I have seen your brain and it might not be so pretty Interview with Susan K. Perry
This interview is based on the article written by Susan K. Perry Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201705/i-have-seen-your-brain-and-it-might-not-be-so-pretty
In your blog post titled “I have seen your brain and it might not be so pretty” you focus on how fMRI can show a physiological response that makes a patient who is unable to communicate verbally do it with his or her thoughts. What led you to write about this topic?
I have always found the workings of the brain fascinating. It would be great to be able to look inside the brain and discover the connections that make us think a certain way.
You start the article by asking if a brain scan can expose that you are psychopathic. I have read that most psychopathic brains have a slightly morphological difference to what we call normal brains. Would you care to explain this? Are there other signs this machine can detect?
Studies have shown that psychopaths can tell right from wrong, but they cannot actually tell the difference between the wrongness of a child hitting another child and one who is merely talking in class. You and I know that there are distinctions between serious breaks of the moral code and actions that are not very serious. Researchers have found that the brains of psychopaths are deficient in moral processing. The brains of psychopaths showed no difference when shown moral versus non-moral images, where the brains of the normal subjects showed a greater activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for moral pictures.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging can also detect who is more racially biased. Part of that complex study involved correlating amygdala activation with other kinds of tests of racial bias. Which may lead into your next question…
How do you believe fMRI machines could be used in ten years from now that we do not have the technology to do?
Once scientists identify what parts of the brain respond to what kinds of stimuli, it may be possible to reduce negative social behaviors, such as racial bias. I would hope they would find ways to help people live in peace with one another, perhaps drive less aggressively, perhaps be more compassionate to the needy. I don’t mean they will fiddle with the insides of our heads directly. By determining what factors are most likely to make a change in some part of the brain’s activation, they can then design experiments to help move people in the desired direction.
In simple terms how does an fMRI machine work for those who never heard of it?
The book I read for this blog post takes 5 pages to explain how those machines work. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has to do with a strong magnetic field combined with radio waves focusing on hydrogen protons. For the “f” (functional) part of fMRI, changes in blood flow are tracked. It’s a very complicated process requiring complex analysis (not just pass/fail). I don’t know how to simplify the terms, unfortunately. I mostly know from having had a couple of MRI sessions, though not for the brain. They are huge noisy machines, and you can’t have anything magnetic on you or with you. You lie down inside of it and it moves over you snapping many images. Those who cannot bear to be in enclosed spaces may have a hard time unless the facility has the newer, more open kinds.
What are your thoughts on neuromarketing?
Marketers already influence our buying choices by associating their product in ads featuring other things we want. Drink this beer and all the girls (or guys) will want to be with you. Apply this make-up and the man of your dreams will walk through the door. Buy this car and you’ll experience thrills and a sense of freedom you never thought possible. Neuromarketing makes me uncomfortable though. People need to be aware of how our wishes and dreams and barely conscious preferences are being manipulated right now by advertisers, because it’s only going to get more subtle and sophisticated. Knowledge gained from studies using fMRI will surely be applied to persuading us to buy stuff we really do not need or cannot afford.
Are there any possibilities that psychotherapists use fMRI to help patients or it is only useful for a diagnosis? (Or none of them).
That sort of application is in the future, so I can’t really say. Some psychologists will probably want to make use of any new technology that may help their clients for whom talking therapy and current medications are not enough.
Are there any studies made with this machine you would recommend reading?
For that, I’ll defer to the authors of the book Sex, Lies, & Brain Scans (the book I used to compose my blog post). They discuss all the relevant studies, so pick one or more from their Notes section for further specific information.
You can find her website here: www.BunnyApe.com
Minority Report anyone? Article discusses the alarming advance of possible future use of BRAIN technology.
Brain scans can now detect if one is racist, with the author suggesting that a different brain part may be activated to “help” a person not be racist.
Racism is BAD. However, as demonstrated in the movie “American History X”, fascism is formed by culture. Change in thought occurs with experience. Do we need technology to shape our beliefs?
Imagine the application of brain scans showing potential serial killers. The article states their brains are activated differently, with moral situations. Fascinating, but application is yet to be determined.
Minority Report may be closer then we think.
This interview with Susan K. Perry is very educational and informative about the possibilities of future technology and how they fMRI can evolve as they have been testing it on the brain of psychopaths. Letting us the readers know that if scientists could just identify what parts of the brain responds to what kind of stimuli, it could be a different world. Such as controlling social negative behaviors, to me it all sound like your typical cliché; a technology was meant for the better and ended up backfiring on humanity. Seems more like robot implants on the human brain on a sci-fi movie, but if it’s to stop negative behaviors such as racism, terrorism etc. maybe one day, it must be done for the better of human kind. Yet its more uncomfortable knowing that the fMRI can be used to persuade us to buy what society believes we need, when we already have media like Instagram doing that, with such success let me add; now image the effect on humans from a scientific system. I appreciate Susan K. Perry’s honesty in informing us the pro and cons without sugar coating anything.
Excellent interview! I love how the questions posed by the author were very meaningful and actually gives its readers something to be interested about. Discussing scientific innovations which benefit the human brain certainly is a very interesting topic to tackle upon and one which deserves ample concern not only by professionals, but also by the whole society. Although to suggest, the interview would probably have a better flow if the question regarding how an fMRI works was placed in the beginning of the interview so as to give the readers a brief understanding of what and how it is as they read along the interview. Nonetheless, this interview is still one worth sharing.
This article brings about a wonderful question of ethics: If we had the ability to get rid of all racism, would we do it? Would you willingly erase the minds of everyone who harbors anger for another race and rewrite them to exclude their bias? Obviously anyone with a sound mind would wish to rid the world of racism, but is this an ethical procedure?
Or perhaps Susan K. Perry is suggesting that by studying the reactions in the brain we can ‘reeducate’ racism from the human race as she explains further by clarifying, “I don’t mean they will fiddle with the insides of our heads directly. By determining what factors are most likely to make a change in some part of the brain’s activation, they can then design experiments to help move people in the desired direction.”
Either way, this was entertaining to read from start to finish. I was hooked from the very title and as soon as I saw the first couple of questions I immediately wanted to know more. Two things that would improve this article would be an introduction and conclusion about the discussed topics–maybe even your opinion on what was discussed–and definitions of terms. I was able to deduce what neuromarketing was after reading Perry’s response, but receiving an introductory definition of terms from your questions or comments would be helpful.
Great read, and I applaud how organized and well worded your interview questions were. Thank you for posting!
This was a very entertaining read! It is interesting to read about a neurobiological perspective of behaviour as well as the power of neuroimaging technology in our current day. MRIs and fMRIs have indeed given us much insight into the different parts of the brain that are necessary for different functions. Apart from the examples in the article that mostly centre around disorders and psychopathology, studies have identified different brain regions and their respective functions using neuro-imaging technology. For example, McGuire et al. (2006) carried out MRIs on London taxi and bus drivers and found that taxi drivers had a larger hippocampus, suggesting its role in spatial memory (taxi drivers are required to navigate while bus drivers follow a specific route).
I find it inspiring that neuroimaging technology is continuing to evolve and will probably continue to be very powerful in the future. For example, a recent research paper showed how neuroimaging techniques can be used to predict if psychotherapy or medication will be more effective for a particular depressed individual (Duncan et al., 2017). I am very impressed by the power of neuroimaging techniques! What I wish I could read more about would be the other neuroimaging techniques besides fMRI and MRI, such as TMS, single-cell recording and more, as each neuroimaging technique has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Wow this all seems like a scary dystopian novel, erasing bad social behaviors, more capitalism, and intense therapy. It brings up a lot of morality questions as all dystopian like subjects do. This technology really has the potential to help our society but increasing consumerism and decreasing those negative social behaviors but is that really what we want? I’d like to think we can fix racism without the use of brain changing technology but with the awful history we have it might be the only solution. Would we force this upon people or would it be volunteer basis? What if people don’t volunteer because they don’t even believe they have racial bias? And what will happen to our economy with a drastic increase of spending, it might help in times of recession but could have a negative adverse effect. This article really brings forth a lot of questions in my mind, amazing job.