Cool Neuroscience Fact of the Day

Ever since I read Proust Was a Neuroscientist, I've found and been recommended a number of strangely related books on topics ranging from aphasia to Pragmatism to anxiety disorders. All really interesting and all of which make me wish I had any sort of grasp of biology so I could learn about this beyond the pop/mainstream books. Oh well.

Anyway, I am currently reading The Mind and The Brain, a book about emerging discoveries in neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to change itself structurally) and, specifically, how adults can use attention to purposefully rewire their brains. The book covers everything from OCD to Buddhism to quantum physics in explaining why that old adage that you can never learn anything new after the age of 12 is completely false. Many of the experiments used to show this plasticity involve the somatosensory cortex. The somatosensory cortex registers sensations around your body and is typically mapped out so that nearby body parts map to nearby spots on the brain. For example, the area that registers touch of the index finger is usually next to that of the middle finger. Depending on use and experience, more used neighbors can steal neurons and synapses from less used. So the boundaries between regions can be kind of grey.

All right, that's a lot of lead up to the cool fact. In the somatosensory cortex, the area that maps to the genitals is actually located right next to that of the feet, and some scientists posit this may explain why so many people find feet erotic - because rubbing someone's toes is just a few milimeters away (in the brain) from rubbing something a bit more exciting! Crazy.

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

Ever since I read Proust was a Neuroscientist, I've been particularly stuck on one idea introduced in the chapter on the plasticity of neurons. The first cool fact is that all those things your parents and teachers told you about how your brain "freezes" at about age 12 and it will be exponentially more difficult to learn new things after that is just hogwash. Related to that (or, heck, maybe it was in a whole different chapter and I'm just remembering it this way, since this book also taught me how grossly unreliable memory can be) is the fact that neurons actually have a short and rapid lifespan so that "you" are constantly being passed on through successive generations of neurons. This just fascinated me, thinking of your identity, memory, executive function and so on being passed like a relay. Except, of course, it's more like a school or sports team because there are so many constituents - every year a class graduates and a new class enters, those still there try to impart the spitit and values and traditions of the school to the newcomers, but something is always changed in the process. Meanwhile, the institution itself continues to go on as a seemingly continous and fairly stable entity.

This idea of subtle and constant mutations in your brain was still stuck in mine as I have continued to read The Metaphysical Club, which covers a lot of philosophical ground related to the changes in ideas about individuality and identity. And that got me to thinking about how our personality and identity is constantly shifting, even though we tend to think of it as just plain constant. At my advanced lab with a sample size of one, I've had the opportunity to observe this in light of big changes. For example, a new job. After all, for most adults, your job is implicitly or explicitly a major part of your identity, though you often still consider yourself as very separate and even in opposition. Lots of people adopt the "This is just my paycheck" attitude, but over time that becomes less and less true, as the office culture quietly works on your brain for 40+ hours a week. But you'll probably never notice this until you leave, because you still conceptualize yourself as the person who walked in the door on Day 1 who just happens to be in this environment.

Now, as much as I like just pondering this in the abstract, I think it has some concrete applications. First off, it can certainly help account for the extremely low success rate of rebound relationships. In cases where it isn't an obvious silly fling, you are probably choosing what you think is a good partner - but is actually (at best) only a good partner for old You, ignoring all the changes that have come about during your last relationship. I think the same applies to many unhappy job seekers, who embark on what they think is a great to position that fulfills most of their needs and desires, only to find they have a whole new set of needs they hadn't even acknowledged.

Evolution and God

Today's edition of Salon has an interesting interview with Karl Giberson, author of "Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution" Giberson's ideas, a lot like those of John Haught, are the kind that I think I'm going to get behind when I read the abstract of an article or interview, but I always end up frustratingly shaking my head at what seem to me to be hand waving, suspicious leaps in logic, or following something down a crazy path to an illogical conclusion.

But today's article struck me for two reasons in particular.

The first reason is that I happen to be reading The Metaphysical Club and I am fascinated about how so much of early modern science and philosophy was based on the end goal of reconciling God with Science. So it's fascinating to see what has changed in a century... and what hasn't.

The second is the question for which Giberson has no answer: "Evolution is taught in American high schools and yet many still don't believe in it. How can that be counteracted?" I've actually been mulling this quite a bit, as I have been reading about the various tides of acceptance and rejection of Darwin at the turn of the century. I think for American schools, the problem is that it gets dumbed down. I'm not sure if this is a tentativeness related to the strong fundamentalist Christian presence in our society, or just a misguided idea that 10th graders wouldn't understand.
I remember being a little uneasy with the idea of evolution when I first learned about it. Not because I believed in God or an Intelligent Designer (I still don't), but because it seemed so fuzzy and to have so many holes. And I also got the distinct impression that evolution implies directionality of progress. I saw that Natural Selection was the best explanation so far, but I already understood that science itself is evolving and that models don't necessarily reflect reality beyond being able to make accurate predictions.
Since then, I have been introduced to both the concept of the Selfish Gene and of the true randomness implied in Natural Selection. This allowed everything to fit into place. So, ironically, I think a more sophisticated and complex teaching of evolution will help make it more easy to understand for a 15 year old. And if it makes more sense, it will be more easily incorporated into a young person's world view.