The Brain That Destroys Itself

Before Brain There were tens of thousands of varieties of creatures on Earth long before the emergence of organisms with a brain—hundreds of millions of years before. They included organisms that consisted of just single cells. Each single cell was enclosed in a thin membrane, part of whose function is simply to hold the interior parts together. Some of these are with us still, in the form of bacteria, for instance. However, there were also other organisms that existed before the emergence of a brain, which consisted of many cells joined together. The cells in these organisms are held together by chemical substances that are a kind of flexible glue—proteins and sugars—the details of which needn’t concern us here. And, as with the single-celled organisms, some of these are with us still, in the form of algae and yeasts, for instance. But if such multi-celled organisms are to form more than just a clump of cells stuck together, and survive as some new kind of integrated, active organism, there must be a way for each cell to affect the condition of at least its adjacent cells. The way this is done is by one cell passing chemical molecules to its neighbors, out through its enclosing membrane, and in through its neighbors’ adjacent membranes. Thus, in these early multi-celled organisms, the chemical condition existing in one cell could affect that of its neighbors by the actual transport of molecules directly to them. And such organisms, “simple” though they be, are remarkable in their capacities for survival, since they are still with us, in what must be much like their original forms of hundreds of millions of years ago, albeit with mutations that must have occurred along the way. But if we now make a giant evolutionary leap, we can come on organisms that are still more remarkable, for their cells employ the previous transfer of molecules to achieve what is essentially electrical inter-cell communication. Each cell that does this is stretched out like a long string, and an electrical potential (voltage) moves along its length if it is stimulated at one end by “something happening,” say, an increase of pressure. This electrical potential is then used to energize some of its molecules which are transferred to an adjacent cell. But, now, it is the fact of there having been an increase in pressure—the fact that something had actually happened—which initiated the electrical potential, that is transferred between cells via molecules. Cells That “As If” Between Them So, there’s something essentially new and very different about this kind of transfer between these evolutionarily later-occurring kinds of stretched-out cells. For, although it is still molecules that are transferred between the first and second cells, what is being conveyed by this transfer is not molecules functioning as just the molecules they are, but, more importantly, it is molecules functioning as something different from what they are. They are no longer molecules involved in just chemistry: they are molecules involved in something more and different. For what is now happening is the passage between cells of a molecule that is not itself the “increase in pressure,” but a molecule that is “standing for” it—a molecule that is not the “happening itself,” but a molecule that stands for the happening itself. And this is not just new, it’s revolutionary. For the new kind of cell has come on a way of making a molecule behave, in going from cell to cell, “as if” it were the increase in pressure. So the new kind of cell has come on what, eons later in evolution’s passage, would have some explorer drawing a “map” that would be “as if” it were the shape of some actual place; would have a teller of children’s tales saying “once upon a time,” as the warning that just an “as if” is about to unfold. This is the emergence of the cells that, because they can, between them, “stand for” some happening, are the first glimpse, not of the impossible retaining of the happening itself, but, instead, the retaining of a “memory,” that “stands for” what the happening had been. This is the dawning, not of the impossible sending of happenings themselves, but the sending of signals, messages, from place to place, from one end of a cell to its neighbor, telling of their happenings. It is the first trace of cells that, together, will some day “pretend” there had been a happening—even if happening there had never been! Cajal’s Neuron These evolutionarily later-occurring kinds of stretched-out cells are what we know as “neurons,” or “nerve” cells, or just as nerves. The understanding of the neuron, including how its electrical potential is generated and transferred between cells at a “synapse,” took many years to be arrived at. It reached essentially the way we now understand it in the remarkably original work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in the early twentieth century, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1906. He established the neuron as the primary functional unit of the central nervous system, making it the elementary item out of which the entire nervous system is assembled. Hints of Brain The evolutionary development of the stretched-out neuron allowed the emergence of a sheltered location, housing a multi-celled junction of a group of neurons, with their extremities spread out beyond this “brain,” as the sheltered junction would come to be known. And, because of the stretched-out nature of the neurons, able to move happening-bearing messages from place to place, this brain would eventually become involved in central direction of parts of the larger multi-celled organism that was its host, parts which were remote from the junction, remote from the brain itself. Indeed, a central brain could, using its stretched-out neurons, behave “as if” it were almost everywhere in its host, directing. But this kind of central “electrical” direction was such an unprecedented evolutionary development, that it must have been attended by special new necessities as it continued in any surviving host species. So let us look at what just one of these must have been. We can begin by noticing that, if a brain is to direct remote parts of its host, then it will need some kind of catalog, some kind of “map” showing what the parts are, and where they happen to be, in their overall relation to the host. Furthermore, the brain will have to keep this map updated, so that when, at any time, it tries to control any particular part, it begins by “knowing” at least where the part happens to be at that time. Indeed, if central direction by a brain is not to become just growing chaos on its way to extinction, there needs to be more than just a “map”; the map will need to be continually updated. And there’ll be more said about this continual updating shortly. It will be convenient to have a name for this map, and I’m going to call it the “configuration store,” since it is what has to carry the “configuration” of the host’s parts. But so that I can identify the configuration store with something that actually came to exist in the brain, rather than in just my imagination—as just an “as if”—I’m now going to go to some of the evidence that such a store actually exists in a brain like ours, for instance. Evidence for a Configuration Store Between 1947 and 1950, Dr. Wilder Penfield did some most remarkable things. Working on a patient undergoing surgery for epilepsy, whose brain was exposed, and by stimulating various places in it, then seeing what moved, he was able to show that there was a mapping of “motor” parts of the body—hands, fingers, feet, tongue, and so on—onto various locations in the brain. He named this mapping the “motor homunculus.” … What was, and still is of immense importance and interest is Wilder Penfield’s showing that, present in the brain, there is a mapping of the motor parts of its host, the “configuration store” that there simply must be, if a brain is to effect central direction of these motor parts. Keeping t