Your Brain Is Hardwired to Snap The same group of neurons could make you a hero—or a rage-filled aggressor.
Picture of man with electrodes on head
Neuroscience can trace the origins of rage to a tiny knot of neurons in an area of the brain known as the “hypothalamic attack region.” Here, electrodes monitor a man’s brain.
Photograph by Adrianna Williams, Corbis
By Simon Worrall
PUBLISHED Sun Feb 07 07:00:00 EST 2016
We’ve all been there: Some jerk cuts you off on the highway. You lean on the horn, scream abuse. You want to get out the car and kick the @#$% out of the bozo’s SUV.
Road rage is just one example of what neurobiologist Douglas Fields calls “snapping.” From domestic violence to mass shootings, the news is full of stories of seemingly “normal” people suddenly going berserk. The easy availability of guns only compounds the problem.
But how and why does this happen? The traditional explanation is that these outbreaks of rage and violence are aberrations: the result of moral and psychological defects. But in his timely new book, Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain, Fields shows that violent behavior is often the result of the clash between the modern world and the evolutionary hardwiring of our brains—and that, unless we understand its triggers, we are all capable of snapping.
Speaking from his home in Bethesda, Maryland, Fields explains what neuroscience is teaching us about rage; how the Baltimore riots were about tribe, not race; and why men are more prone to violence—and heroism—than women.
Picture of Why We Snap book cover
Courtesy of Penguin Random House
In the famous TV show about a serial killer, Dexter says that he is driven to kill by his “lizard brain.” Is there such a thing?
[Laughs] That’s an out-of-date concept, dating back half a century. It’s become vernacular for the snapping rage response but it never was something neuroscientists took as fact. It was a way to simplify some aspects of sudden aggressive behavior. The reason I wanted to write this book is because there’s been so much new information about the brain, and the reality is a lot more interesting than the old lizard brain idea. [Read about new technologies that tell us how the brain really works.]
You were inspired to write this book by an incident while on vacation with your daughter. Tell us about that day in Barcelona and how it affected you.
I was on my way to give a lecture on neuroscience in Barcelona. My 17-year-old daughter was accompanying me. We had a little bit of time before the lecture so we decided to go to the Gaudi Cathedral. We were coming up out of the subway and suddenly I felt something on the pocket of my cargo pants. I slapped it like you’d slap a mosquito, and instantly felt my wallet was gone. Instinctively, I reached back and clotheslined the robber and took him to the ground.
I don’t have any background in martial arts, I’ve never been in the military. I’m not a violent person. What shocked me was that I had instantly responded. This threat in my environment that I wasn’t even aware of unleashed this instant, defensive response. And I wanted to find out why.
You trace the causes of rage and violence to a “tiny knot of neurons at the core of the brain where conscious thought cannot penetrate: the beast within.” Dissect it for us.
A large part of the human brain, just like the brain of other animals, is devoted to threat detection. These circuits are constantly evaluating our internal and external state for threats. This cannot be conscious, because that’s too slow. It’s deep in the brain below the cerebral cortex, where consciousness arises, in a region called the hypothalamic attack region. Picture of Michael C. Hall from Dexter
TV serial killer Dexter attributed his crimes to his “lizard brain.” According to Douglas Fields, this is “an out-of-date concept” with no foundation in science.
Photograph by A.F. Archive, Alamy
The hypothalamus is where a lot of our urges and automatic functions are carried out, like sexual behavior. The hypothalamic attack region controls defensive-aggressive behavior. If scientists stimulate these neurons with an electrode, an animal will instantly become aggressive and attack a test animal in the cage.
Are men more prone to rage and violence than women?
When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of a man, who probably outweighs her. But although 90 percent of those in jail are men, 90 percent of people who have been awarded medals by the Carnegie Institute for heroism are also men. In a quarter of those cases, these are men who gave up their lives and died in an instant to do something heroic, often for a stranger. So the rage circuit is good and bad. It’s a double-edged sword.
One of the paradoxes of human nature you explore is that “rage circuits evolved to help us, not to harm us.” Tell us about the passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
The so-called “underwear bomber” starts to set off a bomb on a plane headed to Detroit. This one passenger hears a pop and sees some smoke, leaps over several rows of seats and attacks the would-be terrorist and subdues him. Afterwards, people ask him why he did that. He says, “I don’t know, I didn’t think.” But all the other passengers around this guy saw the same thing and fled.
We have these circuits because we need them. Most of the time, they work amazingly well. We don’t call it snapping unless the result of this aggressive response is inappropriate. When it works as intended we call it quick thinking or, in many cases, heroic. We have these circuits to protect ourselves, our family unit, or society.
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Poster Comment:
When I was a kid, we looked at Nat. Geo. to see the pictures of the natives. LOL