Neuroscience and change

Matt Grist who writes the RSA Social Brain blog put up this post before the weekend:

Matt Grist who writes the RSA Social Brain blog put up this post before the weekend:

Does neuroscience have anti-progressive implications? I’m going to argue in as far as the facts are so far in, no, not at all - quite the opposite.

Matt is pulling together a lot of research that suggests the brain is much more than just a hard-wired piece of computing equipment. New science says it has has much more plasticisty than was assumed, firstly in the negative sense - that poor environmental conditions, in the meaning of poor well-being - restrict the creation of neural pathways, but also more positively in the sense that our brains don't appear to simply compute decisions in our own self-interest but also act on emotional stimuli. In other words cultural factors can play a part in how our brains come to a decision on how to act. The idea beloved of those who see humanity as a race of cliff-bound lemmings, who can't stop the urge to relentlessly over-consume because this is hard-wired in us is, perhaps, looking more dubious...