Is the male brain different from the female? How does human physiology define spirituality? Renowned Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab answered PSYCHOLOGIES questions.
Last year, Psychologies published several materials with the world-famous Dutch doctor, the luminary of European neuroscience, Dick Swaab. We published his lectures and interviews with him, discussed his book “We are our brain” and asked domestic neuroscientists to comment on it. And now Ivan Limbach’s publishing house has released a new book by Dick Swaab in collaboration with the popular Dutch writer Jan Paul Schütten, author of 30 popular science books.
Dick Swaab, Jan Paul Schütten You are your brain. Translation from the Dutch by D. V. Silvestrov. Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 208 p.
“You Are Your Brain” is even more entertaining, witty and fun because it’s for teenagers. And she – with illustrations by Ivan Arkhipov. In a word, we could not resist and continued our conversation, shifting the focus to the characteristics of adolescents.
Psychologies: Tell me, is there any observation or research in the brain (perhaps the brain of adolescents) that surprised you yourself recently?
Dik Svaab: The fact that the development of the prefrontal regions of the brain continues at least until the age of 24. This area of the brain is extremely important for curbing our impulses and understanding moral values and norms. That is, the brain fully matures only by the age of 24, not at all by 18. And the age of majority as civil capacity should not come at 18, but at 24.
You argued that the male brain is significantly different from the female. Does this also apply to teenagers – or just adult men and women?
D.S.: At present, our studies of gender differences in adults are mostly brain-dead. But we know that the brains of boys and girls begin to differ literally immediately after conception, not at all in the adult state. Already newborn boys and girls are interested in different things: boys are interested in moving objects, and girls are interested in faces. Play behavior also differs significantly, say, cars against dolls. By the way, this is true in general for primates, that is, for monkeys.
You once said that the search for the spiritual, spirituality is a natural need of the brain, determined by the VMAT2 gene (“God gene”), and in the future, spiritual values will be freed from the framework of existing religions and become universal. Do you see this movement towards universalization when you talk to teenagers? Is their perception of the sacred very different from how you perceived it in your adolescence?
D.S.: When I was a teenager, in the north of the Netherlands the vast majority were Protestants, and in the south almost everyone was Catholic. Now in the Netherlands only 20% of the population truly believes in God. In general, the separation of the younger generation from the church is very noticeable in the Netherlands. Many temples are closed or used for other purposes. But, of course, there are young people who say that “there must be something more than what we see and perceive” – and they really do not belong to any formal religion. The human brain is predisposed to faith: prayer is accompanied by activity in the temporal lobes and the production of dopamine. Simply put, prayer brings a feeling of happiness. This happens no matter which god you pray to. But the fact is that our perception of the sacred is inherited. Religious feeling is inextricably linked with childhood impressions: people brought up in Muslim families do not see Jesus, even if they know about him, and vice versa. How the sense of the sacred is realized in those who have completely avoided religious education, I have no idea.