beuve, “Every day, I become more aware that it is only outside [intelligence] that the [artist] can attain something of himself and the only material of art” (see my earlier blog).

It is at any rate wonderful to have in this recent work a neurological insight into a prized characteristic of all art, but especially of jazz and dancing.

Brain concepts and divorce rates

In my recent book, Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, I argued that one of the root causes of human misery can be traced to the fact that our acquired, post-natal, brain concepts– be they that of a house, a car, a symphonic rendering or a lover - are a synthesis of all the experiences that we have had of that particular attribute. But the individual example – of a car, or a house or a lover - that we experience at any given moment may not satisfy the synthetic concept, thus leading to disappointment and misery.

Disappointment can be defined as a failure to come up to expectation. But expectation with respect to what? A synthetic brain concept of course.

I recently read an interesting account of Japanese divorce rates which seems, on the face of it, to support this view in an important domain. Apparently, Japanese divorce rates have soared in the past few years. Husbands and wives are, seemingly, deeply disappointed with one another.

What is it that has brought this sudden increase about?

According to a BBC report, it is the retirement of the husband in a society where longevity has improved (aided as well by a new law which allows a divorced woman access to her husband’s pension). The retirement creates, according to the report, the opportunity for the married couple to spend more time with each other. Apparently, especially disastrous has been the post-retirement cruises in foreign lands, when the spouses find themselves even closer to each other.

Proximity of course increases the opportunity for experiencing something different from the synthetic brain concept of a lover, or a husband, or a wife that an individual may have; hence increases the opportunity for disappointment as well.

After all, Dante was never disappointed with Beatrice because he virtually never spent any time with her. All he did was to see her on two or three occasions. She smiled at him on one and not the other. She then married a rich banker and died young. He did not experience her long enough to be disappointed with her. Instead he could exalt his brain concept of her. He tells us as much in La Vita Nuova: I shall write of "la gloriosa donna de la mia mente" (the glorious lady of my mind) as no man has written of any woman.

In one version of the famous Majnun-Leila legend, when after a long separation Majnun had the opportunity of seeing Leila, he said ”Be gone from me. My concept of Leila is so much more beautiful than you”. He did not want to experience her!

In one of her love songs, the legendary Egyptian singer, Oum Kalthoum, declares: “I suffer in your presence; I need the mercy of distance.”

Just in case there is any misunderstanding – this is not a Japanese phenomenon at all. According to a Daily Mail report in 2006, there has been a similar tendency in Britain. Also, not all couples who see a lot of each other become disappointed; in a highly variable system there is bound to be a percentage whose brain concept of their lover or spouse is never disappointed But a sufficiently large number do so to make the divorce rates in Western societies approach about 48%, significantly greater than in Japan. Their acquired brain concept of what a spouse or partner should be is, apparently, not satisfied by their experience of the spouse or lover.

Motivations for studying hate

Hate is a very interesting condition and, like love, has no doubt been a major force in shaping human history and destinies. It thus seemed naturally interesting to learn something about the neural processes underlying it, which is why we undertook a study of it, to complement our earlier studies of romantic and maternal love. Our study of hate has still a long way to go, and we plan more experiments in this area in the future.

But there is another reason why I was interested in pursuing a study of hate. I have long had an academic colleague in whom I found nothing but hate, but I found it very difficult to pinpoint the source of this hatred towards me. For, to the best of my knowledge, I had done nothing to harm him in any way, indeed had been friendly and well-meaning towards him.

It must be the colour of my eyes or my manner of speaking, I thought.

And then I found that his hatred was not directed against me alone. It was more general than that – evident in letters he had written to, or about, other colleagues.

So, I concluded that he was just full of hate.

And I was really curious to learn about which parts of his brain become active when he looks at me and others – people whom he apparently hates irrationally (for there is no obvious reason why he should hate us).

Experiences – including unpleasant ones - can also be motivating factors in undertaking scientific work.

I was somewhat surprised by the results that we obtained. Given that hate is commonly irrational – and the example I give above obviously so – I expected to see significant de-activation of frontal, parietal, and temporal cortex, just as with romantic love, where people also commonly take leave of their senses. But, with hate, cortical de-activation was much more confined, in fact to an area which has also been found to be de-activated in cases of obsessive-compulsive disorders.

I have tried to account for this by supposing that the hating person wants to use all his judgmental powers to calculate how to harm the hated person. Indeed, activation of parts of the brain – in particular a structure known as the putamen, which has been linked to disgust and to motor preparation in an aggressive context – would support this.

As I say, there are many more studies yet to be done on brain processes and hate. The original inspiration – from my hating colleague – will be forgotten as more interesting insights are gained.

But it is as well to pay my compliments to him for being – at least in part – the inspirational source for this study.

Do I hate him in return? Of course not! How could anyone hate someone who inspires an interesting study!?