Game Changer (16 page)

25

Rachel was proud of her ability to summarize and simplify
her field, but she wondered how fast the intruder was on the uptake. And she
would just be scratching the surface, no matter what she did.

Einstein had famously said, “If you can’t explain it simply,
you don’t understand it well enough.” On the other hand, Einstein had never
suggested that the explanation of millions of pages of research produced over
more than a century could be done through a brief discussion in a moving car.

“Neuroscience is the study of the structure and function of
the nervous system and brain,” began the chair of Harvard’s neuroscience
department as she drove randomly through the streets of Waltham, Massachusetts.
“At least that’s the dictionary definition. But this doesn’t do it justice.
It’s really about understanding what makes us tick. What drives human beings?
What drives behavior? How much of our decision-making is based on emotion, and
how much on reason? Can we cure neurologic disease? Improve upon the human
condition? And what improvements
should
we make, provided that we’re able?”

Rachel paused to let these questions sink in. “And even more
fundamentally,” she continued, “do we have a soul? Is consciousness divine,
special, miraculous? Or is consciousness something we might someday replicate
in every respect with the right bits of matter arranged in just the right way?”

Quinn raised his eyebrows. “What do
you
think?” he asked with genuine
interest. “
Do
we have a soul?”

“I’m not sure. On the face of it, it seems clear that
we don’t. That everything we are emerges from the physical properties of the
brain. Not that I’m suggesting this rules out the existence of a soul entirely,
mind you, just that it makes this a more difficult position to take. But what
is
absolutely clear is that damage to
different regions of the brain can cause dramatic and insanely specific changes
to your personality, behavior, abilities, and desires. Can change
who
you are.”

“But not
everything
is changeable, right?”

“Just about,” said Rachel. “There are changes that can
impact whether you are aggressive or pacifistic, outgoing or introverted.
Changes that can cause a disregard for social norms, impulsive behavior,
hypersexuality, and increases in risky behavior. Changes in your level of spirituality,
or even the ability to name animals or hear music.”

“That does seem pretty comprehensive,” said Quinn.

“And we’re all aware of how dramatically our personalities
and perceptions can be altered by drugs and alcohol. And not just LSD and other
banned substances. Think of all the prescription drugs that change our
personalities and behaviors. Drugs used to treat psychosis, anxiety,
depression, hyperactivity and other conditions. All can change the
you
that your friends have come to know
and love.”

The light turned green and Rachel inched forward
before making a right turn. Given it was early evening on a Monday night, the
streets were as sparsely traveled as she would have expected.

She glanced at her passenger, and then chastised
herself for even momentarily thinking of him as a passenger rather than what he
was: a dangerous intruder. Even so, the man did appear to be genuinely
fascinated and eager to learn more.

“Let me give you a concrete example,” she continued. “It
involves a boring guy named Charles Whitman. Bank Teller and former Eagle
Scout. By all accounts he was a model citizen. But in 1966, this former Eagle
Scout climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower in Austin and opened
fire. Before he was shot by police, he had killed thirteen people and wounded
thirty-three.”

She paused. “Not what one would expect from his
background, is it? Authorities found a suicide note in his home. In it, Whitman
said he had recently been having irrational and unusual thoughts. He requested
that an autopsy be performed on him to see if something had changed in his
brain.”

“Let me guess. It had.”

“Turns out he had a tumor pressing against a region of
the brain called the amygdala. This is an almond-shaped set of neurons involved
in emotional regulation, especially fear and aggression.”

Quinn nodded in understanding, but she wondered if he
was truly grasping both points she was trying to make. Not only that a change
to the physical brain could instantly transform a man from good to what was
traditionally called evil, but that the conscious mind was severely influenced
by, and seemingly powerless to stop, a region of the brain whose motivations
were hidden from it.

“I’ll give you a second example,” continued Rachel. “In
the early 2000s, a forty-year-old Virginia teacher suddenly became obsessed
with child pornography, and even tried to molest his eight-year-old
stepdaughter. Until this point he had been strictly interested in adult females.”

“Another tumor?” guessed Quinn uncertainly.

“Very good. That’s right. This time in his
orbitofrontal cortex. When the neurosurgeons removed it, the man’s sexual appetite
returned to normal.” She raised her eyebrows. “But six months later, the
pedophilic behavior returned.”

Quinn tilted his head in thought. “Had the tumor grown
back?” he asked.

Rachel was impressed despite herself. She had told
this story many times, and few had jumped to this conclusion, however obvious it
was in retrospect. “Yes. Exactly. They excised it once again, and once again
his interest in young girls disappeared.”

“
Jesus
,”
said Quinn. “That is so creepy. So specific a change in behavior.”

“Exactly.”

“Wow. I’d have to think about what these cases imply a
lot harder, but they do seem to make your point. Like you said, if we do have
free will, if we do have a soul, at the very least it can be subverted pretty
easily by physical changes to our brains.”
 

“Pretty sobering, isn’t it? And we think we’re in
control when much of the time we’re not. Unconscious subroutines, seared into
our brains, are calling a lot of the shots, and then we’re expert at taking
credit after the fact.”
 

“But you said you couldn’t rule out a soul. Given what
you’ve just told me, why can’t you? You’ve demonstrated that the
you
inside is totally dependent on the
physical state of your brain. So how can
consciousness be divine, or miraculous
? Seems like consciousness,
and the soul if you’d like, could be recreated by using wires and switches to
duplicate the exact functionality of the human brain.”

“Well said,” she replied, impressed with his grasp of the
material. If he ever got tired of abducting women, he should really consider a
career in neuroscience. “I can’t rule out divine consciousness because while
scientists think they’re zeroing in on what makes us tick, there are those who
argue there is far more to the system than meets the eye. Let me give you an
example involving a transistor radio.”

“Do they even make those anymore?” said Quinn.

Rachel smiled. “No, but it’s still a good example.”

She organized her thoughts. “Imagine you’re a Kalahari
Bushman who finds a radio,” she began. “As you’re messing around with it, sound
suddenly emerges from inside. Voices, music, intelligent conversation, all
streaming from this mysterious little box. If you’re a Bushman scientist, you’d
open the box and begin to study the insides. You might find that if you pull a
wire from its contact the voices stop, or maybe they get softer. You put it
back and the voices return to normal. Soon you’d discover what
we’ve
discovered about the brain, that a
huge number of changes to the wiring will have a major impact on what comes out
of the other end.”

“I’m with you so far,” said Quinn.

“Good. So what if someone asked you
how
these bright plastic wires are able
to produce music and voices? You wouldn’t know, but you’d be confident you were
getting close to understanding.”

Rachel shook her head vigorously. “But you
aren’t
. Nowhere near. Because you can’t
possibly imagine that what you’re hearing has nothing to do with the wires,
nothing to do even with the radio. You’d never even dream that this content is
generated by a transmission tower hundreds of miles away beaming out powerful
radio waves. If someone suggested this was the case, you’d be sure they were
insane. ‘It’s all about these invisible waves,’ they would tell you. ‘You can’t
see, taste, or feel them, but they’re racing through your body even now, fast
enough to circle the globe seven times in a single second. And these
invisible waves
are carrying the voices
and music,
not
the wires.’”

“When you say it that way,” said Quinn, “I’m not even sure
that
I
believe it.”

“Exactly. And the Bushman scientist lives in a world
with no technology whatsoever. He’d never be able to guess this truth in a
thousand lifetimes. He would never believe that while the radio’s wires need to
be configured just right to pick up the voices, the content of the voices has
absolutely nothing to do with the configuration of the wires.”

“Now
that
is
a fascinating analogy,” said Quinn.

“The moral of the story, of course, is that while many
of us believe that consciousness, the soul, and everything else resides in our neuronal
wiring, there could well be far more to it than we’re even capable of imagining.”

She let Quinn digest this for a moment and then said,
“But I brought up the soul just as an interesting side discussion. To really
give you a sense of what neuroscience has learned, I
 
should start at the beginning.”

“By all means,” said Quinn.

“Let’s compare human beings and
animals. Animals are born pretty much complete and ready to go, with instincts
and behavior already wired up in their brains. A baby zebra can run less than
an hour after birth. Many animal species don’t tend to their young at all,
they’re born with all the physical skills and behaviors they need to survive.”

Rachel paused. “In contrast,
human infants are as helpless as it’s possible to be. We’re born with our
brains largely unfinished. Which isn’t to say we aren’t prewired to some
extent.”

“How so?”

“Within minutes of birth a baby
knows to seek out a face. We’re prewired for language acquisition, math, fear
of heights, suckling, and so on. But instead of wiring up in the womb, babies
mostly wire up through exposure to their environment. Which makes us flexible,
versatile, able to readily learn new tricks. Instead of being hardwired, we’re
more like live-wired. Millions of new synapses form in an infant’s brain every
second.”

“Not sure I totally get how the
environment impacts this wiring,” said Quinn.

“Well, an easy example is
language. If you’re born in Japan, your brain gets wired up to understand
Japanese. In America, to understand English. You become better able to hear the
sounds of your language, and less able to hear the sounds of other languages.
Through time, a baby raised in Japan will no longer be able to hear the
difference between the sounds of R and L, since these sounds aren’t distinct in
the Japanese language.”

“I thought they just couldn’t
get their mouths to form these sounds.”

“That too. But they aren’t even
wired to
hear
them. Just like those
who are red-green colorblind can’t detect any difference between these two
colors.”

Rachel stopped at a red light
and turned to face the man sitting beside her. “But the point I’m trying to
make is that we’re born unfinished, to maximize versatility. You can’t teach an
animal to excel at tennis, play chess, do the backstroke, play a piano, touch
type, or solve a Rubik’s cube. For each of these skills, the human brain
creates unconscious subroutines. Burns the proper circuits into our brains. When
you have to do an activity consciously, you are slow and inefficient. Unconscious
subroutines programmed in are just the opposite, fast and efficient. But in many
cases, learned activities that become part of your unconscious wiring can no
longer be accessed by your conscious mind.”

She studied Quinn’s face for just
a moment longer before turning her attention back to the road. “You just spoke
of the process you use to make sounds in a language. If you were to try to consciously
move your lips and tongue to form each sound you make when you speak a
sentence, you’d find you couldn’t do it. Thankfully, the proper subroutines are
burned into your brain, freeing you up to concentrate on what you’re saying. But
go ahead. Without moving your lips or tongue, try to visualize the ballet of
movements your mouth would need to make to say the word,
oblique
. Or
petulant
. Or
any other word for that matter.”
 

“No need,” said Quinn. “If you
say I can’t do it, I believe you.”

“Conscious meddling with our
unconscious subroutines actually makes things worse, not better. When you’re
really great at a sport, for example, you perform better if you don’t
consciously think about what you’re doing.”

Quinn nodded. “Fascinating. When
a basketball player can’t miss a shot, or a tennis player is hitting every
line, the athlete is often said to be playing
unconscious
. I always thought this was just a figure of speech.”