Scientists say they have located the 'conscience'...

Oxford scientists appear to have located the conscience

www.independent.co.uk...

It the size of a Brussels sprout
unique to humans
and a leap beyond current scientific knowledge into realms that can only be described as spooky.

One, it's called the lateral frontal pole. Two, it's unique to humans - they ran tests on monkeys in the course of the research at Oxford and, nope, they don't have it. Three, it's the size of "a large Brussels sprout". And four, it's a leap beyond current scientific knowledge into realms that can only be described as spooky.

And according to this article there are two of them, one above and behind each eyebrow.

The small ball of neural tissue, named the lateral frontal pole, is vital for pondering the ‘what ifs’ of life, researchers said.

Other parts of the brain keep tabs on how well decisions are working, but this new region thinks over what we might have done instead.

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No wonder why it hurts me around there so much

Nice find

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Thanks.

Good that it's been found, now perhaps science can find a way of making the unethical and unscrupulous find theirs and use it.

Perhaps' consciousness' is going to 'found' next, that would be nice!

Very interesting indeed, thanks for this thread. Stuff likes this makes me wonder what we will know in another 50 years.

reply to post by theabsolutetruth


Stop bashing science

It makes me wonder what is missing in people that seem to have no conscience.

Interesting find for sure but I think the author is confusing conscience with consciousness. His statement...

For centuries we thought that the conscience was just some faculty of moral insight in the human mind, an innate sense that one was behaving well or badly - although the great HL Mencken once defined it as, "the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking". It's been used by religions as a numinous something-or-other, kindly bestowed by God, to give humans a choice between sin and Paradise.

...is misleading. Although the new found section of the brain may be responsible for determining right or wrong, I don't think it is responsible for "the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking". I believe consciousness is much more profound and cannot be 'located' using any methods of science we know today. In order to understand consciousness, I think some combination of science and spirituality (for lack of a better word) is required.

I guess the next step is to see if serial killers have that. That should be interesting.

reply to post by fenceSitter


I don't know there is this,

We already knew (he says, hastily consulting his copy of Popular Science for Dimwits) that the brain can monitor decisions it has made. It tells itself: "I have chosen to follow this track in the forest and it's turning out to be a sunlit pathway/sodden jungle", but it registers no more nuanced reaction than that. What this newly discovered region does, however, is to identify other paths that it might have been better to take, and register what a dolt the brain feels for getting it wrong.

"This region monitors how good the choices are that we don't take," said Professor Matthew Rushworth, who led the research,

That would imply decision making

reply to post by Indigent


I love science, I study it often, it was a serious suggestion!

Your accusation of 'bashing' was uncalled for!

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Conscience fiddlesticks. It's a learning mechanism that reviews decisions and distinguishes good ones from bad ones by their material results.

A conscience is what distinguishes ethically right decisions from wrong ones regardless of their material results.

A more sensible discussion of this science can be found here. The original paper (which is fairly impenetrable) can be downloaded as a PDF here. Title: 'Human and Monkey Ventrolateral Frontal Cortex'.

reply to post by Stormdancer777

I'm certainly not doubting the findings of the scientists, I just get the feeling the author of the article is confusing two different concepts. Your conscience is responsible for determining right from wrong and as stated even able to monitor choices not taken to determine whether another choice would have been better. The part about "what a dolt the brain feels for getting it wrong" I'm a little unsure of though.

Now that I've re-read that paragraph I stated earlier a few times, maybe I misinterpreted. He may be referring that "the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking" is something like 'I better not do this in case someone sees me'. I originally took it as something like that creepy feeling you get when you think someone is actually watching you.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Our politicians must have volunteered as patients to have these areas of their brains removed...

... because they don't seem to have a conscience.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


here is another

"There are a few brain areas that monitor how good our choices are, and that is a very sensible thing to have. But this region monitors how good the choices are that we didn't take. It tells us how green the grass is on the other side of the fence."

The remarkable finding highlights how much scientists have to learn about the human brain and how cutting-edge lab techniques are redrawing the map of the most complex organ in the known universe.

One expert who spoke to the Guardian said the work was "stunning" and could pave the way for fresh advances in understanding psychiatric diseases. Details of the work are published in the Neuron journal.

www.theguardian.com...

reply to post by six67seven


Precisely my thought, although I also put in Bankers, Insurance, Estate Agents and a good few more.

What I find so odd is that we have these brussel sprouts and the animal population don't. I would be interested to know if dolphins have anything like this.

It does make me wonder if somehow we have been programmed deliberately or whether our brussels are simply part of evolution.

I bet there will be a lot of consideration going into what this part of our brain does and unfortunaately how it can be used as a weapon to wind us up somehow.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


This means we can slaughter and abuse animals and rape them with impunity. Now we can show definitively we're superior and uniquely special.

When we examine a problem and are trying to find a solution, we can stand still and wonder at the different solutions. An animal, by contrast, has to try each possibility to figure out whether it'll work or not. And once it finds an answer that works it doesn't try to find a better one, until the s**** is really flying. Even so, it still has to try each possibility. It can't imagine any of it.

Line up the animals for experiments and slaughter, those dumb thing. You betcha, I'm asking "What if?" I'm imagining what will happen if we think ourselves absolutely superior to animals. We'll discriminate and segregate. We'll use and abuse the other creatures of Earth because we're demi-gods.

Oddly, all of this brain research will also allow us to discriminate and segregate humans too because we'll find out some humans are more superior than others. For example, I read an article where the person argued Aboriginals cannot control their alcoholism or other bad habits because they lived for so long as hunter-gatherers. There's this feeling they can live primitively and it's fine because they're "inferior" to us and whatever problems they experience are acceptable. So a family of Aboriginals just got eaten by some salties? Is ok!!! Normal for them. This same logic is used with animals. We excuse all sorts of bad behaviors and sufferings experienced by other animals because they're "inferior" to us. A bird in the wild just got raped by another bird? Silly birds! Murdered? Silly birds! We just have to remember to give the Aboriginals a hole in the ground at the public restrooms and send them off into the forest with a handmade spear when they're hungry. Worst case we give the aboriginals a pill so they live halfway normally, but all that welfare costs money and hushed voices will say just give them some jungle.

YOu know what I think? I think we're all part of the same tree. There's only one or at best a couple species that can be at the top of the pyramid as we're. Conservation of energy means the earth can't produce more than this. Our position is not special because it was inevitable a species would dominate and rise up. It cost the earth many millions of years of evolution and expense to produce us and we rest on the labors of all the other creatures, all of which share room and board on this evolutionary tree of life. All is interconnected.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


The areas can be completely negated --by the ego. A dominant sense of power and control, greatly diminishes the need to weigh alternatives in the past.

fenceSitter
In order to understand consciousness, I think some combination of science and spirituality (for lack of a better word) is required.

Maybe spirit science is what you are looking for...

InverseLookingGlass
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

The areas can be completely negated --by the ego. A dominant sense of power and control, greatly diminishes the need to weigh alternatives in the past.

You can also have a hyper sensitive conscious, and a seard conscience.

Tylerdurden1
I guess the next step is to see if serial killers have that. That should be interesting.

Apparently in a sample of 70 psychopathic killers, all 70 brains were found to have some damage to the orbital cortex in this frontal region, behind the eyebrows, but there's more to it than that, like when in a person's development the damage occurs, environment, and genetic factors like "The violence gene" MAOA, as this expert explains in a talk given 5 years ago (so I guess the idea that this area of the brain may be linked to conscience isn't new):

Jim Fallon: Exploring the mind of a killer

His 7 minute talk has a surprising twist at the end!