Announcer from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Charlie tonight, our focus will be on Brain Science and society. Each programmable cover a critical social issue with an examination of social issues with neurological bases and broader sociological effects. Tonight, we consider aggression and the social application of violence. We live in an aggressive world. We are routinely confronted with new incidents of harvick murder horrific murder in the form of murder, war, genocide. But aggression can protect us from threats to our safety. Problems arise when aggression is taken too far and becomes violence. Neuroscientists are working with the transmitters that produce aggressive impulses. Psychologists seek to understand the environmental factors that can prompt aggression escalation. A Remarkable Group of scientists dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of aggression are here. They are David Anderson of the California Institute of technology, richard remley of the university of montreal, and emil, adrian raine of the university of pennsylvania, and once again, my cohost, dr. Eric kendell. He is a nobel laureate, a professor at columbia university, and a Howard Hughes medical investigator. I am pleased to have all of them here. Eric wonderful to have you here. This is our third series. In the first series, we dealt with the normal brain. In the second series, we considered abnormalities schizophrenia, depression, parkinsons, alzheimers. Now we are turning to a third series Brain Science in society. Here we will consider a number of social issues gender identity, sports induced concussions, Brain Science, and the criminal justice system. Today in the First Program we are going to consider Brain Science and aggression and the social amplification of violence. When you and i talked about this particular series and aggression, we knew this was an important topic and weve known it since the beginning of time. Cain killing abel at the beginning of it genesis, you cannot get in the earlier than that. It was not clear that today this would be an even more important topic. Where ever you go, when you pick up a newspaper or listen to a news program, you see one episode or another of extraordinary aggression. Sexual assault in the military. And in religious orders. Terrorism in the United States and syria. Antiand tight semitism all over europe. Antisemitism all over europe. Shooting a big guard in front of a shooting a guard in front of the synagogue. The list goes on. When you look at the whole picture not nationally, but internationally, you see that this is one of the most not only nationally but internationally, you see that this is one of the most important problems facing us all, and president obama appreciated this when he called for an International Summit to discuss how to handle it. This could not be better timed. We might be helpful to society in this way. We are going to consider a number of issues that relate to aggression in an important way. We are going to begin by considering the biology of aggression and how it often focuses on sexuality. We are going to consider the development of aggression, how kids first start to be aggressive. We are going to learn about how victims respond to aggression which is not necessarily uniform, and fascinatingly, how aggression is amplified, how people who are bystanders get recruited and often get enthusiastically involved in aggression. We are going to speak about aggression in people. And there are various kinds. There is impulsive aggression and meditative aggression, and we will hear about all that. In all of these discussions, we will come back to the specific regions. Four regions are especially important. The prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. The prefrontal cortex deals with character formation. It can lead to an increase in aggression. The ventral striuatatum deals with other kinds of aggression. The hypothalamus has many functions, but we are going to focus in particular on its role in aggression and sexuality. We have on this program, as you pointed out, five fantastic people. We have David Anderson, who i have known for a long time, who pioneered a study on aggression and its relation to sexuality. We have richard tomly, who was interested in the development of aggression. Johan has spent a career studying how victims respond to aggression. We have emil a psychologist like myself, competent [laughter] who is interested in psychiatric interests. And we have adrian who is interested in premeditated aggression, which is a different entity. We have not only an extremely important topic, perhaps the most important topic confronting all of us today, but we couldnt have a better group of people discussing it. So we are in for a fantastic charlie lets begin with David Anderson and understanding the biology of aggression. David we are basic neuroscientists we want to understand the basic questions about aggression. How is it, which is an agent behavior how is it hardwired into the brain . Which is an ancient behavior . We see aggression throughout the animal kingdom. We have studied this problem in flies and mice, and we are particularly interested in the parts of the brain that control aggression and those that control mating or sexual behavior. As you know, mating and aggression are closely related behaviors. In nature, you often find that aggression is at its highest when animals are mating, and these behaviors reinforce each other. But at the same time, they are mutually exclusive. A male will direct mating toward a female of the species but aggression toward a male. There is kind of a paradox how can these behaviors be mutually exclusive but also reinforce each other in some way . So, we have begun by trying to pinpoint the neurons that control aggressive behavior. We started by looking in a very evolutionarily ancient region of the brain, the hypothalamus. We began by trying to measure the electrical activity of cells that were active during aggression or mating in a tiny region of the hypothalamus, and we found something quite surprising. Within this very small region of the brain, we found a mixture of neurons, some of which were turned on when the animals were fighting, some when they were mating, and interestingly some had both of them on while fighting and making. There was an overlap. There was a correlation, and we wanted to understand the unction of these neurons. We began by using very modern techniques called optigenetics to activate and inhibit these neurons. We can point this activation, a high level of accuracy, directly to specific cells in the brain that are active during aggression and turn them on and off within a time resolution of milliseconds. I am going to show you a video of what happens to a male mouse when you activate these neurons of aggression. I should say four week showed the video some of your viewers , might find the images disturbing. But what we are doing does not hurt a mouse and these particles these protocols have been approved by our animal use and Care Committee and approved by the nih. When the light comes on, we are stimulating the aggression neurons in the mouse. We can actually trigger him to attack a rubber glove. If there were another mouse there, he would attack the other mouse as well. We wanted to ask if these neurons were says is 34 normal aggression stop mice will naturally fight each other. If you introduce an intruder mouse into a cage where a male mouse lives, very likely, the resident will be aggressive. He does not like another male mouse impinging on his territory. So, can we turn these neurons off . Can we stop a fight that in its tracks . The next video shows it is possible to do that. These two mice are fighting naturally. When the light comes on, we inhibit the neurons. The fight stops. We will show you that again in slow motion. The mice are fighting. Suddenly the light comes on. We stop the mice dead in their tracks. Charlie i dont understand how the neurons know how to respond to light. David we genetically and plant a protein that turns the neuron on only when light activates the channel. It is a light sensitive algae. Its turned the neuron on only when light activates that channel. We can convert these neurons into a light sensitive neurons. That shows us that these neurons are necessary and sufficient for aggression. Eric there are two types, those that can be activated, and those that can he shut off, and you can stimulate either. David as we were manipulating the conditions, we found something surprising you would need low intensity stimulation would promote mounting behavior. The mouse would try to mount any other mouse he was with, male or female. We could actually switch the behavior of the same animal from attempted mounting to a mixture of mounting and attack to attack just by increasing the intensity of light. That tells us that in this tiny region of the brain, there is a mixture of neurons that are controlling both the mating instinct and the fighting instinct, and perhaps that will account, or may account, for the tensions between the sex drive and the aggression drive. Charlie extraordinary. Eric it also explains why aggression can lead to sexual aggression. It really is an amazing set of findings. Charlie you have some information about how children become predisposed to violence. We have been following thousands of children from birth to adulthood, and we have been trying to find, at what time do children learn to aggress. What we discovered is the children start fairly early in life. Richard they use physical aggression as soon as from motor control they can hit, kick, and bite. Charlie so as soon as their brain learns to control their limbs and they can to aggressive things. Do aggressive things. Eric but they do not learn to become aggressive. They are instinctively aggressive. That is an amazing finding. Richard it appears when we look at these videos, it is relatively minor aggression. It is a tough world when you are a one and a half or twoyearold, and the frequency of physical aggression increases tremendously charlie high velocity between 14. Richard the peak is around 34 years of age, and then it decreases toward adulthood. Humans are at their worst in terms of physical aggression between 24 years of age. That is the worst time as far as being victimized by your peers. However, there are important differences among children. There is a sex difference. Girls learn much more quickly than boys not to aggress. This learning is partly related to the fact that girls will use indirect aggression. When you dont like someone, you get others to act for you. You get them not to play with them. Girls learn that much more quickly than voice. Than boys. There are differences among boys. About 20 use aggression very rarely. 4 use physical aggression very frequently. We call them chronic aggressive. Chronic aggressive, over time, are the ones who during adolescence, are chronically aggressive. But its only 4 of males. So, if we think about what are the factors going on here, what are the environmental and genetic factors going on, what we have been able to observe by using twins so we got one set of twins that have the same genetic endowment, and we used fraternal twins who are similar like brothers and sisters they share 50 of their genes. What we see is that the identical twins are much more similar in terms of physical aggression than the fraternal twins. This is a good indication that there are important differences. Important genetic differences. It appears about 50 in terms of explanation of frequency of physical aggression comes from genetic endowment, 50 from environmental endowment. From the Brain Development perspective, we have been looking at brain imaging of serotonin synthesis in the prefrontal lobes, and what we observed is that the chronically aggressive have problems in terms of serotonin synthesis. So, these are the frontal lobes, and there are serotonin synthesis deficits in chronically aggressive children. So, it appears that genetic and early environmental factors are involved in our ability to control our physical aggression, and this is related to Brain Development. Charlie so the longterm outcomes of children from chronic, physical aggression. Richard children that are chronically physically aggressive will fail in school will be rejected by their peers. They will use and abuse drugs during adolescence. Juvenile delinquency criminality during adulthood and of course they have problems integrating in the workforce and tend to be poor and they tend to become parents who will have aggressive children because they have created an environment where you cannot learn to control your aggression. Charlie can we help them . Richard yes, we have shown with a randomized controlled trial that if we do intensive interventions, preventative interventions with aggressive children in kindergarten, we can see that in the long run they have fewer problems in school, they finish high school, they have fewer problems with drugs and alcohol during adolescence and less criminality in adulthood. Charlie things like daycare can reduce the risk. Richard yes, daycare for children whose parents have low education reduces the risk of chronic physical aggression later on. Eric what i find interesting about this is that these kids are not being treated with drugs. They are being treated with social interventions like psychotherapy. It shows how in certain instances, psychotherapeutic intervention can be extremely beneficial. What you are describing is one of the most horrible symptoms you can have in life. Everything one does is bad. That is, if one has these problems. Charlie if we look at the most aggressive people on the planet, if we take them back to childhood, will we find evidence of the things we are talking about . Richard it depends on the type of aggression. Since we have all been aggressive early on and we have learned not to aggress from our environment, it is a thin veneer. Those who are most aggressive early on are most likely to have aggression problems later on but we have all been aggressive early on, and the environment later on is an important determinant. It is easy to see why some adults who appear to have no problem will suddenly become aggressive. Eric the social amplification of aggression, people sitting around, not being participants in the aggression, can easily be recruited into it. It is an important factor in doing that. Its a very fragile safety net we have. Charlie we go now to the response of the victims. Johanna, help us understand this. How is is perceived from the part of a victim . Johanna a negative response to trauma, violence, for example, is to become violent. It is an essentially a cycle of violence. Children who were abused are at a higher risk of becoming abusive later in life. On the societal or intergroup level, we see that groups who have experienced depression of violence develop a mentality of revenge to defend themselves against future violence, so a cycle appears there is well. However, that is only one response to trauma. There is also a more positive response which you can describe as posttraumatic. Some resilient individuals can go through positive changes after the experience of trauma. One of these positive changes can be ultras and through suffering the idea that you want to prevent others from suffering in the way yourself or your group has in the past. Altruism through suffering. For example, people who have experienced traumatic events are more likely to want to help victims of a natural disaster. In studies on Police Officers and Mental Health professionals who themselves had had adverse experiences, they are assisting others now in their professions and are shown to thrive more in their work and be more engaged in their work. This has been described as a survivor mission. There are many examples of cases where survivors of violence want to do something to change the cycles of violence. We see this also among survivors of genocide, who have the idea that we need to prevent genocide from happening ever again to anyone else. We see examples of Holocaust Survivors who are active to stop the genocide in darfur or engaged in antiwar protests or civil rights movements. This occurs transgenerational he ly. It is not just survivors who show this kind of response. This can also be members of the social group to identify with their groups collective experience and become particularly motivated to prevent violence in the present. Charlie so youre suggesting there are different ways of coping and responding to trauma. Johanna exactly, but both basically restore a sense of agency, sense of control that was lost in the violent experience. Human beings have a need to restore this shattered sense of agency and control. One way to do this is to show dominance and aggression. The other is to prevent violence from occurring. Both have a kind of positive affect. Eric in the jewish community, holocaust survivor elie weisel has done too remarkable things one has been instrumental in setting up the Holocaust Memorial in washington, but has also interfered in a number of genocide situations to protect the people being attacked, even though that had nothing to do with his initial experience. Very much like what you are saying. Johanna and this social coping mechanism as a response to trauma also gives survivors a sense of meaning that was lost during the traumatic experience. Helping others, preventing violence from occurring to others and also restore a sense of meaning in the idea that i have not suffered in vain. We know as a work of holocaust survivor victor franco, who survived auschwitz, that maintaining a sense of meaning is essential for coping with traumatic experience. Charlie two we understand the do we understand the factors that make someone more likely to be altruistic . Do understand why, and what are the factors that make one or likely to do that them the other . Johanna we do not yet understand what leads to the prosocial path instead of the violent path. Exposure to role models or social support are part of it. I have the idea that if you recognize the fact that your experiences of victimization and trauma are similar to what others experience, that sense of similarity can contribute to the more prosocial path, where if people think their experiences are unique or distinct, that no one else has ever suffered in this way, that makes violence or destructive responses more likely. Charlie lets talk about how this is related to Mental Illness. Emil a lot of people think aggression is more prevalent in pe