Reading the Mind Of the Body Politic - WSJ and The Neuroethics Society

Here it comes...Big Brother is so here and it should scare everyone. Really everyone. As soon as people start using information about how brains work to predict how one might behave, we're all in big trouble. Individually and collectively, no matter what group, race, country, denomination you belong to.

Reading the Mind Of the Body Politic ran in the Wall Street Journal last week and I've been so bothered by it I couldn't let it pass without comment. A description of the article reads "A wave of research suggests political decisions often occur at the subliminal level. Alexandra Alter reports on how neuromarketers and political strategists are focusing on an uncharted electoral frontier--the brain."

Neuromarketers? Did you catch that phrase? I've known this was coming for a while now but it's scarier to read about it in the Wall Street Journal then to discuss it, and possible solutions for it, with colleagues who study the brain and mind.

The article begins with "during last Sunday's Republican presidential debate in Miami, Mitt Romney declared he was the only candidate who had stopped talking about universal health care and "actually got the job done." Across the country, in San Francisco, five volunteers watched the debate while wearing electrode-studded headsets that track electrical activity in the brain.

When Mr. Romney said the words "got the job done," there was a pronounced shift in activity in their prefrontal lobes. "They liked what they were hearing," said Brad Feldman, an analyst with EmSense Corp., the company that conducted the test."

They might very well have liked what they were hearing. The analysts at EmSense may have gotten that right. But what will they DO with their feelings? With their thoughts? With their reactions?

I love all the new technology that is uncovering the workings of the brain. I love it, I study it and it informs the work that I do. Really, I love it, love it, love it. I've met neuroscientists who are doing the most fantastic work on the brain from monitoring how people react while watching movies to the biochemistry and psychobiology of PTSD and offspring of people who have suffered from PTSD. Great stuff - really - I can't get enough of it. But when people start using the information to predict and say with certainty what an individual, or groups of individuals will actually do - we're getting into dangerous territory.

Imagine if every one of your nasty thoughts and feelings was registered. Every time you thought about what you'd like to do to so-and-so and the revenge you were going to take on such-and-thus. Imagine if you were judged by your thoughts - some of which you weren't even aware of...ok - you can stop now. Way too scary.

Enter a newly founded group called The Neuroethics Society (of which I'm a member). The society was founded in May of 2006 and is "an interdisciplinary group of scholars, scientists and clinicians who share an interest in the social, legal, ethical and policy implications of advances in neuroscience".

Check it out and keep posted about the work that they're doing for all of us. (Martha Farah was quoted in the WSJ article.) We must all of us start paying attention NOW to make sure that the advances in neuroscience are used in responsible ways socially, legally, ethically, and politically.

Whew! Exhausted from that little stint on the soapbox but I just couldn't let the article pass without comment. Now....if only you could have all read my mind about what I thought of it I wouldn't have had to write it down here...but then you might have heard some of the things I didn't want to say out loud, some of the personal thoughts that I didn't want to share....