Is he crazy?

Re “Getting inside their heads . . . really inside,” Opinion, Dec. 5

Daniel Amen’s views on brain imaging of politicians is alarming for two reasons. He treats eccentricities or human flaws as signs of brain damage. This premise is flawed and has been used to justify the horrors of psychosurgery or a dictator’s attempts to eradicate human imperfection. Second, Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) has not been proved valid because it is subject to the biases of the interpreter. By changing only one or two assumptions, a computer-generated image can be manipulated to show brain death, frontal damage, normality or hyper-normality. This is why many federal courts have barred SPECT evidence in personal- injury lawsuits or criminal trials. People need to know that a normal brain is not a perfect brain.

Manfred F.

Greiffenstein

Royal Oak, Mich.

The writer is a diplomate, certified by the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology.

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So Amen wants to peer into the brains of presidential candidates. Abraham Lincoln suffered bouts of depression, and who can attest to the brain health of Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt or, for that matter, our current president? Was Franklin D. Roosevelt paranoid when he declared war against Germany? Why stop with presidential candidates? What about our military leaders? Let’s get rid of wacky judges before they cause harm. We should definitely check the brains of schoolteachers. Maybe we should examine doctors’ brains. Start with Amen.

Anna Sklar

Santa Monica

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Although I can agree with Amen that the mental health of our president is important, I think he opens a can of worms that transcends American politics. The fact is that certain personality types are drawn to seek public office. My concern is that in the modern era of permanent media scrutiny, the pressure of the office itself is the reason for a deterioration in presidential mental health.

Our system of government already has built in fail-safes against breakdowns in presidential mental health: impeachment and constitutional succession. There is no mechanism we could put into place that can protect the public other than what we have: voting in primary and general elections.

Gil Borman

Detroit

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I applaud Amen’s attempt to link neuroscience with politics. Unfortunately, he presents his opinions as if they were established facts. He writes, “Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology” without empirical evidence to support this outlandish claim.

He also confuses correlation with causation, coupled with imprecise predictors. He states that “sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefrontal cortex activity.” True enough. But sometimes they don’t. And sometimes people with low prefrontal cortex activity do not have messy personal lives.

Even if we could locate a reliable neurological link to, say, mood disorders or “excitement-seeking behavior,” such a litmus test could easily exclude such noteworthy figures as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy from assuming important leadership roles.

Let’s focus on judging people -- including candidates for public office -- on the basis of their actions rather than on premature science and wishful thinking.

David A. Levy

Santa Monica

The writer is a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology.