David J. Linden, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular substrates of memory storage in the brain, among other topics. He has a longstanding interest in scientific communication and serves as the Chief Editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
In this broad discussion with D.J. Grothe, David Linden challenges widespread beliefs about the brain, such as that people only use ten percent of it and that it is amazingly designed, arguing instead that the brain is “accidental.” He talks about why, as a brain scientist, he writes about topics such as love, God and sexual orientation. He describes the downsides of how the brain has evolved by including systems from previous brain “models,” and how this has given rise to those qualities that most profoundly shape our human experience. He discusses the neuron, and how it is a “lousy processor of information,” describing how evolution has nonetheless used it to build “clever us.” He talks about how our brains have constrained us, and may have physically led to the necessity of marriage, family and long childhoods. He surveys various claims regarding the enhancement of our cognitive capacities, such as playing Mozart to babies in utero, vitamins, smart drugs, mental exercises, and physical exercise. He talks about the brain science of homosexuality. And he argues that the brain has evolved to make everyone a “believer,” describing the similarities between belief in science and in religion, that both are similar “branches of the same cognitive stream.”
It includes free chapters, reviews, and downloads of some figures from the book.
“Linden’s story is captivating. Chapter by chapter he builds his compelling arguments, starting with a close examination of the human brain’s structural flaws and the shortcomings of its parts.” —Scientific American MIND, Nicole Branan
This was one of the best episodes I’ve heard in awhile. Well done. I was fascinated to learn exactly how inefficient our vaunted human brains are. Evolution
is a big, sloppy, soupy mess, but it apparently does enable us to muddle forward (with the emphasis on the word “muddle” . Would love to see more eps like this.
I quite liked this episode, as I did Ginger Campbell’s a few weeks ago, discussions on the brain are quite interesting.
One thing that occurred to me, especially in the conversation on sexual orientation, was the perception in the public on gender formation. I was at a debate in college last week on whether gay couples should be allowed adopt, and a friend of mine said that if he adopted a girl, there shouldn’t be a concern that there wouldn’t be a female role model in the house for her, as he has female friends, his hypothetical daughter would presumably have female teachers, etc. But doesn’t this concede the idea, to some degree at least, that gender is formed to some degree by imitation? I don’t think there’s enough realization of the influence of biology, whether genetic or not, in matters like that. That said, I don’t like to seem too deterministic about personality, which is a different matter.
This was an excellent show. I’ll be ordering “The Accidental Mind” once I finish this post.
There was much more to say on this subject. It’s too bad the conversation couldn’t have been continued to another episode, or the episode couldn’t have been extended so as to continue the conversation.
But doesn’t this concede the idea, to some degree at least, that gender is formed to some degree by imitation? I don’t think there’s enough realization of the influence of biology, whether genetic or not, in matters like that. That said, I don’t like to seem too deterministic about personality, which is a different matter.
I’m not persuaded by the ‘imitation’ bit, but my reasons are personal and anecdotal. I happen to have not been raised by my biological father but subsequently did spend time with him. I found that in addition to looking and sounding alike we speak alike in terms of diction and pronunciation. We have highly similar interests in terms of literature, movies, technology. We have similar personalities and career paths. The parallels are many and sometimes too obscure to be chance. No doubt it would be assumed that I picked all this up during my upbringing but that was not possible. On the phone he sounds so much like me it sends a shiver up my spine. Freaks me out a bit. Much is clearly just genes, but no more than 50%.
Particularly:
the poorly-designed shoe-horned brain
what does/doesn’t help brain function
I’d like to have heard more about neurons as poor cognitive workhorses. What would be better, I wonder? Does that exist in nature or just speculation?
I found the “agglomerated” metaphor oversimplified because evolution does cut away old pieces in addition to building new- for example our ancestors almost surely had a much better sense of smell than we do. They probably had a larger portion of brain dedicated to it, but this was cut to make room for other more important functions. Not to mention things we don’t have like tails, dense body fur, gills, etc.., That said, such metaphors are forgivable in a brief interview format. I do think the idea we have a “primitive” brain under there is misleading. The so-called reptilian brain was very functional and useful to our recent ancestors (pre-civ, but arguably still is today) which makes it as modern and developed as anything else in my book.
I didn’t think the religion/science section was nearly as interesting or controversial as DJ played at. Yes, abstract thought is the key to all of our basic institutions, arts, sciences, etc.., so what? Hey my unicycle and a Lamborghini both use wheels, which makes them basically the same, yes? awesome.
re: sexuality. This is going to get really fascinating in the near term. I expect we will see a coherent biological explanation for homosexuality for the first time but today’s research just hints at this, as Linden says. Fundys, start your squirmin’ and mental gymnastics.
First off, I have not listened to the podcast; I simply don’t have time for things like that. However, I can offer an analogy that parallels the ideas discussed here: consider the structure of the brain as rather like the structure of the tax code. Both started off fairly clean and simple, but over the years, the world kept twiddling with it, providing a custom tax break here and a new neurotransmitter there. Special interests pushed and pulled in different directions even as survival benefits competed with reproductive benefits. And of course, there was nobody overseeing either process to make sure that, in the end, it all made sense. And now we’ve got this humongous mess of a tax code that is so complicated that only trained professionals understand it—and even they get into disputes sometimes.
I too thought this was a particularly good podcast. Especially interesting was Linden’s explanation of brain growth in children and the trillions of synapses required.
Off the topic but I have never been able to get an adequate response form the P of I show:
It still absolutely drives me up a wall every time I hear the plug for Free
Inquiry magazine:
“It cuts through the noise and the surprising courage to appear politically
incorrect.”
No, it does not cut through the courage. It HAS the courage.
I brought this up a year ago with DJ Grothe and still no change. Is it really
that hard to re-record a faulty one-minute segment? It just seems that for
such a highly respected national broadcast that interviews such luminaries
to have such a glaring syntactical mistake—for a long time—is
intolerable.
One more big thumbs up on this interview! I loved the useful imagery of the old car with new components piled on and of the ice cream cone - my neurons can easily store those kinds of references!
FWIW, I’ve recently been taking numerous long road trips in my car, during which I listen to recent POI episodes and catch up on a few old ones I’ve missed. Yesterday, after hearing the Linden interview, I happened to listen to the Victor Stenger interview from 3/2/07 and the Thomas Kida interview from 7/14/06. Both of those reinforce and dovetail wonderfully with the Linden interview.
Victor Stenger says some of the very same things in slightly different ways. And while the Linden interview provides excellent illumination of our “hardware,” the Kida interview is a very nice discussion of some of the resulting “software” issues, that is, how our piled-together / evolved brains make errors.
D.J. I love your description in twitter of the “kluge mind”. You always hear that our brain is a brilliant piece of complex machinery. I’ve never thought of it as a clumsy accident of evolution.
pjbourque: HAHA…glad to see I am not the only one that has noticed that. Love POI, but always crack a smile when I hear an otherwise intellectual podcast and organization use incorrect grammar in every single podcast. Surely someone in a position to correct this, must have heard the incorrect sentence structure?
Re: “It (Free Inquiry Magazine) cuts through the noise and the courage. . .” I have emailed people at CFI and POI 3-4 times about this horrible syntax and they do nothing.
Re-record the damn message; how hard can that be? Am I being pedantic?
It’s too bad the conversation couldn’t have been continued to another episode, or the episode couldn’t have been extended so as to continue the conversation.
Has anyone from the PoI podcast EVER explained why the podcast isn’t longer?
(I asked this question months and months ago)
So many of the other podcasts I love (like ‘American Freethought’, ‘Reasonable Doubts’ and ‘The Atheist Experience’) are MUCH longer and some of them don’t even have a ‘fixed’ length ~ they seem to just go as long as the discussion dictates…...
why oh why can’t Point of Inquiry do the same? I find it almost frustrating sometimes because it feels almost like we’re just scratching the surface of subjects/interviewees ~ and when you have a host like DJ, you crave a longer discussion!
. Would love to see more eps like this.
