final_thp_5thedition

Brān/:
defining the modern intellect
by: Megha Gupta
sen•sa•tion•al•ism
The day nears 7 o’clock on a weeknight. I relax on my rock-hard
futon, and I do my pre-dinner-post-studying-absent-minded Facebook
scroll. A typical college-kid scene. While sliding through my
newsfeed, I come across a Newsweek cover story that catches my
attention. The story features my principal investigator. I had just
started work in Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s research lab at the
University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute,
and there she was, featured on Facebook.
As I voraciously clicked on the article to read, I saw her sharing
what we’ve learned from personal interviews and fMRI scans of
adolescents from low-income neighborhoods: exposure to
violence in adolescents correlates with decreased complexity of
thought and altered neural activity.
One of the Facebook comments on the post stood out, claiming
“This seems to imply that urban kids can’t learn.”
I scroll down and another commenter said, “Everyone has hurdles
to overcome … but redistribution of wealth (socialism) is not the
answer, if that’s what the study is trying to show.”
With the same misinterpretations of the article being repeated,
the last comment I read was the most telling: “ ... this is sad.”
Years’ worth of research and analyses were being reduced to palatable
sound bites for public consumption in this well-circulated
magazine, and I felt disconcerted: while my principal investigator
and our research team garnered public, international recognition
for our work with brain development in adolescents, this exposure
involved distorted research, work, and understanding of
neuroscience and its implications for humanity—all in favor of
simpler, more attention-grabbing presentation of the pertinent
research questions at hand.
Brain•ism
Davi Johnson Thornton did some musing back in 2011 on the
commodification of neuroscience for public consumption in her
book, Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media. Society,
Thornton argues, is rather obsessed with the brain and its neuroplasticity.
Christopher Shaw et al. in Brain Research Reviews in
1994 defined “neuroplasticity” as the neuron’s capacity to
change in response to changes in its environment. This plastic
quality of the brain heavily contributed to its rise into pop
culture stardom, as Maria Popova of The Atlantic writes. However,
such a claim begs the question: what does “brain culture,” the
term coined by Thornton to describe this phenomenon, mean
anyways? How does this term exactly relate to the public perceptions
of the brain and the average person’s interactions with this
mysterious and relatively unknown organ?
The word “culture” derives from the Latin root “colere,” which
means to inhabit, cultivate, or worship. Therefore, in elevating
the brain into a cultural symbol, the way we treat this logic-defying
fleshy organ can instead be likened to sort of religion. A
brain Jainism—“Brainism,” if you will. Like Jainism, Brainism is
dedicated to cultivating good thoughts, manners, and habits
while conquering counterproductive thoughts and impulses. In
Brainism, the skull is the temple and the brain the deity. The
almighty brain smiles favorably upon meditation and mindfulness,
while it punishes drug use, alcohol abuse, and other
unhealthy behaviors.
According to what Popova writes in her article about Thornton’s
work, society reveres the brain too much, believing that simply
thinking about the brain can change the brain, but also that
neuronal connectivity is directly linked to intelligence or performance.
This phenomenon is evidenced especially by the Facebook
comments, where people claimed that correlational
research exploring violence exposure and differential neuronal
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