In this TED talk, Rebecca Saxe describes her scientific work research on the part of the brain called the right temporo-parietal junction, or the RTPJ for short, which is used solely in making judgements on what other people are thinking. In her presentation, she specifically talks about the development of the RTPJ and how our moral judgements of other people's actions can change as we go from children to adulthood, and how they can also change through the use of magnetic pulses that scramble the neurons in the RTPJ.
What I liked most about Rebecca's presentation was that it was very straight-forward. She used empirical data from her experiments to support her claims, and the videos of the children made her assertions very strong and clear-cut. I actually found the videos of the children to be the best part, not only because they were entertaining and enjoyable to watch, but because they proved her hypothesis on the RTPJ so well; that there really is one part of the brain that controls our thoughts on other people's thoughts, and this is proven through the development of that part as humans get older. The demonstration of the magnetic pulses was also very interesting, and the speaker at the end which asked the question of the possible implications of that technology took the words from right out of my mouth. But Rebecca had a good answer. She said that while using the pulses, she is not changing the defendant's mind, but merely the jury's. And she even said it herself, that this is a fairly new field of science that has not yet been explored, and it leaves me wondering just what will become of it in the future.
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