【一起听英语】大脑与政治观

人的大脑的结构会影响人的政治立场吗？

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 in

Lugano, Switzerland for a more complicated topic this week. We’re talking

about the structure of the brain, and how it could be related to our political

beliefs.

Rob: Scientists at University College London scanned people’s brains and found

that certain areas were more or less developed depending on people’s political

views.

Alice: And - they found some interesting results! Before we hear them, I have a

question for you Rob. Are you ready?

Rob: Of course.

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

pronunciation:

a) corpus callosum

b) tomatosensory cortex

c) pons 

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Rob: Mmm – well, my Latin isn’t that great, but I think I’ll choose b, tomatosensory

cortex. 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 the

end of the programme. Now let’s learn a bit more about this connection

between the structure of the brain and a person’s political beliefs. Let’s think

about 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 theory

they are testing to see if it is correct or not - is to find out if there is any

difference 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 of

neurons – nerve cells, which are very sensitive.

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

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Insert 1:

Tom Feilden: It’s time to get down to the serious business of scanning our MPs – one left

and 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 Cognitive 3

Neuroscience 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 significant

difference 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 being

liberal or conservative - have different shaped brains?

Alice: What the scientists found was that people who have thicker grey matter in one

area of the brain – the anterior 4 cingulate- described themselves as being liberal

or left-wing, and those with a thinner layer described themselves as

conservative 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 the

other called the amygdala, whose structure seems to vary according to their selfdescribed

political attitudes. The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that’s on the

middle surface of the brain, at the front. And we found that the thickness of the grey

matter – where the nerve cells or neurons are - was thicker the more people described

themselves as liberal or left-wing, and was thinner the more people described themselves

as conservative or right wing. 

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Rob: That’s all very interesting, Alice – but what about people who change their

political beliefs as they get older? Does this mean their brain shapes change

too?

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 Blakemore

from Oxford 5 University says that grey matter can change shape in the brain.

For example, even playing computer games for a short period of time a week

can 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 the

brain, the part that’s being measured in these studies - can change its organisation 6

incredibly rapidly, simply teaching someone computer games for a few minutes each

week, 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 be

able 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 used

to describe parts of the brain. But which of the ones I gave you, Rob, at the

beginning of the programme were real?

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

of the brain.

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

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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 in

today’s programme:

Political beliefs

Scanned

Left-wing

Liberal

Right-wing

Conservative

MRI scans

Hypothesis

Grey matter

Neurons

Alice: 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.