Week 7: Neuroscience & Art

 This week's material was something I found particularly relevant to my own life.

To begin with, here's a quote that accurately summarizes my impression of the "Neuroculture" reading: "There isn't a skeleton inside us, we are inside the skeleton (we are the brain)".

The "Neuroculture" reading brought back many memories of media addressing the "brain as self" notion; that is, our consciousnesses and personhoods are contained within the neurons that fire, not in the limbs and body parts we may consider our "selves". For example, in Futurama, preserved heads of famous historical figures show up regularly to make snarky jokes, their personalities preserved even if their bodies are not. The Thing, Alien, Prometheus, Dr. Who, etc, are all other shows and movies that depict this same trope.

 

 

However, beyond the media representation in horror and scifi, the idea of brain-as-self crops up in many more relevant real life discussions. For example, for transgender people, there exists a disconnect between their self (the brain) and their vessel (the body). The phenomenon of phantom limbs that occurs in amputees reminds us that the brain conceptualizes and receives sensory data from the limbs, and does it to the point that the body can forget the limb is no longer there. As science grows closer to mapping electrical impulses in the brain and allowing them to interact with technology to draw, control movement, and more, we grow closer to the idea of brain singularity.

However, this begs the question of at what point the brain becomes more than a lump of gray matter and into a living, thinking organism. Humans have always created cultures of spirituality, extra-conscious existences, souls, etc, but how does that factor into the biological viewpoint of electrical impulses and neurotransmitters? This grows even harder to answer when you consider phenomena such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurogenerative disease linked with concussions and head trauma. People who suffer from this disease can change personalities, lose memories, and become, as testimonies often describe, "completely different people". If their sense of self changes due to biological damage to the brain, can we really claim that there is a sense of "self" such as a soul?

 

To conclude, there is a thought experiment called the Ship of Theseus that I've seen brought up in similar discussions: if a ship is replaced plank by plank, when does the ship stop being the original ship? If a human's brain is transplanted into another body, is that new amalgamation owned by the brain, or the body?

 

I personally think it's the brain. 

References

 

Frazzetto, Giovanni, and Suzanne Anker. “Neuroculture.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 10, no. 11, 2009, pp. 815–821., doi:10.1038/nrn2736.

Lambie, Ryan. “The Best Disembodied Brains and Heads in the Movies.” Den of Geek, 14 July 2016, www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-best-disembodied-brains-and-heads-in-the-movies/.

Levin, Noah. “Ship of Theseus.” Philosophical Thought, Tulsa Community College, 18 Jan. 2021, open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/ship-of-theseus/.

“r/Showerthoughts - There Isn't a Skeleton inside Us, We Are inside the Skeleton (We Are the Brain).” Reddit, www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3rvbg3/there_isnt_a_skeleton_inside_us_we_are_inside_the/.

“The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.” The Jung Reader, 2012, pp. 219–233., doi:10.4324/9780203721049-20.