Any topic involving study of brain or any of its function is
interesting, intriguing and infinitely puzzling.
This half to one KG meat in our species is an unsolved
mystery.
So discussing any
topic connected with brain, mind, conscious awareness, thinking, memory etc most of which form part of , if we can
loosely call it , neuroscience .
In this subject there is no final statements can be made by
anyone irrespective of whichever
approach they have opted for- scientific, structural, anatomical, biochemical,
genomic, psychiatric, philosophical, spiritual, occult, scriptural rant etc.
In my humble view almost all functions of the brain in
totality defies most of the explanations. Probably some functions can be
explained or explained away.
I have been reading many books and trying to understand it
and also through interactions, thanks to internet even with some of the leading
evolutionary biologist.
Long back I bought a few encyclopedias on Mind, Psychology
etc. Some of them must be with me and went about trying to lay my hands on as
many of the reference books mentioned there, restricted by whatever was
available at British Council library and Adyar Theosophical society library.
Many scholars spiritual and intellectual before the
scientist have also tried to decipher the workings of various aspects, parts of
human brain. Then later on scientist gave excellent explanations.
Starting from Adi Shankara to swami Vivekananda to Huxley to
Bertrand Russell to J. Krishnamurthy to Colin Wilson to Le Comte Nuoy to Guy
Murchie to Steven Pinker to Cral Jung to neuro scientist Ramachandran to name a
few have helped me to enlarge my understanding about various workings of the
brain.
Once a Harvard professor suggested me to read ‘How the mind
works’, which I did read and enjoyed every bit of it. I asked him ‘can you
suggest some book on ‘How to make it work’. He said jokingly ‘had I known I
would not be teaching at Harvard nor talking to you.’
In the excellent book which I am reading at present ‘The
Brain Supremacy-Notes from the Frontiers of neuroscience’- KATHLEEN TAYLOR starts off
“Science and technology are also changing their nature—and
ours.”
“Brain research is already changing our sense of what being
human involves, rejecting the age-old idea of a spiritual essence in favour of
an organic approach. This
is what the
feared materialism of modern
science tells us. Brains are the pieces of meat which give us our selves,
allowing you and me to exist as the people we are. Without them there would be
no music, beauty, poetry, or science. There would be no vicious murder or despairing suicide
either; but also no joy of sex, no delight
in nature, no
pleasure in getting
lost in a
really good book.
Everything meaningful in your life and mine needs a cranial
pudding to express itself, and each of those puddings is unique, irreplaceable
and still mysterious. Brains
are astonishing, beautiful,
intricate, delicate marvels. Like human lives, they are good things in
and of themselves.
If you were ill, and needed a heart transplant to save your
life, would you accept one? Most people
would; they feel that having a different heart wouldn’t disrupt their sense of
personal identity. How about a brain transplant? If your brain were removed and put into
storage to make room for a new, younger cerebrum, would you be in the body or
in the storage? What if all your former
synaptic settings were copied across to the
new brain? Or if
only part of
it—the cortex—were
transplanted? These thought-experiments
and others suggest that we identify ourselves with our brains in a way we don’t
with other parts of our bodies. Practical experiments, ethical and otherwise, suggest
that we are right to do so. We can swap hearts, lose a kidney, cope without
hands or eyes, and still be human, but remove the brain and what’s left is a
kind of desecration: manmade meat.”
“The power of self-fashioning.
As well as shaking up
our ideas of what we are, the brain supremacy promises unparalleled
techniques for changing
brains directly: not with language
or images or
drugs, or new
gadgets to play
with, but by altering
the behaviour of neurons
and the function
of their genes.
Of course, brain manipulation isn’t novel; we do it
indirectly all the time and we always
have. The social power which bends others to your will is so greatly valued
that pursuing it is one of
humanity’s great occupations.
With tongues and guns, ideals and incentives, persuasion and pressure
and sheer propaganda,
human beings have
had a lot of
practice in treating others, pace the strictures of Immanuel Kant, instrumentally:
as means to an end, objects to be utilized and adjusted, rather than
individuals who are ends in themselves. And the methods we use affect our
brains and bodies. Drugs change your genes. So do stressful events, meals
eaten, and conversations. Yet we often fail to achieve the changes we want. To
date, attempts to control other human beings have faced a mighty obstacle: the
bony castle of the skull. That barrier has never been invincible—bullets or an axe
will penetrate it—but it has kept out many less violent and crude attacks.
Barred from the inner sanctuary of the brain, we were left with the evolved
skills of social
interaction and the
knowledge built upon them:
psychology, anthropology, history,
literature. That, plus
rare neurological patients, years
of detailed observation of human behavior,
and what we had learned from studying the brains and behaviours of other
species. The idea of an equivalent
capacity to that
of, say, modern chemistry
applied to the management of other human beings is therefore a
tremendously attractive prospect,
particularly for those people
and institutions tasked
with managing or
predicting human behaviour.”
