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Perceiving—A new Look at Brain and Behaviorby Graciela Gutierrez 
Entire walls in the lab of David Eagleman, Ph.D., are whiteboards full of colorful notes that represent exciting new ideas about our brains. The office of David Eagleman, Ph.D., looks like a typical setting for a scientist. Papers and notes for upcoming books and for the many international lectures in which he takes part are strewn across his desk. This explosion of ideas continues even on the dry-erase walls, where complex formulas and notes about the day's discoveries are jotted down in colorful pen strokes. A visiting photographer once referred to the writing on the wall as art. While it might not be something one would put on the wall of a museum, the scrawls by this assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine represent innovations in ways of thinking about the brain. Eagleman directs the Laboratory of Perception and Action at BCM. With the collaboration of his 17 students, he leads studies looking into how the brain constructs perception, how different brains "see" things differently and why this matters for society. His latest endeavor involves evolving new ways of dealing with criminal behavior that enable effective rehabilitation. How it BeganAs a literature major, Eagleman never imagined he could make a career out of studying the brain. "I was reading a lot of articles and books on the subject, anything I could get my hands on. I didn't really think of this as a career choice until a friend of mine suggested it. So in the early 1990s, I came to BCM to get my Ph.D.," he said. As simple as that decision sounds, Eagleman's thesis involved a large-scale simulation of a chunk of neural or nerve tissue that enabled him to postulate how information is transmitted in the brain. He moved on to postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where he studied under Terrence Sejnowski, Ph.D., Professor and laboratory head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, and the late Francis Crick, Ph.D., Nobel laureate and codiscoverer of the structure of DNA. It was there he began leveraging visual illusions to understand how our brains perceive and construct reality. "It seems effortless. You open your eyes and there's the world. But in fact the brain goes through a lot of work to construct that reality for you, and in the case of visual illusions, the brain gets it wrong," Eagleman said. Another area where our brains sometimes "get it wrong," he said, is in time perception. A person can be made to believe that an event lasted longer than it actually did, or that it happened before another event, when in reality it was the other way around. "We can understand and see the biological mechanics of how the brain perceives reality by looking to where it breaks down." Eagleman moved from studying how we perceive reality to how we construct it. After hearing about synesthesia at a conference, he began studying this harmless perceptual condition as a way to understand how one person's reality is different from another's. People who have this condition mix senses. For example, hearing music might evoke the visual perception of color. "Philosophers have suspected that my reality is different from your reality, but by studying the brains of those with synethesia, we can understand the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie that assumption," he said. The brains behind the lawEagleman began studying how the variability in people's brains affects society, specifically how it relates to social norms and the law. He is creator and director of BCM's Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. One goal of the initiative is to find new methods for criminal rehabilitation. He also holds an affiliate appointment at the University of Houston Law Center's Criminal Justice Institute. "I'd like an alternative to just throwing people in jail," he said. "Biology will not excuse criminal behavior, but we need to understand what is different in the criminal mind and use that to develop an evidence-based, effective legal system." To this end, he and his colleagues are working to lay the groundwork with solid data. Stephen LaConte, Ph.D., Pearl Chiu, Ph.D., and Brooks King-Casas, Ph.D., all Assistant Professors of Neuroscience at BCM, are working with Eagleman to use functional magnetic resonance imaging scans to identify the parts of the brain that are involved in impulsive behavior, and the areas of the To customize sentencing, Eagleman said lawmakers should take into account individual variability. The law operates under the convenient myth that all brains are equal in terms of decision-making, capacity, and so on, but unfortunately that's not the biological reality. Biology will not excuse criminal behavior, but we need to understand what is different in the criminal mind and use that to develop an evidence-based, effective legal system." "The law operates under the convenient myth that all brains are equal in terms of decision-making, capacity and so on, but unfortunately that's not the biological reality," Eagleman said. "We're exploring how people experience reality differently. Modern neuroscience is illuminating a good deal about who you are and the choices you make." One example Eagleman gives involves people suffering from frontotemporal dementia, a brain disorder that can release people from their inhibitions, allowing more primitive behavior to take precedence. Fifty-seven percent of such individuals end up in trouble with the law, he pointed out. Another example he cites is that of a person who began molesting children, even though he had never had such tendencies before. He was found to have a brain tumor. When it was removed, his pedophilia stopped. When the behavior returned a year later, doctors found the tumor had also returned. "Such easily-measured problems are hard to come by in most criminal cases, but this does show us how our decisionmaking process is affected by our biology," Eagleman said. "This also illustrates the feasibility of customized rehabilitation." Who calls the shots?Eagleman suggests the unconscious brain might have more power over decision-making than most people think. He is currently writing a book on the topic. "We are finding that most of what you think and believe is generated by parts of the brain you don't have access to," he said. For example, in one study, men rated women with dilated pupils as more attractive than women with normal pupils, even though the difference was not consciously perceptible. The unconscious part of the brain was able to assimilate that information and serve up a decision, with no clue to the men about what was driving their behavior. Eagleman goes so far as to suggest that almost all our decision making is done without the involvement of consciousness. As for his decision to begin a career in neuroscience research rather than pursuing a literature degree, Eagleman said, "My unconscious brain decided that one path made more sense than the other, and then my conscious brain presumably made up a story to justify it." With a wry smile, he added, "Just because you take credit for a decision doesn't mean you were the one who made it." |
FeaturesBaylor College of Medicine in Houston: 65 years of Excellence BCM Looks to the Future on the McNair Campus Legacy of Leadership: BCM Icons Set Foundation for the Future 1,000 Genomes Project: Looking for the Differences NewsO'Malley Receives National Medal of Science Robert Todd Named to Lead BCM's Department of Medicine Roy Huffington Remembered as Bold and Generous SpotlightFollowing his Passion—One Physician's Journey When Two Degrees are Better Than One: M.D. - M.P.H. Thomas Street—The Road to Health Perceiving—A new Look at Brain and Behavior BriefsGenetics Used to Personalize Heart Disease Treatment First Drug for Huntington's Disease Eye Problems from Pain Free Migraines Genetic Insights into Deadly Brain Tumor Made-to-Order Weapon in the Fight Against Childhood Cancer BCM Joins Largest Children's Study Development/AlumniGifts Help Restore Sight to Patients with Corneal Damage Alums Start Careers, Life Together at BCM Development BriefsCharitable Gifts Lead to National Recognition Trustee Chuck Watson Makes Unique Gift
Killer Instincts: Eagleman talks to students about the psyche of serial killers. Classes such as this are part of Eagleman's belief that the legal system can be improved through increased knowledge of the criminal mind, which could lead to customized rehabilitation. 
Scientific Graffiti: The explosion of colorful information on the walls of David Eagleman's lab mimics the explosion of ideas stemming from his team's research on the brain—from seeing color when music is played to customized sentencing for criminals.
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Volume 4, Issue 3, Winter 2008 |
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