Behind the Scenes of The Brain Show

by Zeev Nitsan

  Common-experience components also become modular and can be used for forming memories out of new experiences.

  Generalization, Overgeneralization, and Separation

  Conceptualization of reality in a generalizing pattern is typical for the brains of infants, who are novices in our world. So, at the time of their initial acquaintance with the world, they see every winged animal as a bird. Later on, however, they develop the ability to distinguish between different winged animals and to identify a certain such animal as a stork and another as a raven.

  The brain of an expert is characterized by the ability to represent subcategories (subgroups) of similar situations. In other words, it withdraws from unification (low resolution) to the differentiation (high resolution). Thus, it has the ability to react more “accurately,” in a manner appropriate for the uniqueness of a situation. On the other hand, atavism (backward evolution) of the information encoding pattern characterizes the cognitive-decline pattern of Alzheimer’s patients.

  Alzheimer’s patients at progressive stages of the disease tend to rely on an individual trait of an individual who belongs to a group and to attach the same trait to each individual they relate to this group. For example, if their daughter’s name is Sophie, they will call all women “Sophie.” A plausible explanation for this is the induction mechanism (from the individual to the general) transfer to over-generalized.

  In fact, most Alzheimer’s patients process perception impressions at a low level of processing, at the basic layers of the pyramid, while its higher layers are disintegrating and collapsing.

  The process of dissolution and loss of information is the opposite of the learning process of children. First, the most detailed representation groups collapse, and the representation pendulum moves to the side of unification and raw representation of the perception impressions, which are blind to nuances.

  The assembling nature of insights from a low level to a high level is a mirror image of the spreading nature of dealing with a task that requires lower processing, in which case the information “pours downwards.”

  It seems that, when it comes to the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, nuances and subcategories disappear as time goes by and all perceptual representations converge into a general, raw representation that is blind to the nuances that distinguish it from similar, but not identical, perception representation. There is a type of unification of the representation of various perception impressions that share similar components. The distinction ability is lost.

  It seems that it can be related to the fact that, with respect to Alzheimer’s patients, the first area in the brain that is damaged is the dentate gyrus at the hippocampus, to which the ability to distinguish between pieces of information carried by the sensorial input is ascribed. The dentate gyrus labels shades and nuances before the information undergoes unification and generalization as it is processed at other areas of the hippocampus; when it fails, the distinction ability is damaged.

  A General Nesting Pattern

  The ability to generalize by means of categories in a nesting pattern (like matryoshka dolls that contain each other) is at the basis of information coding in the brain. Information-processing and -preserving in the brain are performed in a nesting pattern in the sense that the information is assimilated by means of gradual categories. A more general category contains pieces of information from the cortical level beneath it through an aphorismic pattern. It is done throughout the processing ladder—brain processing is a multilevel process.

  The taxonomic hierarchy of the kingdoms of wildlife and vegetation (species assembled into types, which are assembled into series, which are assembled into systems, etc.) is similar, in a sense, to the information encoding process in our brain, which spreads out downward and converges upward. Perhaps this method of categorization seems satisfactory to us, since it reflects the central information processing pattern in our brain.

  Maya Pyramid for the Input, Inverse Maya Pyramid for the Output

  A reaction output whose common manifestation is the movement of various body parts spreads out from the cortex downward and constitutes a mirror image of the input pyramid. The decision to activate the action plan encoded as “kissing my spouse” is interpreted into a sequence of instructions given to our facial muscles (and perhaps tongue muscles, aiso…). Here, as well, the more experienced ones have contingency plans that are appropriate for various sub-situations related to this action plan.

  The cortex stores information in a nesting manner—the information spreads out “downwards,” to a lower level of processing and is contained—and gets a shortened code name (in the spirit of brain aphorism) as it goes up the ladder of information processing in the brain.

  As a result of the nesting pattern of information storing in our brain, at any given moment a superposition of information resolution is taking place.

  We have an overall holographic insight, which consciously stores information at different levels of resolution and allows maneuvering between the changing resolution levels—from the contained structures to the unique details, and vice versa. For instance, when we watch a scene in a play, we simultaneously store the content of the scene—at a certain resolution level, the fact the scene is part of the play—at a more general level of resolution, and that the play is part of a festival is at even more general levels of resolution.

  The Imperialistic Urge of the Representation Maps in Our Brain

  Use-Dependent Volume of Representation

  Due to the competitive nature of the brain’s flexibility, cognitive skills, which are not commonly used, get a representation area and become smaller in accordance with decreasing usage. On the other hand, brain areas (representation areas) on which they are based are “conquered” by other skills that are used more frequently.

  An “unemployed” brain area raises the appetite of representation maps around it, and these tend to adopt the deserted brain real-estate asset.

  In the Brain areas that constitute structural infrastructure for information encoded maps - there is a subdivision: between the neurons at the center of the map whose commitment to the processing of the map-specific skill is high, and, on the other hand, the marginal neuron groups, which are similar to peripheral areas, whose level of commitment to the skill-specific processing is lower. The “peripheral areas” of a brain map are the cortical columns, which have weaker relations with their partners. They have higher potential to serve as “double agents,” meaning to assist in more than one skill, and, alternatively, to desert their position and start serving another functional map that maps the processing of another function.

  A painting called A Hand Painting a Hand, inspired by Maurits Cornelis Escher’s painting, shows one hand holding a pencil and drawing another hand while the painted hand is holding an eraser and erasing the hand that is drawing it. This is similar to a situation in which one brain map expands “on account of” another brain map and recruits the neurons that served as infrastructure to the former map.

  When a skill is required and the frequency of its use is high, it is more likely that peripheral areas of other brain maps will be attached to the map encoding the commonly used function.

  The borders of brain maps might change within short periods of time as a result of the challenges the brain is facing (as chairs in a musical chairs game exchange ownership from one bottom to another).

  When it comes to blind people, the representation of the finger used for reading braille letters is larger than the representations of other fingers. Several brain studies have found evidence for the assumption that a significant plastic change takes place in the brain of people who become blind in the course of their life and were not born blind. The occipital lobe, which is normally in charge of processing visual input, converts to processing the input of the sense of touch, related to processing of braille inputs, among the blind. As aforesaid, the brain does not like deserted real-estate assets, and active brain maps confiscate the neural infrastructure of inac
tive brain maps.

  A voluntary study revealed that temporary blindness, induced by covering the eye of sighted participants and by blocking visual input, causes the visual cortex to start processing input through the sense of touch, similar to the process that takes place among the blind who read braille letters. After five days of total blindness, the participants whose eyes were covered were better at reading braille letters than those whose eyes were not covered. Conducting Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain imaging among the former group of participants while stimulating the tip of their fingers showed activity in brain areas that usually process only visual input. In other words, the map that processes touch stimulations invaded the map that is in charge of the visual input and started to enslave the neurons that were previously citizens of the visual-processing kingdom. Another interesting finding is that twenty hours after the eyes were uncovered, on the sixth day of the experiment, no activity was shown in the visual-processing areas as a result of stimulation to the fingers, and the visual-processing map retrieved the stolen territory and its new/old citizens—the neurons.

  Similarly, it was also found that reversible eyesight deprivation caused the auditory-input map to expand its borders and invade the areas in charge of visual input, which was deprived. This further proves that the mutual obligation between input related to a certain sense and a certain brain area that processes it is not tied down necessarily in a monogamous relationship.

  Phantom Pains

  Phantom pains are common among 95 percent of limb amputation cases, in most cases throughout the course of their life. The person who suffers these pains, strangely, ascribes them to the limb that is no longer part of their body.

  The British admiral Nelson, who became an amputee after losing his right hand at the Tenerife battle in 1797, described that he sensed his vanished hand as an invisible entity. He claimed it could be seen as direct proof of the existence of the soul, since the hand that no longer existed in the flesh-and-blood sense continued to exist invisibly. According to his belief, the senses related to his “ghost hand” reflected what happened within his soul following the end of its physical existence.

  Phantom pains are ghost pains. These pains are related to the brain, their addressee, which does not accept the fact that no one lives at the address from which the pain is supposedly sent. What seems like a cartographic fixation of the brain is probably an involuntary product of the flexibility of the brain map’s outline. The representation areas of the “ghost limb” are conquered and turn into sensorial representatives of other areas in the body. Stimulation of a nearby area revives a ghost sense at the nonexistent limb.

  Brain Maps Merger

  When a new interface is created between two existing brain maps as a result of a certain experience—for example, an interface between the map that processes input related to touch and the one that processes visual input—a new supermap is created in which takes place the rule the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This is a new neural network in which the two existing brain maps are interwoven. Every new interface between two brain maps brings about changes in the original maps, since it echoes within them, and the echo induces changes in the connection patterns.

  Thoughts are matchmakers of brain maps, which bring together thought creatures who merge into a chimera unknown in the mental world. The poets weave innovative creatures and original metaphors through map-matching that conceptualizes the meaning of words. A scientific idea can also derive from an induced interweave of maps of ideas.

  Daydreaming can serve as a fertile mental ground for the creation of mutations in brain maps by causing a certain map to rise up into another one and interweaving these maps randomly, more or less.

  A map that ceases to function also changes the maps that are mutually connected to it. This is how the auditory sense of people who become blind in the course of life is intensified as a result of improving the processing quality of auditory input in the brain map that processes auditory input. Layers of resolution are added to the auditory map, while the map processing visual input remains unemployed.

  Among the deaf, peripheral vision is improved, probably to make up for their inability to hear sounds of faraway objects getting closer to them.

  This mechanism can also explain experiencing sexual pleasure in “exotic” ways. For instance, in the sensory brain map the sense representation related to the sexual organ is close to sense representation related to the legs. Perhaps the interweaving of two sensory maps and a partial fusion of these maps can explain foot fetishism—the ability to experience sexual stimulation that results from stimulating the feet.

  Other examples from the province of sexual exoticism: Perhaps the neural networking that causes the abstract mental state of “a sense of control,” is interwoven due to a repetitive experience into the neural networking that leads to a sense of sexual arousal. In that way the “sense of control” and the sexual arousal are attached to each other among those who experience sado-maso games on the dark side of the sexuality moon.

  Even in maps encoded solely for motor tasks, a fusion of separate functions into one map that combines them is possible. For example, music players who maneuver two fingers together while playing music on a regular basis sometimes lose the ability to move each of the fingers separately. The fingers’ representation maps fused into one, and its activation causes the activation of both fingers simultaneously.

  Resolution of Brain Maps

  The brain maps are layered on top of each other, and each of them reflects the information in an increasing or decreasing rating of resolution levels. When dealing with a certain task, we choose a certain level of resolution that, in our opinion, “matches the nature of the task.”

  The brain is a weariless cartographer. It maps maps of maps of maps in a recursive pattern in which one map is contained in another map which is contained in a more general map, and so on. Each containing map adds encoded information.

  The Plasticity of the Maps

  The brain is a plastic system. It experiences constant change, but it is not an elastic system in the sense that it never goes back to its previous status, even if it performs a repetitive task or experiences a similar experience. As with Heraclitus’s river, we do not have the exact same brain twice. The brain is ever changing.

  The choices we make throughout our life derive from our brain, and they, in turn, in a feedback mechanism, affect the brain’s structure and its future function.

  “Neuro-plasticity” is a term that describes, inter alia, the process in which the world of phenomena around us shapes the function, the number of neurons and the relationships between them. Our brain changes its connection patterns at any given moment of our life.

  The brain maps are fluid and ever changing. The constant change of representation areas of cognitive, behavioral and motorial skills is based on the fluidity of the connections between the neurons whose networking pattern is at the base of the skill.

  The commitment of a certain brain area to a functional neuro-map, which actually means to the processing of a specific function, compromises its ability to carry the burden of processing information related to another function.

  Events that take place in the outer world serve as change agents in the brain. Contemporary media, for example, remaps our brain; TV, cinema and computer games often confront us with a rapid, rhythmical and sometimes even “unrealistic” pace of events. Under the circumstances, the “quicksibility” (a portmanteau of the words quickness and flexibility, which describes the ability to quickly adjust to changing circumstances) are challenged to the edge, and brain processing performance is subject to accelerated depreciation. Moreover, in light of these sputters of stimulations that are poured down on our senses, in “super-realistic” intensity our brain creates reaction networks that are sometimes inappropriate for realistic scenarios and have the potential to cause acquired attention deficit disorder, which is reflected, inter alia, in frequent skipping of attention,
a high level of distraction and low mental endurance.

  As a cartographer that never sleeps, the brain constantly deals with mental mapping of the world. The four-dimensional mental maps map the three planes of space and the time dimension. They are constantly updated, almost in real time, as a reaction to an input, and enable the brain to create a reliable forecast as much as possible with respect to time and space.

  With every new challenge, the brain redraws the roadmap necessary to reach the relevant destination. Part of it determines where to go and the other part determines how to get there, as in “Tell me where and I will tell how.”

  Neuro-plasticity contributes both to rigidity and flexibility, which is reflected in human nature.

  The forming and strengthening of brain maps derive from the use-dependent rule of existence, and, on the other hand, wear and evaporation of brain maps derive from lack of use. Often a brain map is not fully operated, or, alternately, certain parts of the map are more active than others. This changing mix grants the unique shade to a familiar skill we have activated numerous times. Like the changing lighting pattern of a Christmas tree, with different bulbs that are turned on and off at different times and levels of intensity, the activity pattern in different areas of a neural map is formed by activation of the various areas in the same manner. Due to this scattering in time and space, a unique pattern is formed for our activity, which, even in cases of repetitive activities, each time we perform it has a unique signature.

  The Brain as a Weariless Cartographer

  Learning and De-learning

  It seems that numerous learning processes necessarily involve parallel processes of de-learning of previous behavior patterns. Sometimes, these patterns do not match the new behavior pattern or, even, contradict it. Thus, for example, an honest commitment to a spouse requires moderation or even cancelation of our tendency to prefer our wishes to those of the other. Parenthood requires certain altruistic behavior patterns when it comes to the offspring, so their needs become preferable to ours, contrary to the tendencies common before we became parents.