Brains and politics

     Alice: Hello, I'm Alice.

     Rob: And I'm Rob.

    Alice: And this is 6 Minute English! We’ve had a special request from our listeners inLugano, Switzerland for a more complicated topic this week. We’re talkingabout the structure of the brain, and how it could be related to our politicalbeliefs.

    Rob: Scientists at University College London scanned people’s brains and foundthat certain areas were more or less developed depending on people’s politicalviews.

    Alice: And - they found some interesting results! Before we hear them, I have aquestion for you Rob. Are you ready?

    Rob: Of course.

    Alice: Now, which of these isn’t a part of the brain? And please excuse mypronunciation:

    a) corpus callosumb) tomatosensory cortexc) ponsRob: Mmm – well, my Latin isn’t that great, but I think I’ll choose b, tomatosensorycortex. It doesn’t sound real to me.

    Alice: OK. Well, as usual I won’t tell you the answer now - but we’ll find out at theend of the programme. Now let’s learn a bit more about this connectionbetween the structure of the brain and a person’s political beliefs. Let’s thinkabout the different ways we can talk about these. If someone is left-wing…Rob: …they are considered to have liberal views.

    Alice: And if they are right-wing.

    Rob: If they are right-wing they are thought to be more conservative.

    Alice: Scientists carried out MRI scans on two British Members of Parliament – MPs- as well as 90 other students and postgraduates 1. Their hypothesis – the theorythey are testing to see if it is correct or not - is to find out if there is anydifference in their brains.

    Rob: These MRI scans can measure the thickness of the grey matter in the brain –that’s the outer layer of the brain which varies in thickness, and is full ofneurons – nerve cells, which are very sensitive.

    Alice: Here’s a BBC Science correspondent, Tom Feilden:

    Insert 1:

    Tom Feilden: It’s time to get down to the serious business of scanning our MPs – one leftand one right-wing to see if we can find any differences in the structure of their brains.

    (Background) Nurse:

    Bit of scanner noise coming now.

    Professor Geraint Rees: We’re now standing 2 in the control room of our MRI scanner...

    Tom Feilden: Professor Geraint Rees is the Director of the Institute of CognitiveNeuroscience at University College London.

    Professor Geraint Rees: We’re going to look in detail at the thickness of the grey matter- that’s the outer covering of the brain.

    Tom Feilden: The hypothesis we’re testing is to see whether there is any significantdifference in the shape or structure - the thickness of the grey matter covering the brain- between people who self-classify as either left or right wing.

    Rob: So did people who self-classify themselves – describe themselves as beingliberal or conservative - have different shaped brains?

    Alice: What the scientists found was that people who have thicker grey matter in onearea of the brain – the anterior 3 cingulate- described themselves as being liberalor left-wing, and those with a thinner layer described themselves asconservative or right-wing. Here’s Professor Geraint Rees:

    Insert 2:

    We find there are two areas of the brain – one called the anterior cingulate and theother called the amygdala, whose structure seems to vary according to their selfdescribedpolitical attitudes. The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that’s on themiddle surface of the brain, at the front. And we found that the thickness of the greymatter – where the nerve cells or neurons are - was thicker the more people describedthemselves as liberal or left-wing, and was thinner the more people described themselvesas conservative or right wing.

    Rob: That’s all very interesting, Alice – but what about people who change theirpolitical beliefs as they get older? Does this mean their brain shapes changetoo?

    Alice: We don’t know yet if brain shape changes as people’s political views change.

    More research needs to be done - but scientist Professor Colin Blakemorefrom Oxford 4 University says that grey matter can change shape in the brain.

    For example, even playing computer games for a short period of time a weekcan change the shape of your grey matter:

    Insert 3:

    We know from lots of other recent studies, that the brain - even the grey matter of thebrain, the part that’s being measured in these studies - can change its organisationincredibly rapidly, simply teaching someone computer games for a few minutes eachweek, can cause their grey matter in certain areas of the brain to change thickness.

    Alice: So perhaps even people who seem hard-wired to believe certain things may beable to change their minds and the shape of their brains too.

    Now before we go let’s answer our question. We heard a couple of terms usedto describe parts of the brain. But which of the ones I gave you, Rob, at thebeginning of the programme were real?

    Rob: I think I said the one that sounded like a tomato? It didn’t sound like a real partof the brain.

    Alice: Well, Rob, you’re right. The odd one out was the tomatosensory cortex.

    The corpus callosum and the pons are parts of the brain.

    Rob: And before we go, let’s hear some of the words and phrases that we’ve used intoday’s programme:

    Political beliefsScannedLeft-wingLiberalRight-wingConservativeMRI scansHypothesisGrey matterNeuronsAlice: Thanks, Rob. Well, we hope you’ve had fun with us today on 6 Minute English- and that you’ll join us again next time.

    Both: Bye.