Local Field Potential: The Slice and Pint in Emory Village

By James Burkett

Don ponders the union of old and new before stuffing new pizza in his old face

The recent closure of Everybody’s Pizza in the Emory Village has left a hole in some of our hearts – and all of our stomachs. Fortunately, the pizza-and-beer torch has now been passed to a new restaurant, which promises to surpass the old one in every way: The Slice and Pint.

Located in the same great spot on the Emory Village roundabout, the Slice and Pint has taken pizza and beer to a new level. First, the restaurant itself has been renovated to give it a warm, inviting feel while preserving the historical building’s old-fashioned charm. Reclaimed pecky cypress walls, a gorgeous copper bar top, and newly refinished wood floors and tables give the old place a sleek, fresh look. Even the bathrooms have been given a style upgrade worth checking out.

However, the biggest upgrade is to the menu. The new owners are totally focused on high-quality, local organic ingredients – including mozzarella made fresh in-store, local meats and local seasonal veggies. The pizzas are made using handmade dough that uses the same beer yeast they plan to use in their brewing tanks, giving it a unique and pleasantly mild sourdough taste. Their red sauce is similarly unique, with a sweet and slightly spicy taste.

The highlight of the menu is their collection of exceptional specialty pizzas, which are sized for two, making them a very good value. The swine pie is a favorite among all the guests I’ve brought: thick layers of cheese covering a delicious (though small) sampling of a North Carolina-style BBQ chicken. True carnivores might like the generous portions of meat on the Ultimate Pepperoni, or the delicious, high quality local sausage on the Riverview Farms sausage pizza. For the vegetarians among us, try the margherita to sample the house-made mozzarella, or the seasonal veggie pizza to see what they can do with whatever is growing fresh in the local area.

The Riverview Farms sausage pizza. No, we really couldn’t wait and take a photo before eating half.

They have larger pizzas per-ingredient for groups, and loners can order big slices or try one of the focaccia-bread sandwiches (the caprese is my favorite). You can also order crispy calzones with any of their toppings and sauces (which are also sized for two, and I recommend sharing for an exceptional value). I have personally tried a BBQ chicken and a pesto chicken calzone, and both were amazing. One hidden gem on the menu that you shouldn’t miss is the tater tots. These cheese-infused tots are so good you will slap Ore Ida in the face. With one of the sandwiches, $1 upgrades your side item to the tots, which is pretty much the best dollar you will spend in your life. And I’m including the Georgia Mega Millions.

After a brief wait at the beginning of the semester, S&P now has their liquor license up and running. They have a smart and well-chosen selection of 15 craft beers on tap, including numerous brews from right here in Georgia. Plus, right next door, the space that used to be the Steady Hand (and before that, a series of coffee and tea shops) is being renovated to put in their own brewery tanks, where they plan to make some in-house brews.

The only potential pitfall in the otherwise exceptional menu is the appetizers. The appetizers are very tasty, and the tater tots are tiny balls of sweet heaven. However, the appetizer portions are a little small and may catch the unwary diner off-guard.

If you’re looking for your average, run-of-the-mill grease bomb pizza, there are two other pizza places within sight of the front door. What the Slice and Pint offers is a delicious, unique taste with high quality ingredients, served in a true brewpub atmosphere.

Russ Yates

If you still need a reason to try it out, one of the new owners, Russ Yates, is an old friend of mine and a long-time home brewer. If you’re on a boring date here and short on conversation, call Russ or his partner over and ask them something about beer; they know more about brews than you know about neurons. I took advantage of our friendship to ask Russ a few questions.

Me: The old Everybody’s Pizza seemed to leave Emory Village very suddenly. What happened, and how did you come to take over their space?

Russ: The partners had a great run of almost 42 years and were just ready to retire. As one of the partners told me, he just wanted to spend some time on the beach with his grandkids. Hard to argue with that. My partner, Crawford Moran, was asked by the landlord if he would be interested in the location for a brewpub and it all took off from there.

Me: Tell us a bit about the partnership that brought us this restaurant.

Russ: I met Crawford while I was at my previous job contracting with Coca-Cola. I worked downtown at Coca-Cola headquarters for 8 years in their packaging group. Once the 5 Seasons Westside location opened up 4 years ago, I made a point to drop by every Thursday for the cask ale that Crawford would put on, and I got to know Crawford quite well over the years. I have always wanted to open a brewpub and I had talked to Crawford about it for some time as he has a wealth of knowledge pertaining to the business from his current and past experiences. Crawford and I got together and talked about the opportunity of taking over Everybody’s late last year and decided that it would be a great place to put a brewpub. The location is perfect with Emory across the street and Druid Hills all around it. Also, there isn’t another brewpub in the close vicinity, which would allow us to be THE local pub that we wanted to be for the area. Not to mention, pizza and beer just go great together. Coming from my customer focused on-site background at Coca-Cola, my focus is mainly on the front of house and making sure that all of our customers have the best experience they can possibly have. Crawford will focus on the brewery operations but I’m also looking forward to getting involved in that as well once we get the brew house up and running.

Me: What is it that makes your food unique?

Russ: We wanted to step up the average pizza offerings that many places have. First of all, we use all organic flour in our pizza dough and then we combine 2 Italian yeast strains, as well as our favorite Trappist beer yeast strain, to give it a great flavor that you will not find anywhere else. From there, we source many of our vegetables from local Georgia farms and source most of our meat from local butcher shops and other Georgia farms, including Riverview Farms and White Oak Pastures. The pepperoni we have from Heywood’s Meat Haus in Marietta is just awesome. It will ruin you for regular pepperoni. By using all of these ingredients, it makes for a better pizza that tastes better and is better for you. We will be changing up our menu on a regular basis to include the different fresh fruits and vegetables we get from our farmers.

Me: I understand you’re installing brewery tanks for making your own micro-brews. When will those be ready? Can you tell us a bit about what you will be brewing?

Russ: We are working on building out the brewery now and should have the equipment by next month. We are targeting pouring our fresh beer around the first of next year. As far as the beer goes, we will start with a Belgian golden that will use the same beer yeast strain that is in our pizza dough. We think that will really tie together the beer and pizza nicely. After that, we will have many other styles including IPA, Pale Ale, Porters and Stouts. We’ll also do a lot of seasonal beers to go along with the seasonal offerings we have on our menu. It’s fun to pair the various beer styles with our food.

Me: Out of the whole menu, what is your personal favorite?

Russ: It changes from time to time, but I’m a big fan of the Southern Pie. It has pimento cheese, fried green tomatoes and pork belly bits. We were trying to roll a classic southern dish into a pizza and it came out great. We liked it so much we even made a sandwich out of it. It’s our twist on a BLT sandwich.

Me: Are there any upcoming seasonal items that we can look forward to?

Russ: We changed up the Prosciutto & Peaches to Prosciutto & Figs, which people are loving. We just replaced our gazpacho with our chili for the fall, which uses White Oak Pasture’s grass fed beef and pinto beans. It’s perfect for the cooler days we are having now. We will also continue to change our specials menu from time to time, so always check there when you come to the pub. Our beer list will change on a regular basis too, as well as the house-made infusions we are using in our cocktails.

Me: Thank you very much, Russ!

Post your own comments and your experiences at the Slice and Pint in the comments section below. Or, if you have any questions for Russ, post them here and I might fire them off to him!

What is ENCORE?

By James Burkett and Laura Jones

James Burkett

Laura Jones

The Emory Neuroscience Candidates’ Ongoing Research (ENCORE) symposium meets for the second time in a few weeks (Tuesday, November 5) at 4:15pm in Rollins 1052. ENCORE meets the first Tuesday of every month, and two upperclass presenters share the hour to tell us a little about their work. In November, we will be hearing interesting talks from Kathy Reding in the Wilson lab and Kyle Srivastava from the Sober lab.

But you may be asking yourself, what is this ENCORE thing, exactly?

The ENCORE symposium was established in 2011 by former GIN President Ariana Mullin. It brings faculty and students together for food, beer and presentations from Neuroscience graduate students about their ongoing research. ENCORE is the Neuroscience Program’s only symposium series that is student-organized and features student presenters.

What ENCORE is for you depends a little on who you are. As a faculty member, ENCORE is your chance to meet graduate students from first to Nth-year, talk to excited first-year students still looking for labs and rotations, hear from upperclassmen still looking for post-docs and collaboration opportunities, and most of all, enjoy the end of the day in a casual social setting where you might even learn something.

As a graduate student in the audience, ENCORE is your chance to see the kind of projects your peers are working on—to see what it is your friend across the hall has actually been doing these past few years, find out what kinds of experiments your upperclassmen are conducting, meet and get to know professors outside the official realm, and share a drink and a laugh with fellow scientists.

As a graduate student presenter, ENCORE is your chance to practice a skill that will be vital to your future success – presenting your work. Tell your story, in your way, in whatever state it is in, about the work you did and the theories you hold. Take questions and engage critically with others as they think and respond to your presentation. Accept meaningful critiques and consider ways that you might need to adjust your story or your science to be more convincing. And most of all, have fun!

Not everything you see at ENCORE will be a perfect, polished story. There will be occasional talks from advanced students with exciting and complete tales to tell, but ENCORE is also a place for students to present their work en media res – as it develops – and for people to see the process as much as the result. ENCORE is not a place for the audience to judge or criticize, but for them to evaluate and critique. Engage deeply with the material, ask questions about things you didn’t understand, and offer suggestions and advice when something could be improved. For presenters, every comment from the audience is a golden opportunity to hear the questions future reviewers, readers, and interviewers will be asking you in a safe and casual academic environment, and to revise your style or your science appropriately.

So come, bring a friend, relax for a bit with fellow academics, and support our Neuroscience students. We hope to see you there!

Are you planning to run a research lab?

By James Burkett

Kerry Ressler eats breakfast like this every morning.

As a PhD graduate student, do you ever feel like you’re being trained on everything about how to run a research lab except how to actually run a lab? You’re probably not alone. Every year, the Emory Office of Postdoctoral Education runs a training workshop called “Lab Management in Academia” to teach people exactly the skills necessary to do so. Until recently, this workshop was available only to post-doctoral researchers as part of Emory’s Office of Postdoctoral Education; Emory’s training program for post-docs is among the best in the country. This leaves us graduate students in the unenviable position of wondering whether our own post-doctoral positions at other institutions will prepare us as well as Emory could.

That may change this spring. I recently spoke with Dr. Mary DeLong, Assistant Dean of Postdoctoral Education, who is in charge of organizing this workshop. She indicated that this spring, for the first time, a limited number of advanced PhD students may be allowed into the workshop on a wait-list basis. The workshop has limited space, and priority will go to post-doctoral researchers.

If you are interested in enrolling in the “Lab Management in Academia” workshop series for this Spring and are a 5th year student or above, please contact Dr. Mary DeLong at mary.delong@emory.edu. More information on this course as it becomes available can be found at www.med.emory.edu/postdoc.

The Editors welcome you to the NEW Central Sulcus online!

For nearly 10 years, the Neuroscience Program has published its newsletter, The Central Sulcus, in PDF and print format. Today, we launch the next-generation newsletter in its new online blog format!

In addition to the usual science, philosophy, art, reviews, humor, and other fascinating content, we will now be able to provide timely news and announcements. And remember, the newsletter survives only through YOUR original submissions!

Furthermore, as you can see below, we have put all 10 years of The Central Sulcus online! A decade of original articles and great content from our own students and faculty is now at your fingertips. To the right of the page, you can click on Categories to quickly see relevant content reaching back to 2004. Or, use the Tag cloud to quickly find articles related to a wide variety of topics. There is also a Search box that will help you find anything at all.

A lot of great content has been produced by our Program in the past 10 years. Some real gems have been “lost” due to the relative difficulty in sifting through the old articles. This new Blog gives you easy access to all of that old content. I encourage everyone to explore!

Finally, keep your eye out for new content, which will be added here all the time. The Editors of the Central Sulcus are very excited about the future of this blog, and we hope you are too!

— James Burkett, Jacob Billings, Don Noble, and Tyra Lamar
Editors of The Central Sulcus

A Final Letter From the Editor

By James Burkett

Originally published Spring 2013.

So you finally made it to the end, my friend, and in more ways than one. This is officially the final printed issue of the Central Sulcus.

When I started as editor-in-chief of the Central Sulcus two years ago, I knew right from the start that a printed newsletter was old hat. The format was difficult to produce, difficult to distribute, and difficult to archive. The long delays between publications made it impractical as a source of news. And as long as it took to make, it was generally consumed in days. So I decided to change the rules.

I steered the Central Sulcus away from news and information and into a forum where Neuroscience students could share their interests, their talents, and their passions. We printed reviews of restaurants, taverns, dance clubs and neighborhoods; event calendars and musical venue maps; artists’ drawings, from the stately to the irreverent; and a great deal of home-brew humor.

So as we transition to an online blog format, I would like to transition into something new as well, but not by subtracting, by adding. We will still strive to be a representation of the minds and passions of our fellow students. However, now we will be able to bring news, announcements, events, and much more to you. So thank you all, and please continue to contribute, or monkeys will raid your kitchen at night.

— James Burkett, Editor-in-Chief

Book Review: The Chemistry Between Us, by Larry Young

Review and Interview by James Burkett

Originally published Spring 2013.

Love is the one area where we are all scientists: even though we all engage in it to some extent, and we all have some knowledge about it, most of us will freely profess our ignorance. Even those of us who study behavioral neuroscience find that information flying out the window when we see our lover’s face. Can powerful, yet insubstantial emotions be explained by chemical reactions in the brain? Dr. Larry Young certainly thinks so. In his new book, “The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction,” Dr. Young and his co-author Brian Alexander delve deep into the science and the experience of love, sex, desire, and infidelity, presenting the topics in their full complexity and cutting through the controversies using what is known from decades of research on the brain.

Dr. Young’s research lab at Emory resides at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, although it is by no means limited to primates. His projects are surprisingly broad in scope, focusing mainly on the neural substrates of social attachments in monogamous prairie voles, but also including human and non-human primates, as well as rats and mice. His research ranges from developing PET ligands, to transgenics and optogenetics, to genomics, to animal empathy. Researchers in his lab seem able to dream up any project they like, so long as they have the drive to master the requisite techniques and skills.

In this book, Dr. Young makes the case that complex behaviors and emotions are driven by chemical processes in the brain, and in many cases we know quite a bit about those processes. He leads us stepwise through the evolutionary garden, where genes, hormones, life experience, and brain circuitry impact our sex, gender, personality, and desires, as well as our ability to resist those desires. Yet, the book is by no means sterile and clinical; the science is weaved into a series of stories, provocative and accessible and yet informative and surprising.

He opens by showing us the science behind sex, gender, and gender preferences, and the critical periods in development where hormones influence them. Yet he does so through a series of fascinating examples, such as the machihembra from the Dominican Republic, individuals who are born female and yet transform into fully functional males at puberty. He discusses the secrets of how female behavior, preferences, and even odor subtly change over the course of ovulation – and how males somehow detect and respond to these changes, particularly when they are at the strip club. He also talks about the objective irrationality of deciding to have children. When some (roughly half) of us eventually do become mothers, some aspects of maternal instinct are inborn – such as the innate attraction to infants that seems to appear magically during pregnancy – while others are a (perhaps unconscious) result of early life experience, such as empathy and the feeling of reward derived from motherhood.

Dr. Larry Young, Ph.D.

Dr. Young then discusses some of the most famous theories from his field – that bonding in females is derived from brain circuitry for maternal care, while bonding in males is derived from brain circuitry for territoriality. Along the journey, we learn about oxytocin and vasopressin and the suite of behaviors to which each is related across a wide range of animals, along with a few other surprising hypotheses – for instance, why human men have large penises and human women have large breasts compared to other animals. We also learn how biology and genetics conspire against sexual fidelity – and how natural and common infidelity really is. Finally, Dr. Young explores the surprisingly faithful parallels between love and addiction, and how drugs of abuse release the same neurochemicals involved in human attachment.

The book is hilarious, graphic, blunt, sometimes crass – but always entertaining. The stories are intricate and yet complete and coherent; intriguing and funny yet based on pure evidence. The text is heavy with humor and science, though sometimes light on philosophy, creating the occasional split between a person’s biology and their identity, while blurring the lines between evolution and psychology. The book will fascinate and enthrall you while it educates you.

I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Young regarding his book.

INTERVIEW:

JPB: What inspired you to write this book? What was your goal in writing it?

The monogamous prairie vole

LJY: The biggest inspiration was the research that I have been doing ever since graduate school. It started when I was a PhD student at the University of Texas working with lizards. I realized that I could manipulate their sexual behavior very exquisitely just by giving them one hormone, estrogen or testosterone. As I came to Emory studying the voles, I was again astonished and fascinated to see how individual molecules could affect behaviors as complex as pair bonding. I wanted to share that science with people who are not necessarily behavioral neuroendocrinologists, but who may be interested in how the brain creates sexual desire or love. I wanted to convey to people who are interested in science and even the lay public the principle that the mechanisms that are involved in controlling animal behavior are also playing a similar role in humans.

 JPB: How can we, as scientists, take control of the media narrative surrounding our work? Without each of us publishing our own book, that is.

LJY: When scientists write a manuscript, they should always think about, what is the public interest in this paper? Why would a non-scientist be interested in this? Then talk to the PR representatives from the University or your institution, the people who know how to get the media’s attention, and put together a press release. Don’t be bashful about trying to get your work out there. It is our job to convey to the public the importance of science, and that means reaching out to the press and communicating with them when we have things that are of public interest.

 JPB: In the book you present two parallel hypotheses regarding human bonding: that bonding in females is an extension of maternal behavior; and that bonding in males is an extension of territoriality. Are these hypotheses primarily evolutionary, or do you think they extend into human psychology as well?

LJY: They are primarily evolutionary. In the book we present these as two mechanisms of pair bonding in monogamous animals, and the relevance of this to humans is more speculative. In the evolution of new behaviors, what the brain tends to do is tap into systems that already exist for other things and tweak them a little bit. Oxytocin, which is responsible for promoting labor, for ejecting milk when the baby nurses, for maternal bonding to the baby, this same molecule is involved in bonding the female to the male. The same thing is true for males and territorial behavior. Vasopressin is involved in scent marking, aggression, and territoriality, and in voles it’s also involved in mate guarding, protecting his female partner. It’s almost as if the female has become an extension of his territory, and he will aggressively defend that female against other animals. Human males don’t think of their female partner as their territory; women don’t think of their husbands or lovers as babies; but there is that root in the biology.

JPB: In light of the studies you discuss showing that OT underlies some aspects of maternal care, what do you think of recent work showing an increase in OT in children from administering OT to parents?

LJY: That is really fascinating work that suggests that the engagement of the parents with the offspring can really stimulate the OT system. That stimulation occurs when the mother and baby, or father and baby, are having reciprocal social interactions. That stimulates the OT release, making that social interaction more reinforcing and helping to build social skills and social aptitude. It builds the brain’s knowledge of how it interacts and relate to others. This system may somehow be disrupted in diseases like autism, and these individuals can’t develop the social skills and the social reciprocity that typical kids may have. If this data is true and can be replicated, this highlights the importance of engagement of the parents or caregivers with the baby in terms of facilitating the normal development of the social brain.

JPB: In Tristan and Isolde, Wagner said that love is a sometimes-fatal chemical imbalance; and in your book you make the case that love is an addiction. If love is truly an addiction, should we be using preventative medicines when going on first dates?

LJY: No, I don’t think so, because if you do that then maybe you’re going to miss the person who’s really the perfect match for you, your soulmate. If I would have done that on my first date with my wife, maybe we wouldn’t have the wonderful life that we have together. You never know when you’re going to meet that right person and when your brain’s real chemistry is going to be kicked off to create that love. You’re right that sometimes when people fall in love, it leads them to do things that they definitely regret later, even things that everyone around them can look at and say, “why in the world is he doing that? It makes no sense.” Nonetheless, his brain neurochemistry is telling him that this is the right thing to do. But the critical thing is that sometimes that crazy thing turns out to be the right thing to do. You meet that special person that you will be really happy with the rest of your life. I would hate for someone to miss out on that because they are afraid of falling in love.

JPB: What new research are you performing along the lines of the hypotheses you present in your book?

LJY: One important aspect of our work is not so much about the neurobiology of love but how we can use our knowledge of the chemistry of social relationships to improve social functioning in social cognitive disorders. For example, in autism, schizophrenia, and some other psychiatric disorders, there is an inability to relate to others and an inability to engage in social reciprocity. We are figuring out how to exploit neurochemistry to improve social functioning and maybe to teach social skills to those who lack them. For example, we are exploring the possibility of combining OT treatment with behavioral therapies so that we can teach social skills to autistic subjects. So that’s one really important application, going from the preclinical basic science to clinical applications. That’s really the goal of the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience that I started here at Emory. But we’re also doing some other things that are very interesting. For example, we are looking at the neurobiology of consoling behavior. When the partner is injured, prairie voles for example will show increased grooming to the partner, maybe to relieve their stress. We’re exploring the neurobiology and the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in that consoling behavior. This may give us insights into the evolutionary origins of things like empathy, which we all think of as a human trait. Empathy, like love, has its origin in animal behavior.

Philosopher’s Corner: The Existence of Free Will

James Burkett and Katherine Bryant

Originally published Spring 2012.

Against free will

Free will is a messy business. No one could dispute that we go about our daily lives with an ability to make choices. The common idea of free will that most people have is of a “self” within us that chooses freely between our various options, and that our freedom of choice makes us morally responsible for our choices. Yet, this common conception ultimately turns out to be inherently contradictory.

Let’s consider the most common definition of free will: the ability to make choices free of influence or constraint. However, information itself influences us. Any relevant information that is known to us becomes a factor in our decision-making process, as does higher-order information from both rational mechanisms (reason, logic) and irrational mechanisms (emotion, intuition) of thought. The only decision which can be completely free of these psychological influences is one about which we have no information, and which is therefore completely arbitrary. A free will that can only act to make completely arbitrary decisions seems highly impoverished.

What about physical constraints? We cannot choose to fly upward into the air, or to run 30 miles per hour, or to see in the dark; those are not possible modes of operation of our human bodies. Neither can a rock choose to have a conversation. Our choices are both limited by and created by the physical matter that comprises our bodies, how it is assembled, and how those assemblies interact. Inasmuch as our consciousness is based on a physical system, the possible states of that system both limit and create the possible outcomes of rational and irrational thought. Therefore, it would seem that the only degree to which we are capable of decisions free of physical constraints is the degree to which our consciousness is based on non-physical material, such as a spirit or soul. This brings up the centuries-old dualist problem: if there is some other material that comprises our “self,” how does it interact with our physical self? In what way could such a non-material substance affect our physical substance, and if it does so, shouldn’t the effect be physically measurable?  Assuming such a “second substance” does not exist, it follows that all possible states of consciousness must be physically constrained.

Look, Heisenberg was uncertain about a lot of things, okay?

The notion that we can make choices “free of influence or constraint” has been dealt serious blows. However, there is another definition of free will, alternately known as the principle of alternative possibilities: a choice is free if it could have been otherwise. Some argue that matter itself is inherently probabilistic, and therefore a purely physical system can be uncertain, leaving open multiple possible effects of a single cause. Proponents of this view often point to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, saying that this shows that matter itself is unpredictable. However, according to Heisenberg, this is a measurement problem, not a fundamental property of the universe. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states only that momentum and position are non-commutative properties, meaning that they cannot be measured simultaneously: the more precisely one is known, the less precisely the other can be known. This is a type of observer effect, such as is seen in many areas of science, and not a source of intrinsic unpredictability for all matter.

However, even if it were the case that matter is inherently unpredictable, this would not make for a particularly desirable free will. If matter were random and probabilistic, this would mean that variation in the operation of matter due to Heisenberg uncertainty would also be random and probabilistic. A system that produces random and probabilistic choices may certainly be unpredictable, but it is not “willed” in any meaningful sense.

The very concept of free will is inherently contradictory. We imagine our will being some inherent property of our “self” that chooses our actions. We think of a choice being free if it is not determined by physical constraints. Yet our “self” is a fundamentally physical system. Thus, the concepts of “free” and “will” are mutually exclusive. You cannot have a physical system that is not bound by physical laws.

So, if we do not have free will, what do we have instead? We have a vastly complex system capable of integrating sensory information with intrinsic goal states in order to select between multiple apparently possible action plans. This system also has a sophisticated feedback capability, which allows it to reflect on past action plans and re-evaluate their effectiveness in achieving intrinsic goal states. We can make choices, transform choices into action, and reflect upon our actions, despite the fact that those choices may actually be the result of predictable physical processes. In short, we have a will that is not free.

In favor of free will

Do we have free will?  Do the physical constraints of our existence preclude “choice” in any meaningful sense?  My esteemed colleague has argued that the physicality of our brains and bodies necessarily means that all our decisions and actions are predetermined.  He argues further that choice is only free if other choices could have been made.  In this essay, I will discuss the relationship between materialism, determinism, and reductionism; different interpretations of determinism; and finally, how the relationship between mind and brain is a complex one which, in the context of a material, deterministic universe, ultimately creates what we know as “free will”.

Determinism and free will are closely linked.  Determinists believe that every causal event is predetermined.  Simply put, every event, including every particle’s movement, every planet formed, every life form that has evolved, and every human that has existed and will exist, was all set in motion from the time of the big bang. There is no ambiguity in these events; it is not possible for them to have happened any other way.  The determinist approach to the question of free will is that human decision-making is no different.  Each choice that you or I make was predetermined since the beginning of time.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860): Although you may disagree with some of his philosophical principles, you cannot argue with his hairstyle.

The 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer summarized what is known as incompatibilism, a subset of determinism, when he wrote, “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.”  Incompatibilists argue that free will is incompatible with determinism.  Schopenhauer specified that we perceive that we have free will because we approach our experience from an a priori perspective; however, when an individual reflects a posteriori, he or she should realize that free will is an illusion.

Incompatibilism lends itself quite easily to the necessarily materialistic mindset of the scientist. Thus, the inevitability of the motion of particles in the universe applies to our decision-making as well, because if the brain is made of physical material, it should be subject to the same inevitability.  As neuroscientists, we are in the business of describing the mind as the brain, and the brain as a collection of cellular and molecular processes.  If neuroscientists usually study neurons, glia, and the molecules that make up these cells, does it follow that the mind (and the origin of will) is reducible to these discrete parts?

A reductionistic approach may work for other branches of science, such as immunology or physiology, but the brain and the mind are different in important ways. We may describe the circulatory system, the immune system, or the nervous system in multiple levels of description: from molecular, genetic, and cellular levels, to networks and systems, and up to outcomes or behaviors. The important question is which level of description is appropriate for describing the properties of the mind.  Since the job of the brain is to encode information and retrieve it appropriately, and because we know this information is stored in networks, the network level is a useful place to start.

The brain operates by forming complex networks of communication between individual neurons, and the precise firing of these networks in organized patterns allows consciousness to emerge.  In addition, there are hierarchies of information, from bottom-up sensory inputs to higher-level inference and information processing.  This hierarchical information structure creates a system that is more than the sum of its parts.  You may perceive the color green and two edges, but it is your hierarchical inference that allows you to know you are looking at a blade of grass.  So while multiple levels of description are important, we should not confuse a part of the system as the system itself.  The mind is the brain, but it is also an emergent property of the brain.

Given a computer as powerful as the human brain, we might be able to simulate the decisions that a particular brain would make.  An incompatibilist would then argue that there is no free will, because we can predict its decisions: they would be identical to the original brain.  I argue instead that this brain simulation would produce the same outcomes because it is doing the same job that the simulated brain would do. Our brains and minds are part of the process of determinism, and, in fact, make manifest deterministic events.

Determinism and free will are not incompatible. Incompatibilists rely on reductionistic principles to support their position that determinism undermines free will.  However, the mind emerges from the network-level processing which occurs in our brain.  This emergence is precisely what is ignored in reductionism. Compatibilism solves this problem by demonstrating that the mind is what the brain does, and the brain’s job is to make decisions. In contrast to Schopenhauer’s assertion, a posteriori determinism does not equal a priori determinism (“fate”).  Free will is not an illusion.