Neuro Brain Research & Creamy Layer

A recent brain-imaging study shows that our political predilections in which Reservation and Creamy layer may be included are a product of unconscious confirmation bias.

We have to find out the answers: Should Children of Mayavati, Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Rly Minister Lalu Yadav, Health Minister Ramdas, Mulayam Yadav, Ajit Jogi and such others who are under the definition of creamy layer be liable for taking the benefits of Reservation on the cost of the poor students of the general caste such as Brahmins.


The Triune Brain shows that reciprocity, not conflict, is the endpoint of human development. So, neuroscience is the bridge between the natural and the social sciences including economics and politics. The link between neuroscience and behavioral ecology is pure hand-waving. Gerald A. Cory Jr. has written a book in this subject.

Francois Gautier placed the facts in his article:
There are 50 Sulabh Shauchalayas (public toilets) in Delhi; all of them are cleaned and looked after by Brahmins (this very welcome public institution was started by a Brahmin). A far cry from the elitist image that Brahmins have!

There are five to six Brahmins manning each Shauchalaya. They came to Delhi eight to ten years back looking for a source of income, as they were a minority in most of their villages, where Dalits are in majority (60 per cent to 65 per cent). In most villages in UP and Bihar, Dalits have a union which helps them secure jobs in villages.

You also find Brahmin rickshaw pullers in Delhi. 50 per cent of Patel Nagar's rickshaw pullers are Brahmins who like their brethren have moved to the city looking for jobs for lack of employment opportunities and poor education in their villages. Did you also know that most rickshaw pullers in Banaras are Brahmins?

Humans are selfish, scarcity-obsessed products of millions of years of biological evolution and thousands of years of cultural evolution, as well as they are equally designed to love, cooperate, and share fairly with other members of our species.

Self-interest and empathy (based on both reciprocity AND concern for others) are both important, and there is a constant tension and trade-off between the two.

At the moment matter under discussion is inclusion and exclusion of ‘Creamy layer’

The Supreme Court upheld constitutional validity of the 77th Amendment providing reservation to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes for promotion in government jobs.
"It is the Supreme Court order and as a minister I would not comment on it. But our party has always believed that creamy layer should not be kept out," said Ramvilas Paswan, leader, LJP on Sept 18, 2006.

Supporters and opponents of the creamy layers’ inclusion are equally convinced that the evidence overwhelmingly supports their position.

This has been scientifically tested by researchers Ernst Fehr, director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich and Paul Sanberg, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa.The results has already been presented at the 2006 annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

The neuroimaging results, however, revealed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning--the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was quiescent. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in the processing of emotions; the anterior cingulate, which is associated with conflict resolution; the posterior cingulate, which is concerned with making judgments about moral accountability; and--once subjects had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable--the ventral striatum, which is related to reward and pleasure.

Scientists discover brain trigger for selfish behaviour
Scientists have found that they can make people selfish and egotistical by turning off a brain region at the flick of a switch, providing new insight into social behaviour.

Civil society may hinge on a tiny piece of tissue at the front of the human brain, a new study suggests.

Experiments involving a "fairness" game show that the right side of this region -- called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -- helps people suppress selfish urges in obviously unjust situations, even at their own expense.
When researchers used a mild electric current to temporarily short-circuit this area, the law of the jungle quickly reasserted itself.

People with disabled right-side dorsolateral prefrontal cortexes (DLPFC) grabbed whatever money they could from lopsided transactions -- even when they knew the deal they were getting was grossly unfair.

"They understood the unfairness of it all, but they simply couldn't inhibit their need for getting the money," said Paul Sanberg.

Sanberg was not involved in the study, which is published in the Oct. 6 issue of Science.

The Swiss and American team behind this research noted that, despite a long history of crime, wars and rapaciousness, human beings are innately cooperative. In fact, Homo sapiens is the only species to exhibit "reciprocal fairness" -- the punishment of others' unfair behaviors, even in situations where doing so hurts the punisher.

This behavior is demonstrated in an oft-used tool in behavioral science called the "Ultimatum Game." In this game, one player is given a set amount of money. He is then instructed to hand over, at his own discretion, a share of the money to a second player.

Player 2 can either accept the amount offered or refuse the deal altogether, in which case both players receive no money.
When Player 1's offer is very low -- for example, $2 out of a total of $20 -- it would still behoove Player 2 to accept the offer, since $2 is better than nothing.

However, under normal circumstances, participants put in this position in the game overwhelming refuse such low offers, which they perceive as grossly unfair. Instead, they forfeit their own self-interest so they can "punish" Player 1.
Why might this be so? Humans are highly socially evolved, and punishing unfairness "helps sustain cooperation in groups," said study lead researcher Ernst Fehr.

Because more cohesive groups tend to have better survival prospects, humans who suppress their immediate urges end up on the "winning team," evolutionarily speaking.

Fehr's group sought to find the seat of this selfishness-override in the brain.
In prior brain-imaging studies, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) lit up during the game, so the researchers focused there.

In the study, they had participants play the game under two conditions. In the first condition, the researchers passed a mild electric current through the right or left hemispheres of Player 2's DLPFC, temporarily deactivating these brain regions. Other participants took on the Player 2 role under sham conditions where no real electric current was flowing.

"The big surprise," Fehr said, "is that a relatively minor inhibition of the right DLPFC removes or weakens the subject's ability to override their self-interest."

Players whose right-side DLPFC's were "switched off" accepted even very low amounts of cash nearly half (45 percent) of the time -- even though they knew the offer was terribly unfair.

But under normal conditions, barely one in 10 players accepted such insulting low offers, the researchers found.
The experiment shows that this part of the cortex "is clearly very important for our social behavior, our societal evolution," Sanberg said. The right side of the DLPFC helps people resist those strong urges for sex, money and general acquisitiveness that come from more primitive sites outside the cortex, he said.

"It provides modulation of those urges, so that you can have control over them," Sanberg added. "As we evolved, we somehow developed this control over our basic needs."

Further research is going on.

The implications of the findings reach far beyond politics. A jury assessing evidence against a defendant, a CEO evaluating information about a company or a scientist weighing data in favor of a theory will undergo the same cognitive process. What can we do about it?

Columnist Michael Shermer rightly said that we need similar controls for the confirmation bias in the arenas of law, business and politics. Judges and lawyers should call one another on the practice of mining data selectively to bolster an argument and warn juries about the confirmation bias. CEOs should assess critically the enthusiastic recommendations of their VPs and demand to see contradictory evidence and alternative evaluations of the same plan. Politicians need a stronger peer-review system that goes beyond the churlish opprobrium of the campaign trail, and I would love to see a political debate in which the candidates were required to make the opposite case. Skepticism is the antidote for the confirmation bias.

By Premendra Agrawal