Hate, it doth dwell in the head
Thursday 30 October 2008 at 15:55 UTC
Brain scan showing the ‘hate circuit’ (source: University College London)
Hate has a physical basis in the brain, according to biologists at University College London.
Reporting in the open-access journal PLoS One, Semir Zeki and John Romaya say that activity in specific areas of the brain correlates with hateful feelings. The two researchers show that the ‘hate circuit’ they have identified shares a part of the grey mass associated with aggression, but at the same time is distinct from those areas related to fear, threat and danger.
The neural circuit studied by Zeki and Romaya includes two distinct structures known as the putamen and insula, which are located in the outer and inner parts of the cerebral cortex. It also involves a section of the frontal cortex thought to be connected with predicting the actions of others. Interesting to note, but maybe not surprising, is that the putamen and insula are also activated by romantic love.
Says Zeki:
“Hate is often considered to be an evil passion that should, in a better world, be tamed, controlled, and eradicated. Yet to the biologist, hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love. Like love, it is often seemingly irrational and can lead individuals to heroic and evil deeds. How can two opposite sentiments lead to the same behaviour?”
Philosophers and others have been discussing this question for centuries if not millennia. Will biology bring us closer to an answer?
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Friday 7 November 2008 at 10:32 UTC
Biology will bring us closer to an answer, but I don’t think it will be through brain scans. See my comments here -
here
and also those of someone else
here
Friday 7 November 2008 at 11:13 UTC
Neurosceptic - I think your criticism is a bit strong. Yes, the public reporting of neuroscience results can be overly-simplistic. But it is science, and in my view it is newsworthy. fMRI blobs do not tell us everything, but that does not mean they tell us nothing. The human body is a biological system with the central nervous system and brain at its heart, and the researchers are asking the right questions.
As for the term “hate circuit”, no, it isn’t to be found in the journal paper, but in the context of a press release aimed at non-experts, I think it has some value. Perhaps I shall ask the researchers whether they worked together with the press release writer on this text, and whether they approve of the term.
You say: “We can’t get enough cognitive neuroscience and fMRI images.” Really? That cannot be true if one goes by the content of the non-science media. Neuro-reductionism is certainly not my thing, but I’m pleased to to see reported work describing physical aspects to human emotion.
What I found most interesting about the study is the report that the hate emotion correlates with activity in a region of the brain thought to be connected with predicting the actions of others. That’s a neurological connection, but it could tell us something about the emotion and how we deal with it.
I asked: “Will biology bring us closer to an answer.” (new emphasis). I have every confidence that it will, and that includes brain scans.
Friday 7 November 2008 at 12:40 UTC
Hi, thanks for your comments on my comments!
I agree that neuroscience is science, and it’s newsworthy in the sense that people ought to learn about it, yes. I myself do fMRI research quite similar to the “hate circuit” work, so I know the value of such science.
What worries me is that the way neuroscience is often reported doesn’t really educate people - in fact it actively misleads. The term “hate circuit” is simply misleading - what this research found was a collection of areas. They don’t form a “circuit” in the brain, and all of them are involved in loads of other things apart from hate.
As I said in my post, this work is valuable to neuroscientists, and it does bring us a bit closer to an answer. But the reporting essentially said that the answer had been found - the biological basis of hatred was now known. It isn’t.
What I’d love to see is neuroscience being reported on in more depth - not a short news piece claiming “brain’s hate circuit discovered” but a longer feature about the whole developing field of emotion neuroscience, for example. That would be really interesting and if it were written by a neuroscientist, enlightening.
However I’d better stop now because the traditional answer to scientists calling for articles like that is “Why don’t you write one then?” - and I really don’t have time for that!
Friday 7 November 2008 at 13:35 UTC
Whether a scientist can write popular articles about their work depends on a number of factors that include among others literary skill and cultural and political awareness. I would never respond to you by saying “Why don’t you write one then?”
You call for more depth. There is a need for in-depth popular articles and other forms of science public outreach. But there is also a need for incisive news reporting in order to bring to public attention the results emerging from a broad spectrum of scientific research.
When I left the lab bench and took up the pen, I struggled to précis the latest research results in a few hundred words. It is a considerable challenge, believe me! But it can be done. Sometimes corners are cut, but in the case of the “hate circuit” the result is, from what I can see, not that bad.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but from my (admittedly quick) reading of the PLoS paper, it would seem to me that the researchers found connections between the regions of the brain that light up when the subject experiences a hateful emotion. In that case, the “hate circuit” is surely not a bad analogy.
Sunday 9 November 2008 at 16:44 UTC
I agree that writing science news articles is very difficult - I wrote a few myself at university and I know how hard it can be. So I’m not trying to criticizing science journalists - rather I’m saying that they shouldn’t try (or be told to try) to write up research like this.
“Hate circuit” is a misleading analogy because what the researchers found wasn’t a circuit - it was a collection of brain areas but they’re not all connected up - and each of the areas is involved in a dozen things other than hate. So some of them will have “lit up” during hatred just because they always light up when you’re experiencing any strong emotions. Others will have a lit up because they’re involved in movement and maybe the people were grimacing with anger when they saw them.
The point is that this research didn’t find the biological basis for the emotion of hatred. It went some way towards that - as I said on my blog, it’s fine research - but it’s limited, as all experiements are. So for journalists to try to write up single experiments is inherently misleading, because no single experiment is a breakthrough (well, maybe 1 in a 1000, but this wasn’t). In fact, no single experiment is likely to be meaningul to anyone except an expert, if it’s accurately described.
Basically I worry that this kind of journalism - and again, it’s not the fault of individuals - misleads the public about the brain and about how much we know about it.
Sunday 9 November 2008 at 18:07 UTC
Neuroskeptic - I can understand your unhappiness with the use of the word “circuit”, but in calling for single pieces of research work to not be reported, you are effectively arguing against the reporting of science in anything other than lengthy feature articles. That doesn’t make sense. It is against the interests of science and scientists, and insults the intelligence of the general public.