RANDOM MUSINGS

David Eagleman has written a fantastic book called ‘The Brain.’ The book explores the workings of the most complex organ-the brain; and each page deeply provokes the reader to think. The brain is a huge system, with billions of networking connections assimilating information through our senses; and interacting with the world through the response systems. Touch, smell, sound, vision, taste, pressure, vibration are the senses which create the world. The brain is completely disconnected from the world, protected in the deep recesses of the skull. Its connection to the world are the sense organs, and the nerves which travel across to it from the periphery. Using the information which come by way of electro-chemical signals, it creates an image of the world. The reality outside is plain energy and matter and the limited slice of information which a brain receives is constructed into a limited slice of the world. The world is almost akin to being projected out there. It is interesting that Advaita says something similar. If the human beings were endowed with some other senses, the world would have been different. Some birds can sense the magnetic field of the Earth and for them, the world and reality might be completely different.

The sense organs can be amplified, replaced, or be completely done away with, as long as the brain is getting its information in a specific area and a specific network. Studies on brain injury patients and some lab experiments have shown that when sensory organs are injured, or the networks are damaged; alternative routes can be created by the brain itself which give the same sensory stimulation. In a distant future, evolution may completely do away with the peripheral organs. The author says boldly that evolution works mostly at the periphery; whereas the brain may not be so much caught up in evolutionary mechanisms. As long as the brain is getting its information about the world, it does not really care from which organ it is doing so. This is leading to some innovative technological advancements to help deaf and blind people. Similarly, the brain can be manipulated to move their paralysed limbs with the help of stimulators and robotic attachments. A stage may come when distant objects in space can be controlled through thought alone. Such ideas are now in the realm of science and not science fiction.

It is amazing that the role of the mind and intellect in creating the world has always been stressed in the Vedantic philosophy. Ramana Maharishi insisted on the mind being a wonderful organ, creating the world every time we open our eyes. Mind is the only organ which by creating the world creates misery and unhappiness. True happiness comes only when the mind and intellect are completely transcended. Swami Vivekananda said that the meeting of science and religion can happen only with Advaitic thought. This book seems to reinforce that thought.

The brain with almost a hundred billion neurons and fifty trillion synaptic connections can be considered as the most complex organ of the human body. In fact, the purpose of the rest of the body might be to keep it alive. The number of neurons in a single brain is equal to the average number of stars in a single galaxy. The connections and the network patterns are established over a lifetime and their stimulation gives rise to everything possible in the physical and the mental world. The physical objects we are actually seeing or touching are a construct of the brains. It is amazing that at birth, the neurons are disconnected and an infant brain makes connections at a rate of two million synapses every second so that by age two, the brain has a hundred trillion synapses. After this peak, the connections are pruned and pared as the person matures. The brain connections are influenced by the events in infancy and early childhood, and bad experiences can be permanently etched into the brain causing irreparable damage. It is surprising that compared to other mammals, humans have the longest incubation period in becoming independent. The early experiences play a very important role in the later blossoming.

A major understanding of the brain comes from study of brain injured patients and experiments on live subjects which may include humans. The brain shows an immense plasticity. Something as gross as removing half the brain or removing the entire connection between the right and left hemispheres may not cause any major impact in the life of an individual. Injuries to critical areas and stimulation of certain areas may evoke some deep responses like failure to register any short term memories, loss of recognition of faces, ‘seeing’ numbers as colours, and so on. Damage in some areas may lead to paralysis and death too, of course. The complexity of the human brain is beyond the comprehension of our present studies, but the future remains optimistic. Pessimism has never been a weakness of science.

The brain requires other brains to the extent that all the living beings on Earth may be considered to be a super-organism. The brain cannot live in isolation. It requires a constant interaction at a social and physical level with other brains to remain feeling alive and useful. A human being cannot grow and live in isolation, as has been proved by some drastic real life situations of solitary confinements. Empathy is a very important phenomenon where the human brain automatically feels what the other brain may perceive in good or bad situations. This becomes the basis for sympathy, charity and a sense of well-being in sharing and giving. Beyond individual survival, the brain allows social groups in a group selection to form stable civilizations and countries. Eusociality is one of the major factors in the richness and complexity of the modern world, says the author.

However, this survival advantage in forming groups has a dark side too; for every ingroup, there must exist at least one outgroup. Syndrome E is a neuropsychiatric framework of diminished emotional reactivity, which allows an individual to join a mob and indulge in repetitive violence against an identified ‘other’. There is a hyperarousal reaction where the normal reactions of empathy and moral engagements are completely overridden. This leads to extreme behaviour and perfectly normal individuals caring for their families can kill their neighbours, if identified as an ‘outgroup’. Our history is filled with such horrors too numerous to mention. The hatred towards a particular group can override all such empathies and can result in holocausts and atomic bombings. Maybe, our brain too needs to evolve further.

The author briefly explains the awake state, dream state and the deep sleep state; and the EEG (electroencephalogram-the recording of brain activity using external electrodes) changes associated with those states. The dream state can be overwhelmingly real in its feel and content. He tells the story of a Chinese philosopher, a story also told in Upanishidic philosophy, who was confused when he woke up after dreaming vividly that he was a butterfly. He questions whether he was indeed a man dreaming that he was a butterfly; or is a butterfly dreaming presently that he is a man. It is a difficulty indeed when one tries to analyse the three states of the human brain, the awake, the dream, and the deep sleep. It is amazing that the seers who wrote the Mandukya Upanishad thousands of years back focussed on these three states of the brain. The awake, dream, and deep sleep states are analysed fully and the conclusion is made that reality is beyond all the three states. The illusory state of the world, the seer, and the seen is clearly in place in this most profound philosophy consisting of only twelve verses. Unfortunately, the western philosophers and thinkers have rarely tried to study and understand these scriptures. The Ribhu Gita simply declares the mind and the world to be false and illusory.

Consciousness is one of the most difficult topics in biology evoking some strong responses from scientists, philosophers, and theologians. The sense of ‘I’ in every individual is the extremely basic definition of Consciousness. The controversy is whether this is primary as our seers insist with matter coming secondary; or secondary as an emergent property of matter-energy, which comes first. The book’s argument is clearly on the side of Consciousness being secondary.

Computational hypothesis of the brain surmises that it is not what a brain is made up of which is important, but what it does. The brain has a huge network of neurons connected in a very precise manner, but is constantly modified by the sensory input of the world. The constant communications inside the brain neurons gives rise to the property of consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property which places it as a phenomenon of the sum being more than the individual parts. The individual neurons may not be aware of the anything. The example which the author gives is that of an ant colony where each ant may be very simple in its reaction to surroundings. The author then explains that however, in an ant colony, a huge organization takes place with some very complex activities like agriculture, food finding, tracking the dead bodies and disposing them off effectively. The brain might be doing something similar. This is the basis for AI or Artificial Intelligence. If the network is important, the brain can be based on other material like silica, and the energy can come from electricity instead of oxygen. There comes this distinct possibility in the future of uploading the entire data of the brain into a computer or a chip. An immortal ‘you’ can be created and can be in theory, sent to travel huge distances across the galaxy. A time may come in the future when biology has been replicated into a new hardware and colonization of distant planets start happening. Technology is combining with brain studies at an explosive rate and many of the speculations today may become a reality in the future. AI is certainly the subject of the future.

Presently, the computers are all input in, and a response out. It does not really understand the meaning of the input or the output. It is simply reads, interprets and relays messages in zeroes and ones using logic and computational power. The brain works much more than this. Being conscious of our responses, and even lying and cheating to get rewards is the unique capacity of the brain. Though a possibility, it may be an extended time before we can create consciousness using matter-energy in our laboratories and factories.

Vedantic philosophy places matter and energy secondary. There are dedicated scientists and philosophers who are of the same opinion. The present human form is not the end of evolution. As the environmental circumstances change in the far future, the human form will also change. The Hindu philosophy has absolutely no issues with evolution. It is simply an accepted fact as far the physical matter is concerned. It is the Consciousness which is constant, beyond space, time, diversity and matter-energy. Evolution is in fact the struggle of matter to reach the state of Consciousness. In the final analysis, Advaita says that the universe is only an illusion and a superimposition on the substratum of an underlying Reality. The Universe is only a play of consciousness and does not require a god for creation.

Michael Talbot argues in his book, ‘The Holographic universe’, for a holographic nature of the Universe. It is eerily close to Vedantic thought. He makes an extraordinary claim that we create the sub-atomic particles as we go along. The human mind is creating the world as we go along as a part of the hologram! This is precisely what the great Ramana Maharishi also says- the universe is being created moment to moment and has no reality whatsoever. Hindu philosophy is entirely summed up in the quest for seeking this Consciousness or its other names: God, Brahman, Paramatman, Pure Intelligence, Awareness, Truth, Reality and so on.

Candace Pert is an American neuroscientist and a pharmacologist who has done extensive research on the role of neuropeptides in the immune system of the body. In her book, ‘the Molecules of Emotion’, she presents her views about information theory to understand the mind-body question. She says, “Information theory is a well-developed field with verifiable laws and theories that are well applicable to traditional sciences as well as to business and the humanities. The new mind-body biology has information as the bridge between mind and matter. An important law of information theory is that information transcends time and space, placing it behind the confines of matter and energy. Information is defined ‘the difference that makes a difference.’ We all perceive the world by observing differences in our sensory fields, such as varieties of taste, texture, etc. A cow grazing in a meadow and a botanist in the same meadow will perceive the green grass as something different from the sky. But for the cow, the grass means food and for the botanist, grass is a possible experimental sample. The difference that makes a difference, then, is the difference to the observer. This is a very important concept in information theory, because including the observer in the equation admits a new level of intelligence to the system. In the old metaphor, the observer is ignored to avoid any taint of subjective interference in determining reality. In the new metaphor, the observer plays an important role in defining the reality, because it is the observer’s participation that makes the difference.”

“Consciousness of the observer is the link to quantum mechanics. The difference that makes the difference, information, does not change with space and time. Information is thus independent of time and space unlike matter and energy which stays within its confines. If information exists outside of the confines of time and space, then it must belong to a very different realm from the concrete, tangible realm we think of as ‘reality.’ And since information in the form of biochemicals of emotion is running every system of the body, then our emotions must also come from some realm beyond the physical. Information theory seems to be converging on Eastern wisdom to suggest that the mind, the consciousness, consisting of information, exists first, prior to the physical realm, which is secondary, merely an outpouring of consciousness.” Although she says this is as radical as a scientist’s mind can get, it is very comfortable with the kind of science which the author is indulging in.

Anyway, Consciousness being primary or secondary is the ultimate chicken and egg question with majority of scientists firmly on the side of the latter. The book is a thought-provoker all through and each page is packed with stupendous information. The book is a must read for every person who has the slightest interest in the workings of the most wonderful organ arguably defining us-our brain.