How Brain Science May Change
the Way We Live

It's been only a decade or so since the world got hardwired, "Google" became a verb, and texting turned into a lifestyle. But if you're still struggling to thumb a message, brace yourself: A whole new revolution in neuroscience is about to shake up our world.

"Just as information technology has affected everything from the way we do business to human communication," says Zack Lynch, executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization, "it will be the science of the brain that drives the fundamental changes of the future." You can already see it starting to happen, and it may affect the way we spend our money, choose our mates, and punish criminals. It could even change our concepts of guilt and innocence.

 Five other predictions on how brain science may change the way we live:

Neurolongevity
We will see cures or vaccines for diseases of the aging brain, says Judy Illes, PhD, professor of neurology and Canada research chair in neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. In fact, better insight into brain function in general will lead to interventions for many diseases and an overall longer life expectancy.

Neuroentertainment
Current technologies (such as video games) will merge with future ones (such as those involving neural feedback), so gamers might wear EEG-type caps that read their brainwaves and pick up their emotions. Conceivably, story lines would move forward in real time, the plot changing based on each person's responses, says Zack Lynch, managing director of NeuroInsights, a market research and investment advisory firm.

Neuroeducation
The more we understand the neurobiology of learning—how the mind develops, what to make of differences between individual brains—the better we can "sculpt" teaching methods. Lynch predicts that educational software will be tailored to students' individual brain patterns to improve math and language acquisition as well as creative thinking.

Neurofitness
Drugs and devices that stimulate the brain to augment our performance and mobility (so that we can run farther and faster, for example) will someday help everyone from Olympians to paraplegics, according to Illes.

Neurospirituality
New tools such as real-time fMRI technology, Lynch says, promise to accelerate our capacity to access deeply meditative and spiritual states.

Marketing is a fairly civilized partner dance—retailers compete to open our pocketbooks, and we shape their sales strategies by flexing our veto muscle and freedom of choice. That balance, however, could be shifting as marketers scramble to harness the power of neuroscience. Once they do—getting inside our brains to understand how and why we buy—they may convince us to part more readily with our cash.

Early research shows that when we consider buying something (a jar of peanut butter, for example), we're juggling the pros and cons from all kinds of perspectives (flavor, nutrition, cost). "It's as though you have multiple brains giving you their input, and you're standing in the center listening to what everyone has to say," explains Joshua Freedman, MD. His neuromarketing company, FKF Applied Research, uses fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures the brain's neural activity) to scan consumers' brains while they respond to different brands and advertisements (clients have included fast food, technology, and financial services companies). And according to their findings, one consideration seems to trump the rest: how the product will affect our social standing and the way others perceive us. (Do you want to be seen as a mother buying a family brand of peanut butter? A health lover who eats only all natural, organic?) "As you're making a purchasing decision," says Freedman, a neuropsychiatrist who is also on the clinical faculty at UCLA, "you're polling these opinions while mulling over who you are and what you represent in the context of how others see you—yes, even when you're buying peanut butter." So don't be surprised if suddenly you have to have a talking toothbrush, or a certain TV ad makes you drop everything and race to the store.

Using neuroscience to unlock one of the biggest mysteries of life, researchers are finding neural evidence that falling for a mate is essentially a matter of intoxication.

In a recent study, 17 young people who described themselves as being intensely "in love" were put in an fMRI scanner while being shown photographs. When the pictures were of their partners—versus a familiar, neutral person—reward areas of the brain lit up, says Arthur Aron, PhD, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University, who conducted the study with Helen Fisher, PhD, an anthropologist at Rutgers, and Lucy L. Brown, PhD, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. These areas are rich in dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to desire and highly involved in addiction to alcohol and drugs.

As partners stay together, the "hooked" state dissipates and brain systems associated with attachment increase in activity. Aron is intrigued by a tiny percentage of couples who say they're passionately in love after ten or 20 years. "We just assumed they had checked the wrong box," he admits. "But we've been scanning them, and we're seeing the same thing we saw in the brains of the newly in-love people. We don't know why yet, but from our interviews these people have all sorts of positive factors going for them. They do exciting things, they have decent communication skills, they're not anxious or depressed."

As for whether online dating will be replaced by outfits like "NeuroMate.com" or "BrainScan Match," who knows. But there could be a day when you meet a guy, have a few dates, then go in for a brain scan to determine if you're "in like" or "in love." Even if the answer is love, Aron says, "we're still not going to be able to predict how a relationship will work out. That comes down to the basics of good mental health, communication, and social support."

In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for criminals under 18, in part based on data showing that the brain is still developing up to that age. That's one example of how neuroscience is redefining the American legal system. A second is the increasing inclusion of brain scans and other neurological evidence in the courtroom. If you're a lawyer who is arguing that your client couldn't curb his aggression, says forensic neuropsychologist Daniel A. Martell, PhD, assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, "and you have a scan that says he has holes in his brain like Swiss cheese in the impulse control spot, that helps make your case. And it helps juries understand why the behavior occurred."

In capital litigation, Martell says, neurological evidence is used in practically every case—"in fact, lawyers can be found to be ineffective if they don't pursue the possibility of abnormalities in the defendant's brain. From those cases, it has kind of trickled down and is becoming more popular in more straightforward criminal trials, where it may form the basis for some sort of insanity defense."

Nita Farahany, JD, PhD, assistant professor of law and philosophy at Vanderbilt University, cites one telling case in a report she recently presented on the subject. In People v. Stokke (2007), she writes, "the defendant was charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. ... An expert on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders testified that he had reviewed the defendant's brain scans and that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant suffered brain damage caused by heavy prenatal alcohol exposure." Stokke was eventually found guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter, a lesser crime than the murder charge.

Another legal area that's getting what you might call "neurocized" is lie detection. Two companies, Cephos Corp. and No Lie MRI, are now marketing tests based on fMRIs, claiming better than 90 percent accuracy. Some experts argue, however, that applying the technology for lie detection is premature. "The problem is, there's more to a thought than blood flow and neurons calling up oxygen," says Owen D. Jones, JD, a professor of law and biological sciences at Vanderbilt, referring to how fMRIs indicate activity. "There's a big difference between how the brain thinks and what the brain thinks."

Nevertheless, researchers are rushing to find the keys to the neuro-lockbox: Both the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA are funding the development of technology that could conceivably decipher someone's intentions (make a deposit, or blow up the bank?) from a distance. "I think this could have positive implications for the criminal justice system, but if it happens without transparency, it will be problematic," Farahany says. "Our expectations of privacy will have to change quite a bit."

The ripple effects of this research are enough to make one's mind spin. Will brain scans someday declare that sex offenders can't be cured? If a killer knows the difference between right and wrong but neurologically can't control his behavior, where does this leave us? How will fMRIs reframe the insanity defense? What about the right to be judged by our actions and not our thoughts? Questions like these have prompted the emergence of a whole new field of inquiry. In May 2006, the Neuroethics Society was formed to promote the responsible application of neuroscience through better understanding of its capabilities and its consequences.

With the addition of behavioral genetics, the questions may become even more controversial, says Judy Illes, PhD, professor of neurology and the Canada research chair in neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. She predicts that the hybrid science of fMRI techniques and genetics—"imaging genomics"—will become one of the most powerful tools of the decade. "We're looking at a technology that is poised to be a true revolution in both psychiatry and neurology," she says.

Illes believes that scientists may be able, for example, to decode a 7-year-old's genes and scan the brain to determine his or her risk for future criminal behavior. "The question is," she says, "What is acceptable accuracy? How do we respond to such children? What if we get it wrong? It might even turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy."

How would society handle a boy who has the potential to become a terrorist? Lock him up? What if the impulses never materialize into crimes? And then, would we require all 7-year-olds to get scanned, just in case—even though judging someone by what he might do, rather than what he has done, flies in the face of the very essence of our judicial system?

As technology hurtles forward along with such questions, a few words of wisdom from a scientist who shaped our lives for more than a century may be comforting. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent," Charles Darwin reportedly said, "but the one that is most adaptive to change."


  Five other predictions on how brain science may change the way we live:

Neurolongevity
We will see cures or vaccines for diseases of the aging brain, says Judy Illes, PhD, professor of neurology and Canada research chair in neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. In fact, better insight into brain function in general will lead to interventions for many diseases and an overall longer life expectancy.

Neuroentertainment
Current technologies (such as video games) will merge with future ones (such as those involving neural feedback), so gamers might wear EEG-type caps that read their brainwaves and pick up their emotions. Conceivably, story lines would move forward in real time, the plot changing based on each person's responses, says Zack Lynch, managing director of NeuroInsights, a market research and investment advisory firm.

Neuroeducation
The more we understand the neurobiology of learning—how the mind develops, what to make of differences between individual brains—the better we can "sculpt" teaching methods. Lynch predicts that educational software will be tailored to students' individual brain patterns to improve math and language acquisition as well as creative thinking.

Neurofitness
Drugs and devices that stimulate the brain to augment our performance and mobility (so that we can run farther and faster, for example) will someday help everyone from Olympians to paraplegics, according to Illes.

Neurospirituality
New tools such as real-time fMRI technology, Lynch says, promise to accelerate our capacity to access deeply meditative and spiritual states.