GREY MATTER // Spasm

Neurocriminologist Adrian Raine is a controversial figure in British science. He researches the biological basis of crime and asks questions that others shy away from. If you could use a brain scan to predict someone would become a psychopathic murderer, for example, shouldn’t you do that?

Raine’s thesis is the inspiration for Grey Matter, a play set a few years hence in a secure neurotreatment centre. This facility is where young men will find themselves if they fail their 18+ test – an assessment of their likelihood to commit murder, which is now compulsory since a mass school shooting. Scanned, probed and treated, they can get out if their test scores improve – but the prospects are grim in the desolate, violent environment, and meanwhile, their real lives outside move on without them. 

The parallel drawn by the show’s creators to today’s young offender institutions could hardly be clearer. 5000 young people are currently detained, often with little hope of rehabilitation and sometimes at the risk of extreme violence, as a Panorama programme earlier this year showed.

Yet, if there is a way to predict crime, do we have a moral duty to do so? The film Minority Report explored such questions, using the psychically-gifted precogs to enable authorities to catch perpetrators before crimes had been committed.

Raine’s precogs are the brain scans of offenders, on which he indicates enlarged or damaged areas he says could have predicted their behaviour. However, as many opponents point out, in modern social neuroscience, brain scans are notorious for their pretty colours and poor statistical significance.

Not even Raine’s discovery that his own brain had structures similar to his psychopathic test subjects made him abandon his perspective. His own wayward behaviours seemed to fizzle out in the environment of a new school at age 11.

But others may not be as lucky. Grey Matter shows us the possible risks we face if a government technocrat decides to adopt Raine’s theories to tackle crime instead of grappling with the much knottier societal problems that are its more likely roots.

- RM

Grey Matter ran at C Venues until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/grey-matter 

Adrian Raine’s work reviewed: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain

Treatment of young offenders: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/13/young-offenders-institution-restraint-injuries

Panorama programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ymzly

The problem with trying to use brain scans statistically: http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/abs/nrn3475.html

BRAIN MATTER(S) // Fen'Harel Theatre

Are you right-brained or left-brained? The two performers in the physical theatre production Brain Matter(s) take on the roles of one person’s interconnected brain as they struggle together to negotiate the challenges of life.

The idea that our brains' hemispheres take separate responsibility for emotion and rationality, confidence and doubt, anger and self-control, is one that brain-training gadgets and airport self-help books would love us to buy into. Brain Matter(s) deftly plays on these notions in the actors’ entertaining dialogue and choreography. The two halves are sometimes fitted snugly together as one, but at other times tumble, balance and fight, like an angel and devil warring for control of the one body.

There is some scientific basis to the belief that the two halves of the brain have different specialist functions. It first gained traction in the 19th century when French neurologists Marc Dax and Paul Broca realised that patients who had lost the ability to speak had all sustained damage to the left-hand side of their brain.

Broca’s area is still the name for the functional region in the brain’s left frontal lobe relating to speech production – although it’s sometimes found in the right frontal lobe of left-handed people, just to confuse anyone hoping for a clear-cut two-sided arrangement.

But this finding hints at the truly interesting aspect of brain hemispheres, and the focus of current neuroscience. Do the two halves process information differently? And how do they work together to produce all the complexities of human ability and behaviour? 

The staging of Brain Matters allows plenty of contemporary thinking about such issues. The female performer takes the more rational, ambitious persona, while the male performer is emotional and impulsive.

Another modern notion in neuroscience is that the specialism in our hemispheres gives us more ability to multitask. This production draws on all the performers’ skills to bring us new thinking on the old left-brain right-brain divide.

- RM

Brain Matter(s) ran at Venue 13 until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/brain-matter-s 

The myth of left and right brains: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-myths/201206/why-the-left-brain-right-brain-myth-will-probably-never-die

Marc Dax and Paul Broca and the discovery of the speech area of the brain: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17056493

Broca’s specialist language area explained: http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html

The advantages of having lateral speciality in your brain - multitasking: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810119/

THE CONVOLUTION OF PIP AND TWIG // PEP

Cryptophasia is the phenomenon of a language developed by twins. At the start of The Convolution of Pip and Twig the consistent, unintelligible muttering suggest these two are among the 50% of twins who have created their personal idioglossia; an idiosyncratic and essentially private language invented and spoken by only a couple of people.

Kara McLane Burke and Siân Richards humble us with an intimate gentle performance that waxes and wanes like the cardboard moon above the stage. Playing identical sisters they transport us to their world, somewhere between Mr. Ben and Rainbow - a childish hedonistic utopia.

After waking entangled from sleep, they dance and complete chores in synchronisation, until Twig is seduced by the moon and slopes off only to be pursued by her sister/twin into the night and the ocean. Clownlike performance and playful physical theatre is complemented by a handmade set: the ocean is enthralling and helps to disperse the overwhelming sense of separation anxiety whenever the two characters are apart. Research shows emotional attachment in twins can become unhealthy with a loss of individualism; this is almost palpable to the audience who feel a genuine philological sense of disconnection when Pip and Twig are apart.

This summer, BBC’s Horizon My Amazing Twin explored the genetic condition neurofibromatosis type 1 and the different effect it had on a set of identical twins, encouraging a discourse around the research studying the differing genetics of identical twins. The Convolution of Pip and Twig explores the twin’s relationship through repetition, as if they are conscious of their intertwined and indistinguishable DNA.

- Lucy Orr

The Convolution of Pip and Twig  ran at 18.40 at SpaceTriplex (Venue 38) until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/convolution-of-pip-and-twig

The Lone Twin: How to Deal With Twin Separation Anxiety: https://healdove.com/mental-health/The-Lone-Twin-How-to-Deal-With-Twin-Separation-Anxiety

Twintuition: Ezra and Adeev Potash at TEDxOmaha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDLoOrdhfAw

Identically Different: Tim Spector at TEDxKingsCollegeLondon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5SeBYERNI

Becoming a twin... at age 23: Georgy Cohen at TEDxSomerville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxHCYSOtLyI

1 Language That Only 2 People Speak: The Secret Language Of Twins: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/twins-secret-languages

THE BRAIN SHOW // Robert Newman

Robert Newman’s comedy routine in The Brain Show criticises research studies that he has encountered in popular science books about the brain and found wanting. He counters their arguments with a mixture of more robust science, appeals to common sense, and humour. The examples of “neurobabble” he uses in the show are not difficult to demolish, which means he does not have to get into scientific technicalities but can make his point before turning into a joke.

Neuroscience continues to be one of the areas of science most likely to be used and abused by people with something to sell, from self-help books to educational tools. It is often presented in a reductive way - “this part of your brain lights up when you're in love”. Newman’s debunking of specific studies challenges such a simplistic understanding of contemporary neuroscience. By deploying ‘common sense’ arguments, or returning to the 19th-century theories of Charles Darwin, however, he risks giving the impression that modern neuroscience is all on a par with the worst examples he can find.

Using brain imaging to ‘see’ what is going on in our heads is still a relatively young research discipline. While pioneering, it can also be speculative and open to criticism as researchers develop, challenge and hone their techniques. Debates around the application and interpretation of such studies have been going on - and increasing - within the field for many years.

The Brain Show encourages its audiences not to take at face value the claims made by and on behalf of neuroscientists. Those who are inspired not to dismiss neuroscience but to engage with it may also discover more of the best examples of the field, whether it's the growing use of brain imaging as a diagnostic tool or work informing and extending our knowledge of the anatomy of the brain. (MR)

The Brain Show is at 19:15 at Summerhall's Main Hall until the 28th August (not 15th) http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/robert-newman-the-brain-show/

This recent Nature video discusses how brain maps are made, including a new one compiled using MRI data: http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/brain-map/index.html

PET imaging is being used to visualise amyloid plaques, a sign of Alzheimer's disease: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160524124241.htm

Quartz reports on flaws associated with functional MRI research in particular: http://qz.com/725746/a-deep-flaw-has-been-discovered-in-thousands-of-neuroscience-studies-so-why-arent-neuroscientists-freaking-out/

An older piece by Guy Kahane discusses the philosophical challenges brain imaging presents: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/01/neurotrash-and-neurobabble/

This 2012 article in Nature set out issues around ‘blobology’ in MRI studies, and how researchers are making progress: http://www.nature.com/news/brain-imaging-fmri-2-0-1.10365

Debunking “neuromyths” in education: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/feb/24/four-neuromyths-still-prevalent-in-schools-debunked