The neuroscience of restorative justice | Dan Reisel

I'd like to talk today

about how we can change our brains

and our society.

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?

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.

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)

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)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(Applause)

Thank you. (Applause)