International conference organized by Itzhak Fried (UCLA / Paris IAS), Alain Berthoz (Collège de France) and Gretty Mirdal (director of the Paris IAS), with the support of the Région Ile de France within the framework of the DIM Cerveau et Pensée.

Presentation

The transformation of groups of previously nonviolent individuals into repetitive killers of defenseless members of society has been a recurring phenomenon throughout history. This apparent transition of large numbers of seemingly normal, “ordinary” individuals, to perpetrators of extreme atrocities is one of the most striking variants of human behavior, but often appear incomprehensible to victims and bystanders and in retrospect even to the perpetrators themselves and to society in general.

This transition is characterized by a set of symptoms and signs for which a common syndrome has been proposed, Syndrome E (Fried, Lancet, 1997). The purpose of such designation is not to medicalize this form of human behavior, but to provide a framework for future discussion and multidisciplinary discourse and for potential insights that might lead to early detection and prevention. Individuals expressing the syndrome show obsessive ideation, compulsive repetition, rapid desensitization to violence, diminished affective reactivity, hyper arousal, group contagion, and failure to adapt to changes in stimulus- reinforcement associations. A pathophysiological model — “cognitive fracture” — was hypothesized, where hyper-aroused medial prefrontal cortices tonically inhibit the amygdala and are no longer regulated by visceral and somatic homoeostatic controls ordinarily supplied by subcortical systems. Thus, the syndrome is a product of neocortical development rather than the manifestation of a disinhibited primitive brain. The acts performed by the perpetrators are not haphazard acts of violence performed at the “heat of battle”, but repetitive automatized acts performed with affective flatness and desensitization, which have an uncanny need for mechanization and repetition that dehumanize both victims and perpetrators.

Notable manifestation of this syndrome can be found throughout history, yet its relevance is still ever present, as seen in recent massive killings carried out by various groups nowadays and in the voluntary participations of previously nonviolent individuals, including young men and women from Europe and elsewhere in these acts. The readily available almost instantaneous visual depiction of these grim phenomena by media offers an opportunity to raise societal interest and ferment systematic inquiry and potential action. Furthermore, rapid developments in cognitive and social neuroscience, along with a growing interest of society in exploring the human brain, as demonstrated recently by large initiatives by US and European governments, offer better opportunity to understand the biological roots of Syndrome E. The final common pathway of the syndrome is a single individual, a single brain, which pulls the trigger.

The Brains that Pull the Triggers, a special conference under the auspices of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, will take place for the second year at the magnificent Hotel de Lauzun in Paris and will bring together scientists and scholars from the human, social and brain sciences. The central focus of the conference is not the victims of atrocities but the perpetrators. We hope this year to have a more extensive coverage of neuroscience aspects, as well as a more clear link to roots in psychiatry and to the use of appropriate terminology from the social sciences. The aim is to increase our understanding of the perpetrator’s mind, and thus inevitably to the brain mechanisms which pull the triggers and make this most extreme and disastrous of human behavior possible. The hope is that such understanding will be useful and aid society in addressing this problem.

“Arguably the biggest challenge for interdisciplinary dialogue across the fields that consider brain and behavior…a bold and important attempt to bring interdisciplinary approach to one of the biggest questions facing humanity", Nature, 521:260, 2015 (Editorial on the First Paris Conference on Syndrome E)

Program

Monday, May 9th

Introduction:

09:00 - Gretty Mirdal (IEA Paris), Alain Berthoz (Collège de France): Introduction and welcome

09:15 - Itzhak Fried (UCLA / IEA Paris): The Brains that Pull the Triggers: Syndrome E, 2016

Empathy and Dehumanization

10:15 - Emile Bruneau (MIT): Intergroup empathy and dehumanizations: consequences, neural basis, intervention

10:45 -  Coffee Break

11:00 - Jean Decety (University of Chicago): Empathy and Morality

11:30 - Alain Berthoz (Collège de France): The question of multiple identities

12:00 - Discusion

12:45 - Lunch break

Pathology: One of us or one unlike us?

14:15 - Åsne Seierstad (Norway): Breivik and Beyond: “One of us” behind the Trigger

14:45 - David Cohen (Université Pierre & Marie Curie): The road to mass killing: a pathological process?

15:15 - Richard Rechtman (EHESS): Questioning the predictive value of syndrome-E

15:45 - Coffee Break

16:00 - Thomas Boraud (Université de Bordeaux): Syndrome E: pathological process or inheritance of evolution?

16:30 - Discussion

18:00 - Cocktail

 
Tuesday May 10th

Valuation and Violence

09:00 - Ray Dolan (University College London): Self and Other Valuation

09:30 - Mathias Pessiglione (ICM): What's wrong with the valuation system in a terrorist brain?

10:00 - Etienne Koechlin (ENS Paris): Rules and Values

10:30 - Discussion

11:15 - Coffee Break

Clinical Correlations and Parallels

11:45 - Michel Botbol (CHRU Brest): What can the clinic of “difficult” adolescents tell us about Syndrome E?

12:15 - Lionel Naccache (ICM): Is society subject to “epileptic seizures”? Communication within the brain microcosm and communication within the societal macrocosm

12:45 - Lunch Break

14:00 - Trevor Robbins (Cambridge): The Neuropsychopharmacology of Syndrome E

14:30 - Discussion

Responsibility and Intervention

15:15 - Patrick Haggard (UCL / IEA Paris): Why I didn't do it... can other people reduce individual responsibility for action?

15:45 - Ken Paller (Northwestern University): Changing hearts and minds - A perspective from memory research

16:15 - Xabier Agirre Aranburu (International Criminal Court): Obedience, Responsibility, Punishment

16:45 - Discussion

17:30 - Itzhak Fried (UCLA / IEA de Paris): Concluding Remarks