What Would Jesus’ Brain Look Like?      Love, Exemplars, and Brain Structures III

Jesus’ brain must have made a difference in who he was and how he loved. Recent neuroscience offers research and theories that prompt us to think anew about Jesus of Nazareth.

In previous essays, I have defined love and noted how repeated expressions of love form the lover into someone we rightly call an exemplar of love. In this essay, I look especially at Jesus as exemplar and what his brain must have been like.

Christians believe the best model of love is Jesus Christ.  Becoming like him –Christlikeness – involves expressing love. Christians rely upon God’s acting to inspire and empower them to love in response to God’s initiating – prevenient – action in their lives. They love when they “work out their own salvation,” for “God is at work within” them “both to will and to work” for God’s loving purposes (Phil. 2:12).

A lover’s relationships with others influence the forms his or her love takes. An often-overlooked dimension of a lover’s relations, however, is the lover’s own bodily conditions and constraints. In particular, neuroscience suggests a loving person’s brain plays a role in his or her expression of love.

A Damaged Brain Affects Love

Research on the brain is growing rapidly. Accounting for all of it is far beyond the scope of this essay. But I do want to mention a few studies of special significance for research on love.

At least since the famous Phineas Gage incident, neuroscientists have studied the role of the brain for morality. While working for the railroad in 1848, an explosion propelled a metal rod through Gage’s eye socket and out the top of his head. His frontal neocortical lobe was severely damaged.

Surprisingly, Gage recovered from the blast relatively quickly. Apparently due to the accident, however, he went from being reliable, efficient, and well balanced to being irreverent and unsympathetic. The post-accident Gage was capricious, indecisive, and seemingly unable to plan for the morrow. “Gage was no longer Gage,” his crewmates famously remarked.

The dominant hypothesis in neuroscience is that Gage’s character changed because he suffered neocortex damage. In the 1990s, work by neurologists Antonio and Hanna Damasio supports this hypothesis. The Damasios document a number of contemporary cases in which the neocortical neurons necessary for empathy are destroyed or rendered dysfunctional from brain damage.

Empathy and Brain Damage

In one research project, the team studied thirteen adult patients who experienced prefrontal cortex damage. The wife of one patient with brain damage testifies that her husband was caring and affectionate prior to his brain alteration. After it, however, her husband reacted with indifference when she became upset or distressed. Despite the fact that his verbal and performance IQ scores ranked in the high 90th percentiles, the husband lacked empathy. Adults with damaged frontal lobes could not employ social and emotional facts to respond sympathetically.

A second study by the Damasios and some of their colleagues analyzed two individuals in their early twenties who had suffered prefrontal neocortex damage. The damage suffered by these two occurred, however, before each reached the age of two. Although both performed normally on standard measures of cognitive performance, both showed signs of deficient behavior control and poor peer interaction. Neither demonstrated a sense of guilt or remorse for actions that would seem obviously immoral to others.

Hanna Damasio concludes that after damage to this portion of the brain, “empathy, as well as emotions such as embarrassment, guilt, pride, and altruism, is not evoked. Consequently, personal and social decisions become defective.”

“Without the prefrontal cortex,” Damasio says, “empathy, along with other adaptive social behaviors, becomes impaired.” Various regions of our brains may influence our capacity to empathize well with others, but these studies show that the neocortex is especially important for some forms of empathy.

If empathy is one we respond to others when choosing to love, the lack or severe restriction of empathy will influence the kind and complexity of love we can express. If damaged segments of the brain can restrict one’s capacity for empathy – which the story of Phineas Gage and Damasio studies suggest – a healthy and well-functioning brain seems essential for at least some forms or expressions of love.

The issue brain damage brings to the fore intriguing questions.  For instance, how much of the brain can be damaged before we no longer think it plausible that a person acts intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote overall well-being?  Are some forms of love possible that do not require complex expressions or even the capacity for empathy? These questions have not been afforded sufficient empirical research.

Intentional Activity Changes our Brains

While some neuroscience research suggests that damage to the brain constrains the kinds and forms of love possible, other research suggests that our experiences influence brain structure.

One of the more interesting studies pertains to the brains of London cab drivers. In a study of the brain size – specifically the hippocampus portion, researchers discovered that the complex thinking required for driving a cab apparently generates a larger brain in cab drivers than in the average person. Researchers also found a correlation between the size of some brain regions and the length of time a cabdriver’s tenure.     

Taking this very small sample of neuroscience research and the issues of love and exemplars suggests some preliminary conclusions. First, the work on brain damage suggests that while moral exemplars may not have higher IQs than others, they at least have functioning brains. Damage to the brain does not negate entirely the capacity to love. But severe damage apparently restricts some capacities to empathize and therefore the forms of love that require these types of empathetic response.

The brief neuroscience research mentioned suggests, secondly, that the loving done by exemplars – which is intentional and entails at least some cognitive employment – has a direct effect on the activation of areas in the exemplar’s brain. It may even be habitual love and repeated loving practices influence the size and structure of a lover’s neural network. More research would obviously need to be done, of course. 

I suggest that a research program be undertaken to compare the brains of those who are known to have developed habits and characters of love – i.e., exemplars – be compared with those who did not love consistently nor develop loving characters. 

Obviously, criteria would be needed for deciding who developed a loving character and who did not. But the testimonies of those who knew well both types of persons – those consistently loving and inconsistently loving – could serve as verification of the legitimacy of the specimens in this research program.

Jesus’ Brain Makes a Difference

And all of this has implications for what we might think Jesus’ brain would be like. It seems likely that Jesus’ brain would have been fully functioning and therefore similar to our brains in many ways. For instance, if Jesus expressed the kind of empathy that John suggests when Jesus heard of Lazarus’s death (Jn. 11:35), he must have had functioning brain supportive of robust empathy. 

It may also be that Jesus’ repeated expressions of love – most Christians would confess that his sinlessness included loving perfectly from birth onward – would shape the physical structure of his brain. And perfect love from birth onward would mean his brain would be unlike any other human brain. Various neural networks and portions of Jesus’ brain must have been unique only to him.  All others would have intentionally not chosen to promote overall well-being at least once in their lifetimes (Rm. 3:23).

In sum, the one whom Christians consider exemplar of all exemplars – Jesus Christ – must have had a brain both similar and dissimilar to our own.

Of course, we don’t have access to Jesus’ brain to know any of this. But it may still matter.  After all, Christians typically want to avoid the Docetic error of considering Jesus’ physical dimensions unimportant for theology and anthropology. Regarding Jesus’ human aspect unimportant has been deemed heretical by the Church.

In addition, were exemplars to possess neural structures significantly different from nonexemplars, it might give new meaning to Jesus’ phrase that you know the character of a person by the fruit generated by his or her life. Such fruit might be judged by both moral and neural measurements!

Conclusion

What would Jesus’ brain look like? We obviously don’t know.  But the witness of Scripture suggests that Jesus loved perfectly from birth onward. And biblical authors call Christians to emulate Jesus, their perfect exemplar.

In the imitating of Jesus, Christians develop loving characters as they repeatedly respond well to God’s empowering and inspiring call to love. Their brains play a role in this responding. And the brains of virtuous people may actually end up “wired” in particular ways.

Those who love others may not only have the mind of Christ Jesus (1 Phil. 2:5), they may also develop brains that look similar to Jesus’ brain.