Wiring the Brain

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

In my younger years - I am nearly sixty now - I wanted to write a book about the human brain. The central idea was to look at the brain as a computer, applying equivalents of analogue and digital computing. I was very fascinated by how we learn and then are able to perform the learned task with eyes closed so to speak. As a side note, I recently came across recent experimental work that looks interesting.

Although the book never happened, my interest in the workings of the brain remained. And so did my love for metaphoric thinking. Metaphors are great to illuminate specific angles of thought when used with a light touch. Overstretched they become a drag. In my current endeavours it will be an essential tool as I am looking to identify patterns of similarity across the board.

In the few decades that have since passed our knowledge has just exploded. And with it the accessibility of knowledge. I studied in a time that books were still like bibles with everything on paper. Now nearly all material is electronically stored and immediately available. We can work with and train our brain at  a much higher frequency than ever before.

Our understanding of the brain is now such that we already have a firm grip on its operational principles. I am not talking about detail here. A lot of its complexity still elude us. We know that the brain is wired and that training the brain means actually wiring up neural networks. The power of neural networks is beyond doubt, judged by the proliferation of the AI neural networks present all around us. But beware: it is early days and there is a long way to go.

The dynamic nature of  the wiring of the brain really intrigues me. This dynamic configuration may well be more sophisticated than the actual running of brain (including consciousness). It is achieved thanks to the power of expression of our cells who have a few billion years of evolution behind them. Brains started to develop more than 500 million years ago. 

I came to the realisation that the brain is central in our quest to better understand reality and our place within. It takes part in the overall evolution of life. It is our means to sense the world around us, to think about it. The brain functional setup determines how we think. We are able to train our brain through mental exercise. We train our brain in our early years to fit in with the society we live in. In todays times, if one does not stay with the times one doesn't recognise the world any more by the time one is of mature age.

What will the consequence of this on the evolution of the brain? Before one could see brain evolution locked in with evolution of physical generation, but will this remain the same?  As we live longer and subject our brain to more information and change, decoupling of the brain/mental evolution from the physical (to a certain extent) looks inevitable to me.

More than thirty years later I want to refocus on the brain with an even stronger fixation.