Such wonders! The tool’s first wonder is how we can “see” a brain at work by detecting tiny magnetic differences outside the skull due to blood inside the brain that contains more or less oxygen. (Yes, oxygen is weakly magnetic.) The second wonder is how oxygenated blood’s magnetic signals reveal where the brain is busiest. Science has developed maps of very specific tasks done in distinct areas of the brain, shown by the oxygen contents. A given part might work on sights, moving your fingers in a Cat’s Cradle string game, tracking words, combining clues, booing, or laughing with glee. Separate parts of the brain have formal names like “hippocampus”.

A researcher figured that the tool and map of the brain might let us delve more deeply into voters’ impressions than mere policy analyzers. Political studies with fMRI began, it appears, in the tough race of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry for president in 2004. Researchers were a small group at Emory University led by Psychology Prof. Drew Westen, a self-described Democrat.

The team recruited 15 staunch Democrats and 15 staunch Republicans and tested their logic. The team customized six pairs of quotes matched with candidate Bush, six pairs with candidate Kerry, and six with someone else like Tom Hanks. Each pair of “quotes” purposely contained clear inconsistencies between an icon’s words and deeds.

Then each partisan was given a statement that might explain away the discrepancy. Each was asked to reconsider and again rate whose quotes were too “dodgy” to be fair. The test used fMRI to see how each of the staunch partisans would deal with these contradictions (sorts of “lies”).

The big news was that political brains for either side mirror the same twisty verdicts.

Republicans had no trouble spotting the contradictions in Tom Hanks’s quotes. The same Republicans had no trouble spotting the contradictions in Democrat Kerry’s words. In both cases, researchers could watch the high-oxygen blood busy in brain sites used for logic.

Yet, the same Republicans saw no contradictions in their party’s hero, Bush. Nor could they hope to do so. The researchers saw that brain activity was less busy at the logic sites. Most of the brainwork (and oxygen) moved to emotion sites that spewed disgust with their “errant” rival.

When the same tests were run with 15 staunch Democrats, the fMRI tool saw the effects of party banners.

The Left saw their party’s hero, Kerry, the same as the Right saw Bush. That is, party devotees perceived no major contradictions in their party’s leader. Neither set of rivals acknowledged this shift in their focus. This shared loss of insight is built into the human brain itself. Our self-esteem is vital, so our brains “help” us out when bad news threatens our party. Science reports on this “meeting of the minds”.

I wrote a column on this subject in the Los Alamos Monitor in 2006. I wrote on the subject in the Los Alamos Daily Post in 2015 and again in 2018. As you might guess, all the while fMRI has been continually improved for a range of uses. Uses include brain surgery, neural psychiatry, and studied mindsets. See, for example, Cornell fMRI Laboratory.

As rivals do, Democrats and Republicans choose words that boost their own spirits. Nonetheless, I do believe that the title of Democrat Drew Westen’s 2007 book fairly describes the “shadowy functions of rivals”. His book title is: “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

Head for the long and short of it: The whole story is always more elusive than anyone’s words can fully tell. Be aware of untold facts.