The Brain: The Story of You

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Who Will We Be? - Now it's time for speculation - plug and play devices into the brain to take care of handicaps; sensory augmentation; keeping the brain in suspended animation; uploading one's consciousness into a computer; artificial intelligence... science fiction? Maybe. Like space travel was science fiction once upon a time. Research is ongoing in all these areas, with exciting possibilities opening up every day. Brains have traditionally been studied in isolation but that approach overlooks the fact that an enormous amount of brain circuitry has to do with other brains. We are deeply social creatures. From our families, friends, co-workers and business partners, our societies are built on layers of complex social interactions. All around us we see relationships forming and breaking, familial bonds and the compulsive building of alliances. The Brain: The Story of You is a book about the brain, and the entity that lives inside it: you. It is a tale of both the hardware and the software of the brain, and about the danger of considering it in those terms alone. It talks about the machine, and speculates on when the ghost enters it. And all this is done in the spirit of scientific enquiry, with plenty of real-life examples. After the Holocaust, Europe got into the habit of vowing “never again”. But between 1992 and 1995, during the Yugoslav war, more than 100,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Serbians. One of the worst events of the war was in Srebrenica in July 1995 when, over the course of 10 days, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims — known as Bosniaks — were shot and killed. They had taken refuge inside a United Nations compound after the town was surrounded by siege forces. But on July 11, the UN commanders expelled the refugees from the compound, delivering them into the hands of their enemies. Women were raped, men were executed, and children were killed.

A magical, mystical tour of the brain showing how life shapes your brain and your brain shapes your life.” – Parade Genocide is only possible when dehumanisation happens on a massive scale. The perfect tool for this is propaganda. It keys right into the neural networks that understand other people, and dials down the degree to which we empathise with them. We’ve seen how our brains can be manipulated by political agendas to dehumanise other people, but is it possible to programme our brains to prevent this?Our drive to come together into groups yields a survival advantage — but it has a dark side. For every in-group, there must exist at least one outgroup Couples married for a long time begin to resemble each other. The longer they’ve been married, the stronger the effect Despite all this very impressive progress which Eagleman dutifully records, it has to be pointed out that neuroscience has so far achieved only a very limited understanding of how the brain actually works. Neural correlation especially has enabled a very thorough identification of areas responsible for a wide range of human behaviour, psychological as well as bodily. But whereas we now know much of what the brain does and where within itself it does what it does, neuroscience has yet to account for how it does what it does, an explanation for consciousness, the ‘hard problem’ par excellence, remaining totally elusive. Why? Because the holy grail of neurological research – getting to grips with the brain’s internal software, no less – has yet to be achieved. In these circumstances, it’s perhaps little exaggeration to say that its practitioners can be likened in some ways to a band of stone age people who, suddenly finding an abandoned car in the desert with the key still in the ignition, start playing with the dashboard controls, pressing switches, turning knobs and pulling levers, carefully noting as they do so that various lights come on and certain engine noises can be heard, some of which dim or stop when, after popping the bonnet, they yank out the odd cable, unscrew a few caps or drain a fluid reservoir. Do they have a clue about internal combustion, let alone electricity? No way. He is a gifted educator with considerable communication skills… Eagleman is a convincing tour guide, and his unstated goal of being an ambassador of neuroscience — a public intellectual taking on subject matter some may consider too esoteric or controversial for widespread dissemination — is laudable in a time when so much new knowldge may prove valuable to society.”– Neurology Today Eagleman concludes with a fascinating exploration of the way in which we might use technology to enhance our bodies and lengthen our lives. While it may not be apparent to us, we have already begun to use technology to enhance what our bodies can do. For example, cochlear implants, which provide those who are deaf with a sense of hearing, are a way in which we have shown that our brains and technology can work together. While the human brain cannot be explained entirely by a computer model, Eagleman explores how human-like robots, brain simulations, and attempts to “upload” our brains may all contribute to an understanding of the brain, and of how we can use technology to preserve ourselves for a long time.

However, people still co-operate irrespective of kinship. That observation leads to the idea of “group selection”. If a group is composed entirely of people who co-operate, everyone in the group will be better off for it. On average, you’ll fare better than other people who aren’t very co-operative with their neighbours. Together, the members of a group can help each other to survive. Author David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, writer, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substitution.What does your brain need to function normally? Beyond the nutrients from the food you eat, beyond the oxygen you breathe, beyond the water you drink, there’s something else, something equally as important: it needs other people. Normal brain function depends on the social web around us. Our neurons require other people’s neurons to thrive and survive. This ranks as the most fascinating and unsettling science series of the year, setting out the state of contemporary research into the human brain in terms that any interested layperson can comprehend.” – OC Register

So what is reality? It’s like a television show that only you can see, and you can’t turn it off. The good news is that it happens to be broadcasting the most interesting show you could ask for: edited, personalized, and presented just for you. Although humans are competitive and individualistic much of the time, we spend quite a bit of our lives co-operating for the good of the group. This has allowed human populations to thrive across the planet and to build civilisations — feats that individuals, no matter how fit, could never pull off in isolation. Writing a popular science book (I won't use the abhorrent term "pop science") is a dicey affair. If it becomes too scientific, it is not likely to be popular; but if it dumbs the science down too much, it tends not to be taken seriously by discerning readers. So the writer of such a tome has a tough time, striking exactly the right note - that is why very few people succeed in this field. David Eagleman is one such, and this book is gem.

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Eagleman’s writing style is easy on the “brain”. His goal is to educate the general public and he succeeds. A fascinating look at Syndrome E and its repercussions. “Syndrome E is characterized by a diminished emotional reactivity, which allows repetitive acts of violence.” “Genocide is only possible when dehumanization happens on a massive scale, and the perfect tool for this job is propaganda.” As we grow, our social challenges become more subtle and complex. Beyond words and actions, we have to interpret inflection, facial expressions, body language. While we are consciously concentrating on what we are discussing, our brain machinery is busy processing complex information. These operations are so instinctive, they’re essentially invisible. But in every moment of our lives, our brain circuitry is decoding the emotions of others based on extremely subtle facial cues.

Full of interesting facts spruced throughout the book. “As many as two million new connections, or synapses, are formed every second in an infant’s brain. By age two, a child has over one hundred trillion synapses, double the number an adult has.” All this social glue is generated by specific circuitry in the brain: sprawling networks that monitor other people, communicate with them, feel their pain, judge their intentions, and read their emotions. Our social skills are deeply rooted in our neural circuitry — and understanding this circuitry is the basis of a young field of study called social neuroscience. Harris showed volunteers photographs of people from different social groups, for example, homeless people, or drug addicts. And he found that the mPFC was less active when they looked at a homeless person. It’s as though the person was more like an object. Traditionally we examine warfare and killings in the context of history, economics, politics; but for a complete picture, we need also to understand this as a neural phenomenon. It would normally feel unconscionable to murder your neighbour. So what suddenly allows hundreds or thousands of people to do exactly that? What is it about certain situations that short-circuits the normal social functioning of the brain? To understand something like violence or genocide, we need to drill down one step further, to dehumanisation.Eagleman’s infectious optimism and enthusiasm do much to make up for the reservations I’ve just expressed. They also let him get away with a certain amount of bold exaggeration. Early on in the book for instance, he tells us that instead of experiencing the outside world directly ourselves, we only experience a fabricated model of reality, one seamlessly and instantly assembled by the brain for our sensory benefit. The real world, he says, is ‘colorless, odorless, tasteless and silent’ and the brain must work overtime to compensate for this barren environment by interpreting the various photons, air compression waves, molecular concentrations, pressure, texture and temperature signals it receives into a meaningful representation of external reality. So far, so good, but Eagleman gives insufficient credit to the brain for the superb job it does. All the incoming signals just mentioned are also an integral part of reality and, far from being somewhat of an illusion or a mere ‘show’, the impression of reality the brain puts together is a remarkably, accurate, dependable and consistent one – indeed, it cannot be otherwise because were this the case we would have utterly failed to successfully manage our environment and evolve as a species. It’s certainly no accident that six expert water colorists, for instance, painting exactly the same scene simultaneously from the same position, will record almost exactly the same visual impression – so much for the notion they individually make much of it up in their heads! The show and its companion book by Eagleman, “The Brain: The Story of You,” are testaments to the neuroscientist’s fervent belief in the relevance of his field to ordinary people.” – NY Magazine In the course of his investigations, Eagleman guides us through the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, facial expressions, genocide, brain surgery, gut feelings, robotics, and the search for immortality. Strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos. In the infinitely dense tangle of billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see in there: you.