6 Minute English ’11 – Brains and politics

Alice: Hello, I’m Alice.
Rob: And I’m Rob.
Alice: And this is 6 Minute English! We’ve had a special request from our listeners in Lugano, Switzerland for a more complicated topic this week. We’re talking about the structure of the brain, and how it could be related to our political beliefs.
Rob: Scientists at University College London scanned people’s brains and found that certain areas were more or less developed depending on people’s political views.
Alice: And – they found some interesting results! Before we hear them, I have a question for you Rob. Are you ready?
Rob: Of course.
Alice: Now, which of these isn’t a part of the brain? And please excuse my pronunciation:
a) corpus callosum
b) tomatosensory cortex
c) pons
Rob: Mmm – well, my Latin isn’t that great, but I think I’ll choose b, tomatosensory cortex. It doesn’t sound real to me.
Alice: OK. Well, as usual I won’t tell you the answer now – but we’ll find out at the end of the programme. Now let’s learn a bit more about this connection between the structure of the brain and a person’s political beliefs. Let’s think about the different ways we can talk about these. If someone is left-wing…
Rob: …they are considered to have liberal views.
Alice: And if they are right-wing.
Rob: If they are right-wing they are thought to be more conservative.
Alice: Scientists carried out MRI scans on two British Members of Parliament – MPs – as well as 90 other students and postgraduates. Their hypothesis – the theory they are testing to see if it is correct or not – is to find out if there is any difference in their brains.
Rob: These MRI scans can measure the thickness of the grey matter in the brain – that’s the outer layer of the brain which varies in thickness, and is full of neurons – nerve cells, which are very sensitive.
Alice: Here’s a BBC Science correspondent, Tom Feilden:
Insert 1:
Tom Feilden: It’s time to get down to the serious business of scanning our MPs – one left and one right-wing to see if we can find any differences in the structure of their brains.
(Background) Nurse:
Bit of scanner noise coming now.
Professor Geraint Rees: We’re now standing in the control room of our MRI scanner…
Tom Feilden: Professor Geraint Rees is the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.
Professor Geraint Rees: We’re going to look in detail at the thickness of the grey matter – that’s the outer covering of the brain.
Tom Feilden: The hypothesis we’re testing is to see whether there is any significant difference in the shape or structure – the thickness of the grey matter covering the brain – between people who self-classify as either left or right wing.
Rob: So did people who self-classify themselves – describe themselves as being liberal or conservative – have different shaped brains?
Alice: What the scientists found was that people who have thicker grey matter in one area of the brain – the anterior cingulate- described themselves as being liberal or left-wing, and those with a thinner layer described themselves as conservative or right-wing. Here’s Professor Geraint Rees:
Insert 2:
We find there are two areas of the brain – one called the anterior cingulate and the other called the amygdala, whose structure seems to vary according to their selfdescribed political attitudes. The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that’s on the middle surface of the brain, at the front. And we found that the thickness of the grey matter – where the nerve cells or neurons are – was thicker the more people described themselves as liberal or left-wing, and was thinner the more people described themselves as conservative or right wing.
Rob: That’s all very interesting, Alice – but what about people who change their political beliefs as they get older? Does this mean their brain shapes change too?
Alice: We don’t know yet if brain shape changes as people’s political views change.
More research needs to be done – but scientist Professor Colin Blakemore from Oxford University says that grey matter can change shape in the brain.
For example, even playing computer games for a short period of time a week can change the shape of your grey matter:
Insert 3:
We know from lots of other recent studies, that the brain – even the grey matter of the brain, the part that’s being measured in these studies – can change its organisation incredibly rapidly, simply teaching someone computer games for a few minutes each week, can cause their grey matter in certain areas of the brain to change thickness.
Alice: So perhaps even people who seem hard-wired to believe certain things may be able to change their minds and the shape of their brains too.
Now before we go let’s answer our question. We heard a couple of terms used to describe parts of the brain. But which of the ones I gave you, Rob, at the beginning of the programme were real?
Rob: I think I said the one that sounded like a tomato? It didn’t sound like a real part
of the brain.
Alice: Well, Rob, you’re right. The odd one out was the tomatosensory cortex.
The corpus callosum and the pons are parts of the brain.
Rob: And before we go, let’s hear some of the words and phrases that we’ve used in today’s programme:
Political beliefs
Scanned
Left-wing
Liberal
Right-wing
Conservative
MRI scans
Hypothesis
Grey matter
Neurons
Alice: Thanks, Rob. Well, we hope you’ve had fun with us today on 6 Minute English – and that you’ll join us again next time.
Both: Bye.