HEART BOT PAGE | 7 The Future of Medicine Rachel Polcyn 12x12 linocut
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 PAGE | 8
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