Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  If you weren't terribly squeamish after your first cut and didn't mind doing a bit of careful scalpel and forceps work, you could lift the brain out. The three-pound grayish-brown concoction of lobes and ventricles would nestle nicely in your hands, rather like a ropy, congealed pudding. It is hard to believe this compact mass once directed the cuddling of babies or dreamed of starting a business.

  Next, you could take a scalpel and slice the brain in half, so you could easily compare the two halves with the areas shown on the next illustration. Poking a bit with a probe, you could pick out the four specialized areas that are particularly important in processing and controlling emotions. These areas have clunky names that can roll surprisingly swiftly off an anatomist's tongue: the anterior cingulate, ventromedial prefrontal, orbital prefrontal, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. We noted some of these regions earlier in relation to psychopathy. Most of these areas are in the prefrontal cortex at the very front of the brain, near the eyes and forehead. Problems involving any of these regions or the pathways connecting them may result in strange emotional behavior—impulsivity, moodiness, or the inability to weigh the soundness of a decision.

  But what precisely does each of those four areas do?

  The first of the four—the orbitofrontal cortex—is designed to inhibit inappropriate actions. This allows us to set aside our urges and put off immediate reward in favor of long-term advantage. When your stomach is growling but you wave away your favorite type of cookie, it's your orbitofrontal cortex that's helping you say no. (The term orbito-, incidentally, refers to the area right above the orbit of the eye.) As you might expect, the orbitofrontal cortex plays a significant role in controlling impulsivity. A dysfunctional orbitofrontal cortex doesn't “play nicely” with the rest of the brain—this may propel a person willy-nilly toward explosively impulsive behavior.

  Fig. 8.2. The illustration on the left shows an external view of the brain, while the right shows a cross section. The four areas shown are those that relate most strongly to processing and controlling emotions.

  The nearby dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is where plans and concepts are held and manipulated. This is the area that would, for example, process plans related to your family's trip to Disneyland—from purchasing plane tickets, to getting your hotel, to planning what you'll be seeing and doing each day. This is also the area that seems to choose to do one thing rather than another. At the grocery store, this area would help you decide to select Fuji apples rather than Golden Delicious. Subtle differences in the operation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may explain the differing styles, for example, of the habitual grocery store ditherer as opposed to the fast shopper who's in and out of the store in seconds. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is also deeply involved in the ability to think logically and rationally about various topics. People with slight problems in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex appear to act normally; however, they may confidently, even arrogantly, draw bizarre and irrational conclusions. Problems related to this area may help cause the gaslighting and projection seen so frequently in borderline-like behavior.9

  The ventromedial cortex is located near, and has very dense connections with, an area completely separate from the cerebral cortex known as the limbic system. The limbic system composes the subconscious part of the brain where emotions are born. The ventromedial cortex therefore allows us to consciously experience our emotions, and helps link conscious to unconscious thought. (You might say that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex plays a role in emotional cognition, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in rational cognition.) The ventromedial prefrontal cortex also gives meaning to our perceptions. For example, depressed people who find no meaning in anything they do often have inactive ventromedial cortices. On the other hand, bipolar individuals in acute manic phase who find meaning in everything they do have hyperactive ventromedial cortices. As we shall see, emotion relates in important ways to our ability to make wise decisions. Not surprisingly, problems with the ventromedial cortex, much like problems with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, can lead to subtly irrational behavior.

  Finally, the anterior cingulate cortex, nestled on the underside of the cerebral cortex, helps us to focus our attention and “tune in” to thoughts. As such, this area of the brain is related to the ability to focus on boring, difficult, or unpleasant subject matter. Dysfunction here may inhibit the ability of borderlines and subclinical borderlines to focus on something they do not wish to hear. The anterior cingulate cortex also plays a role in helping to make new memories permanent and in producing feelings of empathy.

  The Limbic System

  If the cerebral cortex, with four of its subunits, is the first of the two major areas involved in emotional processing, what's the second? It is the limbic system—a far older area (in evolutionary terms) nestled deep within the brain. If you haven't happened to have tidied up yet and still have your dissected brain lying around, you could turn one of the bisected halves of the brain on its side and start picking apart the deep interior to see the main components of the limbic system—the amygdala, thalamus, and the hippocampus. Most emotions are born in the limbic system, along with our appetites and urges. Even though this part of the brain is below our level of awareness, its constant feeding of impulses to the conscious cortical areas profoundly affects us.

  Neural Connections

  Meanwhile, as you might expect, the connections between all the different areas we've just discussed are also critically important in handling emotion. Those connections are generally made through neurons—spidery cells that act like electronic wires to carry information in a syncopated rhythm. As the information travels down the neural wires, it leaps small gaps—synapses—between the neurons in the form of chemical flares known as neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters come in dozens of different flavors, but, as we've already seen, two of the most well-studied and significant are serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin, as we know, plays a critical role in disorders such as depression, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and anxiety; it is also thought to be involved in sexuality and appetite. Dopamine is thought to relate to control of the brain's reward mechanisms, as well as the control of movement. Problems related to the dopamine system have been strongly related to psychosis and schizophrenia.

  Fig. 8.3. The thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala form key components of the limbic system—an older part of the brain from which our emotions emerge.

  Fig. 8.4. This drawing shows the connections between a neuron that is sending a signal and the receiving neuron. Chemical flares known as neurotransmitters carry the signal across the tiny gap between the neurons. Neural signals progress in this hopscotch fashion to allow different areas of the brain to communicate all sorts of information—from sensory information related to sight, hearing, or touch, to high-level processing related to deliberative thought, to emotional reactions such as fear or aggression.

  To see how the neurons make connections between the different areas of the brain, we might want to think about a map. For example, when we want to see how cities in the state of Michigan are connected to each other, we often pull out a road map and trace the connections we're interested in to figure out how to get from, say, Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Hell (yes, there is a Hell in Michigan). In just the same way, we can see how the different regions of the brain connect to each other by following a “brain map” like that shown above.

  Fig. 8.5. A rough sketch of how various areas of the brain connect to one another.

  To get a feel for how this diagram relates to physical processes that are occurring in the brain, start at the left, with the oval labeled “Sensory Stimuli” (that's our “Kalamazoo,” from which we can reach the different points in our neural Michigan). Information from the sensory stimuli—eyes, ears, touch—is sent undulating along neurons to the limbic structure of the thalamus. The thalamus, an egg-shaped gray mass deep in the center of the brain, is a routing station for these sensory signals, some o
f which are sent on to the amygdala. At the amygdala, the emotional significance of the information is determined. For example, if you were to have lesions on your amygdala so that they had to be surgically removed, you wouldn't be able to understand the meaning of growls, screams, angry voices, or other negative signs. From the amygdala, signals are sent on to the nucleus accumbens (the NAC), which determines the appropriate levels of motivation and reward—this is the common site of action for drugs such as cocaine that produce euphoria.

  All of this processing at the subconscious limbic-system level is not very precise, but is fast—fast enough to get your body revved for reaction to danger. For example, if you hear a nearby gunshot, a signal from the amygdala might be shunted through to the hypothalamus and brain stem nuclei (Hypo/BSN) to produce an automatic emotional response: “Run!” Ultimately, all of these deep-brain limbic structures transmit their information up to the prefrontal cortex, where we consciously become aware of the emotional responses we refer to as feelings.

  But there is one last piece to the process. Some of the original sensory information that was split at the thalamus is sent directly on to the cerebral cortex (including the four areas—the anterior cingulate, ventromedial prefrontal, orbital prefrontal, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices—that we mentioned before). Here, slower but more precise conscious evaluation of the directly routed sensory stimuli takes place. But even so, the emotionally preprocessed signals, along with components from memory, eventually arrive at the higher, conscious, prefrontal areas, and can strongly affect, or even overwhelm, our conscious thought processes. These signals are what trigger that surge of affection we feel when we see our beloved dog, or the fear and revulsion we feel when we encounter a rattlesnake in our path. These are also the emotional signals that influence how open we are to receiving and understanding new information. This emotional overlay is intimately related to why my Soviet colleagues and friends on the trawlers often could simply not understand when I hinted that there might be something wrong with their government, or something right about the West.

  “FEEL GOOD” POLITICS: HOW MACHIAVELLIANS—AND ALTRUISTS—MANIPULATE EMOTIONS

  The role of emotion in shaping “rational” thinking is tremendously underrated. Strong evidence shows that human behavior is the product of both the rational deliberation that takes place in the front areas of the cerebral cortex and the “emote control”—emotional reasoning—that originates in the limbic system.10 These two neural systems operate in radically different fashions and often are in conflict with one another. As Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey writes: “Emotionality clearly preceded rationality in evolutionary sequence, and as rationality developed it did not replace emotionality as a basis for human interaction. Rather, rational abilities were gradually added to preexisting and simultaneously developing emotional capacities. Indeed, the neural anatomy essential for full rationality—the prefrontal cortex—is a very recent evolutionary innovation, emerging only in the last 150,000 years of a six-million-year existence, representing only about 2.5 percent of humanity's total time on earth.”11

  In an article on the effect of emotion in foreign policy and international law, law professor Jules Lobel and psychologist George Loewenstein expand on Massey's sentiments:

  Human behavior…is not under the sole control of either affect or deliberation but results from the interaction of these two qualitatively different processes—like a computer that has two different types of processors it can draw upon that process information in qualitatively different ways. Emote control is fast but is largely limited to operating according to evolved patterns. Deliberation is far more flexible—it can be applied to almost any type of task or problem one might encounter—but is comparatively slow and laborious. Deliberation involves what psychologists call “controlled processes” that involve step-by-step logic or computations and are often associated with a subjective feeling of effort…. Emote control is the default mode, while deliberation is invoked in special circumstances.12 (italics added)

  Emote control is not necessarily a bad phenomenon. It can lead to harrowing rescues from burning cars, loyalty to our friends even when the costs far outweigh any benefits, and the impassioned leadership of Winston Churchill in his defense of Britain against the evils of Nazism in World War II. But it can also lead to other, less happy results—especially with regard to Machiavellians.

  One such example is the twenty-five-year crusade to prove that a Virginia man, Roger Coleman, was innocent of the rape and murder of his sister-in-law. Coleman was a likable, good-looking man who resolutely insisted on his innocence. Thus, despite a large body of evidence—that is, rational facts—that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Coleman was guilty, death penalty opponents rallied to his cause. Jim McCloskey was Coleman's principal advocate—he fought for years to save Coleman's life and even founded a group, “Centurion Ministries,” to help get the falsely convicted out of jail. McCloskey says, “I promised Roger Coleman the night he was executed [that] I would do all within my power to prove that he was innocent. Those were my last words to a dying man.”13 Eventually, the state was convinced to make use of new DNA technology to reexamine the case. Hopes were high among death penalty opponents that Coleman's name would prove to be an effective rallying cry to help prevent future executions. When Coleman's DNA analysis came back, however, he was shown to have been guilty as charged. (This is not to suggest that all those convicted of murder are in fact guilty. The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University has proven otherwise for dozens of the poor and forgotten.)

  But why was McCloskey so certain that Coleman was innocent? The ultimate source of McCloskey's certainty is revealed by his statements after Coleman's “guilty” DNA results came back. McCloskey “felt betrayed by the man whose last words included the statement ‘An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight.’ ‘How can somebody, with such equanimity, such dignity, such quiet confidence, make those his final words even though he is guilty?’ McCloskey said.”14 McCloskey had made an “emote control” decision that Coleman could not have been guilty—this decision had been deeply confirmed by Coleman's body language. The intrusion of reality in the form of Coleman's betrayal must have been devastating. Machiavellians such as Coleman often take advantage of an emotionally based—perhaps even genetically predisposed—desire on the part of some honest individuals to believe that others are also honest. This can occur despite sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

  A recent imaging study by psychologist Drew Westen and his colleagues at Emory University provides firm support for the existence of emotional reasoning.15 Just prior to the 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential elections, two groups of subjects were recruited—fifteen ardent Democrats and fifteen ardent Republicans. Each was presented with conflicting and seemingly damaging statements about their candidate, as well as about more neutral targets such as actor Tom Hanks (who, it appears, is a likeable guy for people of all political persuasions). Unsurprisingly, when the participants were asked to draw a logical conclusion about a candidate from the other—“wrong”—political party, the participants found a way to arrive at a conclusion that made the candidate look bad, even though logic should have mitigated the particular circumstances and allowed them to reach a different conclusion. Here's where it gets interesting.

  When this “emote control” began to occur, parts of the brain normally involved in reasoning were not activated. Instead, a constellation of activations occurred in the same areas of the brain where punishment, pain, and negative emotions are experienced (that is, in the left insula, lateral frontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Once a way was found to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted, the neural punishment areas turned off, and the participant received a blast of activation in the circuits involving rewards—akin to the high an addict receives when getting his fix. In essence, the participants were not about to let facts get in the way of their hot-button decis
ion making and quick buzz of reward. “None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,” says Westen. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.” Interestingly, a more extreme version of this type of behavior may underlie borderline-like splitting.16

  A completely different process occurred when a participant had no emotional investment at stake, as with statements concerning the “neutral” Tom Hanks. In this straightforward, rational process, only the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was activated—both Democrats and Republicans were swayed toward reaching the logical conclusion by the mitigating statement. Dorsolateral activation is, notably, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion.

  Ultimately, Westen and his colleagues believe that “emotionally biased reasoning leads to the ‘stamping in’ or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's ‘revisionist’ account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. ‘The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,’” Westen says.17 Westen's remarkable study showed that neural information processing related to what he terms “motivated reasoning”—that is, political bias (in this case, at least)—appears to be qualitatively different from reasoning when a person has no strong emotional stake in the conclusions to be reached.