| The Self: From Soul to Brain A New York Academy of Sciences Conference by Tyler Volk and Amelia Amon NEW YORK CITY -- What do we mean when we talk about the "self"? A recent conference, sponsored by the Academy of Sciences here, brought together psychologists, neurobiologists, cognitive scientists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers to compare perspectives. Here is a report from the field: Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at University of Iowa College of Medicine, believes we're on the verge of major breakthroughs in our understanding of the neurobiological basis of the consciousness. He connects the self to how the body is represented in the brain. Our internal (and largely unconscious) sensing of the "internal milieu," which is relatively constant most of the time, provides the foundation for the cognitive consistency required for an experience of "self." Thus, according to Damasio, each complex thinking and feeling individual is rooted to such basics as blood chemistry and the states of internal organs. Patricia Churchland, neurophilosopher at the University of California at San Diego (U.C.S.D.), sees the relationship between body and environment as key. The self is very much tied to what she terms an internal emulator. This emulator uses a cognitive image of the body in the environment to give us the ability to try out possible actions in response to various situations. We use our emulators all the time -- when deciding what to order in a restaurant to debating the outcome of U.S. military action. The evolution of the emulator might have been the crucial leap that gave rise to human consciousness. Movement and making plans for action are the major functions of the brain and self, according to Rudolfo Llinás, Chair of Neurobiology at New York University's School of Medicine. He cites the case of a tiny marine creature called the tunicate, which has a brain as a larva, because it must swim around to feed. But then comes a surprising shift. When it finds a rock to settle down on for its adult life, to be spent filtering water, it dissolves its brain, which is no longer needed. The way Llinás sees it, the brain evolves in response to the need for movement. And consciousness is the ultimate, adaptive, predictive tool for that. In the views of Damasio, Churchland and Llinás, we find a common emphasis on the body and on prediction. For the neuronal basis of the abstract thing we experience as our own "self" (real as it seems to us in day-to-day life), these researchers point to the practicalities of biological life. But how is it we seem to be more than simply biology? How can our complex personalities of hopes, fears, dreams, and so much more be generated by a mere physical organ, the brain? Made of memories For a start, Terrence Sejnowski, also at U.C.S.D. and a computational neurobiologist, estimates the number of neurons in a brain as about 100 billion. Here is an exercise to gain a sense of scale: If a person is a neuron, then the brain is about the size of New York City. However, to get the number of neurons right, each of the 10 million people in New York would have to be replaced by 10,000 others. And all of those many neurons have several thousand communication connections with others. These networks reach far and wide, like someone in lower Manhattan talking to someone all the way across the city, in the brain's scale. Such complexity seems, at least in principle, to be able to account for memory storage, which requires huge numbers of patterns. Think of how many personal incidents we recall, all examples of what the brain scientists call explicit memory. In addition, think of the number of actions we can perform, which require what is termed implicit memory, such as driving a car, using a computer, or speaking sentences in correct grammar. Many of the scientists at the conference emphasized the close relationship between memory and the self. For example, many of us have had the frustrating and painful experience of witnessing a loved one's self fade away as memory is gradually lost in Alzheimer's disease. "Without memory, we could not be the same person from day to day, week to week, and year to year," explained Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Neural Science at New York University and organizer of the conference. LeDoux's experiments have unraveled which parts of the brain are used for laying down fearful memories. Brain circuits for such memories have been important for animals during the course of evolution as a way to recall, for instance, places where close encounters with predators took place, to avoid those dangerous sites in the future. Imprint of culture A number of scientists at the meeting emphasized culture as another major factor in the formation of the self. We, as selves, are not isolated individuals, but part of an elaborate cultural training process. To Naomi Quinn, cultural anthropologist at Duke University, child-rearing is a central way peoples' selves are guided into what becomes their adult psychological structures. She gave examples of how teasing by adults can teach children lessons about how or how not to behave. Children become channeled by many means of evaluation into forming stable brain patterns and thus acceptable identities within cultural contexts. Hazel Rose Marcus, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, reported on an experiment that provided evidence of the strength of cultural training. After answering a bogus questionnaire at the San Francisco airport, Americans and Asian nationals were given a "reward" for their time. When offered a free pen from a box that contained several the same color plus one of a unique color, about 80 percent of the Americans chose the unique pen, while only 40 percent of the Asians did. Other experiments revealed the same pattern. Marcus explains this as indicative a contrast between a culture that emphasizes individuality and another that encourages collectivity. Where does free choice come into all this? Are our choices culturally determined to a large extent? Are memory and context the sole arbitrators of how we use our emulators? Free will and art The issue of will and choice becomes even more complex if we return to the research that peers into the brain. Harvard University Professor of Psychology Daniel Wegner reported on controversial and somewhat disturbing findings. A number of different experiments in which brain activity was monitored while given a simple task have revealed a time gap between the brain waves that produce an action and an individual's experience of conscious intent. It's as if the unconscious parts of the brain act first and we later become aware of the decision, for instance, to move our finger. The most radical interpretation of these experiments is that our conscious will is mostly an illusion, an after-the-fact explanation of our actions. With some of the scientific findings questioning free will itself, how can we explain art and creativity? One of the most exciting talks at the conference was given by a neurobiologist at Columbia University. Eric Kandel tackled the topic of "radical reductionism in science and art." He began with the issue that humanists sometimes raise: Does figuring out the details of the brain end up trivializing the glories of the mind? No, he said. Instead, understanding components helps us appreciate the whole. To support his case, Kandel turned to examples from artists such as Turner and Rothko. Rothko, in particular, was noted for reducing visual reality to a few large but carefully laid down zones of color on canvas. The minimalist approach leads the patient viewer to explore fine-grained detail in the context of the whole, ultimately yielding an experience that comes from one's own self rather than the canvas. Thus, reduction to visual essentials brings forth imagination from the brain's own patterns. Art, Kandel said, can teach us a great deal about the brain works. As by now must be clear, the conference had no final answer. What is the self? Is it the brain? Cultural context? Individual memory storage? An emulator run by the brain for the sake of prediction? All these approaches have something to offer. The presenters had no illusions about the tentativeness of their approaches. Organizer LeDoux was at one point asked by a questioner from the audience, "If the self is a representation, what is it a representation of?" "More than nothing but less than everything," chuckled LeDoux, as we laughed with him when confronted by that ultimate mystery. For further reading: -- Antonio Damasio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Paperback, Harvest Books, 2000. -- Patricia Smith Churchland. Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy. Paperback, MIT Press, 2002. -- Rodolfo R. Llinás. I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. Paperback, MIT Press, 2002. -- Steven R. Quartz and Terrence J. Sejnowski. Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are. Hardcover, William Morrow & Co, 2002. -- Joseph LeDoux. The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Hardcover, Viking Press, 2002. -- Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. Paperback, Cambridge University, 1998. -- Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel. Memory: From Mind to Molecules. Paperback, W. H. Freeman & Co., 2000. Tyler Volk is a professor of biology at New York University. He is the author of Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind, Gaia's Body -- Toward a Physiology of Earth and most recently, What is Death? A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life (John Wiley & Sons, March 2002). E-mail him at tyler.volk@nyu.edu. Amelia Amon is a solar designer and founder of Alt.Technica, a New York design firm dedicated to integrating aesthetics and energy. E-mail her at amon@together.net. Copyright © 2003 Tyler Volk & Amelia Amon |
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