I'd like to talk today about how we can change our brains and our society.
我今天想談談 人類能如何改變我們的頭腦 與我們的社會。
Meet Joe. Joe's 32 years old and a murderer. I met Joe 13 years ago on the lifer wing at Wormwood Scrubs high-security prison in London. I'd like you to imagine this place. It looks and feels like it sounds: Wormwood Scrubs. Built at the end of the Victorian Era by the inmates themselves, it is where England's most dangerous prisoners are kept. These individuals have committed acts of unspeakable evil. And I was there to study their brains. I was part of a team of researchers from University College London, on a grant from the U.K. department of health. My task was to study a group of inmates who had been clinically diagnosed as psychopaths. That meant they were the most callous and the most aggressive of the entire prison population. What lay at the root of their behavior? Was there a neurological cause for their condition? And if there was a neurological cause, could we find a cure?
這位是喬。 喬 32 歲,是殺人兇手。 13 年前,我在無期徒刑的牢房認識他, 位於倫敦高戒備的苦艾監獄裡。 請你們想像這個地方。 看起來和感覺起來就像它的名字: 苦艾監獄 (Wormwood Scrubs 有洗刷悔恨之意)。 在維多利亞時代末期時 完全由囚犯建造而成, 那裡監禁著英國最危險的犯人。 這些人都犯了 難以言喻的滔天大罪。 我在那裡研究他們的腦。 我是倫敦大學學院研究團隊的成員之一, 這計畫由英國健康衛生署補助。 我的任務是研究一群受刑人, 他們被臨床診斷為精神病患者。 意即他們是所有受刑人中 最為冷酷無情,且最具攻擊性的罪犯。 他們行為的根源是什麼? 是否有神經因素引發他們的疾病? 如果有神經因素的話, 我們能不能找到治療方式?
So I'd like to speak about change, and especially about emotional change. Growing up, I was always intrigued by how people change. My mother, a clinical psychotherapist, would occasionally see patients at home in the evening. She would shut the door to the living room, and I imagined magical things happened in that room. At the age of five or six I would creep up in my pajamas and sit outside with my ear glued to the door. On more than one occasion, I fell asleep and they had to push me out of the way at the end of the session.
我想談變化,尤其是情緒變化。 成長期間,我總是對 人們改變的方式感興趣。 我的母親是臨床心理學家, 晚上她偶爾會在家看診。 她會關上通往客廳的門, 我就會開始想像 房裡發生了神奇的事情。 在五歲或六歲時, 我會穿著睡衣偷跑到客廳, 將耳朵貼在門上,坐在外頭。 我睡著了不止一次, 在療程結束後, 他們得把我向外推才能出來。 我想那大概就是
And I suppose that's how I found myself walking into the secure interview room on my first day at Wormwood Scrubs. Joe sat across a steel table and greeted me with this blank expression. The prison warden, looking equally indifferent, said, "Any trouble, just press the red buzzer, and we'll be around as soon as we can." (Laughter)
我首次踏入苦艾監獄 安全面談室的原因。 喬坐在鐵桌的對面, 不發一語地看著我到來。 典獄長看來也一樣冷淡, 他說:「有任何問題就按紅色警鈴, 我們會儘快趕到。」 (笑聲) 我坐下。
I sat down. The heavy metal door slammed shut behind me. I looked up at the red buzzer far behind Joe on the opposite wall. (Laughter)
沉重的金屬門在我身後關上。 我擡頭看著紅色警鈴, 遠在另一頭,喬身後的牆上。 (笑聲) 我看著喬。
I looked at Joe. Perhaps detecting my concern, he leaned forward, and said, as reassuringly as he could, "Ah, don't worry about the buzzer, it doesn't work anyway." (Laughter)
也許他察覺了我的擔心, 便靠向前, 儘可能地安慰我說: 「噢,別在意警鈴了, 那根本就壞啦。」 (笑聲)
Over the subsequent months, we tested Joe and his fellow inmates, looking specifically at their ability to categorize different images of emotion. And we looked at their physical response to those emotions. So, for example, when most of us look at a picture like this of somebody looking sad, we instantly have a slight, measurable physical response: increased heart rate, sweating of the skin. Whilst the psychopaths in our study were able to describe the pictures accurately, they failed to show the emotions required. They failed to show a physical response. It was as though they knew the words but not the music of empathy. So we wanted to look closer at this to use MRI to image their brains. That turned out to be not such an easy task. Imagine transporting a collection of clinical psychopaths across central London in shackles and handcuffs in rush hour, and in order to place each of them in an MRI scanner, you have to remove all metal objects, including shackles and handcuffs, and, as I learned, all body piercings.
隨後幾個月, 我們檢測喬和他的獄友, 主要針對他們 分類各種情緒圖片的能力。 接著觀察他們對那些情緒的身體反應。 舉例來說,我們大部分 見到像這樣有人看似傷心的圖片, 都會立即有輕微、 明顯的身體反應: 心跳加快、開始流汗。 我們研究中的精神病患能 正確地敘述這些圖片, 但是他們卻無法表現出應有的情緒。 他們沒有身體反應。 彷彿他們認得文字, 卻無法同理其中蘊含的意義。 因此我們想進一步探討這點, 運用核磁共振造影 (MRI) 取得他們腦部的圖像。 結果發現這不是項簡單的任務。 想像你得運送一批 戴著手銬、腳鐐的精神病患 穿越倫敦中心, 而且還在尖鋒時間, 且為了將他們每個人 放進核磁共振造影機, 你得移除所有金屬物品, 包括手銬和腳鐐, 還有所有的打洞、體環。
After some time, however, we had a tentative answer. These individuals were not just the victims of a troubled childhood. There was something else. People like Joe have a deficit in a brain area called the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped organ deep within each of the hemispheres of the brain. It is thought to be key to the experience of empathy. Normally, the more empathic a person is, the larger and more active their amygdala is. Our population of inmates had a deficient amygdala, which likely led to their lack of empathy and to their immoral behavior.
一段時間後,我們有了個試驗的答案。 這些人不只是悲慘童年的受害者, 他們還有別的問題。 像喬這種人腦部的某個區域有缺陷, 這個部位稱為杏仁核。 杏仁核是一種杏仁形的器官, 深藏在大腦的每個半球中, 被視為感受同理心的關鍵。 一般來說,某人越有同情心, 他的杏仁核就越大且越活躍。 囚犯的杏仁核有缺陷, 可能會導致他們缺乏同理心, 並做出不道德的行為。
So let's take a step back. Normally, acquiring moral behavior is simply part of growing up, like learning to speak. At the age of six months, virtually every one of us is able to differentiate between animate and inanimate objects. At the age of 12 months, most children are able to imitate the purposeful actions of others. So for example, your mother raises her hands to stretch, and you imitate her behavior. At first, this isn't perfect. I remember my cousin Sasha, two years old at the time, looking through a picture book and licking one finger and flicking the page with the other hand, licking one finger and flicking the page with the other hand. (Laughter) Bit by bit, we build the foundations of the social brain so that by the time we're three, four years old, most children, not all, have acquired the ability to understand the intentions of others, another prerequisite for empathy. The fact that this developmental progression is universal, irrespective of where you live in the world or which culture you inhabit, strongly suggests that the foundations of moral behavior are inborn. If you doubt this, try, as I've done, to renege on a promise you've made to a four-year-old. You will find that the mind of a four-year old is not naïve in the slightest. It is more akin to a Swiss army knife with fixed mental modules finely honed during development and a sharp sense of fairness. The early years are crucial. There seems to be a window of opportunity, after which mastering moral questions becomes more difficult, like adults learning a foreign language. That's not to say it's impossible. A recent, wonderful study from Stanford University showed that people who have played a virtual reality game in which they took on the role of a good and helpful superhero actually became more caring and helpful towards others afterwards. Now I'm not suggesting we endow criminals with superpowers, but I am suggesting that we need to find ways to get Joe and people like him to change their brains and their behavior, for their benefit and for the benefit of the rest of us.
那麼,讓我們退後一步來看。 一般來說,養成道德行為 只是成長的一部分, 就像學習說話一樣。 在六個月大時,幾乎每個人 都能辨別東西是否有生命。 在一歲大時, 大部分孩童都能模仿 其他人有意義的行為。 例如,你的母親舉起雙手做伸展, 你就會模仿她的動作。 一開始不會太完美。 我記得堂妹莎夏 在兩歲時 就能快速翻閱繪本, 舔一根手指,然後用另一隻手換頁, 舔一根手指,然後用另一隻手換頁。 (笑聲) 漸漸地,我們建立起社會腦的基礎, 因此我們到三、四歲的時候, 大部分的孩童,並非全部, 都已經能理解別人的意圖, 這是另一種同理的前提。 這種發展過程舉世皆然, 不論你住在世界何處, 或是身在哪一種文化, 都強烈表示 道德行為的基礎是與生俱來的。 如果你懷疑這件事, 只要試一件事,我試過了, 不要遵守你對四歲孩童許下的承諾。 你會發現四歲孩童的心智 一點也不天真。 他們就像是把瑞士刀, 在成長過程中 用固定的心理模組精細打造, 而且對公平的感受十分敏銳。 年幼時期至關重要。 童年期似乎是千載難逢的良機, 在那之後 要掌握道德問題變得更加困難, 就像成人學習外語一樣。 但那並非不可能。 最近史丹佛大學有一項很棒的研究 指出那些曾參與 虛擬實境遊戲的玩家, 選擇扮演善良、熱心英雄的人 確實在之後會變得 比較樂於照顧與幫助他人。 我的意思並不是 要賦予罪犯超能力, 而是提議我們應該找出一些方法 讓喬和像他這樣的人 能夠改變他們的大腦和行為, 這將有利於他們, 也有利於我們所有的人。 那麼大腦能改變嗎?
So can brains change? For over 100 years, neuroanatomists and later neuroscientists held the view that after initial development in childhood, no new brain cells could grow in the adult human brain. The brain could only change within certain set limits. That was the dogma. But then, in the 1990s, studies starting showing, following the lead of Elizabeth Gould at Princeton and others, studies started showing the evidence of neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells in the adult mammalian brain, first in the olfactory bulb, which is responsible for our sense of smell, then in the hippocampus involving short-term memory, and finally in the amygdala itself. In order to understand how this process works, I left the psychopaths and joined a lab in Oxford specializing in learning and development. Instead of psychopaths, I studied mice, because the same pattern of brain responses appears across many different species of social animals. So if you rear a mouse in a standard cage, a shoebox, essentially, with cotton wool, alone and without much stimulation, not only does it not thrive, but it will often develop strange, repetitive behaviors. This naturally sociable animal will lose its ability to bond with other mice, even becoming aggressive when introduced to them. However, mice reared in what we called an enriched environment, a large habitation with other mice with wheels and ladders and areas to explore, demonstrate neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells, and as we showed, they also perform better on a range of learning and memory tasks. Now, they don't develop morality to the point of carrying the shopping bags of little old mice across the street, but their improved environment results in healthy, sociable behavior. Mice reared in a standard cage, by contrast, not dissimilar, you might say, from a prison cell, have dramatically lower levels of new neurons in the brain.
超過一百年來, 神經解剖學家和後來的神經科學家 都一致認為在過了 童年初期發展階段之後, 成人腦無法生長出新的腦細胞。 腦只能在特定條件中才能改變。 這是在過去所被深信的。 但是到了 1990 年代, 開始有研究顯示, 從普林斯頓的 伊莉莎白.古爾德等人開始, 研究開始顯示神經生成的證據, 新的腦細胞生成 會出現在成年哺乳動物的腦中, 一開始會在嗅球, 主責我們嗅覺的部位; 接下來是在海馬迴, 這是和短期記憶有關的地方, 最後是在杏仁核。 為了理解整個流程如何運作, 我離開精神病患的研究, 加入哈佛的研究室, 專攻學習與發展。 我研究老鼠,而非精神病患, 因為同樣的腦反應 顯現在許多不同的社會型動物上。 因此如果你將一隻老鼠 養在普通的籠子裡, 基本上就是鞋盒,並放入棉花球, 單獨飼養,沒有太多刺激, 牠不僅會了無生氣, 而且還常會發展出奇怪、重複的行為。 這種天生好交際的動物 會失去和其他老鼠連結的能力, 甚至在接觸其他老鼠時, 會變得有攻擊性。 然而,把老鼠養在所謂的 豐富環境之中, 和其他老鼠住在較大的地方, 附有輪子、階梯和探索區域, 顯示了神經生成, 即新的腦細胞生長, 如我們所見,牠們也會有較佳的表現 在學習與記憶的任務上。 牠們不會建立道德觀, 不會幫"老"老鼠提購物袋過馬路, 但是改良的環境會帶來 健康與友善的行為。 兩相比較,養在普通籠子裡的老鼠, 你可能會說,和在牢房裡也差不多, 已大幅降低腦中新神經元的數量。 現在我們已清楚知道 哺乳動物的杏仁核,
It is now clear that the amygdala of mammals, including primates like us, can show neurogenesis. In some areas of the brain, more than 20 percent of cells are newly formed. We're just beginning to understand what exact function these cells have, but what it implies is that the brain is capable of extraordinary change way into adulthood. However, our brains are also exquisitely sensitive to stress in our environment. Stress hormones, glucocorticoids, released by the brain, suppress the growth of these new cells. The more stress, the less brain development, which in turn causes less adaptability and causes higher stress levels. This is the interplay between nature and nurture in real time in front of our eyes. When you think about it, it is ironic that our current solution for people with stressed amygdalae is to place them in an environment that actually inhibits any chance of further growth. Of course, imprisonment is a necessary part of the criminal justice system and of protecting society. Our research does not suggest that criminals should submit their MRI scans as evidence in court and get off the hook because they've got a faulty amygdala. The evidence is actually the other way. Because our brains are capable of change, we need to take responsibility for our actions, and they need to take responsibility for their rehabilitation. One way such rehabilitation might work is through restorative justice programs. Here victims, if they choose to participate, and perpetrators meet face to face in safe, structured encounters, and the perpetrator is encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, and the victim plays an active role in the process. In such a setting, the perpetrator can see, perhaps for the first time, the victim as a real person with thoughts and feelings and a genuine emotional response. This stimulates the amygdala and may be a more effective rehabilitative practice than simple incarceration. Such programs won't work for everyone, but for many, it could be a way to break the frozen sea within.
包含像我們的靈長類動物, 也能顯示神經生成。 在腦部的某些區塊中, 超過 20% 的細胞都是在近期形成。 我們才剛開始理解 這些細胞真正的功能是什麼, 但是它意謂著腦也能夠 大幅改變,一直到成年時期。 然而,我們的腦也對 環境中的壓力非常敏感。 壓力激素和糖皮質素 都由腦部釋出, 抑制這些新細胞的成長。 壓力越大,腦部的發展就會越少, 因而導致適應力較差, 並且讓壓力更大。 這是先天與後天之間的相互影響, 千真萬確發生在我們眼前。 當你思考這件事時, 諷刺的是,我們目前提供 給有壓力杏仁核人們的解方, 就是把他們放在 其實會抑制任何發育機會的環境。 當然,監禁是必要的處置, 對刑事司法系統 以及保護社會的立場都是如此。 我們的研究並不是說 罪犯應該將核磁共振攝影 當做法庭上的證據, 讓罪犯因為有缺陷的杏仁核而免於受罰。 證據其實與此背道而馳。 因為我們的腦有改變的能力, 我們需要對自己的行為負責, 他們需要負起 改過遷善的責任。 有一種矯正的方式可能有效, 那就是透過修復式司法計畫。 選擇參與計畫的被害者 會和罪犯面對面, 在安全的環境下,安排好的會面場景, 罪犯會被鼓勵 為自己的行為負責, 被害者在過程中擔任積極的角色。 在這種安排中,罪犯可以觀察, 也許是第一次, 被害者以真實人物現身, 有思想、感覺 和真誠的情感反應。 這種方式會刺激杏仁核, 也許會成為一種更有效的矯正練習, 更勝於單純的監禁。 這種計畫不會人人都適用, 但對許多人來說,這或許能成為一種 解決困境的方式。 那現在我們能怎麼做呢?
So what can we do now? How can we apply this knowledge? I'd like to leave you with three lessons that I learned. The first thing that I learned was that we need to change our mindset. Since Wormwood Scrubs was built 130 years ago, society has advanced in virtually every aspect, in the way we run our schools, our hospitals. Yet the moment we speak about prisons, it's as though we're back in Dickensian times, if not medieval times. For too long, I believe, we've allowed ourselves to be persuaded of the false notion that human nature cannot change, and as a society, it's costing us dearly. We know that the brain is capable of extraordinary change, and the best way to achieve that, even in adults, is to change and modulate our environment.
我們要怎麼應用這項知識? 讓我和各位分享 我學到的三堂課。 我學到的第一課是 我們需要改變思考方式。 自 130 年前苦艾監獄建造完成後, 基本上社會在各方面都已提升, 像是經營學校、醫院的方式。 然而當我們提到監獄時, 就好像我們回到狄更斯那個時代, 如果不是中古時期的話。 我相信,一直以來 我們都允許自己被說服 認為人類的偏差想法 是與生俱來、無法改變的, 而對社會來說, 我們為此付出極大的代價。 我們知道腦能做出極大的改變, 要達成的最好方式, 即使成人都能做到, 就是去改變與調整我們的環境。 第二件我學到的事
The second thing I have learned is that we need to create an alliance of people who believe that science is integral to bringing about social change. It's easy enough for a neuroscientist to place a high-security inmate in an MRI scanner. Well actually, that turns out not to be so easy, but ultimately what we want to show is whether we're able to reduce the reoffending rates. In order to answer complex questions like that, we need people of different backgrounds -- lab-based scientists and clinicians, social workers and policy makers, philanthropists and human rights activists — to work together.
就是我們需要連結 相信科學是帶領社會變遷 不可或缺的人們。 對神經科學家來說,把需要高戒備的囚犯 放進核磁共振機裡很簡單。 其實沒有那麼簡單, 但最終我們還是希望能顯示 我們是否能夠降低累犯率。 為了回答像那樣複雜的問題, 我們需要不同背景的人 ──以實驗為基礎的科學家、臨床醫生、 社工、政策制定者、 慈善家和人權主義者── 一起合作。
Finally, I believe we need to change our own amygdalae, because this issue goes to the heart not just of who Joe is, but who we are. We need to change our view of Joe as someone wholly irredeemable, because if we see Joe as wholly irredeemable, how is he going to see himself as any different? In another decade, Joe will be released from Wormwood Scrubs. Will he be among the 70 percent of inmates who end up reoffending and returning to the prison system? Wouldn't it be better if, while serving his sentence, Joe was able to train his amygdala, which would stimulate the growth of new brain cells and connections, so that he will be able to face the world once he gets released? Surely, that would be in the interest of all of us.
最後,我相信我們需要 改變自己的杏仁核, 因為這個問題直指核心, 不只是喬是什麼樣的人, 還有我們是什麼樣的人。 我們需要改變 認為喬徹底無藥可救的想法, 因為如果我們覺得他徹底無藥可救, 那他怎麼會對自己有不同的看法? 再十年之後, 喬會從苦艾監獄被釋放。 他會是 70% 的罪犯之中, 再次犯罪, 又被關進監獄的那一個嗎? 在他服刑期間, 如果喬能訓練他的杏仁核, 讓它能刺激新的腦細胞生長與連結, 難道不會比較好嗎? 如此一來,他在被釋放後 就能面對這個世界。 當然,那是為了我們每個人的福祉著想。
(Applause) Thank you. (Applause)
(掌聲) 謝謝。(掌聲)