About consciousness
Normally, a person understands and realizes what is happening to him at every moment of time. Let's say he walks down the street, talks on the phone and eats ice cream, all at the same time. Our task as scientists is to understand whether we can, registering neural activity in the human brain, say that now there is ice cream in his mind, the next moment - what is happening on the street, and then - a telephone conversation, to which the person has consciously decided return by switching attention. The content of consciousness changes all the time, and this is due to things called neural correlates of consciousness. At the moment, science has identified several such correlates, their composition is still controversial, and not all scientists share the existing theories, however, there is experimental data showing that the group of correlates that inhabits consciousness here and now, at least it is distinguished by a high frequency of its activity. That is, each individual neuron in this group generates strong excitation in the brain. Thanks to this, I can say what exactly fills a person's consciousness at different moments or periods of life, and this is no longer a little and quite interesting from the point of view of various applied things.
About glial cells
When people began to study the brain, it turned out almost immediately that it contains cells that have special processes, and there are cells that do not have these processes - for example, glial cells. This was the very first division that caught the eye, and glia, or glial cell, has always been considered supportive, helping neurons (if I remember correctly, the very word "glia" was generally derived from "glue"). But the more scientists study these cells, the more it turns out that, for example, neurotransmitters that fall out of glial cells, or some other substances, are able to force a neighboring neuron to generate action or excitation potentials, and this is not at all an auxiliary function. Moreover, thanks to this knowledge, some believe that it is glial cells that are responsible for consciousness,
More recently, it turned out that in the human brain there are not 10 times more glial cells than neurons, but the same or 1.5 times more, that is, these are comparable numbers. However, if we look at the human body or any multicellular creature as a colony of unicellular organisms, then the fact that glial cells, it turns out, also somehow affect the excitation of neurons, is not unusual, all cells have a single source. Very often I come across a kind of intuitive opinion that neurons are such chips that are somehow separately inserted into the brain to process information, but this is not so. Neurons come from exactly the same place where all other cells come from: we were all the one and only cell that was dividing until it made us so complex.
About who we are
All parts of the brain make us who we are, and it might be appropriate to say a few words about genes here. We know that some things are genetically predetermined, and it remains only to explain how it all works. I think that this bridge from genes to performing some kind of activity exists, because any behavior, any activity is the activity of some neural groups. And how they developed depends on what genes are inside the neurons, because genes are proteins, and proteins are receptors. Everything that happens inside a neuron, the entire brain, is all of us. That is, any part, wherever we poke, is a very important part, despite the fact that some of these parts are those types of behavior that we acquired a long time ago, ancestral forms. Yet they still define who we are today.
About men and women
The myth of the difference between male and female brains is a very hot issue that I think stems from the possibilities that exist among men and women. Recently, however, these differences in developed countries are leveled more and more. If we plot, for example, the percentage of girls participating in math olympiads on a graph and correlate it with data on gender equality, we will see that the more equal the two sexes feel in life, the more girls participate in math olympiads.
In this sense, attempts to speculate on the difference between a male and a female brain are associated with attempts to understand what is the difference between the behavior of a man and a woman and what is the difference in their activities. For a long time it was believed that the volume of the male brain is greater than the volume of the female brain, but not so long ago it became clear that this difference may be due to the fact that in the brain of men there are larger peculiar "holes", ventricles, where there are no bodies of neurons or processes ... If we talk about smaller differences, then, for example, it was shown structurally that in the brain there are 10 places where women have a greater volume, and 14, where it is vice versa.
But can we say that this is the difference between men and women? It is possible that these differences are related precisely to different life experiences: different experiences mean different brains, because these things are directly related to each other. If the experience is similar, then the brains will be similar. By the way, there were studies that showed that the intelligence of children is more correlated with the intelligence of the mother - this also needs to be borne in mind.
About important discoveries
I have a few favorite studies that make me wonder which experiments are worth doing and which are not. After all, generally speaking, it is very easy to come up with an experiment in neuropsychology or neurobiology - these sciences become almost endless if we study every tiny area of the brain, trying to understand how it participates in such and such behavior. For example, what does the dentate fascia of the human brain do at the moment when he dines? Not the most burning question, but it is a question that can be scientific and that provides an endless field for study. Unfortunately, in science, most research is exactly like this.
But the experiments that were invented unexpectedly and give some interesting progress are relatively few. One of them is a very old idea of Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget is a Swiss psychologist and philosopher, known for his works on the study of the psychology of children, the creator of the theory of cognitive development. about the development of the child, that if you show the child a toy, he will be interested in it, but if you cover it with a handkerchief, he will immediately lose interest in it. The conclusion of this experiment was the idea that children up to a certain age do not have an understanding that if an object is not visible, this does not mean that it disappeared and ceased to exist.About memory loss
More often than not, when we talk about the fact that we cannot remember something, we are experiencing a problem with reproduction, not with memory. Reproduction is when we consciously, as it were, force the neurons to be excited, we go out to the activity of a certain group, which corresponds to the required knowledge or memory. For example, you are trying to remember the name of an actor. You remember that he starred in such and such a film (the first neural group was involved), then - that he was married to such and such an actress (here is another group). So, as if around, by association, all these neural networks are connected to each other, and as a result, you go to the network that is responsible for the name of the actor.
If you can't remember something, it's an access issue. For example, if the event was a very long time ago, then the network is already crammed with some kind of additions, which does not contribute to remembering. Something may just happen that prevents neurons from activating - for example, if a person has an accident or hits his head, a temporary disturbance in blood flow prevents neuronal activity from being maintained. If neurons have died at all, then, naturally, a person cannot reach the activation of this group - these are cases of amnesia that we observe in neurodegenerative diseases. They can be associated with a type of Alzheimer's disease, when neurons die, or with some kind of vascular disorders of blood flow, when the neuron cannot generate an action potential and does not survive. But these are two different types of neuronal death, two different types of dementia associated with amnesia.
About dreams
People have the idea that the brain, as it were, shows us dreams, because in a sense, we are the activity of our neurons. It seems to us that we have such a small homunculus inside that at night looks at a small screen where he is shown a movie, but this is a slightly incorrect concept of what we have in our brain. Dreams arise due to the ability of neurons to repeat their excitement. If a neuron generated many impulses, was very excited, then it remains in such a semi-excited state for some time. And those neural groups that have formed in us during the day, our learning, our recognition of something new, new information are established neural groups that are very willingly activated again.
You probably noticed that if something happened in the morning, then during the day you, willingly or unwillingly, remember it again and again. It jumps right into your head, but what happened yesterday or the day before yesterday jumps much less. But if the event is very serious, it can remain in your brain and occur again for very long periods of time. Dreams in this sense are absolutely the same: in them we reproduce what happened to us during the day, and there is a lot of experimental data proving this.
Most of them were obtained, of course, on psychology students, who were asked about what happens to them during the day. The students took notes, they called them, reminded them, and then they again wrote down their dreams - either immediately after waking up, or they were woken up in the middle of the night and asked what they were dreaming about. It turned out that most often people dream exactly of the events of the previous day, but not exactly in the form in which they happened, but as if fragmentarily. That is, in a dream, other people do other things, but in the same place that was in reality. Or in some new place, but the person you met on the last day dreams and does. There was also a certain amount of data (although not very much and not very convincing, but interesting) concerning the fact that we see different dreams during REM sleep and during slow-wave sleep. And just a dream of rapid eye movements is a combination of what happened to us, and a slow-wave dream is more episodes similar to what happened in reality. By the way, due to this reactivation of neurons, good sleep improves memory.
About laziness
Recent data shows that 95% of US college students are procrastinated, meaning they are doing anything but what they need to do now. In this context, there are absolutely amazing experimental data obtained on students who experienced so-called mathematical anxiety, that is, they believed that they did not understand anything in mathematics, and were very afraid of this science.
The students were put in an fMRI machine, which makes it possible to assess the total activity of the brain based on oxygen consumption - this is an indirect opportunity to understand which neurons and where are activated to a greater extent. The subjects were promised to be shown two random short problems to be solved. But the important thing is that before the problem itself appeared, the students saw a yellow circle or a blue square on the screen. The yellow circle meant that now there will be a math problem, and the blue square - that the verbal one.
As a result, it turned out that at the moment when the yellow circle appeared on the screen, the pattern of brain activity of people with mathematical anxiety was similar to that observed when people experience physical pain. Moreover, it was enough to start solving the problem and the pattern left. That is, the problem of brain laziness is that when we think about all the horror that we need to do, we experience pain and cannot take a half step to start. However, now we know that they need to be done, because it brings relief.
Questions and answers
- Is it true that with the advent of writing, our memory has become worse? After all, why memorize if you can write it down.
- To answer this question, it was necessary to carry out experiments in those days when there was no writing, and then compare with the moment when writing appeared. But, to be honest, I have a feeling that we are now in approximately the same situation, because now there is no need at all, as it seems to me, to store a lot of information in the brain, we can find the answer to any question in 30 seconds. And, probably, it is not the need to remember a lot that comes to the fore, but the need to form some habits, skills that allow you to critically reflect on the information received, extract something from it, analyze, synthesize.
- Do you know anything about the electromagnetic theory of consciousness According to the theory, neurons exchange charges, charges create a special field, which contains our consciousness. and can you comment on it in any way? How do you feel about her, how real is it?
- The idea, in general, is not new. You know, maybe this is not entirely obvious, but after all, all living cells have a charge on the membrane, including plants and any others. True, I met a philosopher who argued that a sundew cannot catch an unconscious fly, which seems to me not entirely convincing. And, by the way, there are suggestions that any matter in general possesses consciousness. I still think that consciousness arises at a certain stage of the complexity of the interaction between cells. If all living cells have electricity on the membrane, not only neurons, then it turns out that we are also talking about changes in the magnetic field in the context of all living organisms, including unicellular ones. However, I still feel the intuitive difference between amoeba, hydra and man.
Rather, consciousness arises as a definite organization of what is happening, the organization of cell activity. A number of neurons must be coordinated in a certain way in order for us to see the manifestation of consciousness, but we do not know how many - just as we do not know for sure how much water is capable of forming a wave - in very different ways and depends on various factors ... As an explanation, I will give a metaphor about an orchestra in the brain. Imagine that the brain tries to play different melodies all the time, it is a kind of jazz band. If he picked up a bad melody that led to the death of the organism, it is highly likely that the gene that contributes to the creation of such neural networks will not be passed on further. How are the musicians coordinated in this jazz band? They try different things, some of which sound good - and they fix them. Neurons do not know that they have other neurons in the neighborhood and they need to negotiate. I see it this way.
- You said that the problem of memory is the problem of accessing it. It turns out that the amount of information that can be stored in the brain is not limited. That is, relatively speaking, it scans and remembers everything that happens around? Or how does it happen?
- Apparently, it is evolutionarily important for us to lose memory. If you learn once and for all that this and that happens in such and such an environment, and you have to do this, then you cannot act in any other environment, it is not adaptive. Adaptive is when you can transfer the experience to other situations, even those that seem to be inappropriate. In order to be able to transfer it, some details are lost. More precisely, maybe not for this, but not keeping them turned out to be evolutionarily beneficial.
As a result, it turns out that during reproduction these neuronal groups are not the same as they were during the acquisition of information, but slightly different. You need to understand that, in fact, memory is not a closet where you put something, and then took it out, and you simply lost the key or forgot which shelf you keep. Memory is the life of a neural network, group or ensemble that does not know that it is inside you, in your head. They just all play together, then someone added to them from young neurons, and then they drove him away, then someone left for another reason, and then something else happened, and the ensemble began to reach the level of high activity more often , sounds in your head, and you realize it. There are no simply memory neurons, but there is a memory about something specific, and it turns out that all these combinations of neural networks practically behave like this, as they please, and we say that we cannot remember something. It's just that something completely different is going on in my head now.
- Is it true that left-handers are more creative, and right-handers are more inclined to analytics and mathematics?
- I do not know such data and I think that one cannot say that one hemisphere is responsible for creativity, and the other is responsible for analytics. Asymmetry is present, but it is not as simple as one might think.
- Will the development of the left hand in a right-handed person help the development of his brain as a whole?
- Everything that develops our brain is very useful. By the way, there is such a recommendation - periodically brush your teeth with the wrong hand, which you usually do. Supposedly, this contributes to just everything, from enlightenment to improving well-being. I can't say if this is really so, but it seemed very curious to me. Indeed, if we somehow get out of the usual rut, we suddenly begin to notice the novelty, learn something new, and this, of course, is only a plus for the brain.
- People with equally developed hemispheres, or ambidextrous, is this a pathology or a new round of brain development? In your opinion.
- I think that neither one nor the other. The difference between pathology and the norm is generally very conditional, different societies consider different things to be pathology. Any disease cannot be diagnosed on the basis of any one symptom, there is always a whole list, a whole scale. And if we look at one of the scales, for example, autism spectrum disorders, then for some of the symptoms I find myself quite suitable for this category. At the same time, I in no way think that this is somehow pathological. And so in all the parameters that we can only think of. Separately, I want to say that some parameters that seem to us to be already established and long existing, tested by science, such as impulsivity, now, it turns out, are usually divided into several very different scales. I think that there is no pathology at all, it's just a construct of society,
- You said that memory is acquired knowledge, but then what about the knowledge that we do not acquire (this is the example of Nostradamus, Vanga, Messing)?
- I cannot comment on Messing, Wang and so on, because in general everything that I am telling is based on experimental data. It may be wrong, but nevertheless. When someone took some different groups, studied them, showed some results, I think this is more convincing than a variety of individual cases.
I still think that memory is a conscious experience, which is taken, among other things, through the deployment of those neural networks that our distant ancestral forms acquired in the course of evolution, and we are completing them. I see the whole experience in this way, and I am not sure that we can predict everything that will happen next. So far, this does not fit into my concept of how I see the work of the brain. Maybe this is a misconception, but I am missing experimental data on this issue.
- Have there been people with extraordinary memory in your practice?
- I want to say that there are many such people, there are much more of them than one would expect. In Luria's work "A Little Book of Great Memory" there is a character under the letter Sh. So, his surname is Shereshevsky, this man worked in a newspaper, and one day the editor noticed that when he gives instructions to everyone, Sh. Does not write anything down. This upset him very much, and then the editor found out that Sh. Remembered everything perfectly even without notes. He sent him to psychologists to find out how it works, and Shereshevsky, if I'm not mistaken, was able to reproduce the rows of numbers or letters that were offered to him 15 or more years ago.
He belonged to synesthetics, that is, he saw these numbers and letters very brightly, with taste, with color, and so on, and he placed these bright images, for example, somewhere in space - this is one of the famous mnemonics. At the same time, despite the fact that he remembered huge amounts of such data, he himself said that he was very poor at memorizing texts. You and I easily remember them, we can read the text and remember its meaning for a huge amount of time, while he saw all this in separate images that flowed over each other, overlapped, interfered, and in this sense, it turns out, it cannot be said that S. had an excellent memory.
Nevertheless, according to my feelings, there are really many more people who have a phenomenal memory or some aspect of it than we think. For example, people who remember episodes from their lives in detail and can say what they did on November 2, 1996. An ordinary person cannot do this.
- Is it worth sacrificing the body for science now, or is it not helping brain researchers in any way?
- Donate, I think, is no longer necessary. But if you want to participate in some kind of experiments with registration of an electroencephalogram or MRI, this is welcome, such subjects are always needed. It is a well-known fact that all psychology was made on experiments on first and second year students of the psychology faculty, but I would like some wider sample. Still, a person's personality is the activity of his neurons, which cannot be studied after death. After the death of the brain, we immediately see that something has changed, while the connections between the neurons have not yet disintegrated, but there is no activity anymore, there is no possibility of generating an action potential, what we call a personality, the mental world, whatever you like, is falling apart.
- What big question do you have no answer to?
- I have a lot of questions, and one of them is scientific, which I am trying to solve, combined with intellectual abilities. It seems to us that we intuitively feel that some person in an intellectual sense, maybe, does not meet our expectations, but at the same time it is absolutely impossible to explain why, except that his experience is different from ours and therefore we see differently the same situation. But even if we take, for example, animals, we will see that some of them are quick to think, and some are slow, and I am very interested in why. This is from simple questions, and from more difficult questions - is it possible to distinguish the reasonable from the unreasonable?
