There is a beautiful hypothesis that the human brain has some kind of power that affects time and space. And the entire universe visually is just a product of the work of our gray matter. But, having “invented” the Universe, we have forgotten about our own significance. And they began to worship illusion - some to the Cosmos, some to God
Where do such strange ideas come from? How deep have neurophysiologists gone into the mysteries of the mind? These and other questions are answered by the director of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Doctor of Biological Sciences Svyatoslav MEDVEDEV.
More powerful than any supercomputer
- Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich, I heard that scientists still cannot answer the question: why and how do people do what they do?
- Unfortunately, we cannot. Moreover, we still do not know how the human brain fundamentally differs from the dog's brain.
- So, space, enclosed in the cranium, has not become closer for a hundred years of study?
- He became much closer, but not enough to understand him completely. We have the same problem as geneticists. In the 1990s, they decoded the human genome (a huge breakthrough!). And faced with a misunderstanding of how it all works.
We know a lot about the work of nerve cells, about the role of individual parts of the brain. Its structures providing speech, attention and other functions are described in sufficient detail. There are even approaches to the study of the brain mechanisms of creativity. We know a lot, but we probably don't know something fundamentally important.
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Here, for example, the brains of a higher ape and a human are approximately the same. But her mental development throughout her life remains at the level of a three-year-old child. Why? We are lost in conjectures …
- But at least there are assumptions?
- Completely, including fantastic ones. It’s like the brain is only the receiver of the universal mind. But such hypotheses are not based on facts. The main problem is that the brain is difficult to study - the structure is incredibly complex. It has about 10 billion neurons, each of which has 10,000 contact endings. The exchange of information from neuron to neuron goes not at the speed of light, as, for example, in a computer, but at the speed of sound in water - about 1400 meters per second. Despite this, the brain is more powerful than any supercomputer. Why? How does it all work? Unclear.
If there was a universal mind, then there would be no savages
- Nobel laureate, physiologist John Eccles argued that the brain is just a receptor through which the soul perceives the world. Do you agree?
- Rather, the brain acts as an interface (communication hub) between the ideal and the material world. Love, hate, lies are concepts from the ideal world. But they are impossible without their material carrier. So you ask me a question, and I hear the shaking of the air - this is a material phenomenon. Then the brain translates it into understanding your speech - this is ideal. Understanding your speech, I think how to answer - this is also an ideal world. And then I tell you some information - this is again material. Articulation of the mouth, movement, concussion, your perception. The interface between these actions is the brain.
- It turns out that in our head we have only a "piece of iron" that works for the input of one information and the output of another. And nothing divine?
- Not a "piece of iron", but the most complex object in the Universe - the only object known to us, capable of connecting the ideal and the material. Children prove that there is no universal reason. Those who were raised by animals. After all, these Mowgli, even after getting to people, for a long time, and sometimes forever remain savages. And if some kind of superintelligence, which endows everyone with intelligence, existed, then Mowgli, even among wolves, would become Einsteins.
- Are we generally descended from monkeys or not?
- According to Darwin, yes. But really no transitional species have been found.
- Why does a person use only 10 percent of the brain?
- This is a common delusion. Just as all muscles work in a healthy person, although not simultaneously, so in a healthy person all brain cells work. Part of the brain works in chronic alcoholics and the sick. In normal people, the brain is almost completely loaded. And, of course, not at every moment he develops maximum performance. The mode of operation is different for everyone: one is sluggish, the other is intense. And some, like Vladimir Vysotsky, use the brain in afterburner mode - to the limit of their capabilities. And they burn out quickly. Not necessarily from brain damage. The entire body burns out, although the specific reason may be different. But regardless of whether you trade in seeds or prove Fermat's theorem, not a single brain cell sleeps waiting for a person to think more, read books or, as many science fiction writers dream,evolve into a superman. The body does not need unused things.