The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning

by Bor, Daniel

  All the time, the details of mental-illness symptoms and the array of useful treatments reaffirms the view of consciousness as involving the prefrontal parietal network to support a combination of attentional and working memory systems, with pattern-searching a crucial function.

  Although some of these nascent treatments haven’t as yet reached the clinic, hopefully this soon will change. And by holding in mind the putative perspective that each of these mental illnesses intimately relates to a skewed, misfiring consciousness, clinical researchers may make important new breakthroughs. It’s vital that this army of future strategies be given as much attention and as many resources as possible so that the pandemic of mental illness can be overcome.

  Epilogue

  A Delicious Life

  The science of consciousness is coming of age. It can explain the origin and purpose of awareness, its mental features and neural mechanisms, as well as its intense fragility. From this picture, we can see the seeds of awareness in the history of life on earth. All ancient creatures blindly clung to survival by capturing and combining useful ideas about the environment—but this limited learning happened randomly, awkwardly, via DNA changes and the rhythmic fall of generations.

  Consciousness first arose out of this evolutionary endeavor via a specialist information-processing organ, a neural computer capable of acquiring accurate concepts and deep strategies far more rapidly and flexibly than ever before. Some evolutionary branches created complex brains, which were optimized to build pyramids of knowledge out of simpler ideas cemented together. This critical skill in combining mental objects to generate increasingly meaningful, useful structures of thought is both the essence of consciousness and its overriding purpose.

  Humans have a unique place in the world. We have an exceptionally complex brain, whose central wired core, in the form of the prefrontal parietal network, is greatly expanded even compared to our nearest primate relatives. We can process and combine information like no other species, and consequently we experience the world in exceptionally rich, varied ways.

  Our consciousness allows us to unlock nature’s secrets, from the architecture of the smallest atom inside us to the swirling mist of galactic stars above us. Our consciousness enables us to ward off death by decades via medical technology, to travel to the moon in a couple of days, and to generate a plethora of immensely sophisticated gadgets by which to feed our prodigious appetite for stimulation. We should feel incredibly fortunate that evolution has endowed each of us with this immense biological computer, which can experience and control the world with such variety and depth.

  But our pride in the mental richness of our lives and the power of our intellect should be tempered by a nagging sense that, in the case of human brains, evolution almost seems to have overreached. The signature skill of our conscious minds, our advanced powers to search for profound patterns that help us understand or conquer our environs, was only ever meant to serve our primitive evolutionary drives of survival and reproduction. This observation is most apparent in the vertiginous chasm that exists between the enormous wealth of conscious comprehension that any educated adult demonstrates daily and our embarrassing ignorance of the reasoning behind so many of our decisions. Some of us strive for a more enlightened life, somewhat divorced from these basic impulses, but such undercurrent motivations nevertheless rule and constrict us. Only in humans do these forceful evolutionary drives seem sometimes to clash so violently with higher conscious goals.

  Moreover, we are so clever at spotting the patterns and tricks to meet our primitive desires that our lives can easily spiral out of control. Humanity’s prodigious conscious tools of innovation can be devoted to discovering broad truths about the world. But they are just as easily co-opted to generate inventive tactics to have affairs, to overeat, to steal, or to pursue all manner of other short-term goals that are likely to backfire when all the consequences are counted up.

  And, all too easily, our aggressive ability to form such packets of ideas and behavior perpetuates unhappy traps of thought, or even, occasionally, outright delusions, as we unwittingly reveal the delicate fragility of the human mind. For some, this route leads to a debilitating mental illness, with consciousness mutating into an enemy—to such an extent that a few are so tormented that they wish to end their lives, to free themselves of this toxic inner foe. But all of us, to varying degrees, are both the beneficiaries and the victims of our own consciousness.

  I’m utterly passionate about science, not just because of the wondrous, surprising, fascinating facts it reveals about the universe and our place within it but also, more abstractly, for its dogged devotion to the truth. As a romantic at heart, I like to think there is nothing more noble than this meticulous, ruthlessly honest, strangely humble goal to understand the intricacies of reality. But as part of my affection for science, I revel as well in the pragmatic reach of this professional investigation into natural machinery: Scientific discoveries effortlessly engender a multitude of powerful, malleable, liberating tools of technology. Evolution has learned the lesson a billion times over that rational, accurate ideas about your local world, whether they are stored in DNA, proteins, or brains, equates to control and success, even in the teeth of the most severe habitat. But humans, exceptionally, have an attentional system that can label absolutely anything as potentially biologically relevant and push it forward for deeper conscious analysis. Science is the crystallization of this widely roaming curiosity, and its technological fruits pervade modern life.

  And, as with so many other branches of science, a rapidly maturing scientific picture of consciousness should yield perspectives and technologies that improve our lives. Although we have developed methods to communicate with brain-damaged patients by their thoughts alone, and can pharmacologically target brain chemicals and regions to return consciousness to normal levels in some mentally ill patients, ideally we’d expect such an intimate scientific field to help every one of us.

  Already, the emerging scientific revelations about awareness can help us tip the scales away from being victims of our own consciousness and toward relishing the breathtaking range of skills and experiences awareness can provide. First, there are the rather trivial issues, such as that we should be wary of stress, and shouldn’t underestimate the importance of sleep, both for its protective role against mental illness and its ability to keep our consciousness as clear and wide as possible.

  In addition, certain more abstract scientific results, some deeply unintuitive, can help soften our view of ourselves and smooth our interaction with others. Our consciousness is by default the loyal clever assistant of our dumb primitive unconscious, which is in many instances running the show. Because of this, at times our thoughts and decisions may be far from smart. But this imbalance of power and limited control is the product of evolution’s addiction to selfish, demanding traits; every single one of my billions of ancestors, stretching back to the first life-forms, had to possess such ruthlessly self-interested drives in order for me to exist today. This doesn’t necessarily negate our responsibility for our actions, but it can make us more tolerant of our foibles and mistakes. And as we more readily recognize when our unconscious impulses are blindly guiding us, we have more chance to change tack, if necessary.

  We can also apply the same sympathy to others, who may be far less able to curb their actions than they realize. Given the pandemic of mental illness, many may secretly be harboring depression or another such disease, and any apparently hurtful behavior they exhibit could merely be a result of a complete lack of control and a skewed awareness. This scientifically driven “benefit of the doubt” can help us view others’ actions with more tolerance and acceptance, and less anger.

  But there are far deeper ways that the science of consciousness can help us change the way we live. Recently, I watched my baby daughter learn to walk. Walking is one of those activities that adults take for granted. But for my infant daughter, absolutely everything in life is a wonderful toy, and w
alking is included in that inexhaustible list, like everything else. As soon as she mastered this new skill, she passionately ambled around the house almost every waking moment, to experience the unbridled fun of rhythmically plodding her feet shakily in front of her. Sometimes she walked sideways, or in circles; occasionally she even indulged in a good bit of stamping. She was especially proud and excited when she managed to walk backward. Walking barefoot, with socks, and, on special occasions, with shoes each provided their own species of gleeful exploration. She even found it particularly funny, unfortunately for me, to walk across my stomach and chest if I was lying down. Toddling around seemed to provide an infinite variety of entertainment for her.

  To my baby daughter, everything is exciting, because she is filling her fledgling awareness every day with new ways of seeing and understanding the world. She has a passionate, open readiness to form novel chunks. I find this approach utterly beguiling and infectious, but at the same time, can’t help comparing it to my own more closed view of life.

  As we all emerge into adulthood and slowly age, there is a natural transition away from this playful building of mental chunks. We gradually replace this perspective with a more measured, perhaps even dulled approach, as we’re weighed down by the myriad chunks we’ve already built up over our lifetime. In some ways it makes perfect sense that we increasingly turn into creatures of such extensive habit, because we’ve already learned many vital chunks of information, many ready tricks for interacting with the world. Successful bacteria in stable environments take the safer, less innovative route with lower mutation rates. And we do the same: As we get older, our learning increasingly protects us, so why rock the boat by fiddling with the formula now?

  The trouble is, though, that the initially dazzling glow of our experiences in infancy, when our hunger for patterns is particularly urgent, can be dimmed and obscured over the years by so many overly familiar nuggets of knowledge. We are less ravenous for new jewels of wisdom, and our entire existence, examined through the perspective of the thousands of chunks we’ve acquired, can become routine.

  What we need is a way to crank up our conscious levels in a more immersive way. After all, the more conscious we are, the brighter, more vibrant, and more pregnant with opportunities the world appears. This is trivially true in experiments in the lab: When I focus attention on a location on the computer monitor, it makes the upcoming dot stand out more when it appears there. But it’s profoundly, wonderfully true in real life, when I now shine every ounce of my beam of attention on the broad smile on my baby daughter’s face.

  How does the science of consciousness help here? Well, if consciousness is all about innovation and shunting automatic habits to our unconscious, we can try to foster more awareness by biasing our minds as far as possible in the direction of innovation and relying at least a little bit less on our bank of deeply grooved habits.

  One potentially effective strategy along these lines to help combat our slow, age-related deterioration of conscious fire is to nurture a globally questioning, doubting perspective. If consciousness is fundamentally about being ravenous for those innovations that will help us in life, then by fostering a habit of skepticism of almost every mental chunk that passes through our consciousness, we’re setting up a superchunk, as it were, a higher habit to be restlessly searching for any little innovation we can get our hands on.

  It’s generally not so hard to detect and question those basic drives that try to steer our thoughts and behavior. But far more slippery, pervasive, and controlling are the thousands of ready-made mental packets, once consciously and carefully pieced together, that are now so automatic that we hardly notice them. Most of these chunks are invaluable in our lives. For instance, I give little attention to how I am touch-typing these words on my computer keyboard, and so have more conscious space to write my sequence of ideas. But a fair few chunks, just as automatic and long since submerged below my awareness, involve how I deal with my emotions, my relationships with others, and various other fields affecting my well-being. Some of these may be habitually generating fears, eroding my self-esteem, robbing me of happier moments, or polluting intimacy with my family and friends.

  Again, though, the science of consciousness can help us dislodge and nullify these toxic patterns of behavior. It immediately helps to acknowledge that we’re little more than a mental bag of such mini-programs, and that all of them can be revised, rewritten, or even nullified by other chunks we establish in their stead.

  More importantly, we can spend considerable time trying specifically to notice what old structured chunks invade our emotions, decisions, and behavior, especially if they seem to underlie feelings of uneasiness. We can bring them briefly back to consciousness, examine their shape and source, and ask ourselves whether they are helping us or need to be modified.

  In fact, because we are all so quick to spot patterns, even specious ones, it helps more generally to acknowledge that we are in some ways a little too hungry for knowledge—that all manner of spurious beliefs are regularly going to take anchor, so we need to be on our guard with a cautious, distanced approach to any ideas we entertain, in a way that mirrors the obligatory scientific skepticism in the lab.

  Simultaneously, we can constantly nurture a searching attitude for useful and exciting new chunks to absorb.

  All this questioning of preexisting chunks and gathering of fresh ones to supplement or supplant them may sound like unsettling, needless extra work, but it can be surprisingly pleasurable and invigorating to be perpetually skeptical about our own ideas and beliefs, partly because it means we’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to live. It makes us feel somehow newer ourselves, less stale, more dynamic, more open to new experiences—even more alive.

  The practice of meditation very much complements these questioning habits.

  Meditation is increasingly proving to be a powerful tool to boost and calm consciousness in mentally ill patients. But it can also help us all experience the world in new, more connected ways. By adopting an immovable, piercing, open attention directed only toward the contents of our sensations, along with an awareness temporarily unfettered by thoughts, we can choose, for a time, completely to reject the plethora of strategies and habits we’ve built up over the years. Instead we enter a welcoming, ready state where we’re deliberately labeling every speck of information flowing into us as important and unexpected.

  A meditative mind can be strangely reminiscent of how we experienced the world as a child. We’re exquisitely ready for fresh illumination, hungry and wide open for novel insights, but at the same time, deliciously bathed in the present moment. The rich, immediate diversity of direct sights, sounds, and smells comes once again to the fore. Without the myriad mental obstacles of those chunks invading our thoughts, we can reacquaint ourselves with how beautiful so much of the world really is, and how very easy it is to find intense pleasure and joy within it.

  Previously, buried under our usual mass of habits, we might have ignored the taste of a whole plate of dinner as we simultaneously watched the latest TV drama. But now, simply, silently eating a meal is an overwhelming treat of stimulation: We devote every ounce of awareness to every bright facet of flavor of every single morsel—and it never tasted so delicious.

  Acknowledgments

  Throughout the process of writing The Ravenous Brain, I’ve continuously felt both terribly lucky and immensely grateful to receive invaluable help from such a large number of people, and I shudder to think how the book would have turned out without them.

  At the early stages, my friend and former work colleague John Duncan demonstrated his kindness and generosity yet again with critical assistance in shaping my proposal. My fabulous agent, Peter Tallack, has helped in so many ways, initially with hard work on editing the proposal, then with securing the deal; later with looking over various chapters, not to mention those friendly lunches, and consistently quick responses to my bothersome stream of questions about the process.

&
nbsp; Continuing the theme of luck, I managed somehow to receive not one very talented editor, but two. TJ Kelleher’s very wise advice at multiple times both on the overall shaping of the book and on the content of specific sections both shocked me for the extent of flaws in the manuscripts I sent him and excited me for the opportunities he showed me for dramatic improvement. Tisse Takagi has helped enormously in cutting out the flab from the chapters, reducing my vagaries, and smoothing out my stylistic foibles, not to mention being another person to gracefully and swiftly respond to my bothersome stream of questions. My copy editor, Katherine Streckfus, did a wonderful job of correcting all those unclear or stylistically awkward lines. Then, in the final stages, my production editor, Michelle Welsh-Horst, was an exceptionally efficient, friendly manager as she guided the book from being a rough manuscript to the product you have in your hands.

  Many family members also lent a hand. My cousins Adam Beckman, Fiona Beckman, and Eleanor Baker, and parents-in-law Ramarao Paidisetty and Indira Patra, put me on the right track, especially during the early stages. My cousin, Janetta Lewin, gave invaluable advice on some of the artistic issues. My uncle, Tony Epstein, provided very useful financial advice. My mother, Gaynor Bor, and brother, Simon Bor, tirelessly read through multiple drafts of each chapter, pointing out unclear sections and other problems.

  Friends and colleagues at Cambridge’s Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit who gave great advice and encouragement on various chapters include Adrian Owen, Jessica Grahn, Martin Monti, Rhodri Cusack, and Lorina Naci, while Simon Strangeways performed his photographic magic to create my cover portrait. I received further help from many at my current department, the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. In particular, Anil Seth read through an entire late draft and made many excellent technical comments, while advice and discussions from Ryan Scott, Adam Barrett, and others in the center helped me improve various tricky passages.