The Doctor Weighs In

By Dov Michaeli MD, Ph.D

Neurobiological research has discovered that our brain is an arena for fierce competition: primitive reactions such as fear and aggression competing with cooperation and altruism, risk-seeking competing with risk aversion, male testosterone competing with your inner female—all competing for attention. Whose attention? – your brain’s prefrontal cortex, the executive that gets all the inputs, weighs them one against the other and then makes a decision which one should prevail—and the outcome of this process is your behavior.

Adolescent behavior

Research on the neurobiology of children’s and adolescents’ behavior revealed that the prefrontal cortex is still immature and performs its executive functions in an incomplete, and sometimes in an haphazard way. Sometimes the loud volume of a risk-seeking voice would drown out the more cautious whisper, and the poorly functioning prefrontal cortex, still lacking Solomonic wisdom, does not exert its judgment; the result is ‘adolescent behavior’.

Is it solely a function of the prefrontal cortex?

If all judgment resided in this cortex, one would expect that once all the neurons are programmed, correctly connected, and fully functioning all adults would behave in a, well, adult way. But consider these statistical finding about the behavior of adults age 35-54, published in a New York Times op-ed by Mike Males:

• 18,249 deaths from overdoses of illicit drugs in 2004, up 550 percent per capita since 1975, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
• 46,925 fatal accidents and suicides in 2004, leaving today’s middle-agers 30 percent more at risk for such deaths than people aged 15 to 19, according to the national center.
• More than four million arrests in 2005, including one million for violent crimes, 500,000 for drugs and 650,000 for drinking-related offenses, according to the F.B.I. All told, this represented a 200 percent leap per capita in major index felonies since 1975.
• 630,000 middle-agers in prison in 2005, up 600 percent since 1977, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• 21 million binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined, according to the government’s National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health.
• 370,000 people treated in hospital emergency rooms for abusing illegal drugs in 2005, with overdose rates for heroin, cocaine, pharmaceuticals and drugs mixed with alcohol far higher than among teenagers.
• More than half of all new H.I.V./AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were given to middle-aged Americans, up from less than one-third a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control

In Conclusion

To ascribe all behavior, good or bad, to the structure and function of the brain is not only simplistic and incorrect biologically, it is socially dangerous; “The devil made me do it” as an excuse for sociopathic behavior is simply not compatible with a functioning civil society. Unfortunately, defense attorneys are already recruiting expert witnesses who make this deterministic argument in court.

 Males concludes his article thus: “ In reality, human brains are highly adaptive. Both teenagers and adults display a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors derived from individual conditions and choices, not harsh biological determinism. There’s no “typical teenager” any more than there’s a “typical” 45-year-old.

Commentators slandering teenagers, scientists misrepresenting shaky claims about the brain as hard facts, 47-year-olds displaying far riskier behaviors than 17-year-olds, politicians refusing to face growing middle-aged crises ... if grown-ups really have superior brains, why don’t we act as if we do?”

To which I can only add: amen!

Dov Michaeli MD Ph.D is in the biotech industry, and frquently has his doubts about his own prefrontal cortex.