The Brain’s Moral Molecule
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| Paul Zak administering oxytocin |
Can a molecule make us moral? Paul Zak, a professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University, thinks so. A pioneer in the field of “neuroeconomics,” Zak has overseen dozens of experiments involving oxytocin, a brain chemical released during sex, childbirth, and perhaps most activities that bond one human being to another. With the support of a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Zak and the researchers at the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies (CNS) are investigating possible connections between oxytocin and virtuous behaviors like generosity, compassion, and resilience.
In one experiment, Zak found that subjects given oxytocin were 80% more generous, giving away real money, than were subjects on a placebo. In a study published last December in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online science journal, Zak and his colleagues found that men who received doses of testosterone were stingier with their money. Why? Testosterone inhibits the action of oxytocin.
In other experiments, Zak has induced the brain to make oxytocin. He once showed test subjects a video about a terminally ill child. This sort of experience “reliably induces people’s brains to release oxytocin,” Zak reports—and in turn makes them more likely to share money with strangers. The video watchers did not simply want to contribute money to the sick child and his family; they also were more generous to a stranger with money they controlled. “There’s a large philosophical literature out there saying that we’re moral beings because we have empathy,” Zak says. And we have found that “empathy is connected to this chemical in our brain.”
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| Oxytocin |
In another experiment, described recently in New Scientist, Zak and his colleagues tested the oxytocin levels of attendees at a wedding, which rose not just for the bride and groom but for family members as well. These results, says Zak, suggest that the public wedding ceremony evolved as a way to cement emotional bonds between couples and their communities in order to support successful reproduction.
There are 35 researchers working under Zak now, and their findings have found a wide audience. Their work has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and Psychology Today, among many other publications. It has even been discussed on popular television shows like “Boston Legal” and “House, M.D.”
Barnaby Marsh, senior vice president of management and strategic initiatives at the Templeton Foundation, calls Zak an “explorer” expanding the boundaries of his field. “Sir John Templeton had this idea that if you rule your mind, you rule your world,” Marsh said. “Paul Zak is helping us get into the black box, to understand how the human mind works.”
The Creative Gift of a Slow Brain
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| Rex Jung |
Thanks to a three-year, $600,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico and his colleagues have demonstrated that brain characteristics associated with intelligence are largely different from those associated with creativity. Jung’s team has been performing MRI scans on test subjects to determine how biological factors are systematically linked to creativity. In research published in the March 22 edition of PLoS ONE, Jung suggests that brains possessing less "white matter" (as distinct from "gray matter") are linked to higher levels of creativity.
Neurons and dendrites—the brain’s cognitive workhorses, responsible for information processing—compose its gray matter; the fatty myelin sheaths covering neurons qualify as white matter. White matter, which connects processing cells to one another in functional networks, sends information more quickly when cells are covered with myelin. The less myelin present in white matter, the lower its "integrity," and, in turn, the more sluggish the neural network. Jung’s research found that creative people have lower white-matter integrity in a key brain area. In other words, creative brains tend to be slower, less efficient ones.
Jung says that “creativity seems to require meandering thought.” When it comes to intelligence, “the brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from point A to point B. But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.”
To date, Jung and his team have published papers in the Journal of Neuroscience on the relationship between levels of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and creativity, and a second paper in Human Brain Mapping on the relationship between the amount of gray matter in the brain and levels of creativity. Their latest findings were featured in the March 30 issue of New Scientist, which noted that Jung’s findings bolster other studies establishing a link between creativity and mental illness.
