Sense, decide, act and remember
The right way to proceed with the description of science is to begin with a foundation of true statements that are supported by evidence. The challenges are many. In Neuroscience Notes, I begin with statements that have general validity and introduce terms and concepts from neuroscience that every reader must learn. The statement "Nervous systems allow organisms to sense, decide, act and remember" is undeniably true. If you begin to understand these four domains of brain function, sense, decide, act and remember, then you accelerate beyond common language where confusion prevails.
Brains
Neuroscience is the broad inquiry into the structure and function of animal nervous systems. Neuroscience begins with the consideration of how the simplest animals on the planet interact with their environments. A deep sense that develops in humans who study and understand life is that every creature that lives on planet earth shares common properties. Nervous systems allow organisms to sense, decide, act and remember. These properties begin as simple devices and evolve into sensing strategies that are increasingly complicated, more accurate and more effective. A complex device such as the human eye is easier to understand if you already understand a simple device such as light detecting pigment spot in a snail. Thus, it makes sense for a neuroscientist to study all animals and to assume that principles learned about older, simpler animals can be applied to newer, more complex animals such as humans.
The brain is the organ of the mind. Anatomists have described the brain in terms of our evolutionary path. We have old-age, middle-age and new-age parts, each with different properties. A neuroscientist, Paul McLean, suggested that the human brain could be viewed as three systems of different ages - an old reptilian brain, a middle (early mammalian) brain, topped off with a new, advanced brain, the neocortex. The neocortex allows us to learn, adapt and create new modes of behavior.
New babies are not born with the new brain programs. Old programs are built into us and need not be learned. Old programs include some of the most negative qualities – predatory and territorial aggression, anger and fighting, for example. Some of our most positive qualities are also innate such as the tendencies to mate, bond and form social units with altruistic features. The old brain remains in control of our bodies and our minds.
The infant cerebral cortex is folded in an adult pattern but has one third the total surface area. Hiila et al compared cerebral cortices of 12 healthy infants born at term with 12 healthy young adults and demonstrated regions of lateral temporal, parietal, and frontal cortex expand nearly twice as much from infancy as other regions in the insular and medial occipital cortex. They suggested:" This differential postnatal expansion may reflect regional differences in the maturity of dendritic and synaptic architecture at birth and/or in the complexity of dendritic and synaptic architecture in adults. This expression may also be associated with differential sensitivity of cortical circuits to childhood experience and insults. By comparing human and macaque monkey cerebral cortex, we infer that the pattern of human evolutionary expansion is remarkably similar to the pattern of human postnatal expansion. We hypothesize that it is beneficial for regions of recent evolutionary expansion to remain less mature at birth, perhaps to increase the influence of postnatal experience on the development of these regions or to focus prenatal resources on regions most important for early survival. "
Whatever we value about civilized human existence - culture, knowledge, social justice, respect for human rights, and dignity must be learned anew and stored in each person's neocortex. Information always comes with noise, that extra, confusing, unnecessary stuff which burdens our brain not with the task of remembering but of forgetting. There is so much we do not want to remember that it is a wonder that a modern citizen manages to cope with information overload. Information noise interacts with molecular noise, useless or bad chemicals that flow through the brain from food, water and air.
Neuroscience views minds as manifestations of the living processes found in brains. Brain science does not "explain" mind, or consciousness, but does give us strategies for understanding the properties of mind. Neuroscientists have made rapid progress in the past few decades and some of them are asking the same sorts of questions that only philosophers used to ask. The difference is that neuroscientists are sometimes able to ask more specific questions that may lead to more insight into the basic principles of the human experience. Neuroscientists are motivated and equipped to find real and practical answers to philosophical questions, leaving philosophers behind in an anachronistic philological niche, repeating discussions of what philosophers said hundreds to thousands of years ago. This is not to argue that all neuroscientists are philosophers or that all neuroscientists understand the human mind, since many are focused on highly specialized tasks that reveal little or nothing about how the whole system works.
In the year 2000, the Nobel committee awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine to three neuroscientists, Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric R. Kandel. Their research revealed basic processes at work in animal brains. Carlsson identified dopamine as at brain neurotransmitter. Greengard revealed the molecular cascade triggered inside neurons by the dopamine signal. Kandel realized that the molecular basis of learning should be studied in simple animal systems as the basis for understanding learning in human brains. He spent many years studying the nervous system of Aplaysia, the Moon Snail. His 1976 text “The Cellular Basis of Behavior” can be considered a classic in the study of nervous systems.
Kandel stated: “All animals are faced with the universal problems of reproduction, adaptation and survival. An important assumption of biology is that phylogenetically diverse organisms share similar sets of solutions to these problems. Since in the end we are concerned with identifying biological principles applicable to human behavior, the invertebrate is a convenient but necessary substitute for people. Although a solution found in invertebrates may not be the only mechanisms for a given problem, the solution is likely to be a common mechanism that might be found as well in vertebrates, including man.”
Neuroscience would say that consciousness is produced by brains and can be destroyed by brain lesions and brain death. Consciousness is a property of the old, middle, and new brains working together, but if old brain structures are damaged, consciousness is obliterated. If the neocortex is damaged, consciousness remains, but specific memory content, sensations, and skills may drop-out.
Cognitive philosophers increasingly provide commentary on what neuroscientists are doing and saying. Tim Smith stated that:” A large number of articles and books have monitored the growth of Cognitive Neuroscience… motivated by a feeling that "things are about to be understood." As advances in imaging has added new potential to the neurosciences, so too neural networks and computational models have added new power to the cognitive approaches. Neural networks are tools that enable researchers to "probe how high-level functions such as perceiving, attending, learning, planning, and remembering emerge from the massively parallel neural architecture of the brain."
Michael Gazzaniga stated that "Psychology departments across the country have realized that they've got to get into brain science- in humans and not just rats…. universities should be looking for people who can liaison with clinicians working with brain-damaged patients, with people doing brain imaging, with the computer jocks". Cohen remarked that research efforts have not been integrated. Integration requires uniquely trained individuals, people who can understand a number of disciplines. Since smart, humans with diverse knowledge and skills are not produced by university education, Schneider observed that finding staff with the right blend of cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, computational modeling, and brain imaging.... is a tall order. Gazzaniga suggested that the work of figuring out the brain will take another 200 years and I believe he is underestimating the task. If you want to know exactly how the brain works, the investigation is likely to go on for thousands of years. Humans tend to be impatient. They overestimate their accomplishments and underestimate the extreme complexity of natural phenomena.
In their introduction to advances in neurotechniques. Gray and Chouard stated:" It is an exciting time to be a neuroscientist. The experimental landscape has changed markedly over the past few years with advances in molecular genetics, optogenetics and functional imaging. Neuroscience research was once dominated by anatomical techniques. But, with the advent of electrophysiology, and subsequently molecular biology, anatomical labelling techniques were eclipsed. Now, improved anatomical methods are experiencing a renaissance, thanks to the ability to deliver molecules in a cell-type-specific manner, with advances in imaging methods, together with electrophysiological technique, makes it feasible to study the relationships between specific neural circuits and particular behaviours in rodents. Neuroscientists are also poised to benefit from systems-based approaches to data collection and analysis but lag behind other researchers, such as tumour biologists, in implementing these strategies. Using the results from such approaches to direct hypothesis-driven work and improve the design of these experiments could focus efforts on candidate genes in the genetic network associated with disease. "
From Neuroscience Notes by Stephen Gislason MD. Available for download at Persona Digital Online.
The right way to proceed with the description of science is to begin with a foundation of true statements that are supported by evidence. The challenges are many. In Neuroscience Notes, I begin with statements that have general validity and introduce terms and concepts from neuroscience that every reader must learn. The statement "Nervous systems allow organisms to sense, decide, act and remember" is undeniably true. If you begin to understand these four domains of brain function, sense, decide, act and remember, then you accelerate beyond common language where confusion prevails.
Brains
Neuroscience is the broad inquiry into the structure and function of animal nervous systems. Neuroscience begins with the consideration of how the simplest animals on the planet interact with their environments. A deep sense that develops in humans who study and understand life is that every creature that lives on planet earth shares common properties. Nervous systems allow organisms to sense, decide, act and remember. These properties begin as simple devices and evolve into sensing strategies that are increasingly complicated, more accurate and more effective. A complex device such as the human eye is easier to understand if you already understand a simple device such as light detecting pigment spot in a snail. Thus, it makes sense for a neuroscientist to study all animals and to assume that principles learned about older, simpler animals can be applied to newer, more complex animals such as humans.
The brain is the organ of the mind. Anatomists have described the brain in terms of our evolutionary path. We have old-age, middle-age and new-age parts, each with different properties. A neuroscientist, Paul McLean, suggested that the human brain could be viewed as three systems of different ages - an old reptilian brain, a middle (early mammalian) brain, topped off with a new, advanced brain, the neocortex. The neocortex allows us to learn, adapt and create new modes of behavior.
New babies are not born with the new brain programs. Old programs are built into us and need not be learned. Old programs include some of the most negative qualities – predatory and territorial aggression, anger and fighting, for example. Some of our most positive qualities are also innate such as the tendencies to mate, bond and form social units with altruistic features. The old brain remains in control of our bodies and our minds.
The infant cerebral cortex is folded in an adult pattern but has one third the total surface area. Hiila et al compared cerebral cortices of 12 healthy infants born at term with 12 healthy young adults and demonstrated regions of lateral temporal, parietal, and frontal cortex expand nearly twice as much from infancy as other regions in the insular and medial occipital cortex. They suggested:" This differential postnatal expansion may reflect regional differences in the maturity of dendritic and synaptic architecture at birth and/or in the complexity of dendritic and synaptic architecture in adults. This expression may also be associated with differential sensitivity of cortical circuits to childhood experience and insults. By comparing human and macaque monkey cerebral cortex, we infer that the pattern of human evolutionary expansion is remarkably similar to the pattern of human postnatal expansion. We hypothesize that it is beneficial for regions of recent evolutionary expansion to remain less mature at birth, perhaps to increase the influence of postnatal experience on the development of these regions or to focus prenatal resources on regions most important for early survival. "
Whatever we value about civilized human existence - culture, knowledge, social justice, respect for human rights, and dignity must be learned anew and stored in each person's neocortex. Information always comes with noise, that extra, confusing, unnecessary stuff which burdens our brain not with the task of remembering but of forgetting. There is so much we do not want to remember that it is a wonder that a modern citizen manages to cope with information overload. Information noise interacts with molecular noise, useless or bad chemicals that flow through the brain from food, water and air.
Neuroscience views minds as manifestations of the living processes found in brains. Brain science does not "explain" mind, or consciousness, but does give us strategies for understanding the properties of mind. Neuroscientists have made rapid progress in the past few decades and some of them are asking the same sorts of questions that only philosophers used to ask. The difference is that neuroscientists are sometimes able to ask more specific questions that may lead to more insight into the basic principles of the human experience. Neuroscientists are motivated and equipped to find real and practical answers to philosophical questions, leaving philosophers behind in an anachronistic philological niche, repeating discussions of what philosophers said hundreds to thousands of years ago. This is not to argue that all neuroscientists are philosophers or that all neuroscientists understand the human mind, since many are focused on highly specialized tasks that reveal little or nothing about how the whole system works.
In the year 2000, the Nobel committee awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine to three neuroscientists, Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric R. Kandel. Their research revealed basic processes at work in animal brains. Carlsson identified dopamine as at brain neurotransmitter. Greengard revealed the molecular cascade triggered inside neurons by the dopamine signal. Kandel realized that the molecular basis of learning should be studied in simple animal systems as the basis for understanding learning in human brains. He spent many years studying the nervous system of Aplaysia, the Moon Snail. His 1976 text “The Cellular Basis of Behavior” can be considered a classic in the study of nervous systems.
Kandel stated: “All animals are faced with the universal problems of reproduction, adaptation and survival. An important assumption of biology is that phylogenetically diverse organisms share similar sets of solutions to these problems. Since in the end we are concerned with identifying biological principles applicable to human behavior, the invertebrate is a convenient but necessary substitute for people. Although a solution found in invertebrates may not be the only mechanisms for a given problem, the solution is likely to be a common mechanism that might be found as well in vertebrates, including man.”
Neuroscience would say that consciousness is produced by brains and can be destroyed by brain lesions and brain death. Consciousness is a property of the old, middle, and new brains working together, but if old brain structures are damaged, consciousness is obliterated. If the neocortex is damaged, consciousness remains, but specific memory content, sensations, and skills may drop-out.
Cognitive philosophers increasingly provide commentary on what neuroscientists are doing and saying. Tim Smith stated that:” A large number of articles and books have monitored the growth of Cognitive Neuroscience… motivated by a feeling that "things are about to be understood." As advances in imaging has added new potential to the neurosciences, so too neural networks and computational models have added new power to the cognitive approaches. Neural networks are tools that enable researchers to "probe how high-level functions such as perceiving, attending, learning, planning, and remembering emerge from the massively parallel neural architecture of the brain."
Michael Gazzaniga stated that "Psychology departments across the country have realized that they've got to get into brain science- in humans and not just rats…. universities should be looking for people who can liaison with clinicians working with brain-damaged patients, with people doing brain imaging, with the computer jocks". Cohen remarked that research efforts have not been integrated. Integration requires uniquely trained individuals, people who can understand a number of disciplines. Since smart, humans with diverse knowledge and skills are not produced by university education, Schneider observed that finding staff with the right blend of cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, computational modeling, and brain imaging.... is a tall order. Gazzaniga suggested that the work of figuring out the brain will take another 200 years and I believe he is underestimating the task. If you want to know exactly how the brain works, the investigation is likely to go on for thousands of years. Humans tend to be impatient. They overestimate their accomplishments and underestimate the extreme complexity of natural phenomena.
In their introduction to advances in neurotechniques. Gray and Chouard stated:" It is an exciting time to be a neuroscientist. The experimental landscape has changed markedly over the past few years with advances in molecular genetics, optogenetics and functional imaging. Neuroscience research was once dominated by anatomical techniques. But, with the advent of electrophysiology, and subsequently molecular biology, anatomical labelling techniques were eclipsed. Now, improved anatomical methods are experiencing a renaissance, thanks to the ability to deliver molecules in a cell-type-specific manner, with advances in imaging methods, together with electrophysiological technique, makes it feasible to study the relationships between specific neural circuits and particular behaviours in rodents. Neuroscientists are also poised to benefit from systems-based approaches to data collection and analysis but lag behind other researchers, such as tumour biologists, in implementing these strategies. Using the results from such approaches to direct hypothesis-driven work and improve the design of these experiments could focus efforts on candidate genes in the genetic network associated with disease. "
From Neuroscience Notes by Stephen Gislason MD. Available for download at Persona Digital Online.