BRAIN AND MIND: WHO IS THE PUPPET AND WHO THE PUPPETEER?

George Paxinos

BRAIN & MIND: WHO IS THE PUPPET & WHO THE PUPPETEER?

Brain or Mind?The question has social, legal and religious implications.

If the mind controls the brain, then there is FREE WILL and its corollaries, dignity and responsibility. You are king in your skull-sized kingdom. You are the architect of your destiny.

If, on the other hand, the brain controls the mind, an incendiary conclusion follows: There can be no FREE WILL, no praise, no retributive punishment, no purgatory and little hope for survival.

Rockefeller Center NY

Wilhelm Wundt, father of Psychology Leipzig 1879

Something of my journey through the brain before IReturn to the question

RATΑρουραίος

The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates (Paxinos and Watson 1982)

Rockefeller Plaza

BL

Αμυγδαλη

θεος

Amygdala ofRhesus Monkey

Chemoarchitecture. section stained for cetylcholinesterase

The Gain in The Brain is Mainly in the Stain (Floyd Bloom)

Δεν χρωματιζω παντα εγκεφαλους ποντικου.Οταν ομως το κανω, προτιμωΑκετυλοχολινεστεραση. Zaria

IRt

10 10Sol

SolSol

SolSol

10 10

10 10

IO IO

IOIO

IO

Different stains provide Different windows to the Brain.

The avian brainstem Is very similar (homologous) to the mammalian one

Chick

Luis Puelles

Ontology based on Development

‘A rose under any other name’

Brain Atlas Taxonomy – The Map Making Process

WatsonPuelles

The Chick Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates.

Paxinos

OrangutanTaronga Park Zoo

Ορακοτάγκος

Marmoset

NO MOUSE IS AN ISLAND

Paxinos, Watson, Petrides, Rosa and Tokuno, The Marmoset Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, Academic Press 2012

PF, PFG, PG, PE, TE1 are Economo Koskinas terms

3D Marmoset

Petrides and Pandya, 1994 45a

Petrides and Pandya, 1994

Executive Processing in Working Memory

u

Constantin von Economo (1876-1931)

7 Billion for Brain Research in China

NHMRC Australian Mouse Brain Mapping Consortium (Reutens, Bartlett, Petrou, Paxinos, Egan)

Μαγνητικη Τομογραφια Εγκεφαλου Ποντικου

DTI/MRH

Sanes et al. 2005, Development of the Nervous System

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (Duke U, Calebrese et al)

Tractography of the Human Brainstem.

Johnson & Calabrese Duke U

GRE Human Brainstem postmortem. Duke data

FAC Human Brainstem postmortem. Duke data

Why construct atlases of the brain?

The fox entered the house of an actor and rummaging over everything she pulled a mask, a beautiful imitation of a human head. She put her paw on it and said, “What a beautiful head! Yet it is without any value because it is entirely without a brain.” (Aesop)

Don Juan:… Will you not agree with me…that it is inconceivable that Life, having once produced (Birds), should, if love and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the clumsy elephant and hideous ape, whose grandchildren we are?

The Devil: You conclude then, that Life was driving at clumsiness and ugliness?

Don Juan: No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life was driving at brains--at its darling object: an organ by which it can attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act III

The Brain is my Second Most Favored Organ.

-Woody Allen

Sydney

2 idon odigi.ELBOWStrong faith in adult neurogenesis & regeneration of the brain

Ιθάκη

21.00-21.30 μμ, 15 Αυγουστου 2013, Παραλιακός δρομος Ιθάκης σε σημειο Εξέδρα____

Μηχανάκια Αυτοκίνητα

Χωρίς Κράνος

Με Κράνος Χωρίς Ζώνη Με Ζώνη

68 0 70 27Ικονι--------------

BRAIN & MIND: WHO IS THE PUPPET & WHO THE PUPPETEER?

Without special examination it is not possible to infer that the brain creates the mind, that it is the anatomical seat of cognition, motor and sensory functions, and emotion. As Robert Doty pointed out (Neuroscience 147, 2007: 561), the Egyptians, so obsessed in care for their afterlife, heedlessly discarded the brain in funerary practice. They carefully preserved the heart, lungs and other organs, but millennia of Pharaohs went brainless to their after life.

Some pre-Socratic philosophers rejected supernatural causes and mythical explanations of the physical world and the nature of the soul, including the relation between psychological events and the body.

These philosophers replaced myth with reality, banishing Gods and magic.ALCMAEON OF CROTON

Astoundingly modern view of the brain:“Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pain, griefs and tears."Hippocrates, ca 460-

377 BC

Aristotle (384-322)The best of times and worst of times. Pupil of Plato, the greatest classical biologist and first anatomist. Described the meninges, distinguished the cerebellum, described poroi (nerves, though he did not know it).Observed that humans have the largest brain for their body size.Cardiocentric Theory.Three species of soul:

1.The vegetative soul (also plants).2.The sensitive and motor soul (animals only).3.The Intellectual soul (nous): man.

All souls reside in the heart.Brain served to reduce the heat of the blood.A Professor’s greatness is measured by how long he stymies progress in his field. ===

Galen of Pergamon (Bergama of today’s Turkey)

Kos

Admirer of Hippocrates. He lived in the intellectual environment of the Greek and Roman world including Alexandrian anatomy. One of the greatest physicians (served Marcus Aurelius). Did dissections. Cord transections. Coined the word autopsy.

Described as absurd Aristotle’s view that the brain was for cooling the blood.

Scornfully discarded the notion that convolutions of the cortex are related to intelligence saying even an ass’ brain presented many convolutions.

Encephalocentric (Galen) and Cardio-centric (Aristotle) views battled it out for 1,300 years – until after the dawn of modern science.

In the Merchant of Venice, Portia asks: “Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head?”The millennial question about the hegemonikon/regent is now answered: it’s the brain.Conclusion: it is time after 2,500 years to put out a press release advising the public to stop sending photos of hearts on Valentine’s Day and instead send photos of something far more appropriate.

HeadingContent and copy as required

A Feb 14 in Bondi Junction

HeadingContent and copy as required

ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function

After such a battle to localize the seat of the soul, Psychology loses its soul in the 1930s. Hebb: The mind is the integration of the activity of the brain.

There is no ghost in the machine (Patricia Churchland)..

For scientific considerations: If the ‘soul’ is where emotion and motivation reside, where mental activity occurs, sensations are perceived, memories are stored, reasoning takes place and decisions are taken, then there is no need to hypothesize its existence.

There is an organ that already performs these functions.

There is no need for a soul; but is there free will?

So many neurophilosophers now think that there is no need to invoke the concept of soul to understand and modify behavior. The question is whether there is free will?

Many neuroscientists, best expressed by BF Skinner, believe that behavior is the result of two and only two factors and that we have not choice over either of them.

1) Genetic endowment2) The environment

There is no need for a soul to study behavior; but is there free will?

BF Skinner

HeadingContent and copy as required

Environment sculpts character just as Phidias sculpted Apollo from Parian marble in this statue from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia.

Όπως ο Πραξιτέλης λάξεψε τον Ερμή.

As Praxiteles sculpted Hermes.

MATTER BECOMES CONSCIOUS OF ITS OWN EXISTENCE

Sensation, perception and consciousness are totally dependent on the brain.

Consciousness or phenomenal awareness is the inner mental life. It is what it feels like when someone experiences love, hate, lust, jealousy or the colors of the rainbow. It is believed an organism needs many neurons before awareness can arise and even more neurons and interconnections before consciousness can arise. As though by magic, if we have enough neurons you can have consciousness and fall in love. The greater the complexity of the nervous system, the more complex the repertoire of conscious states. Even within our own life span, we are more conscious when we are concentrating on a lecture and less when we are falling asleep or when we are embryos or dementing.

Consciouness is divisible. Each cerebral hemisphere in Patient P. S., a callosum-sectioned patient, appears to possess mental properties deserving of conscious status. The observations seem to answer many questions concerning the issue of whether the mechanisms of consciousness can be split and doubled by split-brain surgery (LeDoux, Wilson & Gazzaniga, 1977).

Sperry

No freedom or freedom liteOur brain is the riverbed that holds and channels our stream of consciousness (Koch, 2012). It is molded by the family and the culture we were raised in.

There is nothing left for free will to explain once you account for nature/nurture and random influences on behavior.

If so, this would render us passive observers of the thoughts and emotions the brain parades for us, with no crack for free will to elbow in and join the parade. From the above hypothesis follows a prediction ––

No freedom or freedom liteThe question is to what extent our preferences are arrived at freely or are forced on us by genetic predispositions, epigenetics and environmental factors totally outside of our control?

It seems there is no free will in the domain of romantic love. In the words of Carmen in the opera by the same name, “L’ amour … il n’ajamais, jamais, connu de loi” –– Love has never, never, known the law. –– Some scorned lovers state emphatically they want to lose their love, but cannot.

They keep loving someone who has abandoned them, or is even abusive to them. Some are more capable of committing suicide than switching their affection from the one who does not love them to one who does love them.

No freedom or freedom lite

This absence of free will in emotion is consistent with Voltaire’s more catholic comment, “… I can’t help wanting what

I do want.”

“I do not believe in the freedom of will. Schopenhauer’s words: ‘Mancan do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants’ accompanyme in all situations of life. They reconcile me with the actions of men, even when they are rather painful to me. This insight on the lack of free will protects me from taking myself or my fellow men tooseriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing mytemper” , Albert Einstein (1932), ‘My Credo’

Albert Einstein wrote:

Alzheimer’s disease will pay an unwelcome visit to many of us at the end of life. It will disrupt the internal structure of our neurons and we will be living evidence the mind is the product of the brain and has no influence on it.

The 19th century poet Lord Alfred Tennyson was half right when he wrote in Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met”

The other half of the truth lies in genetics.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Neuroscientists agree genes confer predilections. Many consider the environment is the only sculptor of behavior. If only we could abandon our undesirable desires, our depression, our obsessions, our compulsions, our unrequited love.

If only we were the authors of our thoughts and not mere observers of what the brain presents us. If only the puppet could get hold of one of the strings with which the brain makes it dance. It seems the puppet is free only in as much as it loves its strings (Harris, 2012).

Quite different approach to crime and punishment. No retributive justice. No hate. If only the scorned lovers…

Remember Jesus on the cross

We are slaves of yesterday. But today is the yesterday of tomorrow

Many neuroscientist believe that we are slaves of yesterday; but today is the yesterday of tomorrow. The brain can change. Australia, Canada and the US may one day understand that it is a dubious distinction to be amongst the countries that successfully sabotaged the international effort to stabilize the climate.

fREADERS

I hope I have convinced some of you of Hippocrates’ notion of the primacy of the brain. If yes, it will be that much more important to figure out if it is the right “size.”

Homo Sapiens:Intelligence made

them extinct

Is the Brain the Right “Size?”

If the brain was 'smaller' (less clever and incapable of language) than what it is, it would not have been able to produce the science and technology which today threaten existence. If the brain was ‘larger’ than what it is, humans might have been able to comprehend the problem, even rectify it.

The Brain is just not the right size.

Know Thyself

Jacques Monod”…man must at last wake out of his millenary dream; and in doing so wake to his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. Now does he at last realize that, like a gypsy, he lives at the boundary of an alien world. A world that is deaf to his music, just as indifferent to his hopes as to his suffering or his crimes."

Ελπίζω πως οπλισμένοι με την αλήθεια (το γνώθι σαυτόν) ότι ανήκουμε και εμείς στο ζωικό βασίλειο, και έχοντας βάλλει πλώρη το χάραμα και όχι το μνήμα των παιδιών μας, θα κάνουμε φτερά τα κουπιά μας.

Johann Liss 17th

Century. The fall of Phaethon(The Hubris of Humanity). Who are we?