Howard
Gardner is a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education. He’s also the author of over 20 books and several hundred
scholarly articles. Gardner is probably best known in educational circles for
his theory of multiple intelligences, which is a critique of the notion that
there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard
psychometric instruments. His most recent book, Five
Minds for the Future, offers some advice for policy-makers on how to do
a better job of preparing students for the 21st century. Mind Matters editor
Jonah Lehrer chats with Gardner about his new book, the possibility of teaching
ethics and how his concept of multiple intelligences has changed over
time.
Todd Suomela on 31 Oct 08In this work, we address an important but unexplored topic, namely the neural correlates of hate. In a block-design fMRI study, we scanned 17 normal human subjects while they viewed the face of a person they hated and also faces of acquaintances for whom they had neutral feelings. A hate score was obtained for the object of hate for each subject and this was used as a covariate in a between-subject random effects analysis. Viewing a hated face resulted in increased activity in the medial frontal gyrus, right putamen, bilaterally in premotor cortex, in the frontal pole and bilaterally in the medial insula. We also found three areas where activation correlated linearly with the declared level of hatred, the right insula, right premotor cortex and the right fronto-medial gyrus. One area of deactivation was found in the right superior frontal gyrus. The study thus shows that there is a unique pattern of activity in the brain in the context of hate. Though distinct from the pattern of activity that correlates with romantic love, this pattern nevertheless shares two areas with the latter, namely the putamen and the insula.
