We think that the brainrules our decision-making process but it's pretty clear from operations like this that our guts have a very profound effect on how we behave.
Under Jewish and Islamic law, animals for slaughter must be healthy and uninjured at the time of death, which rules out driving a bolt into the brain - though some Muslim authorities accept forms of stunning that can be guaranteed not to kill the animal.
Under the cover of the Basel rules, RBS and the Rock took the kind of risks that no investor with half a brain would ever take (is it an unusual occurrence for the value of investments to fall by 2%?).