The Human Brain!

Human Brain!

You have been entrusted with the care and feeding of the most extraordinary and complex creation in the universe. Home to your mind and personality, your brain houses your cherished memories and future hopes. It orchestrates the symphony of consciousness that gives you purpose and passion, motion and emotion.

But what do you really know about it?

Your brain and spinal cord make up your central nervous system. Together, they control your body -- but it's the brain which is Commander-in-chief.

Here, in this article, explore with me, the creation that your brain is!

Okay, so your brain is wrinkled, soft and a little wet. It doesn't look like much. But it's made of more than 10 billion nerve cells and over 50 billion other cells and weighs less than 3 pounds! And it's the most extraordinary thing that you could possibly imagine! It monitors and regulates unconscious bodily processes like breathing and heart rate, and coordinates most voluntary movement. It's the site of consciousness, thought and creativity!

Different parts of your brain do different things. Some areas receive messages from sense organs, others control balance and muscle coordination, and still others handle speech, or emotion, memories, or basic motor skills, or complex calculations. You may think your heart is where you feel emotion, but it's really your brain. You may think your legs take you down the street, but it's your brain instructing the muscles in your legs to move. Your eyes may take in light and an image may be projected onto the pupil, but it's your brain that interprets what you see...you get the picture.

The brain contains a staggering one hundred billion nerve cells, or neurons. As Helen Phillips in her new scientist article on brain puts it – “The complexity of the connectivity between these cells is mind-boggling. Each neuron can make contact with thousands or even tens of thousands of others, via tiny structures called synapses. Our brains form a million new connections for every second of our lives. The pattern and strength of the connections is constantly changing and no two brains are alike. It is in these changing connections that memories are stored, habits learned and personalities shaped, by reinforcing certain patterns of brain activity, and losing others “.

The Human Brain Atlas

Let’s start first with the atlas of human brain. There is a very good resource for those who are somewhat more medically inclined from the Michigan State University – Brain Biodiversity Bank. There’s even a human brain screensaver there, though I can’t imagine your average Joe downloading this, but still here it is.

How the Human Brain Developed

Manfred Davidmann talks about the development of human brain through its evolutionary stages. The brain has been evolving into a more complex organ throughout the evolution of humanity, indeed throughout the evolution of life itself.

Davidmann puts it as – “We slowly ascended from lower life forms to what we are today, by a process of natural selection from randomly occurring changes. Each change had to prove its worth by surviving the continual battle for existence, being against being, species against species and this process has gone on for many millions of years”.

Basically the current understanding of science has it that we really have 3 different kinds of brains (or layers) which evolved during the course of our rise from the slime… Basically, these are categorized as:

• Reptilian Brain: this is the innermost part or layer and it’s the oldest and the most primitive part and is sometimes also known as hindbrain. The reptilian brain appears to be largely unchanged by evolution and we share it with all other animals which have a backbone. This brain layer controls body functions required for sustaining life such as breathing and body temperature.


• Mammalian Brain: Also know as the mid-brain, this was next layer to evolve. This was an enormous evolution over the primitive reptilian layer. The mammalian brain contains organs for automatic control of body functions such as digestion, the fluid balance, body temperature and blood pressure as well as for filing new experiences as they happen and so creating a store of experience-based memories and most importantly (in my opinion) for experience-based recognition of danger and for responding to this according to past experience. And for some conscious feelings about events.


• Human Brain: And the mammalian brain became the human brain by adding the massive grey matter (neocortex) which envelopes most of the earlier brain and amounts to about 85 per cent of the human brain mass. This massive addition consists mostly of two hemispheres which are covered by an outer layer and interconnected by a string of nerve fibres. It is also called the forebrain.
  

For those who would like to delve deeper, here is a good resource on the net for unfolding history of brain through the ages.

Comparison of the brain and a computer

Most interest has been focused on comparing the brain with computers. We have seen enough science fiction movies or novels or articles, comparing human brain to a variety of computers. A variety of obvious analogies exist: for example, individual neurons can be compared with a transistor (although a neuron's computing power is probably closer to a simple calculator than a transistor, and the specialized parts of the brain can be compared with graphics cards and other system components. However, such comparisons are fraught with difficulties.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between brains and computers is that today's computers operate by performing often sequential instructions from an input program, while no clear analogy of a program appears in human brains.

In addition to the technical differences, other key differences exist. The brain is massively parallel and interwoven; whereas programming of this kind is extremely difficult for computer software writers (most parallel systems run semi-independently, for example each working on a small separate 'chunk' of a problem).

The closest to the equivalent would be the idea of a logical process, but the nature and existence of such entities are subjects of philosophical debate. Given Turing's model of computation, the Turing machine, this may be a functional, not fundamental, distinction. However, Maass and Markram have recently argued that "in contrast to Turing machines, generic computations by neural circuits are not digital, and are not carried out on static inputs, but rather on functions of time" (the Turing machine computes computable functions). Ultimately, computers were not designed to be models of the brain, though constructs like neural networks attempt to abstract the behavior of the brain in a way that can be simulated computationally.

The human brain is able to interpret and solve problems that are not formalized (strong AI), whereas the computer with current software and current hardware is only able to solve formalized problems (weak AI), a human can understand context in an arbitrary text, something even the most powerful and best software is not able to discern (as of 2008).

The computational power of the human brain is difficult to ascertain, as the human brain is not easily paralleled to the binary number processing of today's computers. For instance, multiplying two large numbers can be accomplished in a fraction of a second with a typical calculator or desktop computer, while the average human may require a pen-and-paper approach to keep track of each stage of the calculation over a period of five or more seconds. Yet, while the human brain is calculating a math problem in an attentive state, it is subconsciously processing data from millions of nerve cells that handle the visual input of the paper and surrounding area, the aural input from both ears, and the sensory input of millions of cells throughout the body.

Wikipedia has a great section on this approach and can be accessed here.

Oh, by the way, have you ever tried this trick? (note you might need to click on the image)

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.

If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating.

It's amazing how our brain works. *

Was this Interesting? Watch out for my entry on human dreams and their exploration!

Consciousness, Meditation & Connection to the cosmos – both inner and outer!

In our search for the wonders of cosmos, it is often that we forget that there is an inner cosmos or universe within ourselves also. I do not, in a strict sense, refer to the biological universe that a human body is, rather what our consciousness allows us to experience of the universe. But in the daily clutter of our lives, especially those competing in the so called “Rat Race” of the corporate world – we often find ourselves disconnected with the nature and universe at large. The chase for deadlines, the ever increasing demands for material comfort, or leisure or somewhat more esoteric conquests of nature, the ever increasing need for more gadgets, all are leading us away from the fundamentals of existence – the purpose of being here or the so called corporeal existence.

While I am a great fan of materialistic or physical methods of discovery of nature and universe, especially since they present, at least currently, the best way towards understanding of the true nature of physical universe that surrounds us – I cannot, but help thinking about the inner universe and other more outré methods of understanding the reality.

To understand this reality, one needs to calm one’s mind down to a level where the clutter of daily mundane thoughts is swept away and instead one’s consciousness is able to concentrate on higher things and contemplation of the whole rather than parts. I found that throughout human history, before the advent of our “technological society”, there have been attempts to understand the reality of universe through powers of the mind alone. Meditation is one such technique which allows human mind to achieve level of consciousness which is way beyond the regular everyday requirements and may possibly allow us to tap into a hitherto unknown aspect of the universe, of which we are usually unaware.

According to Wikipedia - Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. It often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. Meditation is recognized as a component of almost all religions, and has been practiced for over 5,000 years. It is also practiced outside religious traditions. Different meditative disciplines encompass a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which may emphasize different goals -- from achievement of a higher state of consciousness, to greater focus, creativity or self-awareness, or simply a more relaxed and peaceful frame of mind.

Meditation has been central to almost all religions in the world. Usually we find that Concentration meditation is used in many religions and spiritual practices.

Buzzle Staff and Agencies talk at length over the - The Long History of Meditation Is Evidence of Its Benefits.

“Meditation is both an ancient spiritual practice and a contemporary mind-body technique for relaxing the body and calming the mind. Although there is not a lot of recorded information dealing with the history of meditation, its roots can be traced back to ancient times. Researchers speculate that even primitive societies may have discovered altered states of consciousness and meditative states while staring into the flames of their campfires”

Meditation has been defined as: "self regulation of attention, in the service of self-inquiry, in the here and now." The various techniques of meditation can be classified according to their focus. Some focus on the field or background perception and experience, also called "mindfulness"; others focus on a preselected specific object, and are called "concentrative" meditation. There are also techniques that shift between the field and the object.

Tracing meditation to its beginning is like tracing the controlled use of fire to its beginning: In all probability the controlled use of fire emerged in many different places at approximately the same time, being instinctual and intrinsic to human development. It is speculated, in fact, that meditation may have been stumbled upon by early men falling into a state of relaxation by staring for long periods of time into the flames of man made fires. It is similarly argued that the experience of spending time in dark caves could lead the mind to enter a trance like state - accounting for the profusion of simple abstract symbols drawn on cave walls in the Paleolithic period.

We can also define 'meditation' as the art of consciousness becoming aware of itself on the grand and cosmic scale. Meditation cannot be called a science as yet, because science requires objective testing with objectively proven methods and results. Meditation is on the road to becoming a real science, however, and not just an intuitive art veiled in mystery.

For those who might be interested in learning meditation “Learning Meditation” might be a good starting point. A further resource in this direction can be found at - http://www.how-to-meditate.org/ I also strongly recommend a further reading with transcendental meditation.

Okay, I always digress into the side topicsJ. The fundamental point we are discussing here is the way to understanding this universe, and not restricting oneself to one path alone. However, the lure of meditation as a path to aid the understanding of universe is irresistible indeed.

Christopher Calder describes meditation as inner astronomy. “You discover the stars, the moon, and the sun are all inside you”.

The TES Hypothesis, by Calder, is rather more interesting. “It is a mind that is unprejudiced by religion, philosophy, and cultural conditioning. It is going naked in the stars”

The TES hypothesis is inherently obvious, fundamental, and in harmony with a state of mind that values both science and super consciousness. It declares that the universe and all of its manifestations are created by time-energy-space, the TES. Nothing in the universe is truly supernatural and beyond the laws of nature. Everything that exists is created through cycles of the TES, both on the large physical scale involving the formation of stars, galaxies, and planets, and on the subtler inner dimensions involving the evolution of the human brain and consciousness. The vast majority of the TES exists unconsciously, without feeling or life. This portion is made up of empty space, stars, and the bulk of planets. No human being has ever known the unconscious part of the TES directly because all that we know is within the world of consciousness. We become aware of the unconscious realm of the TES only through inference. When you look at a tree, you are not seeing the tree directly, but rather a representation of the tree created by your own brain. Our experience of colors, smells, tastes, and sounds, are all subjective creations of our mammalian neurological evolution.

Christopher Calder also talks of The Realms of Consciousness. According to him, ancient Hindu yogis and Tibetan Buddhist monks categorized seven stages of human consciousness, and referred to them as the "seven bodies." He would like to describe these "bodies" as realms of consciousness, because he feels the evidence strongly suggests that they are all layers of awareness in the purely physical human brain. In his articles and teachings, he is trying to bring science and the Eastern traditions into harmony in order to express the actual facts, rather than just restating ancient myths. This marriage of science and meditative states of consciousness may be a bit awkward at first, as the combination is so very new.

Personally, I don’t think I know enough about these schools of thought to become either a follower or a critic. However, they are stepping stones to our understanding of the universe through multiple channels.

I found a distinctly different, though not unique, view on symbolic or spiritual cosmology by M. Salim McCarron - Cosmos as meditation: Sufi and Shi’a Muslim Reflections on the Spiritual Cosmology.

However, to date, in my personal experience, I have come across the most moving discussion is from Dalai Lama - From Meditation to the Atom in the Universe. He talks of consciousness, the experiences of human mind, the natural boundaries of introspection, Buddhism’s long history of investigation into the nature of the mind and its various aspects and his call for modern science and Buddhism to conduct collaborative research on the understanding of consciousness while leaving aside the philosophical question of whether consciousness is ultimately physical. I definitely recommend reading of The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

And if you are looking for wonderful inspirations into the area of science related to consciousness, take a look at Edgar Mitchell’s foundation - the Institute of Noetic Science. The institute of Noetic Science is a nonprofit membership organization located in Northern California that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness - including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention, and intuition. The institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor. The vision for creating the Institute of Noetic Sciences came in 1971. Nations throughout the world had galvanized around the exciting frontier of space exploration. The potential for scientific understanding of our world seemed unlimited to a naval air captain named Edgar Mitchell. He was a pragmatic young test pilot, engineer and scientist; a mission to the moon on Apollo 14 was his “dream come true.” Space exploration symbolized for Dr Mitchell what it did for his nation as a whole - technological triumph of historical proportions, unprecedented mastery of the world in which we live, and extraordinary potentials for new discoveries. But it was the trip home that Mitchell recalls most. Sitting in the cramped cabin of the space capsule, he saw planet Earth floating freely in the vastness of space. He was engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness - an epiphany. In Mitchell’s own words: “The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. . . . The knowledge came to me directly.”Mitchell faced a critical challenge. As a physical scientist, he had grown accustomed to directing his attention to the objective world “out there.” But the experience that came to him in space led him to a startling hypothesis: Perhaps reality is more complex, subtle, and inexorably mysterious than conventional science had led him to believe. Perhaps a deeper understanding of consciousness (inner space) could lead to a new and expanded view of reality in which objective and subjective, outer and inner, are understood as co-equal aspects of the miracle and mystery of being.

Sounds interesting? – I’ll explain more in my next post… watch out this space for more…

Origin of universe and beginnings of life

Origin of the Universe - What's the Latest Theory?
When it comes to the origin of the universe, the "Big Bang Theory" and its related Inflation Universe Theories (IUTs) are today's dominant scientific school of thought. According to these interrelated notions, the universe was created between 13 and 20 billion years ago from the random, cosmic explosion (or expansion) of a subatomic ball that hurled space, time, matter and energy in all directions. Everything - the whole universe -- came from an initial speck of infinite density (also known as a "singularity"). This speck (existing outside of space and time) appeared from no where, for no reason, only to explode (start expanding) all of a sudden. Although this sounds contrary to our common sense everyday notions of what is possible or not, however, as has been frequently noted by men of science over centuries, the universe need not be in line with human expectations of common sense. Ok, I digress a little bit. Back to the original theme… over a period of billions of years, this newly created space, time, matter and energy evolved into remarkably-designed and fully-functional stars, galaxies and planets, including our earth.

Here's what the experts are saying about the origin of the universe:

NASA: "In the more than 70 years since the discovery that that the Universe is expanding, we have made some significant steps in understanding how the Universe began and how it must have evolved to be what it is today. We know this: galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed from tiny fluctuations in the early Universe. We can measure these fluctuations by mapping the cosmic background radiation and relate them to the structures which we observe today. However, many challenges remain…"
(http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/mysteries_l1/origin_destiny.html)

UC Berkeley: "The big bang theory states that at some time in the distant past there was nothing. A process known as vacuum fluctuation created what astrophysicists call a singularity. From that singularity, which was about the size of a dime, our Universe was born."
(http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/IUP/Big_Bang_Primer.html)

University of Michigan: "About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What existed prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurrence was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other."
(http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm)

PBS: There was an "initial explosion" of a "primordial atom which had contained all the matter in the universe."
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp27bi.html)

Origin of Life - What's the latest theory?

When it comes to the origin of life, "evolutionary theory" is still the foundation of today's scientific worldview. The conventional school text books teach that organic life sprung from non-organic matter exclusively through a natural mechanistic process on a pre-biotic earth. There is another school of thought that comets brought the necessary elements of life to earth and kick-started this whole process. To my mind, this is just skirting the issue. Even if comets did bring elements of life from extra-terrestrial, indeed extra-solar sources, life, in the end, had to originate somewhere. If not on earth, then somewhere else… in that sense, we are all, everything on earth, aliens in a manner of speaking… I digress again and apologies for that.

Back to the main theme of origins. That original life form then evolved into more complex life forms through a natural process of random mutations and natural selection. In a nutshell, the majority scientific hypothesis is that matter randomly acting on matter for a long period of time created everything we see. Although there are several holes in this theory as well.

Consider the highly evolved sense of echo location in bats. According to the theory, it would imply that that in response to the necessity of finding food during the dead of night, bats evolved this capability. However, if one looks closely, then there are several serious problems… how did the bats evolve both ultrasonic equipment to generate the sound waves and the ears to catch them back along with necessary brain capacity to process all of the information. Even today, doing that requires high level technology in form of radars and ultrasonic capabilities by humans and it wasn’t developed until Second World War… evolutionary theory does not adequately explain simultaneous evolution of higher order features in animals, let alone the origin of life itself. But that’s the best we’ve got…

However, there are serious questions… How can nothing explode? Where did all that matter and energy come from? What caused its release? How did this explosion of everything (from nothing) order itself? How can simplicity become complexity? Where did the chemical elements come from? Where did the mathematical laws and physical properties come from? How do we explain the design, complexity and fine-tuning inherent in spiral galaxies, solar systems, and stars? Questions such as these are pushed into the realm of meta-physics and avoided at best by the current scientific establishments. Religions, of course, have the simple answer – GOD or some other being answering to that description created this entire out of nothing, or his thigh or some other part. I do not wish to be irreverent or blasphemous but find all this just a plain way of saying – folks – although we seem to have microwaves, television, seem to be able to send out spacecrafts to other planets – we are still largely ignorant about the reality around us and how it came about.

The mad dash to find ever more number of elementary particles – does not seem to have an end. With ever more powerful colliders, we seem to find more and more elementary particles… we are getting besides the point again… habit of mine – opens up multiple threads of thought and execution simultaneously.

How did life come from an inorganic soup? How did the bacteria come about? How did a bird come from a lizard? Why don't we see birds come from lizards today? Why are there no transitional fossils in our museums today, the so called missing links? Why have we never observed beneficial mutations? Where did the information code in DNA come from? Where did the language convention that interprets DNA come from? How can we explain the random development of the human eye, reproductive system, digestive tract, brain, heart and lungs? What about the subconscious mind? What about love, morality, ethics, and emotions? Can these things really evolve gradually and randomly over time? By the way, I am in no way affiliated with or subscribe to – intelligent design philosophy. Never have, never will. Imagine if the question relating to terrestrial biology can be so difficult and mind boggling, what about extra-terrestrial biology, and beings? But first I wanted to get my head cleared up on terrestrial biology and open up the website – Google! This is one thing about the internet that I love. Google has turned the internet as it was supposed to be. Near instantaneous searchable repository of world information.

I opened the site on tree of life. The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. I opened one on life on earth, and was stunned by the first page I saw. They say and I quote - “The rooting of the Tree of Life, and the relationships of the major lineages, are controversial. The monophyly of Archaea is uncertain, and recent evidence for ancient lateral transfers of genes indicates that a highly complex model is needed to adequately represent the phylogenetic relationships among the major lineages of Life.”

Behind a lot of poppycock and scientific jargon hides the fact that they don’t know it yet! Regardless of any theoretical problems with the tree itself, what about all the evolutionary processes required to get to the first simple life forms at the bottom of the chart in the first place? This seems to be a big mystery and while there are debates, they mostly border on the Meta part of it rather than actual solid physics or biology. We seem to understand a lot of rules which shape the nature as we understand it today, but nothing about how these rules came about and more importantly why…

Watch out for this space... i'll be back with some more thoughts - profound and profane, both :-)

Is there anybody out there?

Now that the “mars craft”, created by humans, has landed on the 4th planet – MARS and sampled water in the planet’s frigid and frozen soil, the question of “life elsewhere” has gained further momentum. NASA scientists said that they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander. Phoenix is the latest NASA’s bid to discover whether water - a crucial ingredient for life - ever flowed on Mars and whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, exists or ever existed there. While a full story of what exactly has been achieved can be found here, to my mind however, the question of whether there is life out there is much more deeper and has profound relationship with the mother of all questions – the origin of this universe.

Sounds familiar? – I’ll explain more in my next post… watch out this space for more…