FEU Public Intellectual Lecture Series | Dr. Rachel Parr

[Music] good day welcome to the far eastern university public intellectual lecture series my name is rita i am from the political science department our topic for today is neuropsychology and how it is used to explain moral behavior and we are privileged to have with us a practicing psychologist of the mlac institute for psychosocial services and a professor of de la salle university dr rachel and rosales parr good day ma'am thank you for accepting our invitation to be part of this public intellectual lecture series thank you for inviting me um so ma'am can you please give

us an overview of what neuropsychology is and how it affects moral behavior well uh very very briefly neuropsychology is like understanding behavior by looking at brain processes so this particular topic is understanding how we become moral beings moral creatures through the lens of neuroscience neurological science so i'm not a neurologist but in psychology part of our training is that we use scientific models to [Music] explain to describe explain and possibly predict uh the behavior of people all right so that's very interesting so now we're talking about the brain right yeah okay so mom what's the

relationship with between the brain and how individuals make ethical decisions or generally decision making um okay that's a huge question but um the research i actually did a lecture on this so i have a powerpoint presentation on this and here in this presentation we i will be looking at how are we talking about how empathy starts out how individuals why do individuals engage in risk taking behavior why is this so salient or prominent in adolescence as we all know um and then how a conscience develops um these big concepts lately we have research has shown

that research in evolutionary biology in cognitive neuroscience and in developmental psychology have shown that the moral development of a person you know how a person knows right from wrong has its biological roots and can be influenced by a person's genetic makeup and brain processes right that's very interesting so can we talk about that ma'am about the moral development of an individual uh okay so in in the branch of science we call evolutionary biology so in this lecture that i did this is in i hope i can give you a copy of this now in the

third slide we talked ab i will show how evolutionary biology looks into how people are the same okay the universalities of behavior okay we are individuals and we come from different backgrounds but there is something universal also about the way human beings behave as a species and there are even universalities where we behave the same way as other mammals like other primates so evolutionary biology looks at this universalities okay so part of that is the universalities in our moral behavior so how are we the same as animals primates and then also we look at cognitive

neuroscience so here we look at brain processes how the brain processes affect how we perceive how we understand what's happening how we how this translates into action and behavior and then vice versa cognitive neuroscience also looks at how our experiences how our behavior reshapes our brain and affects the structure of our brain and then developmental psychology well this is the systematic study of the changes through the lifespan the changes a person goes through physical emotional social etc and also moral so in developmental psychology we use scientific theories to try and describe and explain these changes

throughout the lifespan from birth to rather from womb from conception to death okay it's a long it's a rather big topic actually uh i'd like to go back to the topic on evolutionary biology uh because here a group of scientists led by a social psychologist rather led by jonathan height okay he came up with a theory talking about the moral foundations okay of moral behavior so apparently as i said most of people are different individuals are different we have different cultural backgrounds but um if you look at the moral behavior you can actually categorize the

different value systems that people have into five major categories based on his studies one is you know we we behave our moral behavior can be put together in terms of how we care for one another how we cherish each other um and the other end of that spectrum is harm no harm is the opposite of caring and then the other principle is about fairness and cheating so how we value fairness how we value justice okay um so here you will see the traits of um how social conscience um evolves and then we also behave morally

in terms of loyalty so apparent uh it would seem that people value belonging to a certain group okay so whether this is belonging to school belonging to a uaap team or belong to a family or a barcada so it's very important for human beings to have this sense of belonging to a particular unit and this sense of belonging leads to being loyal being matapat in tagalog so the opposite of that is betrayal and then the fourth principle is about how we how we give importance to authority okay so respect um how how do we respect

one another how do we respect people who have a legal sense of authority so our professors our government officials etc and then the fifth principle is about uh sanctity and degradation so how we behave morally in terms of how we value the purity in our bodies the people we relate to so here you will have the issues on okay like same-sex marriages for instance so how do we see this how do we decide on these issues so do we are we open how open are we to these uh to this to same-sex marriage for instance

for two people uh belonging to the same sex and having a relationship um or do we find this disgusting okay so that continuum okay so that's the fifth um so there and then um [Music] in a biological sense also when uh we looked at the research it was in the 1990s uh that we that this group of scientists led by um giacomo rizzolatti rather sorry um they discovered the presence of a set of neurons that seem to mirror um behavior so the the experiment they were doing was with monkeys okay and what they found out

um was that a certain when you when i'm when a monkey behaves in a certain way like for example picking up a banana so i have a slide on this i think it's in it's the fifth slide when a monkey picks up a banana so a certain set of neurons fire up light up and then when the monkey observes the same behavior in another monkey the same set of neurons will light up oh so this is for young people to say what is right and what is wrong especially when you have uh people supposedly modeling

moral ascendancy and yet they don't seem to model what they're supposed to model so can you please elaborate on that on the development of one's conscience um one way of studying conscience okay is by looking at this concept we call um mutually or mutually responsive orientation okay in a presentation in the same presentation that i did okay where is this slide 58 okay there's a scan here an mri scan of a this is actually a mother um kissing her baby okay but this could be a father doesn't have to be a mother so in this

scan they were able to see that when a parent and a child begin to interact when they first interact there is that exchange of positive reactions mutual exchange no just sound of the voice being happy to be with the child the touch of the parent kissing the child these um forms of interaction they they saw that these um actions would light up certain parts of the brain and they were the same for the parent and the child and so scientists explained this by saying that when this happens there seems to be like what we call

an imprinting okay so the the parent there's an imprint happening in the brain okay the parent suddenly feels this i think if you talk to some parents they will probably explain it differently but there is this sudden sense of this surge of oh my god this person is this baby is the most important thing in my life now i would die for this child very extreme but that's how some parents describe it it's very primal it's very i'm now responsible for this person i will die for this person something like that and then for the

child naman they explain it that the child imprints that okay the sound of your voice is the same as that sound i was hearing when i was in the womb uh it must be the same i must it must be you your smell um the way you touch me putting that all together the child imprints on that the face of that parent becomes imprinted that this is the person who will take care of me or i need to attach to this person attachment studies show that children need to attach whether the parent is nurturing or

not they will attach because it is a biological need to attach because they need to be cared for so there so when this locking in of positive emotions when this takes place this atmosphere of what we call a mutually responsive orientation is created okay and in this um okay if you look at it from a neural perspective they would say that during this time uh this is slide 59 now in that presentation as i jumped um dopamine is a neurotransmitter dopamine levels increase during this time so there is again a neurological manifestation when a mother

or when a parent and a baby start this bond we call it mute mutually responsive orientation in psych but that's it no that's that bonding that moment that they lock in each other and um so this is when the attachment begins when this mutually responsive orientation is allowed to develop through positive interaction positive exchanges between parent and child so socialization begins children develop this sense of wanting to cooperate with that parent so this is where children learn how to absorb gradually the value systems the what is important to the parent they begin to absorb this

of course they don't oh they may not show it red lina anything my mom wants i'm gonna do it it's not as black and white as that but they they absorb this sense of wanting to cooperate this sense that is it's not really just conscious it's actually subconscious you know you know how young people talk about you know they're outside they're with their friends and then they usually want to do this thing but they know their mom or their dad's going to get upset so that concentra the conscience okay it starts as early as infancy

that's what i'm trying to uh explain here um that sense starts with that bond that you form with your parents so that's why it's very important to have that positive relationship as early as infancy because that is when supposedly this conscience begins to develop all right well that's very interesting because now it appears to me that parents are responsible mainly for developing the rational pathway that you were mentioning earlier because it is the parent that tells the child this is what you should do this is the acceptable thing to do but it is actually the

peer group who can also influence the emotional pathway and there's where the confusion starts yeah and it's not just telling the child actually uh if we go further into this it's living it's giving a living in a way that you become a role model also so you're not just telling the child but it's the action also you also have to show that you you know it shows your sincerity you lead by example also ah okay so of course there is the verbal exchange there is a communication process that happens but the child needs to grow

up in an environment where the child will believe you so you need to lead by example and this is not just with parents this is also in an educational setting yeah the figures of authority exactly the teachers the administrators all right those of us who are supposed to be molding them there all right so mom um i'm just curious because there are certain there are certain issues now that we take up in or that we encounter not being being teachers um and these are issues of let's say sexuality and you know the development of values

of our young people so how do you weave through the the neuropsychology part with these challenges of you know sexual behavior among our young people even addictive patterns of behavior and all that so you were saying earlier that experiences matter and when we talk about the rational pathway this young people as young as 15 already know what they're supposed to do but the emotional pathway gets into the picture and the emotional pathway is yet to to develop so i would like to see how you know how this this variables like sexual behavior and addiction even

depression and suicide weave into one big issue among our young people today um wow okay i would like to see how the the adolescent brain works for example how does it look like okay as compared to an adult or to a young child because in adolescence as mentioned earlier they're creating connections but at the same time they're also getting rid of connections that they don't use so during adolescence the the shape of your brain the structure of your brain really goes through a very dramatic change right they call it like a dramatic overhauling okay so

what overhauls this what shapes this is experience okay and that's where we come in um do we teach them values of social justice do we teach them to be open-minded do we teach them to be accepting of themselves and of other people these experiences we can do as parents and as teachers and this is how we help structure their brain in such a way that they are socially aware that they are mindful that they they value social justice that they are able to go beyond themselves and help other people this is how we teach them

how the important how it becomes natural for them to be selfless and not just to think of self-preservation not just be about self-preservation but also be to to to start you know this altruistic tendencies how to become altruistic it's up to us to give them that experiences at home and in school okay mom thank you for that so mom i just have some very specific cases here and i'm just curious about how psychological processes affect uh this kind of behavior or maybe should i say misbehavior so what happens to the human brain when a person

gets involved for example in crimes or let's say rape and other forms of sexual violence like sexual harassment and domestic violence okay rape in itself is uh well again it's you know there are many factors or ways of trying to understand why a person would rape another person and um so you have gender issues there you have the the gender issue of you know men feeling more powerful than women rape is about power rape is not about sex but then you have these pathological cases where you know you have children babies uh being raped by

an adult whether it's their father or their caregiver okay no no as mentioned earlier those are very extreme cases but if as mentioned earlier we are born to feel uh to bond with other people we are born to feel compassion towards those who are weaker than us those who are more vulnerable than us which is why when you are when you see a child you naturally feel different you're more willing to help a child if a child is hungry crying even though you don't know the child you are more you're triggered by the the the

child being a child you know that person being a child now you want to help you want to do something for that child so to do the extreme opposite of harming a child raping a child is really a clear sign that this person there's something pathological about this capacity for empathy so perhaps um you know in psychology we have this clinical condition we call um sociopathology psychopathology so these are people who have no conscience and they are not capable of bonding with other people so this could be brought about this could be caused by experiences

in childhood they were they're born with this pathology you know it's not you cannot just pinpoint one source no but this is a condition so you know if an adult is capable of doing that uh horrible act uh with a very helpless infant child okay then it i think it's safe to say that this person has no conscience so if we use a neural psych uh perspective then we could say that this was damaged during the time that it was developing it was not it was not able to develop normally it was not strengthened or

perhaps it was damaged by trauma by abuse there are many cases of abusive people who became abusive because they were also abused as children that's one way of looking at it and understanding it all right understanding it okay how about uh cases where i think most students can very well relate to um like pieces of cheating you know maybe not only cheating and exams but also cheating in relationship partners yeah how do you explain the psychological processes there as we mentioned as i i mentioned earlier in the earlier part um we one of the moral

foundations we have is the sense of um fairness okay uh being fair or cheating no so that's the other end of it so we if if your sense of fairness if your sense of wanting to be fair um is not honed proper it's not encouraged it's not reinforced by experience then chances are you will still have this but it will be weak so for some people it might be weaker they're more prone to cheating they're more they succumb to temptation more than others because this sense is weaker in them so it could be upbringing experience

it it was not strengthened so we are we're all wired to have this to be like this that's what the theory is saying but you need the outside world to strengthen it so even though a person as a child as an adolescent can construct this sense of morality on his own or on her own now indeed you shouldn't cheat you should be loyalty is a virtue you should uh when in relationships it is important to to stay in this relationship you need to be like this you need to be faithful etc etc you can construct

this on your own but how strong is that against temptation depends on how it is addressed by the environment so can the brain catch up like for example you had trauma when you were young and then you had all of these bad experiences and then it affects the brain so how does the brain catch up for you to be morally upright yeah so that was actually one part in this lecture that um a huge part of this lecture is also about brain plasticity okay so plasticity uh means is this capacity of the brain to respond

to the demands of the environment okay so for example there are damaged parts of your brain other parts can be triggered to make up for the damaged parts for example i'll go back to that point a person who cannot use his hands um some people learn how to write with their feet so those neural connections are created and that is the brain that's plasticity that's the brain responding by creating new connections to respond to that need to that damaged part so the same thing of course there is always hope okay um a person who has

been traumatized or abused or is incapable of being fair or being just given the right experience yes it is possible that this person can reconnect with society in a healthy way in a positive way yes it is possible for an anti-social person to become pro-social given the right experiences which is why we have rehabilitation centers which is why you know we don't we're not supposed to kill young people or people just because they're taking drugs okay that that drug taking behavior is supposed to be a manifestation of something else there is something that caused them

to do that so we should help them that's the idea that's the rationale behind it we don't kill them because we we believe there is always hope no matter how dire or how dark the situation is now yes um i think in applied ethics now you talk about crime and what do you do but um you you can't remove a person from society if this person is a danger to society but you don't remove a person by killing the person supposedly but we rehabilitate the person well that's what we should watch restorative justice not punitive

i see so um for your final word ma'am i think this topic is actually very interesting because you know many of our young people are actually struggling now with ethical decisions and it's important that they know that uh the brain the plasticity of the brain know that they can learn new things and they can actually adopt given the right experiences so um what are your final words for our students or listening to us now i'd like to end it with a quote from mahatma gandhi i think he's quite well known okay according to him a

man is the sum of his actions of what he has done and of what he can do nothing else now if we believe that the brain is the physiological representation of who we are then i will say that you are your brain your brain is you my brain is me i am my brain okay so therefore if we believe this it is very important that we bear in mind those of us who deal with children those of us who are in the molding of children in the business of molding children educating children then it is

important that we remember that these connections begin very early on in life so it is important to provide the right connections and in adolescence the people go through the reshaping of the brain in a very dramatical way so it is important that in adolescents uh in while they are in school it is important that we create the right experiences so that the brain gets shaped in a way that they are pro-social they learn how to bond with other people and in adulthood we can only hope that all these experiences become crystallized so the the brain

becomes crystallized less flexible but crystallized with the right lessons in life so that's what we can hope for all right so uh thank you very much ma'am for for your time and for this explanation i think our students will have a better understanding of how their brain functions and relate this functioning with their own experiences so thank you ma'am you're very welcome for your expertise not for sharing with us your expertise so there you go another session i think my two key takeaways for this session is number one we have to take care of our

brain of our mental health and number two i think it is very important that we are very responsible in choosing the kinds of experiences that we engage in so there you go thank you very much for your participation in this session [Music] you