Brain Poetry

Picture the Mind

By Myra Sklarew

It’s not a pretty sight—Vesalius’s  folded surface

of the brain. Or da Vinci’s ventricles, spinal cord

trailing down like a braided afterthought.

Or each hemisphere bed down in its cubicle,

parted by the corpus callosum, crossing guard

for traffic back and forth. Now Descartes comes

on stage, appoints the pineal gland—trusty messenger

between matter and mind. Hard to say when beauty

slipped into this equation. Axon and dendrite.

Molecules dancing across synaptic space. 

Receptors hungry for their messages.

Cascade of ions in their chrysalis of light.

Upcoming Research on Prospective, or Predictive, Memory

New Research on Prospective Memory at U.T. Austin, funded by the NSF.


ABSTRACT

We often reflect on our past to understand current experience or predict future events. For example, in choosing a birthday gift for a friend, we can look to past birthdays for help in deciding what gift would elicit the greatest joy for the friend this year. In this way, memory is not merely retrospective, but also intrinsically prospective. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Alison Preston, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how the brain supports predictions about the present and future based on memories of the past. Despite decades of neuroscience research focused on retrospective memory, very little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms that enable the prospective use of experience. However, a rich history of research suggests that the brain's medial temporal lobe structures are important for learning and remembering individual experiences. One goal of this project is to learn how these brain structures reactivate existing memories in the face of new experiences. In one set of studies, participants learn sequences of events while undergoing fMRI. The researchers are seeking evidence in the fMRI data for reactivation of prior memories during prediction of upcoming events in the sequence. A second goal of this project is to discover how remembering influences new learning. To be maximally adaptive for future use, memories do not simply consist of individual records of directly experienced events but also include memories built by integrating knowledge across different events. The researchers are learning how remembering past events during new situations provides an opportunity for new memories to be formed that connect present experience with existing memories. For example, if today one sees an unfamiliar man walking a familiar Great Dane, the sight of the dog may trigger a memory for a previous occasion on which one saw that same dog being walked by a woman. By recalling the previous experience with the Great Dane, a new memory can be formed that not only represents the relationship between the man and the dog, and the woman and the dog, but also connects the man and the woman, despite ones never having seen them together. Such integrated memories are a means by which individual experiences are combined to anticipate future judgments and actions. In related fMRI experiments, participants study events that share content and make judgments about the relationship between those experiences. These studies are allowing the researchers to understand how the brain builds a rich, cohesive record of experience by incorporating new events into existing memories.

The Physicality of Thought (Part II)

Hi all--

A few choice quotes on the eighteenth-century brain, as well as Jonathan Swift joking about the animal spirits. Enjoy...

"Brain" in Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728):

 BRAIN, in its general Sense, that large, soft, whitish Mass, inclos’d in the Cranium or Skull; wherein all the Organs of Sense terminate, and the Soul is supposed principally to reside. the Brain is encompass’d with two Meniges, or Membranes, call’d Dura and Pia Mater; see MENINGES. Its Figure is the same as that of the Bones that contain it; viz. roundish, oblong, and flat on the Sides; it is divided into three principal Parts, viz. the Cerebrum, or Brain strictly so call’d, the Cerebellum, and the Medulla oblongata.

The Cerebrum, or Brain, properly so call’d, is that large globulous Prt which fills the fore and upper Part of the Skull: It is divided by a Duplicature of the Dura Mater, call’d from its Figure Falx, into two equal Parts, call’d Right and Left Hemispheres: Tho the Figure of the Brain be pretty far from a Sphere. It is also separated from the Cerebellum by another duplicature of the same Dura Mater. The Brain consists of two Kinds of Subtstance, the one Cineritous, or of an Ash-color, soft and moist; which being the Exterior, is call’d the Cortex, or Cortical Part of the Brain; the Thickness of this is about half an Inch...The other, or inner Substance, is white, more solid, as well as more dry than the Cortex, and is call’d the Marrow or Medullary, and sometimes the Fibrous Part, in contra-distinction to the other, which is call’d the Glandulous Part...

[and yet, later...]

The Brain does not appear absolutely necessary to animal Life. We have several Instances in Authors, particularly in the Philosophical Transactions, of Children brought forth alive, and surviving their Birth for some time, without any Brain: […] we have a History from Paris, of a Child, deliver’d at Maturity; and living four Days, not only without a Brain, but even a Head: instead of both which, was a Mass of Flesh like Liver found.  M. Denys gives us another Instance, of a Child born in 1673, which, setting aside the Head, was well form’d, but without any Brain, Cerebellum, or Medulla oblongata...

***

Swift and the Brain

Two (distinctly mocking) descriptions of the brain-based discourse of mind and its metaphors from Jonathan Swift.

The Brain a Crowd of Animals

"It is the Opinion of Choice Virtuosi, that the Brain is only a Crowd of little Animals with Claws extremely sharp, and therefore, cling together in the Contexture we behold, like the Picture of Hobbes’s Leviathan, or like Bees in perpendicular swarm upon a Tree, or like a Carrion corrupted into Vermin, till preserving the Shape and Figure of the Mother Animal.

That all Invention is formed by the Morsure of two or more of these Animals, upon certain capillary Nerves, which proceed from thence, whereof three Branches spread into the Tongue, and two into the right Hand. They hold also that these Animals are of a Constitution extremely cold; that their Food is the Air we attract, their Excrement Phlegm; and that what we vulgarly call Rheums and Colds and Distillations is nothing but an Epidemical Looseness, to which that little Commonwealth is very subject, from the Climate it lyes under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent Heat, can disentangle these Creatures from their hamated Station of Life, or give them Vigor and Humor, to imprint the Marks of their little Teeth. That if the Morsure be Hexagonal, it produces Poetry; the Circular gives Eloquence; if the Bite hath been Conical, the person, whose Nerve is so affected, shall be disposed to write upon the Politics; and so of the rest.

--Swift, Mechanical Operation of the Spirit (1704)  

   
Anger, Satire and the Brain:

I have learned from long Experience, never to apprehend Mischief from those Understandings, I have been able to provoke; For, Anger and Fury, though they add Strength to the Sinews of the Body, yet are found to relax those of the Mind, and to render all its Efforts feeble and impotent.

There is a Brain that will endure but one Scumming: Let the Owner gather it with Discretion, and manage his little Stock with Husbandry; but of all things, let him beware of bringing it under the Lash of his Betters; because, That will make it all bubble up into Impertinence, and he will find no new Supply: Wit, without knowledge, being a sort of Cream, which gathers in a Night to the Top, and by a skilful Hand, may be soon whipt into Froth; but once scumm'd away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing, but to be thrown to the Hogs.  


--Swift, Battle of the Books (1704)

The Physicality of Thought?: Images and Quotes (Part 1)

Like Cavendish, William Blake worried about attempts to reduce the mind to the brain, and about the scientific method more generally. Here, in Blake's illustrated engraving, Newton (above), we see the celebrated Newton attempting to pin down the infinitely complex world with a compass, an act Blake viewed as antithetical to organic growth and poetic renderings of cognitive intricacy. 

A quote from Blake's Jerusalem.

"O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!
For Bacon & Newton sheathd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion.  Reasonings like vast Serpents
Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations"  

***

A portrait of Margaret Cavendish, early woman writer, forger (with Bacon) of the science fiction genre, female scientist.

The Circle of the Brain cannot be Squared

Margaret Cavendish

 

A Circle round divided in four parts
Hath been great Study 'mongst the men of Arts;
Since Archimed's or Euclid's time, each Brain
Hath on a Line been stretched, yet all in Vain;
And every Thought hath been a Figure set,
Doubts Cyphers were, Hopes as Triangles met;
There was Division and Subtraction made,
And Lines drawn out, and Points exactly laid,
But none hath yet by Demonstration found
The way, by which to Square a Circle round:
For while the Brain is round, no Square will be,
While Thoughts divide, no Figures will agree.
And others did upon the same account,
Doubling the Cube to a great number mount;
But some the Triangles did cut so small,
Till into equal Atoms they did fall:
For such is Man's curiosity and mind,
To seek for that, which is hardest to find.

 

(For those not present in class: cypher is an early-modern term for zero.  Enjoy the math.)

Also, a quote from Cavendish to add...

True it is, Spinning with the Fingers is more proper to our Sexe, then studying or writing Poetry, which is the Spinning with the braine: but I having no skill in the Art of the first (and if I had, I had no hopes of gaining so much as to make me a Garment to keep me from the cold) made me delight in the latter; since all braines work naturally, and incessently, in some kinde or other; which made me endeavour to Spin a Garment of Memory, to lapp up my Name, that it might grow to after Ages: I cannot say the Web is strong, fine, or evenly Spun, for it is a Course peice; yet I had rather my Name should go meanly clad, then dye with cold. (my italics)

***
Finally, an anatomical engraving of the "Circle of Willis," a circle of arteries that supply blood to the brain. This image was published in Thomas Willis' Cerebri Anatome, or Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves (c. 1664).  The circle of the brain cannot be squared?

Note that this anatomical engraving is described as a "figure," a word that can also mean to perform a mathematical equation: "to figure."

Enjoy!

Thanks for a fantastic makeup class, all! More soon on Swift...

Cog Sci Event on Working Memory: Friday Jan 20th, 3:30 p.m.

Hi all--

   For any of you that might be interested, I wanted to announce this event on the linguistic aspects of 'working memory,' the cognitive faculty that lets us hold information on back-burner while processing something else. It's this Friday at 3:30 in the Psych building.  I'll be there; feel free to join me...

***
Cognitive Forum on January 20th by Jonathan Hakun

Dear Psychology and Cognitive Science Colleagues,

Please join us for Cognitive Science Forum on Friday, January 20th at 3:30 pm in Psychology 230.  Jonathan Hakun will be presenting "Working Memory Capacity: An Unhealthy Obsession with Size."

Abstract: Working memory, during every step of its conceptual evolution from a short-term-store to a processing platform, has been described as a limited-capacity system.  However, despite nearly 60 years of empirical development, the units of measurement used to describe the capacity of the system have remained a controversy to this day.  While theoretical contributions from the verbal domain have moved the argument beyond a description of the number of items that can be maintained over a short delay, in favor of an attention-based maintenence mechanism, research in the visual domain has held tightly to the discrete unit/slot hypothesis (i.e. how many items can be maintained).  In my talk, I'll review the visual working memory literature and discuss the source of controversy over this strong hypothesis.  By presenting my own data in the context of current theoretical models I hope to lay the groundwork for a future multi-modal investigation into the mechanisms that circumscribe the capacity of working memory.

Post from Karthik

A post from Karthik while he sets up his blog...

Descartes and Plato

I thought the Descartes primary reading was extremely interesting. My thoughts were all over the place when reflecting on it, but one main ideas caught my attention: the connection between Descartes and Plato, in regard to Descartes’s assumption that the physical world we perceive is false or unreal. The basis of Descartes’s writing is to understand the nature of the self in a world where everything else is false. He begins by assuming that nothing is real, and attempts to find substantial proof for his existence. He comes to the conclusion, later on, that the world around us is perceived by the mind: “We say that we see the wax itself, if it is there before us, not that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape: and this might lead me to conclude without more ado that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees, and not from the scrutiny of the mind alone…And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind.” Thus, Descartes suggests that all perception is subject to the scrutiny of the mind. This reminded me very much of Plato’s idea of the truth, first metaphor, and second metaphor.

The tenet of Plato’s philosophy is that there is one original, intangible original of any object, that is created by God. It exists in the realm of thought, one that can’t be created. Any creation of replication of the thought, then, is simply a representation of the prefect original. Furthermore, he claims that human’s can’t recreate the perfect original which exists in this ideal realm; therefore, any representation of the original is a distortion of it. The distortions become progressively worse as more representations are made. This becomes very interesting when considered from a neuroscience perspective. For every object that we, as humans, see, it takes time for the light to reach our eyes, and time for our brains to send signals that unscramble the light into a meaningful object. In that time, the object has changed in some way, whether by age, or time. Thus, for every object we see, what we are actually seeing is only a fragment of it, it is only a representation of the original. Connecting this to Descartes, it begs the question that he attempts to answer: what is real? Is what we perceive ever the Truth? To be honest, when I first read Descartes, I thought his assumption that everything around us isn’t real was a little farfetched. When reflecting on it with Platonic thought and neuroscience, however, his assumption is correct. All that we perceive around us is in fact a false representation of the actual object, caused by the very limitations of our minds judgment. This ultimately provides weight to Descartes’s argument, the sign of life is the existence of thought.  

Welcome all!

I'm very much looking forward to spending the semester together reading, writing, and discussing issues in literature, cognitive science, and the history of mind. Our class blog will be a primary way in which we treat the course material. You will each be keeping your own individual blog (linked here) throughout the semester and using this space to chart the development of your unique ideas as you encounter each week of readings. You will also use this space as a way to check in with your classmates about their thoughts and discoveries. I will post as well from time to time.

Work hard, challenge yourself, ask questions that you don't know the answers to yet--I'm eager to get started!

Best,
Dr. Phillips