Somehow, by chance, a neurosurgeon saw in my hands a thick monograph disclosed on a page with diagrams of different models of brain functioning. He looked into the book, grinned and told me a case from his rich practice. After a complex brain surgery with removal of the tumor, the patient retained the ability to think, talk, and take care of himself. All this, in the eyes of the surgeon, testified that the work of the human brain does not obey any schemes and rules, but was, is and will forever remain a mystery of nature. Then I asked the doctor: “Has the patient returned to his former place of work (he worked as an engineer)?” - “What are you! - waved his hands my interlocutor. - Of course not.
The neurosurgeon's delusion is very typical: if, after removing a part of the brain, a person retains basic skills and abilities, then they immediately conclude that the amputated part of the thinking apparatus did not take any part in thinking, or, more simply, was, as it were, redundant, superfluous. And if we add here the supposedly scientific calculation that a person uses only 10% of neurons in his daily life, who knows where it came from and has long been walking by itself, then we can come to the conclusion of Aristotle that the brain is an organ exclusively for cooling blood.
Nevertheless, the data of neurophysiology accumulated to date clearly indicate that there is nothing superfluous in our brain and it works strictly according to the scheme. As for the observations of my interlocutor, a neurosurgeon, the clock will show the correct time without the minute and second hands. However, they will lose exactly. Likewise, any damage or removal of a part of the brain changes a person's personality. And here we get into the jungle of an even more confusing question - what is personality?
I would say that ideally a person is determined by the highest limit of creativity that a person is capable of. We all know that for different people the very range of their creative maximum and its direction are very different. From "Quiet Don" at one to the village five-wall at the other.
For the first time, as they say, "in its pure form", the question of the effect of turning off large masses of the brain on the human psyche was investigated by American psychiatrists in 1848. Then, during the blasting work, the flying scrap entered the road master Phineas Gage in the lower jaw, and left in the region of the frontal bone. The unfortunate man completely lost his left frontal lobe of the brain, but he not only survived, but even retained most of his intelligence. True, he became quarrelsome, reacted irritably to comments, was rude, capricious and indecisive, which, however, did not prevent him from building numerous projects about his own future. But, of course, he had to leave his job, and for a long time he traveled around the country with his attending physician and for the money showed himself and the ill-fated scrap.
A modern psychiatrist would diagnose Gage with frontal syndrome. However, here we are already getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start from the stove - with a diagram of how the brain works. Here it is in front of you (see diagram).
It is immediately striking that there are two roads here: a wide one, a pole, and the other - a winding path, with lanes and branches. This topography reflects the functional significance of the structures: the wide Vladimirka is a motor line, and the curved Moscow streets are a mental labyrinth.
Let's start with a straight line. It starts from the sensory cortex (SC), and ends with the motor cortex (MC), from which a motor act of any degree of complexity is triggered.
Promotional video:
The sensory cortex, like a hardworking bee, collects a variety of information from the entire receptor apparatus - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile - and sends it to the motor cortex. On the way to the MC, information passes through the parietal cortex (TC).
TK is a kind of fitting room that matches the size of the surrounding space with the size of our body. She, like a tailor, measures how far you can reach out and stand on tiptoe to reach the hanging bunch of grapes. Or how to put the forward's right foot in such a position that the ball hits exactly the “nine”. Under the influence of hallucinogens on the parietal cortex, the surrounding space becomes concave, like the lens of glasses, the arms are unnaturally stretched to the size of a garden remover, and the head can swell to such a size that it seems impossible to stick it through the door.
Unlike the poet, physiologists say: machine-like. This is how this section works mechanically (or reflexively). It is this, that is, the sensory-motor part of the brain, that is activated by hypnotists in their somnambulists. The motor cortex also works in sleepwalkers (while the rest of the cerebral cortex is inhibited), and it is extremely well-coordinated, which allows the sleepwalker to walk along the railing and cornices (and the most household ones to wash clothes and chop wood). However, in autonomous mode, the sensory-motor part of the brain is able to do only what it has learned earlier - when the whole brain is working. That is why a person can be programmed to do against his will only such an act that he has already done before in a conscious state. In other words, if a person has never fired a revolver in his life or cut people with a knife,no sorcerer will turn him into a zombie killer. The only thing that can be programmed is to use the gun as a hammer.
The sensory-motor cortex has one more property that prevents the transformation of a person into a robot. This is the so-called monotony effect, familiar to everyone from childhood on boring school lessons. Adult mankind came face to face with this problem already at a fairly mature age - at the beginning of the century, during the time of the American theorist of productivity increase Taylor and his most capable student, Henry Ford. That is, with the advent of the first conveyor lines.
In fact, what can be more boring than an assembly line for the production of, for example, shoes! I saw a heel - hit with a hammer, saw - hit, saw - hit, saw - hit … And so ten pages in small text. Can you read it to the end? I believe that already on the sixth page you will be drawn to sleep. Monotony … Or monotony, as experts say. A well-known method of fighting insomnia is based on a similar effect - counting to a thousand.
What causes monotony? The fact is that the brain has a kind of battery for feeding the waking brain - physiologists call it the reticular formation. If, for some reason, the "battery" turns off, then the brain either falls asleep or goes into shock. Under normal conditions, the sensory-motor system of the cortex is weakly connected to the “battery”. If the reflex mechanism works for a long time in a monotonous mode, that is, almost independently of the mental labyrinth (you don't need to bang a hammer on one place a lot), then the “battery” of the reticular formation, which feeds the mental labyrinth, turns off - and with it the person.
On the other hand, monotonous work was known to mankind long before the invention of the conveyor. For example, the work of galley slaves. Now it is difficult to judge how reliably it is shown in historical films, but one detail undoubtedly accompanied this exhausting and soporific hard labor - the rhythmic drumming. In addition to the apparatus of thinking, there is another “golden key”, which, like the ignition key in a car, is capable of turning on the reticular formation. His name is rhythm. Our brain is so arranged that neurons form a set of oscillatory circuits with the reticular formation, which, under certain conditions, enter into resonance. It is the motor cortex of the brain that is most sensitive to resonance, and this is not accidental.
Any of our movements has a two-phase rhythmic character: here and there, here and there … Almost all our muscles are paired, that is, each has an antagonist: flexor - extensor. Otherwise, we would look back at the shout, and then walk the rest of our lives with our heads turned. Even a weak sensory recharge, if it comes in a synchronous rhythm, is able to activate monotonous muscle activity for a very long time, almost to complete exhaustion. However, what is there to explain, anyone who has ever been to a disco knows that to a good rhythm you can jump until the morning and feel after that, if not fresh like a cucumber, then not very tired. Under the drumbeat, the Great Wall of China was built, a huge boulder was rolled through the swamps, which now serves as a pedestal for the Bronze Horseman, one might saythat the whole history of mankind was done to an encouraging rhythm. Even the oldest known agricultural implements - digging sticks of prehistoric man - were made so that when they loosened the soil, a subtle sound was heard. He stuck a stick into the ground - it rang, stuck it again - it rang again. As a result, a person entered a labor rhythm to the rhythmic purr of his weapon and could work without straightening his back all day long. And no one raised any philosophizing around this, did not build scientific theories, but worked hard in the sweat of his brow so as not to starve to death. As a result, a person entered a labor rhythm to the rhythmic purr of his weapon and could work without straightening his back all day long. And no one raised any philosophizing around this, did not build scientific theories, but worked hard in the sweat of his brow so as not to starve to death. As a result, a person entered a labor rhythm to the rhythmic purr of his weapon and could work without straightening his back all day long. And no one raised any philosophizing around this, did not build scientific theories, but worked hard in the sweat of his brow so as not to starve to death.
And only after eating a little, the person took a break and, from excessive satiety, began to dig inside himself - and why am I suddenly so tired? Has the reticular formation resonated with the cerebral neurons in my brain?
And now, after traveling along the motor line, let's go back - to the beginning of the mental labyrinth. It also starts from the sensory cortex, but from here the information for thought does not go to the parietal cortex (as in the motor area), but to the temporal lobe of the brain - the place of collection of data from different receptor zones. Here, in the temporal lobes, a single image is synthesized.
Let's say an image of an object resembling a bun comes from the visual cortex. From the auditory - the stomp and the sound of rustling leaves. From tactile receptors - injections of a dozen pins. And here you are, the image of a hedgehog is synthesized in the temporal lobe. The total number of images in the temporal cortex is a whole "Leninka". Figuratively speaking, the temple is the most educated and knowledgeable part of the brain. Some neurophysiologists believe that a person remembers absolutely everything that he has dealt with throughout his life. Allegedly, this invaluable store of knowledge is stored in the temporal library, but, alas, it lies there, alas, mainly as dead capital, because it is very difficult to extract the necessary information from there.
Everything or not everything is stored in our temporal libraries forever - this is still a big question, but something definitely settles there, and special brain structures take the trouble to extract information from there, resembling the topography of Moscow Krivokolenny Lane: temple - hippocampus - reticular battery “- temple. The hippocampus plays a key role; it surrounds the desired memory footprint with non-functioning brain regions. In fact, the hippocampus weeds information beds, leaving useful (from his point of view) information, and pulls out the side information from the focus of attention like a weed. The weeding process is by no means using agronomic methods, but rather electrical ones, according to the principle “… I cut the wires myself”. It is not in vain that the hippocampus closes in on a “battery” - it deprives unnecessary information of energy supply, and it seems to be mummified in the temporal cortex. The surviving information goes further to other formations of the brain - the amygdala and the frontal cortex.
The frontal cortex (FC) is the receptacle of our “I” (for modest people), “I” for narcissistic figures and “I I” for over-ambitious people like Julius Caesar. Let's see how the last letter of the alphabet becomes the first in the brain.
From birth, FC is pure as “tabula times”, therefore, children are characterized not by weakness of will, but by the vagueness of the goal of an unformed personality. Initially, information comes from the external environment to the FC through the temporal region, but after gaining a foothold in the FC, the memorable traces acquire the ability to live their own independent life. See the arrow on the diagram - from the hypothalamus to FC? The hypothalamus is the place where our vital needs are born: here feelings of hunger, thirst, and comfort arise. That is why the memory of how a person was once good, revived, for example, by hunger, can become a real force, pushing on any, sometimes unseemly actions.
It is here that the determinism of the materialists - they say, matter is primary, and the ideal is secondary - collapses. In most human actions, even if a street child stole a pie from a barmaid, the ideal is primary in relation to the material.
A person born in FC feels an image quite differently than a similar memorable trail in the temporal region. He is perceived as a part of his own soul, a stimulus, a goal of life. And there is nothing else left - either to look for the original outside (be it a scarlet flower or Sannikov's land), or, following the example of Captain Gray from Scarlet Sails, create a real copy on your own.
Some will call this an obsession. Well, there is nothing wrong with such a name, it would be a good idea. And at the level of the brain, the following happens: the image that has settled in FC, the “goal of life,” simply suppresses and inhibits all behavioral reactions (FC in its structure is an inhibitory structure of the brain) that are not aimed at realizing this goal. It’s like a kind of cuckoo settles in the brain. That is why the highest award for FC is the iron will of its owner, which, by the way, can bring him, as Leskov's hero with the “iron will” of Hugo Pectoralis, to a real misfortune.
What makes madmen and poets related? Both those, and others directly gush with fantasies. True, the former consider it nonsense, but the latter, in fact, call it poems, poems, sonnets. In addition to these two states of unbridled fantasy, there is a third, which is familiar not only to patients of specialized hospitals and creative individuals. This state, when the most incredible plots are scrolled in front of a person's mind's eye, is called a dream.
From the point of view of neurophysiology, all three states of the soul are united by one common state of the brain - inhibition of FC or its pathological insufficiency as a result of an illness. Schizophrenia is waking dreams, poetic or other creative inspiration is a temporary insanity, a sleeping person is crazy for an hour.
However, naked statistics can lead us far. On the principle of economy of thought, it is much easier to assume that both the genius and the madman have an increased ability to turn off their FC - each in its own measure. And this ability appears to be inherited. That is why in the family of geniuses there are so often mentally unbalanced relatives - it is just that in the latter this ability goes off scale for the generally accepted norm. After all, such a concept as a reaction rate has long been well known to geneticists.
It is possible that this mode of FC operation is not very favorable for the brain. Some genius personalities, whose work was almost completely fixated on their own imagination (for example, Gogol, Vrubel), really had to put on a strait shirt. But at the same time, practicing geniuses - engineers, military leaders, administrators - were distinguished by one hundred percent mental health.
So, we have completed a short introductory tour of the labyrinths of the brain. Let's now try to imagine what we could hear during this excursion, if the structures of the brain were able to talk to each other in Russian, and we could hear them.
Hypothalamus: “Oh. I want something … It seems to drink."
Frontal cortex: "I know where to look."
Tonsil: "Isn't it dangerous there?"
System "temporal cortex - hippocampus": "Aha, there is water!"
Sensory cortex: "We should take a mug …"
Parietal cortex: “… and reach the spring”.
Motor cortex: “Please! Drink is served."
Quite a simple situation from the category of vital, that is, vital for our body. And how many anti-monies around this were lit by the interlocutors already familiar to us! But in addition to hunger, thirst, danger, there are several dozen more motivations that push a person to certain actions that make up our life. Where do the brain structures responsible for prestige, leadership, justice, love and much, much more argue about and live?
All this is a topic for a special conversation, and here we will put an end, remembering the main thing - there is no excess in our brain, take care of it.