Neuropolitics

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Neuropolitics is a science which investigates the interplay between the brain and politics. It combines work from a variety of scientific fields which includes

behavioral genetics, primatology, and ethology. Often, neuropolitics research borrow methods from cognitive neuroscience to investigate classic questions from political science such as how people make political decisions, form political / ideological attitudes, evaluate political candidates, and interact in political coalitions. However, another line of research considers the role that evolving political competition has had on the development of the brain in humans and other species. The research in neuropolitics often intersects with work in genopolitics, political psychology, political physiology, sociobiology, neuroeconomics, and neurolaw
.

History

Philosophers, including

blank slate and formed governments as a result of the necessities imposed by the state of nature. Though Locke was trained in medicine, he became skeptical about the value of anatomical studies of the brain and concluded that no useful insights about mental faculties could be developed by studying it.[1]

Roger Sperry and colleagues performed the first published neuropolitics experiment in 1979 with split-brain patients who had their corpus-callosum severed and thus had two brain hemispheres with severely impaired communication.[2] The researchers showed photos of political figures to each of the patients' eyes (and thus each distinct brain hemisphere) separately and asked them to give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" evaluation. Both hemispheres were shown to be capable of rendering a political attitude about the people they were viewing. For instance, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro were given a thumbs down, while Winston Churchill was given a thumbs up, and Richard Nixon was given a thumb in the neutral position (the experiments were carried out prior to full revelation of the Watergate scandal
.) Each hemisphere attempted to communicate clues about the identity of the individuals to the other hemisphere. This study demonstrated that neurological approaches could inform researchers' understanding of political attitudes.

Aristotle's Politics
compared the mental faculties of humans to other animals in trying to establish a foundation for understanding human politics, the systematic work of de Waal and Dunbar brought rigorous methods for illuminating the relationship between the brain and politics, even across distantly related species.

Neuroimaging

The advent of

political campaigns in his book The Political Brain.[7]

David Amodio and colleagues

anterior cingulate activity. In 2011, Ryota Kanai's group at University College London found differences in the size of particular brain regions corresponded with whether the participants were more liberal or more conservative.[9]

Politics in other species

Despite the risks of anthropomorphizing the behaviors of non-human animals, researchers have investigated the politics of a number of social species. In addition to de Waals' work on chimpanzees, scientists have investigated the dynamics of coalitions in

fission-fusion society in which groups of hyenas can form and dissolve on a regular basis. The greater complexity of the political dynamics among the spotted hyena appears to require a larger neocortex than in related species with simpler social structures.[10] Dolphins have been shown to exhibit changing multilevel political alliances that appear to put substantial demands on their social cognition.[11] And, elephants exhibit different coalitional dynamics in the different levels of their societal organization.[12] Considering the relationships among neuroanatomy, mental function, and political dynamics in other species can inform our understanding of the politics in humans and the role that our brain plays in our politics.[13][14]

See also

References

  1. ^ Zimmer, Carl (2005). Soul Made Flesh. p. 246.
  2. .
  3. ^ de Waal, Frans (1982). Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes.
  4. ^ Schreiber, Darren (2005). Evaluating politics: A search for the neural substrates of political thought (Ph.D.). University of California, Los Angeles.
  5. PMID 18988845
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  6. .
  7. ^ Westen, Drew (2008). The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Archived from the original on 2007-07-04.
  8. PMID 17828253
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  13. ^ Proctor, Darby (January 1, 2001). "Chapter 2: Political Primates: What Other Primates can Tell Us about the Evolutionary Roots of Our Own Political Behavior". In Hatemi, Peter (ed.). Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics. University Of Chicago Press. pp. 100–110.
  14. ^ Schreiber, Darren (January 1, 2001). "Chapter 10: From SCAN to Neuropolitics". In Hatemi, Peter (ed.). Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics. University Of Chicago Press. pp. 100–110.