Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ Category

Free won’t

Posted in from the reading room, life, neuroscience, psychology on August 30, 2007| 3 Comments »

Now here’s an interesting concept – “free won’t” – which, it is argued, is an essential part of free will!

Neuroscientists have shown that we use two different parts of our brain – one to develop an intention to do something; and a separate part to hold off doing it. If someone can’t hold off then they act impulsively. For example, children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who tend to have big problems with self-control. The researchers who did this work are calling the holding off ability “free won’t”.

This is such an interesting idea. Probably somebody has told you at some stage in your life “Count to ten!” – that’s free won’t. This skill is the skill of choosing, so that your experience of life isn’t driven by unprocessed and uncontrolled feelings and urges (a life that is driven this way often feels as if it is happening to the person rather than giving them the sense that they are the active creators of their own lives).

Here’s a great quote from the researchers –

“The capacity to withhold an action that we have prepared but reconsidered is an important distinction between intelligent and impulsive behavior,” says Brass, “and also between humans and other animals.”

On the other hand, I wonder, do procrastinators have an overdeveloped “free won’t”? Is this the part of the brain they use to keep all those intentions under control?!

Read Full Post »

Human Traces

Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, life, neuroscience on July 21, 2007| 6 Comments »

Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks (ISBN 978-0-099-45826-5) is a novel of ideas. Set in the late 19th, early 20th century it tells the story of two young men who become idealistic doctors, determined to work together to understand mental illnesses so that they can cure them. In addition, they hope that in understanding the interface between the body and the mind they will understand what it is to be human.

I found it really absorbing. Much of the discussion was around subjects which are very familiar to me – consciousness, the relationship between the body and the mind, the debate about whether mental illnesses have neurological bases or not, and the still young area of evolutionary biology. However, as a doctor, the book has additional relevance. After all, my experience is also one of idealism and hope; the belief that doctoring will be about curing, and the gradual erosion of that to aim at managing diseases instead of curing them (that last is a painful loss – for sure, doctors have cures for many acute diseases now, but the burden of illness is chronic disease and, sadly, we seem a long way off from finding genuine cures for those)

Sebastian Faulks floats an incredibly interesting hypothesis about the hearing of voices, having one of the characters, Thomas, propose that this was a facility that all human beings possessed but which has since been lost by most of us. He cites the literary evidence of Man’s relationship to God/gods where the earlier stories show people hearing voices which they obeyed – they experienced the daily reality of their gods; and later stories showing that people no longer reliably heard those voices and had to throw lots, examine entrails, find unusual characters (prophets) who could still hear the voices, in order to know what the gods wanted. He links this idea to the emerging concept of evolution and natural selection by proposing that the hearing of voices was linked to the development of consciousness and the loss of the voices was related to the development of self-awareness through the acquistion of language. If you are not familiar with any of these ideas this novel is a great place to introduce yourself to this area of thought.

However, this 609 page novel did not engage me emotionally……..until page 595. From page 595 to the very last word of the novel, it hit me like a sledgehammer. I didn’t just cry. I sobbed. I was totally unprepared for it. This is quite honestly one of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve read. Maybe it hit me so hard because it touched so many issues which lie in the core of my being – what is it to be a doctor? what use am I to others? how do we get a sense of self and how does it feel to lose that to an illness like dementia? what does it mean to become invisible? and, ultimately, what trace do I leave on this Earth?

There are a number of phrases and passages which have stimulated a whole lot of things for me, and I’ll return to post about some of them separately.

Thought provoking, educational, well-written, and, ultimately, powerfully emotional.

Highly recommended.

Read Full Post »

Phantoms in the Brain

Posted in books, from the reading room, neuroscience, perception on March 25, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Phantoms in the Brain by Sandra Blakeslee and V.S. Ramachandran (ISBN 1-85702-895-3). Ramachandran is a specialist in brain research and I’ve both read some his previous writings and have often seen him referred to by other neuroscientists. His particular interest is in perception which he researches from a neurological perspective. The mechanisms of perception are much more complex than they seem. Take vision for instance. Many people have a vague idea that the way we see things is by light passing through the lenses of eyes, setting off some kind of impulses down the nerve fibres which connect to the backs of our eyes (the retina, which is made of of cells called rods and cones). These signals are then sent to brain, maybe you even know that they go to an area of the brain called the visual cortex. I guess many people who even know this much think of a kind of screen on the back of the brain where the images are projected, a bit like being at the cinema. It doesn’t take long however to figure out that this can’t be right. Who’s watching the screen? And how do “they” turn what they “see” into an image? No, it’s more complicated. In fact, creating an visual image involves some 30 distinct areas of the brain all working together! Ramachandran is great at explaining this kind of thing and in his book he covers not only vision, but all kinds of perception, discussing phantom limbs, memory, emotions and beliefs. He even has a chapter entitled “The Zombie in the Brain” about some of the automatic functions of the brain that go on below the level of conscious awareness.

There’s not much new in this book. If you’ve read works by Antonio Damasio (Looking for Spinoza, Descartes’ Error and The Feeling of What Happens) and Oliver Sacks (The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, Awakenings) you’ll be familiar with most of the issues explained here. However, if you’ve never read anything about perception and the brain before this would be an easy and informative place to start.

One thing that really strikes me about these neuroscientists is how important individual experiences are to them. Ramachandran declares this at the outset. He says –

“More was learned about memory from a few days of studying a patient called H.M. than was gleaned from previous decades of research averaging data on many subjects.”

Individual case reports, case studies, real peoples’ stories, are dismissed by many scientists as anecdotes (and they never mean that as a compliment!), but in cutting the human uniqueness out of research conducted on groups of people and concentrating only on what is in common, on what the statistical averages show, learning is impeded. The “Evidence Based Medicine” movement (“EBM”) has created a whole hierarchy of evidence that tends to rate what is found in common (group trials and reviews of groups of group trials) much more highly than individual experiences of patients and their doctors. I understand that this method can throw some light on the usefulness of certain therapeutic interventions but unless we consider individual experiences our understanding will remain unnecessarily limited. Ramachandran points out that if I show you a talking pig, you’ll say “how amazing!”, you won’t say “Oh yes, show me more talking pigs then I’ll be interested!”

So that’s what I liked best about this book. It is scientific, easy to read, and based on the real experiences of real people. Individual human beings are completely fascinating and their stories are frequently utterly amazing. Phantoms in the Brain is full of amazing stories and after reading it you’ll never think about perception the same way again.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts