This week, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and one of the world’s leading authorities on language, cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, Dr. Steven Pinker, spoke at MaRS.

Sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) and the Krembil Foundation, the former McGill student and current Harvard Psychology professor, discussed his upcoming book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

Pinker found that the use of metaphors can be the window to human thought, the use of swearing can be a window to human emotion, and innuendo can be a window to social relations.

Most interesting to me was the association of certain brain areas (amgydala, basal ganglia) and the association of the right hemisphere (more than the left) to swearing and the use of taboo words. In neuropsychological tests using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they found that the use of swear words triggered activity in these right brain areas and elicited negative emotion. They also found that healthy brain processes slang and illiterate phrases exactly the same way as taboo or swear words. In addition, when test subjects must identify the colour in which a word is written (instead of the word itself), swear words distract the participants from colour recognition. You can also remember swear words about four times better than other words. (However, none of this necessarily has anything to do with swearing a lot - it could just be a symptom of a disease or a result of brain damage.)

I asked Dr. Pinker after the talk if sexual differences in the amygdala or basal ganglia would affect sensitivity and capacity for negative emotions. He didn’t know but was willing to consider that for further research.

It will be interesting to see how neuropsychologists use imaging like this to map out our emotions, image our thoughts and motivations, and eventually try to define consciousness. And how, exactly, will this information be used?

Further reading:

• Dr. Pinker’s articles covering topics from linguistics to genes to consciousness
• Dr. Prinker’s recent research paths
• Current issue of Time magazine including a feature article by Steve Pinker about consciousness.

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