The Body: The Prison of the Mind

“Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark . . . I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.
It will keep the vultures at bay.”

Those words were produced by Jean-Dominique Bauby, an acclaimed French journalist, author, and editor of ELLE magazine during the latter half of the twentieth century. Bauby was an exceptional and influential talent in his field of work, but today the accomplishment that endures in our collective memory is his memoir Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (i.e. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

Bauby died three days after the completion of this autobiographical exploit, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect concerning its creation was that he did not physically write it. He couldn’t. Bauby suffered a massive stroke two years prior and soon after became almost totally paralyzed, locked in his own body except for his ability to blink his left eye. Using only the latter he was able to dictate the contents of his memoir to his aid, Claude Mendibil, providing us with a unique insight on consciousness and, more importantly, the life and work of a man of great talent who was greatly loved…

Jean-Dominique Bauby (left) and his ghostwriter, Claude Mendibil (right)

What of the “non-responsive”?

What does such a term even mean in today’s world of medical advancement?

To most the concept of essentially being locked-in one’s own body is a particularly frightening one, but it does happen – and in retrospect has happened – much more frequently than we would like to think. As of present, we have little concrete knowledge surrounding the workings of consciousness and the lack thereof. We know how such states may arise (e.g. strokes and injuries to certain vital areas of the brain), but we lack the insight necessary to truly what is being experienced and how.

What complicates this issue is that many of the questions and decisions that must be answered and undertaken regarding the afflicted patients usually are matters of life and death. What can be done when communication is the vital for the success of a treatment and yet the very same seems to have been lost indefinitely? Neurologists and ethicists alike attempt to solve the matter.

According to Syd Johnson, an assistant professor of philosophy and recent author of a paper published in the American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, “new research with people using just their brains to communicate reveals that more of them might be able to make their own decisions.” Unconsciousness, in certain special cases, does not warrant unawareness. As in Bauby’s case, certain methods of communication can be identified and developed and we can also search for other methods of assessing well-being through some other response.

“Being able to do that would open up the possibility of assessing quality of life even in those who have never been able to communicate, such as infants or people born with severe cognitive disabilities” explains Johnson.

These propositions do not undermine the complexity of the issue – it may work for some and not for others. The most important thing researchers must have in the search for progress is a careful analysis of the assumptions they make and the overarching questions that surround quality of life.

Johnson wonders whether when caregivers make decisions in these cases they adequately consider the position of the patient. She remarks that many people adjust to their new way of life requiring caregivers “to recognize what might be a foreign viewpoint for an able-bodied person.”

The subjectivity of quality of life is problematic for the increasingly objective nature of diagnostic medical practice. Johnson remains hopeful. “New technologies like fMRI might be able to provide a different kind of objective assessment of subjective wellbeing—by looking at brain activity—in those individuals who are unable to tell us how they’re doing.”

— written by PMO

Sources:

1. D. Walikainen. (2013, Nov. 6) “Researcher Seeks to Help Those Who Can’t Help Themselves” [Online] Available: http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2013/november/story98975.html
2. L. S. M. Johnson (2013, Sept. 11) “Stable Value Sets, Psychological Well-Being, and the Disability Paradox: Ramifications for Assessing Decision-Making Capacity” in American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience. [Online] Available: doi:10.1080/21507740.2013.827273

Harvard develops Mind Control? The development of the brain-to-brain interface

In many ways the human imagination transcends reality, surpassing any facsimile inventions conjured by even the most brilliant of minds and transforming the already beautiful and magnificent marvels of nature into new strange and exciting landscapes. Millions of fantasies have originated in the minds of one and because of the wonder of consciousness they have been shared and continue to live in the minds of many. Human thought is boundless, or so it seems until every now and then reality catches up with imagination.

Nowadays, humans can “fly.” One person can speak to another on the other side of the globe. Memories can be re-experienced through recording devices. The moon is within our grasp as are many infectious “spirits” and “curses” which we now know to only be tiny, tiny organisms at work (and play?). Though it may not seem like it to us, our world is full of science fiction fantasies come alive. And every day new fantasies breach the realm of reality thanks to hardworking researchers like those who relatively recently announced an interesting development at Harvard University.

In April, it was announced that Seung-Schik Yoo, Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues were able to configure a non-invasive brain-to-brain interface that allows humans to control other animals with thoughts alone. A video demonstration of the technology at work can be found here:

Left Behind? The Deal with Handedness and What It Says About the Brain

Every now and then it is advisable to engage in a bit of house cleaning, venturing in all the nooks and crannies from the darkest depths of the basement to the harrowing heights of the attic. Preferring the latter’s airy condition to the eerie blackness of the former I decided to start by sorting through the clutter that was to be found in the hidden space above our heads.

In doing so I came upon an old guitar, previously owned by my grandmother’s late brother. Its body despite the years of use, and later seclusion, still exudes a nice golden glow and the sound of the instrument after a bit of tuning sounded wonderful. Soon after, my little cousins demanded they possess the instrument. My attempts to ward them off failed as their demands grew more rambunctious. To assuage their passions and protect the instrument from their angry plucking, I agreed to offer each one of them a simple beginner’s lesson. This calmed the brewing storm, but soon Kelly, the youngest of the bunch brought something to my attention: this guitar was made for right handed people and she was left handed. Another storm was brewing as she asked me if being left-handed meant she couldn’t play. I reassured her that there exist a variety of ways for left-handed people to play guitars, without forcing themselves to play right handed, such as playing upside down, switching strings, or buying a left-handed guitar.

Kelly seemed content with my answer and soon enough her attention span carried her off to discover new things, but the question still resounded in my head and made me think about the treatment of lefties in general.

From writing smudges and school desks to operating can-openers and other machinery, many operations or tools are built to suit right handed users only. Though it is true that over the last few decades, much more attention has been given to consumers with a stronger left hook than most, many providers of goods and services have not changed their routines or specifications by much if at all, and this is understandable seeing as only about 10% of the population are lefties. So in honor of International Lefties Day which was held this week on Tuesday, August 13, 2013, let’s take a closer look at lefties and handedness in general.

In Search of Answers: Large Neuronal Network Simulation

According to Neuroscience News, researchers in the RIKEN HPCI Program for Computational Life Sciences at the Okinawa Institute of Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan and the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany harnessed the full computational power of the K computer to carry out the largest general neuronal network simulation ever.

K computer in 2011

Neurological Drug Development Projects Launched by NIH

Images of patients suffering from Fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition affecting the X chromosome consequently making it the most common form of inherited intellectual disability in boys.

As the summer sun rages on as relentless force on the people of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, so proves the resolve and vision of researchers and directors at The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Recently, NIH has announced the launching of several major innovative projects focusing on developing therapeutics for Fragile X syndrome, nicotine addiction, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). These projects are to be funded through the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network which provides access to a variety of drug development resources.

What is a Brain Science?

So… what is a brain science, really?

What does it mean to “study” the brain? Is it even possible to analyze it “objectively”?  A good place to start is with the label for brain studies: neuroscience. Strictly speaking, it is a biological science because the brain is a biological system. The brain being what it is, however, one finds that this could not be a grosser oversimplification.

Most biological systems are pretty intricate and complex, in the common everyday sense of those words. The brain, though, is a particularly complex biological system in that its behavior is emergent or chaotic like mathematically “complex” systems (i.e. weather or traffic). The brain is the most complex biological system that we know of (minus the human body in its entirety — brain included), and certainly one of the most complex systems in the universe altogether. Due to the nature of such systems, neuroscience, albeit being the study of a biological system, has a lot to do with fields outside of biology and addresses questions that are not — strictly speaking — biological.

But regardless of all these fancy terms, one does not have to be a mathematician to know or understand the broad, almost all-encompassing nature of brain sciences. One does not have to be a logician or a theoretician, or go to school for a long, long time to have a stake in neuroscience. In fact, you, dear reader, are touching upon the very heart  of the science right now.

How?

You are reading the words on this page.

Just think of what is going on in your head right now. Roughly speaking, the activity of a number of electrons correlates to the release of a specific pattern of photons which enter your eye, activating neurochemical receptors and creating an image that your brain easily constructs from years of pattern recognition, word association, and all the good stuff that equals “reading”. Truly fantastic. Yet there is an even greater process occurring inside your head as well as inside mine. The interesting part of that sentence, the heart of the science, is “you.” The “you” that is reading this and the “me” that is writing it. The “self” is the source for millennia of religious attitudes, beliefs, superstitions, discoveries, instincts, sciences, wars, loves lost, loves gained, lives lost, lives gained, politics, what have you — it is the basis, really, for humanity.

In modern neuroscience, the consensus is that the mind, brain, and body are one and the same. We are our brains, a part of the body, and not a soul. We live this unequivocal, subjective experience that no other species that we know of has ever experienced. The narratives that our brains play out for us appear to be constructed in a truly “miraculous” fashion and one can understand why the idea of souls persists. It is for this reason that when people discuss neuroscience I believe that it is kind of a cop out to simply brand it as “the study of the brain.” Strictly speaking, that is a correct definition, but it is one that does not adequately convey the significance of the science to the layman.

Neuroscience, really, is the study of our “selves”. Who we are, what we think, what we feel, all the emergent properties that are the idiosyncrasies of human emotion, thought, and interaction are locked away somewhere within the brain. The basis for them, the realities we experience, and the infinite realities that can emerge  lie locked somewhere within the neural pathways of the brain. And that is just our best guess — it may not even work that way! The pathways may simply describe a world all unto their own and the mind surfaces as an emergent (non) conscious property through some literal miracle of evolution to create the thought processes that we see before us.

For me (and most), branding neuroscience as a simple study of the brain evokes images of a dispassionate scientist collecting the occasional three pounds of gray matter in a jar or calculating stimuli and developing “electrifying” hypotheses. Doing those things are important, and often fun, but there is more to it than that. Yes, brain science is biological. It is mathematical and requires logicians and statistics, but au bout du compte neuroscience has huge implications on the way we think about ourselves. Education, philosophy, art, love, religion — all these things are products of human cognition, inspiration, and creativity stemming from this one organ. To study the brain is to gain a whole new perspective on who “you” are and who “I” am.

So… what is a brain science, really?

A humanist’s Rubik’s cube.

Id est quod est.

— written by Patrice-Morgan Ongoly