Opinion – Luciano Melo: The pretense of uncovering the hidden reasons of the mind

The ER was packed as usual. New appointments renewed the compilation of demands, the confusion resorted to burying the sprout of organization that, from time to time, seemed to take hold. Anyway, the routine of that teaching hospital.

In a room a doctor, still a neurology resident, was inserting a needle into the back of a woman’s head. He wanted to take a sample of the fluid that bathes the brain, it was thought to be meningitis. However, the stillness was marred by the opening of the door, and a senior student in the medical course walked in like a herald: “A man has lost movement on his left side and hasn’t spoken for a few minutes. It must be an accident. ischemic vascular (ICVA)”.

While the liquid was purulent, the neurologist instructed the youngest apprentice to be quick, “ahead of the preparations, so that only my decision remains for therapy.” Treatment against stroke loses effectiveness every minute.

Once the puncture was finished, the doctor walked to the new emergency room, still worried about the woman he was attending. To the surprise of the entourage of students around him, words, not medicine, made the patient get up and walk: “You again? You can get off the gurney.” The clinician had already examined that man in other departments, the story was repeated, of a disability that actually never existed.

It’s a challenge to understand the reason for this scene. People with certain psychiatric illnesses believe they have disabilities and behave according to the belief. But there are those who lie cunningly, for whatever reason, such as to solicit favors from a compassionate relative. Psychiatric illnesses can also be the reason for crimes. But, obviously, there are those who delinquency for vile causes and lie.

Over the past thirty years, many techniques have been developed to measure brain functions, structures, chemical properties, and connectivity. With this, we are pretentious, will we be able to open a mental black box and extract what is most personal: beliefs, motivations, intentions, abilities and secrets? Will we be able to understand the reasons of the man who discontinues care for a woman with meningitis, will we be able to recognize when criminals lie?

Take the following example: 100 participants are instructed to lie or tell the truth while their brains are scanned by a functional MRI scanner. Data analysis reveals that there is a statistically significant difference between lying and telling the truth. Untruthful activates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It even seems that we have a machine here for detecting fallacies.

However, it’s not that simple. The statistical value rests with the group, not the individual. For some participants activate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when reciting truths, and others can lie at will without turning this brain region on.

We still don’t know well enough how certain structures of brain functioning, mapped out in controlled experiments, act in dynamic and unpredictable social environments. Therefore, we do not know much how these determine behaviors in the real world, such as violence and disease simulation.

These caveats did not prevent neurosciences from going to court in the recent US past. Behind this invasion was researcher Lawrence Farwell, a former Harvard student. Based on the premise that a pattern of electrical brain waves appears milliseconds after seeing something familiar, he created an apparatus to detect lies.

If an accused is in fact the culprit, readers of brain electrical activity will denounce him, as they will prove that there was visual recognition of the objects relevant to the crime, among any others. No matter what the defendant says, just look at what’s presented to you.

But the excitement about the truth machine has passed. The scientific community pointed out that Farwell’s conclusions arose amid research methodological errors. Worse, experiments that tried to replicate the Harvard graduate did not confirm the results. So what was left was a folk contraption.

Neuroscience’s visit to the courts was the result of a high expectation, perhaps unattainable, that we will be able to read the truth through technological devices and understand the reasons that are difficult to access.

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