How
the Brain Works
A
multidisciplinary systems analysis:
the psychology/neurology/cybernetics
of mind/brain/behavior
Eugene
B. Shea
While neurobiologists have been making great strides in identifying brain diseases and genetic anomalies, enabling them to develop wonderful biochemical products and gene therapy to treat them, cognitive neuroscientists and neuropsychologists are having a much tougher time of it. They are trying to understand the brain processes in stimulus/response, in hopes of eventually arriving at an understanding of the unsolved relationships of mind/brain/behavior.
Many neurologists, biologists, physiologists—even some physicists and mathematicians—are exercising their truly prodigious powers of imagination to justify their conviction that consciousness, reasoning, decision-making, etc., - all our “higher” faculties - must be functions of the cortex.
But since this article will take strong exception to the direction of the research of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, I must devote the following portion to explaining why I believe the great majority are on the wrong track.
First however, I want to clearly and largely exempt Bernard J. Baars, Ph.D., and Nicole M. Gage, Ph.D. from my criticism, based on their marvelously lucid and carefully researched new textbook, Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience - Academic Press, 2007.
Dedicated neuroscientists, they struggle bravely with such things as metacognition, intentionality, volition, “making choices in the absence of inherently correct solutions,” which they boldly admit “remains, at least for now, a uniquely human territory,” tacitly implying free will, and find it necessary to ascribe homunculus-like faculties to the prefrontal cortex.
But I am deeply indebted to them for much of the factual neuroscience cited in this article. I think every serious student of cognitive neuroscience should have a copy of this excellent book.
The major problem facing cognitive neuroscientists is that the chimpanzee's DNA is now known to be 99+% identical to ours, so most “scientismists” thought this proved we were only a branch of the chimp family, and that the <1% difference could account for our vastly superior capabilities.
But now they have found that the remaining <1% difference is primarily related to hair, skin, bones, blood, muscle, etc.―hardly differences which could begin to account for our superiority.
Our DNA is not similar to that of the chimpanzee,
it is, to all intents and purposes, identical.
Then how come we're so different? Never at loss for figments, most scientists have concluded that our differences, or “higher faculties,” must be found in the cortex, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, both of which are much larger than that of the chimp, imagining that a larger but physiologically and biologically identical brain, must account for our superiority.
So hundreds of researchers are expending millions of people-hours, centering all their efforts to locate human faculties of consciousness, reasoning, decision-making, imagination, volition, intentionality, etc, in some as yet undiscovered faculties of the human cortex.
Professor Sebastian Grossman, Ph.D., Emeritus Chair of Bio-Psychology, University of Chicago, points out "... neuropsychologists' proclivity to 'localize' higher faculties such as consciousness in that part of the brain that has undergone the most obvious evolutionary change. . .” (in a letter to the author)
Note the good Professor's precise use of the word “proclivity,” and quote marks around the word localize. In other words, they arbitrarily posit our higher faculties in the cortex, not on the basis of any scientific evidence, but because that’s where they want them to be.
(And, as we now know the larger brain is not at all “evolutionary,” having appeared on the planet in an instant of geological time.)
Nor is there any validity to the “triune” nature of the brain, as composed of evolutionary development from reptilian to mammalian to primate brains. The so-called “reptilian brain” is not a brain at all, since it represents only a portion of the reptile brain, which is comprised, like ours, of brainstem, midbrain, and cortex. Nor, for the same reason, is the mammalian brain a brain. And as we shall see, their derogation of these so-called lizard and mammalian brains in favor of the cortex has led researchers to only a perfunctory analysis of their marvelous functions, without which we would be vegetables a few minutes before our demise.
And cognitive neuroscientists are admittedly struggling with a “binding problem.” The various visual characteristics of an object―color, shape, size, motion, etc.―are registered and interpreted in different
parts of the cortex. So, they wonder, if I see something red, round, baseball-size, in motion, where in the cortex do all of those percepts come together to instantly alert me to the fact that I’m going to get hit in the face with a tomato? The famous binding problem.
(The answer as we shall see, is that they don't come together in the cortex, but in the thalamus, the much more likely home to consciousness.)
My first computer 25 years ago, was a Model III Radio Shack running on a Z-80 processor, with 64K of internal RAM and two 64K floppy disks. My current Pentium 4, with 2G of RAM, and a 60G hard drive, operates on exactly the same principles as my old Model III. The only substantial difference is a faster processor (though some may be surprised how fast the Z-80 was when running programs written in machine language) and vastly more RAM and external memory.
Now consider the lowly rat, whose peanut-size brain, consisting of a brainstem, a minuscule mid-brain, and cortex, can generate perhaps only twenty or thirty different responses. But those few responses have insured the perpetuation of the species for thousands of years. Now looking at the successive anatomical forms of the mammalian brain of the rat, cat, owl monkey, rhesus monkey, and chimpanzee, isn’t it obvious that these are simply sequential enhancements of the rat’s marvelously efficient and effective Command and Control System?—enhancements which, coupled with a more versatile body and larger brain—more work space and memory―enable the chimpanzee to generate scores of responses and, by operant conditioning and social learning, acquire scores more?
And, since our DNA is identical, that our brain is simply an enhancement of the chimp’s brain, and must also operate on the same principles and components?
I read 10 or 12 years ago that those working on artificial intelligence realized that for a computer to emulate the brain it must be equipped with many facts. Children can’t be as old or older than their parents, shirts are bought at a department store, etc. They first estimated maybe as many as a million facts. The last time I heard they were up to 10 million and still counting. Where does the brain store all these facts?
(Aside: And what became of AI research? I’ve heard nothing about it in the last 10 years. Apparently funding has dried up and redirected to research on the cortex.)
Further, can you imagine the number of neural motor sequence memories, subroutines, necessary for a typist to hit 9 keys a second for minutes at a time, without realizing what he has typed? For sighted words to appear on a page, while he thinks of something else? Can you imagine the number of subroutines necessary to drive my car through traffic while I’m thinking of something else, and alert me instantly to anything requiring my attention? To take a shower? For a concert pianist to have thousands of musical phrases wired to his fingers’, hands’, arms’, feet, and legs’ motor neurons? Some of which can be executed continuously for half an hour? The number of sensory sequence memories to read and absorb information at 400 words a minute? To know thousands of words which I can rattle off correctly in millions of different phrases? To know the appearance and something about 1,000 people on hearing their names? To recognize 1,000 people on sight from many angles? To recognize the voices of scores of people? To recognize hundreds of songs on hearing one or two phrases? And on what instrument they are played?
Where could we possibly store all these facts and sensory and motor sequences―program routines, subroutines, and sub-subroutines―all this memory? Why, only in a much larger cortex of course! We don’t need another operating system; but we humans do obviously need more working space (RAM) and more memory, a larger hard drive; both provided by the vast human cortex.
(Note that none of the above memories have any use or meaning to the chimpanzee, which does very nicely with a much smaller but identical cortex.)
Also, neuroscientists in general, using their fMRI and PET scans, have limited themselves to a modular model of the brain, examining each segment (normal or lesioned) during different mental activities, as though each is independently responsible for (or independently participates in) one or more of the multiplicity of activities of which the brain is capable.
For example, handicapped by this modular approach, they consider central nervous system activities such as thought, voluntary movement, reasoning, perception, emotions, etc., as functions of the parts of the brain which “light up” when those activities are operant, while those mental activities are impaired when that part of the brain is damaged.
But doesn’t my computer hard drive operate exactly the same way―activate
relevant sectors when certain programs are run, and fail to run those programs when those sectors are damaged? Does that mean my computer operations are functions of the hard drive? Isn’t the hard drive just a passive memory of operational sequences called forth and managed from somewhere else? As Baars & Gage warn, we should not confuse correlative with causal. Calling brain activities “functions” of active brain segments is like saying that running water is a function of the faucet.
Further, believing that the cortex is home to all our higher powers, researchers have concentrated their analyses on the
“upward” course of information from the senses through the reticular formation and thalamus up to the cortex, where they think processing, analysis, and decision-making must take place. But according to Erich Harth in The Creative Loop - How the Brain Makes a Mind, they have “studiously ignored” the simultaneous downward passage of ten times as much information from the cortex to the thalamus!
I will try to prove that a much more efficient processing, and a binding problem solution, lie in considering consciousness, in both animals and humans, to be centered in the thalamus,
which uses the cortex to retrieve relevant memories and identify and feed motor response routines and subroutines to the prefrontal cortex.
For example, when I am attending to the voice of someone who says, “Marilyn Monroe,” I suggest that those words pass in neural networks through the reticular formation to the thalamus (and uncomprehending consciousness) and up to auditory cortex regions.
But ten times as much information is returned from the cortex to the thalamus, enough information to give me a picture of a beautiful blonde in a white dress and high heels standing over a subway exhaust grille trying to hold her skirt down
―a picture which would require scores of thousands of computer bytes. Isn't it obvious this picture was simply retrieved to thalamic consciousness from the cortex?
On the other hand, presented with that picture, it is sent in neural networks through unknowing consciousness to visual cortex V1 through V3, and returns the name “Marilyn Monroe” to consciousness in the thalamus, together with highlights of her life.
Researchers who concentrate their efforts to understand cognitive neurology while confining their search for our higher powers to some yet-to-be-discovered faculties of the cortex, while ignoring both our metafaculties (see below), and the remarkable functions of the Reticular Activating System, or ERTAS, the extended reticulo-thalamic system (Baars & Gage page 145), and the vast range of their influence on human cognition and behavior are heading down a one-way dead-end road.
Some neuroscientists agree, at least in part: “From modern neuroanatomy, it is apparent that the entire neocortex of humans continues to be regulated by the paralimbic regions from which it evolved.” [A General Theory of Love, Lewis, et al., pg; 33]
As Dr. Grossman puts it, ”. . . the reticular formation has been sadly neglected by contemporary neuroscientists, .“
In view of the above, it is a major thesis of this article that
although we use the brain differently, e.g., for everything
from language to putting men on the moon, and have
control over some of its functions, the human btain, in
and of itself, has no inherent functional capabilitieswhich differentiate it from the brain of the chimpanzee.
As I shall try to make clear in the following,
if cognitive scientists are to understand the brain, they must suspend their search for uniquely human faculties of the cortex, expand their studies of the Reticular Activating System (or ERTAS), including its “sentinel,” the Reticular Formation; and they must hypothesize an AGENT—call it “X” if you will—of the metafaculties of metacognition, imagination, conviction, and commitment, which include what Baars & Gage boldly admit is, “at least for now,” the uniquely human faculty of “making choices in the absence of inherently correct solutions.”
The rest of this article will be devoted to a new paradigm of the human brain, one which can resolve the binding problem, explain from a systems standpoint how the brain does work, and elucidate human motivation and behavior.
How the Brain Does Work
To understand human behavior, and identify the locus of consciousness, a multidisciplinary systems analysis of the brain may prove to be a more fruitful approach.
Look at it this way: if beings from another planet were smart enough to get to earth, and simply observe an automobile for a day or two without raising the hood, but listening, examining the gas, the exhaust, etc., they would undoubtedly be able to tell, without a design of each part, exactly what components were at work inside the car. They would know that there must be a fuel vaporizer, combustion chambers, ignition devices, a transmission, etc., etc.,
Now,
with ever-increasing analytical skills, we have been observing each other for more than three thousand years, and apparently no one seems to be trying to analyze the brain from a systems standpoint―to postulate the components and their functions which must be at work “under the hood,” in order to explain all the rational and irrational physical, mental, and emotional responses which biologists, physiologists, neuroscientists, and particularly cognitive psychologists, know the brain can generate and/or implement.
Drawing on the disciplines of psychology, cybernetics, and neurology, and painting with a broader brush in a systems analysis, we can perhaps begin to develop a schematic of the human and chimpanzee brain components and their functions in mind/brain/behavior.
From a systems standpoint, we know that every complex mechanism - and so too, every complex organism made up of multiple subsystems, a mechanism whose subsystems can operate in unison in a coordinated way, enabling the mechanism to simultaneously accomplish a number of different tasks―like a battleship for example―must have a command and control system which manages and coordinates the functions of the subsystems.
To operate effectively, a command and control center must have:1. Immediate access to all available environmentalinformation,
2. A means of rapidly assimilating, evaluating, and
prioritizing that information,
3. A means of selecting and implementing appropriate
responses to the information, and
4. Immediate two-way communications, for control
and feedback, with all of the subsystems.
Now of course the body is a complex mechanism with many subsystems, capable of operating in a coordinated way. So it must have a command and control center, which all agree is the brain.
But the brain itself is a very complex mechanism/organism with many subsystems capable of operating in a coordinated way.
It is inconceivable that the human and animal brain, with all of its components and subsystems
―much more complicated than a battleship―could possibly coordinate each of their functions in effective management of the thousands of complex physical, mental, emotional, and biological activities of the body, providing as it does, instantaneous, coordinated reactionsto circumstances of vital interest, without a central
priority evaluator and responder to its
environmental and biological stimuli―
i.e., a command and control system.
But then where is it? What is it?
The only viable candidate for the brain’s
“command and control system” is the
Reticular Activating System, centered,with consciousness, in the thalamus,
which sends and receives signals to and
from all parts of the brain and body.
The only segment of the brain which has access to all
incoming information, is known to immediately scan
and prioritize that information, then select and
implement “appropriate” responses, and has
two-way communications with all of the
subsystems, is the Reticular Activating System
including its “sentinel,” the Reticular Formation.
Although scientists have known about some of the
properties of the Reticular Activating System/
Reticular Formation for over 50 years, none of them,
to my knowledge, has suggested they form a command
and control system for all operations of the brain.
The key to a cogent systems analysis of the brain was provided many years ago by the renowned Jerome S. Bruner, one of the fathers of cognitive psychology, when he observed,
“The human mind has an ‘inhibitory system’ which routinely and automatically removes from perception, reason, and judgement over 99% of available fact.”
I will try to prove that the Reticular Formation (RF)―in both humans and the social animal―is the perfect neurological candidate for Bruner’s ‘inhibitory system.’ The RF is an uncharted - because unchartable - amorphous mass of millions of neurons, whose responses are uniquely unspecific,
But now, even after fifty-plus years, neurologists have identified only a few of its purposes. It is so complex that research on it has practically come to a halt.
What is known about the RF/RAS raises questions which no one in the scientific community seems prepared to address. For example,reticular system.”“Nature appears to have gone to great pains to cause essentially all the incoming and outgoing communication channels of the brain to pass through the
“[The reticular formation] is well placed to monitor all the nerves connecting brain and body. It ‘knows’ what is going on better than any other part of the brain.”
“[The reticular formation] alerts the brain to incoming information from the senses, and from the centers of thought, memory and feeling. More than that, it adjudicates the relative importance of that information. . . In a way the RAS is like a vigilant secretary, sorting out the trivia from the incoming messages.”
“The reticular formation is, in essence, the physical basis of consciousness, the brain's chief watchguard. . .The reticular formation continuously sifts and selects, forwarding only the essential, the unusual, the dangerous to the conscious mind. . . The reticular formation can both send and receive messages. If it suddenly spots one that merits attention, it shoots up an alert through ascending RAS pathways to receiving areas in the cortex. Timed to arrive simultaneously with the impulses sent directly from sensory receptors, [ ! ! ! ] the RAS alerts the cortex to these impulses.”
“The RAS determines which of the many bits of information are important enough - or novel enough - to report to the higher portions of the brain. . . Normally, the information relating to automatic actions, such as the heartbeat and digestion, is dealt with directly by the RAS, which sends out regulating impulses when they are needed without allowing any awareness of them to filter through to the conscious brain.”
“Researchers have a relatively clear picture of the physical underpinnings of consciousness. Information streaming in from nerve receptors in the skin, muscles, tendons, joints, eyes, ears and mouth passes first through the thalamus and/or the reticular formation - a group of nuclei in the brainstem. Thus, before even reaching the cortex, impulses have passed through a series of processing regions that behave somewhat like secretaries in an office who screen phone calls, mail and visitors before passing them on to the boss.
“The reticular formation, sometimes called the ruler of consciousness, stands at the critical junction — both in terms of anatomy and function — of the senses and the higher brain. Vigilant day and night, the neurons of the reticular formation sort all incoming impulses. By some unknown means, they determine which deserve further attention, and having done so, flag important impulses so that the cortex will take note of them. At night, while the cortex is deep in sleep, the reticular formation keeps tabs on the senses and in times of possible danger is first to sound the alarm.”
“There is also direct evidence that the RAS is able to produce the kinds of effects on the operation of the muscles and glands that would accompany the role of a response-selecting mechanism. It seems to be able to sensitize or ‘awaken’ selected nervous circuits and desensitize others. This is sometimes accomplished by selective muscular activation: electric signals sent over reticular nerve fibers down the spinal cord to terminate on the relay nerve cells whose axons pass out to the muscles achieve a sort of ‘volume-control’ action that increases or decreases the magnitude of the muscular response.”
“The reticular formation monitors incoming stimuli and chooses those that should be passed on to the brain and those that are irrelevant and may be ignored. . . In addition to being a filter, the reticular formation controls respiration, cardiovascular function, digestion, awareness levels, and patterns of sleep.
“In recent years, the reticular formation has been discovered to be more significant than previously thought.
Scientists now believe it to be involved in higher mental processes, in particular the focusing of attention, introspection, and reasoning.”
Finally, because a picture is worth a thousand words:
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THE BRAIN - MYSTERY OF MATTER AND MIND
U. S. News Books - 1981 |
I quote all these sources (with emphasis added) to show the consensus of evidence that the RF/RAS is Bruner’s “inhibitory system;” that the RF, “like a vigilant secretary,” with the power to inhibit, automatically makes it our very stimuli selector; but that much more than a secretary, its associated RAS also selects and implements responses to those stimuli; that together they form the silent sovereign manager of all human and animal vital functions; are capable of “selective muscular activation;” are now thought by some scientists “to be involved in higher mental processes;” and lastly, to remark that, remarkably, this is all they have to say about this mysterious element in the brain. All of these authors then go on to discuss other parts of the brain, with apparently no curiosity about how the RF is able to decide what and what not to inhibit―how it decides which of the great multiplicity of available sensory stimuli it will select for further processing.
From all the evidence, the human and chimpanzee RF/RAS can only be characterized as a computer/servo-organism which receives all incoming data, scans and prioritizes that data for further processing in accordance with its programs, and, through the Reticular Activating System, generates and controls Responses or Response-Impulses “appropriate” to its iterations of the data.
It is a second major thesis of this article, representing a new
paradigm of the brain, that in all sentient beings, the brain
constitutes a coherent computer-servo organism which,
under the direction of the Reticular Activating System,
and at the instigation of the Reticular Formation, uses
the
whole brain to try to maintain physiological and
biological homeostasis; in social beings to also try to
maintain stasis
of bio-sociological needs; and in humans,
to also try to
maintain stasis of our uniquely induced psychological,
emotional, and volitional states.
(Hereafter I will use the term "RAS" to include all the processes of the RF.
Also, since the RAS can enact responses, e.g., a blink at something approaching our eyes, or only a response-impulse, e.g. hunger pangs, the word “response” will be used to indicate response or response-impulse, or both, as the context requires).
What then, are the programs on which the RF/RAS is operating?
Well, as we have seen above, the RAS is known to control all our vital functions, respiration, pulse, sleep/wake cycles, etc. But the chimpanzee, without higher powers, also gets an immediate response to any disequilibrium in any of its biological, physiological, and bio-sociological needs, its Social-Animal Needs. Responses to these Needs must also be generated by the RAS.
And since we are social animals whose DNA is 99+% identical to that of the chimpanzee, we must assume that our basic RF programs are the Social-Animal Needs (SA-Needs) we so obviously share with the chimpanzee―Needs which are continually moving into operant and quiescent states. Functioning as priority-interrupts, any Need can be primary at any given time.
The Social Animal Needs
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So it is the Reticular Activating System which motivates children and chimps to imitate others, to seek belongingness, which makes us sleepy when we are tired, and generates an instant mind/body fight-or-flight reaction to a threat, etc., etc. Of course, both animals and humans learn from experience and improve their performance, so the RAS must have access to all of the organism's Memories, in order to generate the best, or most common precedent response for need gratification or fear assuagement.
Both animal and human brains are wired with our experiences.
Those who have had a bad experience with a skunk, instinctively avoid them in the future. And we both learn rapidly about experiences which affect our SA-Needs.
But we have some metafaculties absent in our
“cousin” the chimpanzee. One of the most important of these is the power to commit ourselves. The animal is committed by any response strong enough to pass the action gate in the prefrontal cortex. But we have the power to commit ourselves to a purpose, to an idea, or to an act, including the direction of our attention.
Many philosophers and theologians have defined the act of love not as an emotion or empathy, but as a commitment of ourselves to a person or a purpose or an idea. This may sound strange, since we can commit ourselves to another's welfare or to his downfall. But in either case we have identified ourselves with that purpose, and this is love.
And we can commit ourselves simultaneously to a number of purposes from an innumerable number of options. Aldous Huxley describes it best:
. . . since the mind- body is capable of an enormous variety of experiences, we are free to identify ourselves with an almost infinite number of possible objects—with the pleasures of gluttony, for example, or intemperance, or sensuality; with money, power, or fame; with our family, regarded as a possession or actually an extension and projection of our own selfness; with our artistic or scientific talents; with some favourite branch of knowledge, some fascinating ‘special subject’; with our professions, our political parties, our churches; with our pains and illnesses; with our memories of success or misfortune, our hopes, fears and schemes for the future; and finally with the eternal Reality within which and by which all the rest has its being. And we are free, of course, to identify ourselves with more than one of these things simultaneously. Thus a man can be at once the craftiest of politicians and the dupe of his own verbiage, can have a passion for brandy and money, and an equal passion for the poetry of George Meredith and under-age girls and his mother, for horse-racing and detective stories and the good of his country—the whole accompanied by a sneaking fear of hell-fire, a hatred of Spinoza and an unblemished record for Sunday church- going. [The Perennial Philosophy, p 40]
We can also commit ourselves to ideas, i.e., we can adopt beliefs. (In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi points out that every belief is a commitment.) Uniquely, we can adopt convictions based on assumption, inference, deduction, induction, syllogisms, or the reports of others.
And humans have an insatiable metaneed, in our need to know. Unlike simple animal curiosity, we want to know who, what, where, when, how, and why about everything. Aristotle said,
“We must know.”
Herein lies one of our major human problems:
in our need to know, we readily adopt literally thousands of beliefs―accept
as facts―things we don't know,
haven't witnessed, and can't prove, but have been adopted based on inference,
reports of others, etc.
This led Joseph Jastrow to conclude that
“the mind is a belief-seeking rather than a fact-seeking apparatus.” One needs only follow a four-year old around for a few hours to confirm this idea. We humans have an inordinate need to know, causing us to avidly adopt beliefs by the scores of thousands as we mature. Even things we know as facts act as beliefs, as do all our doubts, disbeliefs, memories, values, and our self-adopted “needs” additional to the SA-Needs.So starting at birth (or possibly in the womb) we all haphazardly develop a
“Love/Belief System” in the brain, comprised of scores of thousands of things we believe and an ever-changing group of purposes or people to which or to whom we find ourselves committed.
Now m
ost of us think we see and hear things in their pure form, which are then evaluated against relevant elements of our Love/Belief Systems.
But our instantaneous, involuntary reactions to contradictions of our beliefs or derogation of things to which we are committed, and positive reactions to their support, are autonomic, and those responses must therefore have emanated from the RF/RAS. As William James wrote many years ago:
“It is clear that between what a man calls ‘me,’ and what he simply calls ‘mine,’ the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same acts of reprisal if attacked. . . In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body, and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and his works, his land and horses and yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax or prosper, he feels triumphant, if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down - not in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all.”
We humans uniquely respond autonomically to hundreds of circumstances other than those related to the Social Animal Needs, but significantly related to our Loves and Beliefs, and must therefore have been selected and interpreted by the RF/RAS prior to entering consciousness.
So we have for example, the “cocktail party phenomenon,” the instantaneous, involuntary shift of our attention when a loved one’s name is mentioned, even in a babble of sounds. Or when someone criticizes our church, or our children, a feeling of resentment is instantly generated, and one or more of our perceptual defenses are brought into consciousness. We autonomically generate the same reaction we would to a kick in the shins.
All our sights and sounds come to us preselected,
preevaluated, and processed before they fully enter our
consciousness. Favorable stimuli are rushed intact to our consciousness; but stimuli in conflict with elements of our Love/Belief Systems are, failing complete repression,
modifed, justified, rationalized, to make them
conformable to elements in our Love/Belief Systems.
For example, if someone says, “I like your looks,” that expression is rushed to our consciousness. But, “I don’t like your looks,” comes to us perhaps as, “He’s a moron.”
Can these responses also be a function of the RAS, or do they involve some other brain function? Obviously the RAS autonomically selects and implements responses to our vital functions: respiration, heart rate, digestion, arousal, adrenalin level, etc. And if we share the Social-Animal Needs, it's easy to understand how the RAS would generate an instant response to a threat of pain or isolation or the taking of one’s food. But although again,
the RF/RAS is the only viable candidate, how could it also pick out from the environment and generate instant responses to the sound of a loved one’s name, or a diminution or enhancement of his “reputation and his works, his land and horses and yacht and bank account?”
The answer lies, I believe, in the fact that Dr. Gary Lynch of the University of California
at Irvine has proved that “learning involves a physical change in the
circuitry of the brain.” When we learn something, new synapses are
formed in our brains, or existing connections are strengthened, sometimes in as little as ten minutes. (Aside:
perhaps in geniuses and idiot-savants, much faster?)
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The Plausible Hypothesis |
Certainly it is not then an “astonishing hypothesis”
to infer that if I love someone, that person’s name becomes
wired into my Reticular Formation, and the RAS generates
a response whenever that name is mentioned; or if I believe
that I am an honest, intelligent person, that belief becomes
wired into my RF, and any implication to the contrary
triggers a defensive response.
The point is that all of our Loves and those Beliefs with
an emotional or affective component, are not additional “learnings” to be stored in the brain as data. They must
somehow be processed differently, to be registered in the Reticular Formation, where, with the Social Animal
Needs, they represent the principles or programs
which determine how all the data is handled.
Therefore, until some “sensor” and “response generator” of each of these brain actions is identified, what better candidate than the Reticular Formation and Reticular Activating System? Why would such a marvelous system be limited to sensing and issuing responses to physiological,/biological, and SA-Needs, and not include, as I suggest in this article, our uniquely induced social, psychological, and volitional states of disequilibrium?
I suggest that the RF/RAS is most likely the entire
organisms’ equilibrium sensor and balance restorer of
all biological and physiological functions of all sentient
beings, including the Social Animal Needs and central and
peripheral nervous systems in animals and in humans; and
further, that in the human it is the RF/RAS, equipped with
our Loves and Beliefs, which generates responses in an
effort to maintain stasis of our uniquely instigated
emotional, psychological, and volitional states.
In addition to all its other functions, the
RAS works continuously to bring us equanimity,
i.e., Peace.
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Domain of the RF/RAS |
It seems the only plausible hypothesis is that the human Reticular Activating System takes on an additional responsibility for the
Love-Belief System, whose programs consist of the hundreds of significant conscious and subconscious Loves and Beliefs which we all adopt or with which we are introjected, since infancy. This transformation of the RF, together with our uniquely human metafaculties, makes of each of our brains what we have always known as the mind.
So here is Bruner's “inhibitory system,” the centralized, indefatigable, quintessential sentinel (and manager) of the brain, the Reticular Activating System (or, including our Loves and Beliefs, what theologians should recognize as the “heart”), as it says in the illustration above, “deflecting the trivial, letting the vital through to alert the mind.”
But vital and trivial are subjective terms, different for each individual. How does the mind know what is vital and what is trivial to each of us, if not in the way this article describes? As noted earlier, I can find no serious literature which addresses this question.
Since the RAS is both our stimuli and response-selector,
we are all seeing and hearing the world―experiencing and responding to it―through our Reticular Activating Systems.
Think about it. This means that we are all wearing diffracting lenses over our eyes which select and pre-evaluate what we see, and earphones over our ears, which select and translate what we hear. Our experiences all come to us selected and modified by the RAS before they reach consciousness. Remember, the RF not only selects important stimuli, it removes 99+% from our very perception. And this is why, as all psychologists know (but most think only applies to others):
The RF rushes favorable sights and sounds to consciousness;
but if unable to completely repress unfavorable stimuli, they
reach us only after having been colored, modified, or rationalized to be presented in their most palatable form:
“The grapes were probably sour anyway.”
Therefore it is our endowed
Social Animal Needs, accompanied by the RF wiring of our Loves and Beliefs,
which explains the creation of LeDoux’s “synaptic
self”
- and precisely how “our brains become who we are.”
The
shocking conclusion we must draw is that the RAS operates
exactly like the U.S. government! Like the government, it is a
vast and incredibly complex bureaucracy, comprised of scores of
open and secret bureaus, departments, and branches, staffed by
hundreds of bureaucrats―whose
responsibilities often overlap or conflict, and with very imperfect
commu
We are all living in a post-hypnotic trance,
induced in early infancy.
―R. D. L
AING
Now if this was the whole story, we would be restricted to a chimpanzee-like stimulus/response existence, and the behaviorists would reign unopposed. But of course, we aren’t and they don’t; and the reason lies in our uniquely human metafaculties. I
n addition to the metafaculty of committing ourselves to beliefs, purposes, and acts, we also have the uniquely human metafaculty of metacognition.
Cognitive psychologists, e.g., Merluzzi, et al., have long recognized the human metafaculty of metacognition, which they say
“refers to the ability to monitor a wide variety of cognitive enterprises, . . to monitor one's memory and comprehension, or knowing about knowing or an awareness ot one's own cognitive machinery and the way it operates.”
And now
neuroscientists Baars & Gage recognize metacognition as
“the
ability to know our own cognitive functions, and to be able to use that
knowledge.”
Both metacognition and commitment are
manifest in the well-known Benjamin Libet experiments, which clearly illustrate the pre-conscious (i.e., sub-conscious) nature of RAS-generated response-impulses, as well as the subject’s metacognizance and and veto- or alter-power over those response-impulses.“Benjamin Libet of the University of California, recorded electrical signals generated by the brains of his experimental subjects and looked particularly at a signal called the ‘readiness potential’ that always appears just before a movement. Using special timing techniques, he found that the readiness potential begins about half a second before a subject begins to move a hand. This is expected, since brain activity must begin before the brain issues a command to the muscles. What is surprising, however, is that the subjects do not become aware of deciding to move until only about two tenths of a second before the movement begins, some three tenths of a second after the brain activity began.
“. . . to Libet [this] says that the intention to act arises
from brain activity that is not within our conscious awareness. . .
the brain initiates the impulse to act and the conscious self
subsequently becomes aware of it. Libet also finds that his
subjects are able to veto the impulse to act during the few tenths of
a second after a subject becomes aware of it. In this sense,
consciousness becomes a gatekeeper for intentions generated by the
brain, letting through only those that somehow meet an individual’s
criteria.”
So we are all exactly like pilots,
each flying on our own uniquely programmed autopilot.
Any sensory signal interpreted by the RF as “significant,” is brought to
uncomprehending consciousness
in the thalamus
and control of the RAS. The RAS forwards the signal immediately on
to the cortex for identification - what is it? where is it? - and a search of the cortex for all relevant memories and
responses, which are forwarded to the frontal lobes for execution or resolution.
Now in both human and chimpanzee, these responses, if unambiguous and uninhibited by
associated memories (see “feasibiity analysis” below)
are forwarded through a “pass”
channel of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), premotor cortex, and motor cortex, for initiation
of the response. (The PFC doesn’t “light up” for unambiguous, uninhibited, or
habituated responses.)
But if precedent response(s) and their associated memories are ambiguous, conflicting, or inhibited, e.g., a threat generating
“fight or
flight or freeze” response, all responses in the form of their
initiating motor sequence memories―each
“weighted“
by memories of their associated results―are registered
in the prefrontal cortex, where, accompanied by continuous additional
sensory stimuli from thalamus consciousness regarding the significance and
momentary
imminence of the threat, and perhaps additional relevant memories from
the cortex, the momentary urgency of each
response is adjusted until one prevails and immediately breaks through to the
conveniently contiguous premotor cortex for
implementation, or the threat abates.
In other words, the much-vaunted prefrontal cortex (PFC) is simply RAM, random access
memory, which does not store memory, but
provides current “work-space” for ambiguous, conflicting, or inhibited responses, their associated
memories, and sensory iterations from the thalamus, until , in the
animal one of them prevails, and then serves
as the
gate
to motor neurons to enact a response. Naturally, if the threat
disappears, the PFC is restored to inactive RAM.
Neither animal nor human PFC’s decide which responses will be executed, any more than a neuron, receiving both excitatory and inhibitory impulses, decides when to fire.
But this
“simple” PFC function―also active, but notdeterminant, in humans―has led most neuroscientists
to ascribe our unique executive powers of reasoning,
analysis, and decision-making to some mysterious,
yet to be discovered capabilities of the PFC and
cortex, simply because they are larger than
those of the chimpanzee.
However, this “weighting” function of responses in the PFC is not determinant in humans. As we have seen in the Libet experiment, we have metacognizance of response-impulses, and commitment power through direct thalamic channels to the PFC action gate―a metapower executed by the RAS from a commitment to a consciously generated image contradictory to the RAS-generated response-impulse.
And we have a third metafaculty, the faculty of imagination,
the ability to create and manipulate words, images, ideas, and symbols in our
consciousness and put them together in creative ways. Most all philosophers and many scientists agree this is a uniquely
human faculty, though most scientismists disagree. I don't think the
matter is arguable.
So, except for overpowering responses, e.g., avoiding a flying object,
if a RAS- or self-generated response is even slightly ambiguous, conflicted, or inhibited, we can either allow it to be executed, or we can both remember and imagine the effects of those responses, imagine alternative responses, select a preferred response, and implement that response by commiting ourselves to its execution, i.e., opening the PFC gate to action.(Unfortunately, our analysis of alternative responses is limited to consideration only of our conscious memories and SA-Need/Love-Belief elements of the RF, but is subject to strong insidious influences from subconscious elements. Which is why we so often have two reasons for what we do: a good reason, and the real reason.)
But it is not only ambiguous responses which are resolved in the PFC. Rather, isn’t it obvious that every human problem or problematic situation must be referred to the PFC RAM for resolution? As Baars & Gage point out, “...
the frontal lobes are critical in a free-choice situation, when it is up to the subject to decide how to interpret an ambiguous situation.
Don’t we all
live in a sea of ambiguous situations?
And we can will to do things we only imagine, to generate actions independently of RF/RAS impetus,
even things we've never done before. How is this accomplished? How do we Will something to happen?
Let’s
suppose I find I need something at the grocery store. First, I
visualize, Imagine myself at the grocery store, and of course
I must Believe/Know it can be accomplished (the brain automatically runs each of our
“images of intent”
through a “feasibility analysis,” and if it finds a problem,
which it often does, refers the conflict to the PFC and our
consciousness, where it can be resolved
per above), then Commit myself to going to the store:
Creative Will is the concurrent use of our
metafaculties of imagination, belief, and commitment.
How does the brain do this? I submit that when furnished with a clear picture of a result, a feasibility-check resulting in belief in its attainability, and a commitment to achieve it, the RAS is presented with a disequilibrium: “I’m here - I will be there.” In response the RAS, holding that purpose until equilibrium is restored, takes it to the cortex where it searches out relevant neuronal motor sequence memories
―subroutines―and forwards each in turn to the PFC where all are given a subconscious “pass” to the premotor cortex and to the motor neurons which, subject to continual subconscious sub-subroutine adjustments―steering, braking, accelerating, etc., based on thalamic sensory input―take me to the store, leaving my consciousness free for daydreams.This same principle applies over a longer period of time, to the images of intent: "I will be a doctor, lawyer, wife and mother, teacher, millionaire, congressperson, missionary, etc., etc. Any image of intent, firmly held, creates a disequilibrium in the Reticular Activating System, and it constantly brings to our attention from the deepest recesses of the memory and from the environment the jig-saw-like pieces of the elements which will actualize the intent.
The parts of Gutenberg's printing press were all in existence when he decided to build one, and his RAS led him unerringly to the pieces of a solution. History is rife with examples of people who accomplished the seemingly impossible through a firmly held image of intent.
But most of us, by virtue of our hundreds of significant Loves and Beliefs, are always operating on a dozen or two perpetual purposes― longevity, good health, welfare of loved ones, our love lives, work and family responsibilities, our spiritual lives, financial security, social acceptance, projection and protection of our idealized self-image, observance of our “shoulds,” consistency of our Love/Belief systems, validity of our religious and political persuasions, etc., etc.―purposes to which either the environment or our imaginations continually provide relevant stimuli, and to which, due to the ultimately unresolvable nature of these purposes, the RAS can only engender ambiguous, conflicting, or inhibited responses―most of us are “worrying” our PFC'S almost every waking moment. No wonder our PFC's occupy such a large portion of our cortex! And that so many of us live “lives of quiet desperation.”
(Here's an interesting research project: Subjects
have been equipped with a beeper which sounds at various times during
the day, with instructions to make note of their thoughts when it goes
off. They've learned how often we think about various subjects.
But now they should add instructions that subjects should also note what
they were doing when the beeper sounded. I believe this
would clearly prove that during the majority of the day, our actions were on RAS
management while our thoughts were occupied elsewhere.)
Unfortunately, as we “mature,” many of our RAS-generated responses―which must include all our emotions―tend to become conditioned responses, and it’s usually much easier to accede to these responses with the attitude, “That’s me; that’s the way I am." Most of us become reconciled or resigned to these specious
synaptic selves, and allow our brains to “become who we are.”We need a new paradigm of the human brain, as a brain which starts out physiologically and functionally identical to that of the chimpanzee,
Conclusions
but is transformed into what can now be defined as a “mind” by virtue of
our metafaculties of metacognition, imagination, and commitment, as well as
by the thousands of
self-adopted Loves
and Beliefs and their concomitant Desires and Fears
which
form a "Love/Belief System" and become wired into our Reticular Formations as we “mature.”
We must also conclude that the thalamus, home to consciousness of humans and all sentient beings, constitutes the Command and Control Center of the brain, and the RAS as the Governor, the de facto Manager of the brain. The RF is its “sentinel.” The inaptly named Reticular Activating System should now be considered the brain’s Command and Control System; and, until some limits to its jurisdiction are delineated, the RAS must be seen to exercise its influence throughout the entire brain and body. All other elements of the brain would then represent the subsystems or “tools” of the RAS. Their functions―constantly contributing new sensory input and feedback to the RAS iterations, recovering memories, fleshing out the details of percepts, generating and controlling emotions, physical and vocal reactions, etc.―are only enacted when innervated by responses from the RAS/RF iterations, or purposes enacted from thalamic consciousness through the RAS, but originating in the person’s Will.
Sadly however, even our best intentions, originating in our consciousness, must take a reverse path through the RAS to reach the muscles which will carry them out, often a tortuous feasibility check, where they are very often displaced. They just don't get done.
And since our DNA has no significant differences from that of the chimpanzee, and since DNA is known to determine all the biological and physiological characteristics - all the capabilities - of the organism, and since we are putting men on the moon and living in homes with all the accouterments of comfort and safety, while chimpanzees are still living in trees, isn’t it also obvious that in addition to a larger but physiologically identical brain, we must be uniquely endowed with a non-biological element, an element whose metaneeds and metafaculties enable us to use, override, and even reprogram the Reticular Activating System?―an element which acts as Chief Executive Officer to a RAS Chief Operating Officer as it were?―the element whose faculties enable us to generate an infinite number of responses? (See HowtoFindYourSoul.com)
These concepts enable us to understand, from a systems standpoint, how the brain works,
and explains not only the human behavior commonly considered “normal”―as well as our potential for enlightenment―but also most psychoses, neuroses, character disorders, perceptual defense, obsessive-compulsion, cognitive dissonance, displacement, repression, split personality, the powers of the self-image, suggestion, hypnosis, positive thinking, meditation, etc., etc., and even some physiological, biological, genetic, and chemically induced pathologies.
For example, all the mood-altering drugs, from crack to marijuana, act primarily on what are called the monoaminergic neurons, all of which are located in a few discrete nuclei in the Reticular Formation.
The drugs
must have the effect of relaxing the RF, freeing it from its inhibitions and
its customary preoccupation with the Desires and Fears arising primarily from
our Loves and Beliefs; resulting in enhanced self-confidence and some
purification of the senses, Blake's “cleansing of the doors of perception,” and rendering the experience, at least initially,
exhilarating.
Also, ten years ago, one of the obvious derivatives of
this concept was that a malfunctioning RAS could yield schizophrenia,
and indeed, recent autopsies of a small population of chronic
intractable patients who had lived as schizophrenics showed neural
anomalies in the Reticular
Activating System!
This article, Copyright © 2002 by The Shelton
Group,*
is based on the book
The Immortal
“I”
A Unified
Theory of
Psychology, Neurology,
and The Perennial Philosophy
by Eugene B. Shea
Originally published by University Press of America
See theimmortali.com
*
Revised and updated 05/07 and 07/08.Text information on this web page is protected.
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