A Clockwork Orange

In high school, I managed to read A Clockwork Orange.  For those of you who haven't attempted this, be warned that it's  like reading a foreign language.  The author uses words from Russian, Spanish, English, and Japanese to create a very unique street dialect.  The first few chapters are spent trying to figure out what the hell the main character (whose point of view the reader shares) means.  Pretty soon though, you pick up what's going on and you start to realize how truly creepy this futuristic world is.

But it took me watching the 1971 film to start to wonder about the neurological implications of the movie.

One of the key plot points (*SPOILERS*) is that Alex, the protagonist, is brain-washed to feel sick every time that he sees sex or violence or considers doing either of the two.  In the movie, he's portrayed as gagging and nearly throwing up after his "treatment".  I know that the idea behind his brainwashing is that they give him a drug that activates a particular center in his brain and they correlate this with horrific videos of sex and violence to make Alex associate the two.

I suppose this could be considered a form of classical conditioning.  Like Pavlov with his dogs, Alex is trained to match a physiological response with an external stimulus.  So Pavlov's dogs were trained to salivate when they heard a bell.  Alex was trained to feel sick whenever he witnessed or thought about "evil impulses" of violence (and sex).  They even give an example of generalization where the subject is not trained to differentiate to one particular stimulus.  In Alex's case, he was accidentally also trained against Beethoven's 9th.

Not exactly a hero but definitely the protagonist.

But the question I have, is what part of the brain were they activating for revulsion?  I know the amygdala is activated for fear and that can modulate emotions and memories.  But I don't know where the center of revulsion is.  Anyone have a suggestion on what Alex's doctors were activating?

In any case, I do suggest you read this classic novel.  (Yes, it's 50 years old so it's officially a classic.)  It's disturbing and confusing at times but the political messages it contains shouldn't be ignored.  And if you're too lazy to read the book, the movie is on netflix instant play.

Bird-Brained Bombs?

While Pavlov's dogs and B.F. Skinner's work with behavior conditioning are the quintessential studies of learning for psychology and neuroscience alike, the archives of experimentation have even stranger stories to tell.  Some are gruesome, but others are so absurd that you can't help but marvel at human ingenuity and creative thought.

My favorite example of "the odd" starts in the dire settings of America amidst World War II.  B.F Skinner, the famous behaviorist psychologist, wanted to assist in the war efforts.  In particular, he saw a need for improvement in the missile guidance of America's air craft.  The key issue was, we really didn't have one.  Bombers approximated when they were over their target and then dropped the full payload in the hopes that a few would accurately hit.  The sheer inefficiency of this system sent Skinner in search of a solution.  And what better experience did he have than working with operant conditioning?

His solution was to train pigeons to peck at a target through a glass lens marked with crosshairs.  As long as the target was in the center of the lens, the pigeon pecked at the center and the bomb flew straight.  But if the explosive began to veer off target, the trained pigeon would peck off center (in order to hit the target it saw through the glass), altering a complicated series of mechanisms which would change the angle of the bomb's fins and redirect it towards the target.

The military actually funded a good part of this research and initial tests looked promising.  However, by late 1944 the military withdrew their funding in favor of more immediately promising technology.  The idea was revived for a short time in 1948 and paid for by the Navy but ended permanently in 1953 after computer guidance was shown to be consistently reliable.

An image of B.F. Skinner's pigeon contraption.

Still, I can't help but crack up at the idea of pigeon-headed bombs falling on enemies.  Animal rights groups would be aflutter with animal cruelty and abuse claims nowadays.  Nevertheless, I'm perversely proud of Skinner and his finally thinking "outside the box."


*Get it?  B.F. Skinner is best known for the "Skinner boxes" he used to condition his animals in his initial testing.