Mind As Mosaic

One of my most vivid insights during my first years in training as a Neurologist was the realization that the brain functioned as a mosaic. The many divisions of the brain  each has its own function- they collaborate but work largely independently. When part of the brain is damaged by a stroke, after a period that’s like shock, the rest of the brain carries on as before, just missing an ability due to the loss of function. It’s a lot like loosing a limb. Loose the part of the brain that produces speech, moves the left arm or sees the right side of the world and those particular abilities are deleted.

Its hard to reconcile this view of brain as mosaic with our subjective sensation of a single “I”. There seems to be a single identity inside each of us that we identify as ourselves, as our consciousness, our mind. We wonder whether animals have a similar unitary experience of identity. And we wonder whether a machine could ever experience self.

Putting aside these interesting questions about animal and computer minds, there is a related question of where the mind resides. To my pragmatic way of thinking, asking where these sensations are experienced is like asking where in some one’s body the personhood resides. I am my body and no matter how many parts of my body might be lost or replaced, my personhood is my body. Simply. The truly remarkable subjective illusion of conscious unity makes it seems like the mind has to be something or somewhere other than just the function of the brain in its totality. But I say that this mind is a mosaic of functioning brain areas.

I haven’t read Damasio’s latest: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, but I did see the review in the NYT by Ned Block. It interesting how Block wants to define consciousness much as I do, this odd subjective sensation of inhabiting a brain that interacts with an environment, criticizing Damasio for emphasizing “knowledge of one’s own existence and of the existence of surroundings.”

Damasio has been interested in how the subjective sensation of awareness arises in the brain. It seems unfair for Block to review a book by criticizing the author’s choice of subject rather than their approach to the subject. These questions of self awareness and more abstract thought are really more interesting than mapping experience in the brain. Damasio’s subject here seems to be the one that I’ve been writing about recently, which is how we view the metaphor and artifacts that we create in a uniquely human way. Language, metaphore and, above all I think, models capable of  running internal mental simulations are what let us imagine, plan and coordinate activity in ways never before seen on the planet.

I want to link this neurobiology of experience with the growing understanding of how language and metaphor are embodied in the brain and environment. I’m more and more convinced that the more real we see these abstractions as being real, the better we can deal with them in the world. My best example of this currently is equating fear, the emotion, with loss of control, loss of the feeling of mastery.

After all, making decisions under conditions of uncertainty can not be done well if motivated by fear of unknown, uncontrollable future events.

Author: James Vornov

I'm an MD, PhD Neurologist who left a successful academic career on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop new treatments in Biotech and Pharma. I became fascinated with how people actually make decisions based on the science of decision theory and emerging understanding of how the brain works to make decisions. My passion now is this deep explanation of what has been the realm of philosophy, psychology and self help but is now understood as brain function. By understanding our brains, I believe we can become happier, more successful people.

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