Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Moral Brain Scientists are overreaching if they think their mapping of the human brain explains moral behavior [Dec. 3]. If one section of the cortex "lights up" when we are solving dilemmas that engage us emotionally, and another when we are making cool, rational judgments, so what? The observed brain activity may help to tell us how we act and react, but that is very different from telling us why. The moral drive within us is not so easily explained. Alasdair Livingston, Adelaide
This is not the only study to have suggested that disbelief and moral outrage may be processed in the area of the brain that makes us go "Blechh." Sam Bowles, professor of human behavior at the Santa Fe Institute, describes research in which an unfair business deal produced a response in the same region. How did disgust get involved in the belief-and-disbelief business? Some think it started as a fairly straightforward adaptation to enable a suspicious taste, smell or appearance--like that of vermin--to trigger the impulse to eliminate the source. We may have then generalized that...
...less complicated parts of your body, and yet we credit it with considerable intelligence in the area of truth vs. falsehood. We "sniff out a lie." We say "something smells fishy." Now studies suggest that something more than metaphor may be at work here--specifically, brain science. The same research may also shed unexpected light on religious faith...
...physiological terms. To many readers, Harris is best known for his antireligious book The End of Faith. But he is also a neuroscientist. In a study reported in the Annals of Neurology, Harris presented 14 people with 360 statements designed to elicit belief, disbelief or uncertainty. He tracked their brain response with a functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI) and got some very revealing results...
...tricky complication: It may interfere with other important treatments. If its protection extends to other opiates, for example, it would prevent patients from responding to medically necessary drugs like morphine. The same potential concern applies to nicotine vaccines that may block normal nerve transmissions involving nicotinic receptors in the brain, which play a role in muscle movement, Cohen says...