The rotting flesh, the shuffling walk, the unintelligible groans — it's
not hard to spot a zombie at a glance even among the most gruesome of
Halloween monsters. But what's going on inside their brain?
Based on fictional accounts of the undead creatures' bizarre behavior, several prominent
scientists have taken a crack at the mystery.
Neuroscientists Bradley Voytek, of the University of California, San
Diego, and Tim Verstynen, of Carnegie Mellon University, are both avid
zombie fans. Back when they were in graduate school together, they would
sit around watching zombie movies and got to thinking about what causes
zombies to behave as they do.
"We mocked up what a zombie brain would look like," Voytek said, and
"it kind of took off." Voytek calls it a way of getting people to
accidentally learn something about the brain.
Diagnosing a zombie
Broadly speaking, zombies can be either slow zombies (think the
original "Dawn of the Dead") or fast zombies (à la the film's 2004
remake). Slow zombies shuffle in an uncoordinated manner and can't open
doors, suggesting a problem with the cerebellum, Voytek said. This
region at the back of the head, known as the "little brain," plays an
important role in coordinated movements. Tasks such as picking up a
quarter on the ground are actually really hard, Voytek said. "We still
can't get robots to do this."
All zombies — fast ones included — seem to have poor memory and lack the ability to plan as a group.
"They don't really have any social skills," Voytek said.
They also lack cognitive control — there's no delaying the
gratification of warm human flesh. These symptoms suggest their frontal
lobes probably aren't functioning correctly, Voytek said. In animal
studies, cutting connections to the frontal lobes causes lots of
problems, he added.
