…it gets everywhere
these days
 |
| An Italian pasta forest |
 |
| Making music - The Grand Old Duke of York with Great -granddad, Great Auntie and Aimee |
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| Deciding which look tastiest |
‘Almost
2500 years since Hippocrates first saw the brain as the centre of our thoughts,
we can now interrogate its inner world with some of the most advanced
technology known to humanity. The ultimate aim is to work out how the brain
generates our conscious mind. Such understanding is a long way off.’
The puzzling problem
of binding
I have found yet another ‘brain’ article,
this time in New Scientist of 6 April
2013, perfect reading matter for my three-hour train journey.
Without a doubt, as I read further in this
very well written piece, I knew that the paragraph that I was waiting for would
appear.
What made me so sure?
I was sure because the article was full of
the words and phrases that repeatedly reinforced what I have heard spoken from
the mouths of several research neurologists, and read in well informed articles
like this one.
‘Is the mind beyond
human understanding?’
This is the question that begins this list of
phrases that read and noted down as I read about the brain in the New Scientist –
·
Is the mind beyond human
understanding?
·
...according to one
theory
·
... it could be
·
...many neuroscientists
believe
·
... some neuroscientists
claim
·
...according to this view
·
...elusive phenomenon
·
... impossible to specify
·
...it has also been
suggested
·
... the idea is
controversial
·
... a potential
breakthrough may lie
·
...no one has been able
to work out how
·
...recent reports suggest
·
... may be possible
·
...which is thought to
explain...
And just as I thought, at the end of the page
I read –
‘As we have seen, different tasks are carried
out by different cortical regions. Yet all you have to do is open your eyes to
see that these tasks are combined smoothly: depth, shape, colour, and motion
all merge into a 3D image of the scene. Objects are recognised with no
awareness of the fragmented nature of the brain’s efforts. Precisely how this is achieved
remains a puzzle. It is called the “problem of binding” and is one of
the questions that remain to be answered by tomorrow’s neuroscientists.’
Is this “problem of binding” the spiralling
upwards that I often discuss in my writing, that coming together of many things
that are developing in our whole selves, influencing our development, and
creating a spiral of progress towards our personal goals in our active lives?
As a conductor I know that by helping my
clients learn to develop in many areas of their lives, by helping them to learn
to take an active part in society and helping them learn to keep body and soul
happy and healthy, that this will result in a so-called ‘merging together of
the scene’, what I call a spiralling upwards. I am happy to work hard with my
clients to achieve this upward spiralling and I am just as happy to leave the
neuroscientists of tomorrow to continue the 2500 year-old quest of trying to
solve the puzzles of the brain.
Notes
New Scientist,
6 April 2013 – The
Human Brain, Michael O’Shea
1 comment:
The whole 'science' will stay log-jammed till it is forced to confront the long-expressed position that the human mind is not product solely of the intra-cerebral, but of the extra-cerebral too, especially the inter-cerebral.
(I suppose that perhaps one might blame Hippoctrates, though I doubt that he personally started it.)
As for CE, the Akoses were on to this long ago but the rest of the field seems nailed firmly in a pre-Luriyan (i.e. preparagmatic) time-warp.
So sad...
I should add that your 'spiralling' is a process that occurs within an extra-cerebral (largely inter-cerebral) universe, in transactions, reciprocity and mutual transformation between active, conscious and largely autonomous learners.
Sorry if this all sounds rather wordy but it refers to a very material phenomenon, eminently modelable. And as A. R.Luriya and associates showed, not a bad basis for a real neuropsychology and a powerful rehabilitation.
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