More than 2,000 years ago, the semi-mythical father of medicine, Hippocrates of Kos, puzzled the thinkers of his day with a bold statement about the nature of human consciousness. In response to supernatural explanations of the manifestations of the psyche, Hippocrates insisted that "from nowhere else, except from the brain, come joys, pleasures, laughter and rivalry, sorrow, despondency, sorrow and lamentation." In the modern era, Hippocrates could have expressed his thoughts in a single tweet: "We are our brains." And this message perfectly resonates with the latest trends to blame the brain for everything, to redefine mental deviations as brain diseases and, already in a futuristic light, to imagine improving or preserving our lives by preserving the brain. From creativity to drug addiction, hardly one aspect of human behavior can be foundnot related to the work of the brain. The brain can be called the modern replacement for the soul.
But somewhere in this romantic perception lies the most important and fundamental lesson that neuroscience must teach: our brains are purely physical entities, conceptually and causally embedded in the natural world. Although the brain is essential for almost everything we do, it never works alone. Its function is inextricably linked with the body and its environment. The interdependence of these factors is hidden under a cultural phenomenon that Alan Yasanoff, professor of bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls "cerebral mysticism" - an all-pervading idealization of the brain and its extreme importance that protects traditional ideas about the differences between the brain and the body, free will and the nature of thought itself. …
This mysticism is expressed in various forms, from the ubiquitous depictions of supernatural and supercomplex brains in science fiction and popular culture to more balanced and scientifically based concepts of cognitive functions that explain inorganic qualities or enclose thought processes in neural structures. "All ideas are born in the brain." "Thought shapes reality." "The moon does not exist until you look at it." This idealization is very easily given to both mere mortals and scientists, fits perfectly into the point of view of materialists and confessors. Cerebral mysticism fuels interest in neuroscience - and that's a good thing - but also limits our ability to analyze human behavior and solve important problems in society.
Is the brain a computer?
We say that the brain is a computer, to some extent. Or the computer is the brain. The widespread analogy between the brain and the computer makes a powerful contribution to cerebral mysticism, as if separating the brain from the rest of biology. The striking difference between the machine-like brain and the soft, chaotic mass ("meat") that exists in the rest of our body draws the dividing line between the brain and the body, which was noted by Rene Descartes. By proclaiming his eternal “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes placed consciousness in his own universe, separate from the material world.
And while the brain reminds us of a machine, we can easily imagine its separation from the head, preservation in eternity, cloning or sending into space. The digital brain seems as natural as the detached Cartesian spirit. It is perhaps no coincidence that the most influential inorganic analogies for the brain have been presented by physicists who, in their old age, plunged into problems of consciousness in the same way that older people go to religion. This was John von Neumann; he wrote Computer and the Brain (1958) shortly before his death (1957), revealing to the world this strong analogy at the dawn of the digital age.
The brain is definitely somewhat similar to a computer - after all, computers were designed to perform brain functions - but the brain is much more than the intertwining of neurons and electrical impulses that travel through them. The function of each neuroelectric signal is to release small amounts of chemicals that help stimulate or suppress brain cells in the same way that chemicals activate and suppress functions such as glucose production by liver cells or immune responses by white blood cells. Even the electrical signals from the brain themselves are products of chemicals, ions, that enter and exit cells, causing tiny ripples that travel independently through neurons.
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It is also easy to distinguish relatively passive brain cells from neurons, which are called glia. They are roughly equal to the number of neurons, but they do not conduct electrical signals in the same way. Recent experiments in mice have shown that manipulating these boring cells can have profound effects on behavior. In one experiment, a group of scientists from Japan showed that targeted stimulation of glia in the cerebellar region can lead to a response similar to the changes that occur during stimulation of neurons. Another notable study found that transplanting human glia cells into the brain of mice improved the learning ability of animals, in turn demonstrating the importance of glia in altering brain function. Chemicals and glia are inseparable from brain function, like wires and electricity. And when we become aware of these soft elements, the brain becomes more like an organic part of the body than an idealized central processing unit, which is stored under glass in our skull.
Stereotypes about brain complexity also contribute to the mysticism of the brain and its separation from the body. The famous cliché calls the brain "the most complex thing in the known universe", and if "our brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would not be able to understand it." This opinion is primarily due to the fact that the human brain contains about 100,000,000,000 neurons, each of which forms about 10,000 connections (synapses) with other neurons. The dizzying nature of such numbers makes people doubt that neuroscientists will ever be able to solve the riddle of consciousness, let alone the nature of free will that lurks in one of these billions of neurons.
But the sheer number of cells in the human brain is unlikely to explain his extraordinary abilities. The human liver has about the same number of cells as the brain, but the results are completely different. The brain itself comes in many different sizes, and the number of cells in it also changes, somewhere more, somewhere less. Removing half of the brain can sometimes cure epilepsy in children. Commenting on a cohort of 50 patients who underwent the procedure, a team of physicians from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore wrote that they "were horrified at the apparent retention of memory after removing even half of the brain, and the retention of a sense of personality and humor in children." Obviously, not all brain cells are sacred.
If you look at the animal world, the large range of brain sizes has absolutely nothing to do with cognition. Some of the most cunning animals - crows, magpies and jackdaws - have brains that are less than 1% human in size, but still exhibit far more advanced cognitive abilities in some tasks, even compared to chimpanzees and gorillas. Behavioral studies have shown that these birds can make and use tools, recognize people on the street - something even many primates cannot. And animals with similar characteristics also differ in brain size. Among rodents, for example, you can find an 80-gram capybara brain with 1.6 billion neurons and a pygmy mouse brain weighing 0.3 grams with fewer than 60 million neurons. Despite such differences in brain size,these animals live in similar conditions, exhibit similar social habits, and show no obvious differences in intelligence. While neuroscientists are just beginning to grope brain functions even in small animals, this clearly demonstrates the popular brain hoax due to its abundance of components.
Talking about the brain's machine qualities or its incredible complexity removes it from the rest of the biological world in terms of its composition. The separation of the brain and body exaggerates the distance between the brain and the body in terms of autonomy. Cerebral mysticism underscores the brain's reputation as a control center that is connected to the body but still detached.
Of course it is not. Our brains are constantly bombarded with sensory inputs. The environment transfers many megabytes of sensory data to the brain every second. The brain has no firewall against this onslaught. Brain imaging studies show that even subtle sensory stimuli affect areas of the brain, from low-level sensory areas to parts of the frontal lobe, a high-level region of the brain that is enlarged in humans compared to other primates.
The brain depends on nerve stimuli
Many of these irritants directly control us. For example, when we look at images, visual details often grab our attention and make us look at certain patterns. When we look at a face, our attention automatically switches to the eyes, nose and mouth, subconsciously highlighting them as the most important details. When we walk down the street, our attention is guided by environmental stimuli - the sound of a car horn, flashes of neon lights, the smell of pizza - all of which guide our thoughts and actions, even if we are not aware of it.
Even lower under the radar of our perception are environmental factors that slowly affect our mood. Seasonal periods of low light are associated with depression. The phenomenon was first described by South African physician Norman Rosenthal shortly after moving from sunny Johannesburg to the gray, north-smelling United States in the 1970s. The colors of the environment also affect us. Despite many hoaxes on this topic, it has been proven that blue and green colors cause a positive emotional response, and red - a negative one. In one example, researchers showed that participants performed worse on IQ tests with red marks than with green or gray ones; another study found that creativity tests performed better with a blue background than with a red background.
Body cues can influence behavior as strongly as the environment, again questioning idealized concepts of brain superiority.
A surprising find in recent years has been the fact that microbes living in our internal organs also take part in determining our emotions. Changing the microbial population in the intestines by eating food rich in bacteria or a so-called fecal transplant can be anxiety and aggression.
This demonstrates that what is happening to the brain is largely intertwined with what is happening with the body and environment. There is no causal or conceptual boundary between the brain and its environment. Aspects of cerebral mysticism - the idealized view of the brain as inorganic, super-complex, self-sufficient and autonomous - falls apart when we study closely how the brain works and what it is made of. The integrated involvement of the brain, body and environment is what separates biological consciousness from the mystical “soul,” and the implications of this distinction are profound.
Most importantly, cerebral mysticism contributes to the misconception that the brain is the main engine of our thoughts and actions. As we strive to understand human behavior, mysticism encourages us to think first about the reasons associated with the brain, and only then - outside the head. This forces us to overestimate the role of the brain and underestimate the role of contexts.
In the criminal justice arena, for example, some writers believe that crimes should be blamed on the brain of the perpetrator. Often reference is made to the case of Charles Whitman, who in 1966 carried out one of the first mass shootings in the United States at the University of Texas. Whitman talked about psychological distress that manifested itself months before the crime, and autopsy later revealed that a large tumor had grown near his amygdala in his brain, which affected stress and emotion management. But while brain accusers may argue that Whitman's tumor should be blamed for a crime, the reality is that Whitman's actions were driven by other disposing factors: he grew up with an abusive father, survived his parents' divorce, and was often rejected from employment and from him. there was access to weapons as a military man. Even the high temperature on the day of the crime (37 degrees Celsius) could affect Whitman's aggressive behavior.
Blaming the brain for criminal behavior avoids outdated principles of morality and retribution, but it still leaves out the wide network of influences that can contribute to any situation. In the current debate about violent incidents in the United States, it has become very important to maintain a broad view of the multiple factors at work for the individual: mental health problems, access to weapons, media and community influences all contribute. In other contexts, addiction to drugs or childhood trauma is also worth considering. In any case, an idealized view of the brain that is supposedly to blame for everything would be short-sighted. A combination of brain, body and environment works.
Cerebral mysticism is of particular importance to how our society tries to cope with the problem of mental disorders. Because there is a broad consensus that mental disorders are defined as brain disorders. Proponents of this theory argue that this puts psychological problems in the same category as fever or cancer, diseases that do not elicit the social responses usually associated with psychiatric illnesses. There is even an opinion that the very definition of such diseases as "brain disorders" lowers the barrier at which healthy patients will seek treatment, and this is important.
In other respects, however, reclassifying mental problems as brain disorders can be problematic. Patients who associate mental problems with internal neurological defects are already stigmatized by themselves. The thought that their brains are imperfect and damaged can be devastating. Biological defects are more difficult to fix than moral ones, and people with mental disorders are often viewed as dangerous or even inferior. The attitude towards schizophrenics and paranoids does not improve from year to year, despite the growth of methods of mitigating the course of their mental states.
Regardless of the social consequences, blaming the brain for causing mental illness can be scientifically incorrect in many cases. While all mental health problems involve the brain, the underlying factors in their occurrence can be anywhere. In the 19th century, sexually transmitted syphilis and pelagra caused by vitamin B deficiency were the main reasons for the growth of hospital patients in Europe and the United States. A recent study found that 20% of psychiatric patients have physical disabilities that can cause or worsen mental health; among them are problems with the heart, lungs and endocrine system. Epidemiological studies have found a significant relationship between the manifestation of mental problems and factors such as the status of ethnic minorities, births in cities and births at certain times of the year. While these relationships are not easy to explain, they highlight the role of environmental factors. We must listen to these factors if we are to effectively treat and prevent mental disorders.
On an even deeper level, it is primarily cultural conventions that constrain the concept of mental illness. For just 50 years, homosexuality has been classified as a pathology, a deviation, in the authoritative collection of mental disorders by the American Psychiatric Association. In the Soviet Union, political dissidents were sometimes defined on the basis of psychiatric diagnoses that would terrify most modern observers. Nonetheless, sexual preference or an inability to bow down to authority in a righteous pursuit are psychological traits for which we may well find biological correlates. This does not mean that homosexuality and political dissidence are head problems. This means that society, not neuroscience, defines the boundaries of normality that define the categories of mental health.
Cerebral mysticism exaggerates the contribution of the brain to human behavior, and in some cases also paves the way for the great role of the brain in the future of humanity itself. Technophilic circles are increasingly talking about “hacking the brain” to improve human cognitive abilities. Instantly there is an association of hacking a smartphone or a government server, but in reality it looks more like a hack with a master key. Early examples of brain hacking included the destruction of parts of the brain, such as in the now defunct procedures that inspired Ken Kesey to create One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962). The most advanced hacks in the modern brain involve the surgical implantation of electrodes to directly stimulate or read brain tissue. These interventions can restore basic function in patients with severe movement problems or paralysis - an amazing feat that is a mile away from improvements in normal ability. However, this does not stop entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or DARPA from investing in brain-hacking technologies in the hope of one day creating a superhuman brain and connecting it to a machine.
Is it possible to separate the brain from the body?
Much of this discrepancy is the product of an artificial separation between what is happening inside the brain and beyond. Philosopher Nick Bostrom of the Institute for the Future of Humanity notes that “the best benefits you can get from brain implants are the same devices outside of the brain that you can use instead of natural interfaces like those eyes to project 100 million bits per second straight to the brain. " In fact, these "brain enhancers" are already stuffed into our pockets and on our desks, giving us access to improved cognitive functions like a powerful calculator and additional memory without touching neurons at all. What a direct connection of such devices to the brain will add to us, besides irritation, is another question.
In the medical world, early attempts to restore vision in the blind through the use of brain implants quickly shifted to less invasive approaches, including retinal prosthetics. Cochlear implants, which restore hearing in deaf patients, rely on a similar strategy of interacting with the auditory nerve rather than the brain itself. And if you don't take very limited patients in movement, prostheses that restore or improve movement also work as interfaces. To give the amputee control over a mechanized artificial limb, a “targeted muscle reinnervation” technique is used, which allows doctors to connect the peripheral nerves of the missing limb to new muscle groups that communicate with the device. Exoskeletons are used to improve motor function in healthy people,which communicate with the brain through indirect, but evolved channels. In each of these cases, the natural interactions of the brain with the human body help people use prostheses, and form a direct connection between the brain and body.
The most extreme trend in futuristic brain technology is the pursuit of immortality through the posthumous preservation of the human brain. Two companies are already proposing to extract and preserve the brains of dying "customers" who do not want to rest in peace. The organs are stored in liquid nitrogen until the technology becomes sophisticated enough to regenerate the brain or "download" consciousness into a computer. This aspiration brings cerebral mysticism to its logical conclusion, fully and completely welcoming the logical error that human life is reduced to the function of the brain and that the brain is only a physical embodiment of the soul, free of meat.
While the pursuit of immortality by preserving the brain does little harm to anything other than the bank accounts of a few people, this persecution also highlights why demystifying the brain is so important. The more we feel that our brains contain our essence as individuals, the more we believe that thoughts and actions simply stem from a piece of meat in our head, the less sensitive we become to the role of society and the environment, and the less we care about culture and its resources.
The brain is special not because it embodies the essence of us, humans, but because it unites us with our environment in a way that no soul could. If we value our own experiences, our experiences and impressions, we must protect and strengthen the many factors that enrich our lives, both inside and outside. We are much more than just brains.
Ilya Khel