Brains and politics!

BBC Learning English
6 Minute English
Brains and politics
NB: This is not a word for word transcript
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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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
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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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:
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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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.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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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.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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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.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2011
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Vocabulary and definitions
political beliefs your opinions on how governments should run the world
scanned here, photographed by a machine which can show images
of people’s brains
left-wing having political ideas which are close to socialism
liberal tolerant of different beliefs or behaviours
right-wing having political ideas which support conservatism and
capitalism
conservative likes to preserve traditional ideas, and resists changes or
new ideas
hard-wired here, unmovable in opinion
MRI scans a machine which can photograph people’s brains (MRI –
magnetic resonance imaging
hypothesis explanation or theory which has not yet proved to be
correct
grey matter type of matter which forms part of the brain
neurons cells in the human nervous system which conduct
messages to and from the brain
nerve cells cells which, together, form human nerves
More on this story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2010/12/are_political_beliefs_hard_wir.html
Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/2011/01/110106_6min_brain_page.shtml