GRAY MATTER
Presented to
Belles Lettres Society of River Forest
By Edgar Hiestand December 3, 2001
THE ABSTRACT
What is happening in the brain at that threshold, or tip
point, when a young child moves between venturesomeness and the anxiety cry of
separation; when Tevye finally says, "I can't bend that far" in
breaking tradition without breaking himself; or when a pluralist society
swings toward its unum after attack?
This is a paper, combining science and philosophy, on the
relationship of Body (brain, world) and Mind. Gray Matter refers to both the
cells of the Brain and the ambiguity of life that the brain seeks to
modulate. The ambiguity of life is in
part because of the nature of the brain itself.
How do we handle dichotomies of reason and emotion, self and other,
centering or crossing frontiers, tip points of fear and trust,
fight/flight/embrace?
This paper was planned for a year. but little did I know
that September 1,2001 would be the context for its presentation. In the years
since presenting this paper, I have been struck often by the realization that
we live in a time fraught with suspicion and distrust of the Other. Such a culture of fear of the xenos --
the stranger, in civil, religious, and international relationships has created
a context for violence against the other. In all of this, the mental evolution
of my twin granddaughters is a paradigm for hope that the mental state of all
people in human culture can evolve toward trust and embrace.
GRAY MATTER
Presented to
Belles Lettres Society of River Forest
By Edgar Hiestand December 3, 2001
(20 Minutes)
I have twin grandchildren, Alison and Ashley. Nancy and I see them often. Generally they are trusting and gregarious. Last May, at
one year old, as I held one; she smiled in at
my face; then a dark cloud came over her face, her smile was gone, it was a
slow movement of her muscles in response to some sort of non-recognition - I
was not mommy or daddy. Then arose the cry of separation.[i] [TEVYE]
The title of my talk tonight is "Gray Matter" —in
two senses —1. the gray colored cells of the brain, and 2. The various issues
we think about that are ambiguous — neither black nor white but gray. This
paper will be about the relation of these two gray matters. A philosopher would
say it is "the Mind/Body relationship"; a scientist would say
"the Mind/Brain relationship". How
does our brain interact with ambiguity? What is happening when we feel
competing impulses? James Ashbrook, my
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary professor, got me interested in this
subject. In The Humanizing Brain
he wrote that the brain combines order and predictability on the one hand with
flexibility and experimentation on the other. It is both centering and outward
seeking."[ii]
http://www.dhushara.com/book/brainp/brainil/brain.jpg
A surgical papyrus
3700 years ago contains the first recorded use of the word "brain."
Let's look at this 3 Lb. mass of soft tissue. [Figure 1 - Show Model][iii] White cells, as in the corpus collosum, do
connecting things like linking right and left brain hemispheres. Gray cells are
mainly in the new brain, and the gray matter layer
is only 3-4 mm thick. Synapses connections are made between neurons in the
brain when electrochemical impulses shoot between the dendrites. This
hardwiring of the brain manages everything from bodily functions, to emotions,
to things like music, language, and sight. The Mind then, is not just in the
gray matter but in spaces for fluid, the chemicals, the glands, the organs,
immune system.[iv]
We begin life with billions of gray cells. A Tribune Nov. 25 article said that though we lose a
million cells a day, the mind's decline is no longer a given, because of
neurogenesis, the creation of cells.[v]
Old dogs can learn new tricks and build
new neuron pathways. The article wisely advised getting sleep, and exercise and
avoiding stress
The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. There are 1
quadrillion synapses in the human brain.
That's a half-billion synapses per cubic millimeter[vi]
The weight of the human brain triples during the first year of life, going from
300 grams to 900 grams.
The brain, like a computer
is hardwired. The brain structure is a given for any individual. To illustrate:
You've probably heard about right and left brain people. Now, everyone fold
your hands together. Where is your right thumb—on top or bottom? Now fold them
so it is the other way. How does it feel? We are inclined, hard wired one way
or the other. Professor Ashbrook suggested
facetiously that some cultural fights are similar to "fighting about the 'Right' way to fold
one's hands.[vii]
Are you an analytical wordy person?- you are left brain; Are
you more intuitive and artistic? -you are right brain. Maybe you have taken the
Meyers-Briggs type tests (invented in the 1950s as a parlor game by
mother/daughter Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers)
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E
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Extrovert
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I
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Introvert
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S
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Sensing present
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I
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Intuitive future
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T
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Thinking logic
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F
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Feeling values
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J
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Judging planners
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P
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Perceiving flexible
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I'm approaching this paper as an amateur -1 defer to medical
people here. Maybe I should say that I approach Mind/Brain
with metaphors, as is obvious in Maps of the Mind, (SHOW j drawings) by Charles
Hampden-Tumer. Before we had MRIs it was philosophers and theologians who tried
to figure out how what is "out there" - got into "in
here"= ie. Mind. They spoke metaphorically, as implied in Nancy's
"art of memory" paper last time.
For Julian Jaynes author of Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind "consciousness is a metaphor—a
relationship between two unlike experiences joined by likenesses[viii].
Two persons looking at metaphors
will see different things, (in the words of a President, "it depends on
what is 'IS'") Therefore, our
metaphors, like our brains and like reality, are going to betray in the sense
of ambiguity. We have "wars of metaphors."
Mind talk is metaphorical because it posits correspondence
between levels of mental function with three historical stages of the brain's
evolution - reptilian, mammalian, new brain (or cortex). The tripartite
brain was the analysis of Paul D. MacLean, head of the Laboratory for Brain
Evolution and Behavior at the National Institutes for Mental Health [Figure
2]. [MAKE FIST][ix]
The oldest is the reptilian
brain which is the brain stem, and evolved more than 500 million years ago.
The mammalian brain with the limbic system developed in the center of
the brain, on top of the reptilian brain stem some 200 to 300 million years
ago. The third and latest part of the brain to develop, about 50 million years
ago, is the cerebral cortex, or new brain.
MacClean says there is a basic schizophrenia between the
older and newer brains. We have a chronic disassociation in our brains between
the emotion in the older mammalian limbic area and reason in the cortex- The struggle between reason and emotion is historically long (cf. the battle of the centaurs and
humans on the Parthenon frieze), but also internal to each person's struggle
with conflicting modes of thought.
A "lethal design error"[x] (MacClean) may be that we have few vertical
neuron pathways between cortex and mammalian limbic to reconcile emotion and
reason. That causes us to be at war within ourselves—centaur and human,
cultures, political blocks, enlightenment and
superstition. We are divided. --Think of all the "dis" words in our
language (from Greek DI -separation into "two") which hint about the
feelings of discontinuity of the human condition
post-Sept. 11: disorient, dismember, distraught, distrust, discombobulate
and "Don't Dis us![xi] These words of cognitive
dissonance fit other world issues, from weapons of mass destruction to ecology.
Everywhere emotions (good or ill) and logic (good or ill)
confront each other, In spite of this, the author of Maps of the Mind, leans to a hope
that the hardwiring of brain is only a tendency, not a sentence by destiny.[xii] REPEAT
To quote from Maps of the Mind about this three part
brain. "The older two are involved in the
ancestral lore of the species. They contrast with the third part, the new
mammalian brain, which is "adept at learning new ways to cope and
adapt."[xiii]
Though the reptilian brain is the oldest, humans still
spatially orient as individuals and nations, as Robert Audrey described in The
Territorial Imperative.[xiv] He asserts all animals have to establish a
space that serves basically two needs: center and boundary. The center is the
place of family, nourishing, rest, etc. while the boundary is the limiting edge of
that space,
The next brain to
evolve was the Mammalian Brain [Figure 3].
Central to the Mammalian Brain is the limbic lobe. "Limbic" is Latin for a "border."
The limbic system decides |if it is necessary to attack,
flight or mate, for survival. It allows the animal to distinguish
between the agreeable and the disagreeable, it induces the females to nurse and
protect their toddlers. The limbic system is
the center of the emotional "self-ish" brain, which is primarily
responsible for the integrity and centering of the body.[xv]
The third and last part of the brain to develop is the cerebral cortex. It is our "thinking cap."
This thin folded layer is where decisions are made, models
of the external and internal worlds are formed, memories are accessed, language
is produced, and sight and sound are appreciated.
Now I want to use the experience of my grandchild's
cry of separation as a parable for dealing with the gray of ambiguity in
crossing boundaries. She had the inborn fear of abandonment. The familiar was
absent—representing hundreds of hours of parent/child
bonding and mutual physical bodies that symbiotically gurgle, eat, and move
together. I was the "stranger," the xenos (xenos) of
xenophobia, the alien, the Other. (Incidentally, it is significant that the Greek word for hospitality is xenia
(also from xenos, but implying that the Other has been welcomed as a
guest.)
After birth, three cerebral layers appeared, one after the
other during the development of her embryo and fetus. Ontology replicates philogeny in the
development--first comes the reptilian brain, then old mammalian, then the new
brain. Her infant's cry was an
innate mammalian emotion, a universal human survival behavior which
appeared simultaneously with the onset of strong material behavior.[xvi] Infants naturally suck, get close, and
bond. They mesh with the parent,
synchronize action, face to face with parent.
Complementary to her memory attachment to her mother's face, is her fear
of strangers, peaking at 8 months with separation anxiety, and the separation
cry.
But IMPORTANT, then, from the secure base of her mother, she
begins to explore. Finally, she tests
the newcomer to see if he fits some safe scheme -- namely that mommy hugs
grandma and grandpa every time they come.
In a while learning and memory will differentiate the face of
grandpa. Yes, grandpa is
"Other," but it will be safe to venture out appropriately beyond the
closest boundaries of identity. A
paradigm for crossing boundaries is established.
Let's look inside the brain at what is happening in these
opposite tendencies -- the cry of separation and reaching out. Through experiences, default memories are
established. At worst they are memories
of some fearful trauma, at best they are memories that trust is rewarded. Go back to the limbic area of the Mammalian
brain. Here are the two hippocampi
- (seahorse shaped) areas of the cortex.
The hippocampus converts information from short term to long-term
cortex-memory. It takes in new
information, and checks it out for remembered previous dangers.[xvii] Subconsciously then she checks out the plots
from the three brains (instinctual, emotional, meaningful) from stories of
previous defeats, or survivals, allowing her to weigh the relative risks.[xviii]
There is a tendency within our brain that pushes us
outward. Exploration is evolutionary. The animal that pushes beyond the
limit of the reptilian territory may find food. The rat frantically searching
the maze to find Who moved my cheese? is being creative. The baby
searching for the suckling spot is rewarded with food.
The venturesome hero may find a specially winsome fertile maiden in the next
country, even though part of his brain is saying watch out for the strangers
and monsters over there. The Promethean venture is risky, but it does get fire
and Prometheus' sister-in-law, Pandora, hangs
on to Hope.
Creativity is a form of stretching — the hippocampus
stretches a remembered metaphor "is like" to some other "is
like" metaphor It mediates the dissonances that make up life. Like a third
eye it jumps unrelated experiences together, links opposites, tries out links between the old metaphors with new
ones— creatively[xix]. It orders and prioritizes raw experience
polarities such as[xx]
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Pain
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Pleasure
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Tension
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Relaxation
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Fight
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Flight
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However when cognitive dissonance overwhelms the
hippocampus, its mediating crashes. I'd call that threshold a "tip
point." Anxiety takes over. Our reaction is to get hyper or chill out.
The solution to overwhelming anxiety at the border is not
just cortex rule over the lower brain -ala the Parthenon friezes of the
mythic battle between humans victorious over centaurs. We need to engage the best of the limbic with
the best of the neocortex (both right
with its leaps of imagination and intuition,
and left with its analysis and ordering). We can breathe deep and
believe our center will hold.
As an evolutionary survivor I can intentionally move the tip
point toward the presence of the Other. I can go from my kin, to my clan, to
tribe, to nation, to humanity.
It is a viewpoint like Robert Frost in Mending Wall,
reflecting on his neighbor who thinks that good fences make good neighbors.[xxi]
Before I built a wall I'd like
to know
What I was walling in or
walling out,
Frost implies that his neighbor is
at a previous evolutionary stage, with a stone
In each hand, like an
old-stone savage armed
He moves in darkness as it
seems to me --
Miroslav Volf, warns in Exclusion & Embrace that
such idealism comes only at a high price. He is a Croatian who
approaches identity, otherness and reconciliation with memories of violence
that are impossible to forget. For him, getting beyond the tip point abyss is
to remember but to risk an embrace.[xxii] His four necessary elements for an embrace
are: Opening the arms, waiting, closing the arms, and opening them again (so as
not to make a new in-group We vs. Them).[xxiii]
This border of WE/They is a gray matter—we feel ambiguous-
If we are confident, centered, have a cortex worldview that is pretty sure of
the trustworthiness of the world, then we will cross the thresholds. If we are
anxious, we will hold back. Which will it be?
Inherited tip points are social constructs abetting and
being abetted by fear. Cultures have used fear memories for solidarity:
"Remember the Maine", the fall of Constantinople, Little Big Horn or
Wounded Knee,—you'll easily extend the list. The kindred in-group
defined those thresholds. Listen to Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics from South
Pacific:[xxiv]
You've got to be taught to hate
and fear.
You've got to be taught from
year to year.
before you are six or seven or
eight,
to hate all the people your
relative hate,
You've got to be carefully
taught!
and that is when the limbic
kicks in - stranger danger.
BUT The contrary is also true, you can be taught to use
the limbic's caring aspect for embracing the other. Move that threshold out
to be curious, venturesome, the hero journey. And we've seen heroes lately,
moving contrary to physical self-survival. We've seen boundary walkers and
bridge builders.
Is survival at any cost hard-wired? Orwell in 1984
said Big Brother placed his bets on our being infinitely malleable by fear
I ask, "is our brain malleable by our intentions, by
who we have decided to be?" Often our choices are based on our default
assumptions -- the habitual construct we have put on reality. BUT, it is
possible that ultimately survival and a really Brave New World depends on a
conscious choice to use our whole brain to counter chemical destiny; to use our default
memory of trust. Currently the data and
the answer is ambiguous and gray. . . .but my
granddaughter does always smile at me now. In that there is hope--Not just
clinging to Pandora's remnant, but... Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soule. And sings the tune without the words. And never
stops at all, (by Emily Dickenson). [xxv]
Appendix
Emily Dickenson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soule.
And sings the tune without the words.
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the dullest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
And to whom I was like to give offence,
Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
That wants it down.' I could say "Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
[i]
Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof, could have been the seminal illustration of
separation and approach, when we are privy to his emotional thoughts at his
Jewish daughter marrying a Christian: "Accept them--How can I accept them?
Can I deny everything I believe in? On the other hand. . . can I deny my own
daughter? On the other hand, how can I turn my back on my faith, my people? If
I try and bend, that far, I'll break! On the other hand. . . No!--there is no
'other hand.'"
[iv]
Chicago Tribune Nov. 25, 2001 Perspective: Brain: Research suggests new powers
p. 10 .Statistic from Changeux, J-P. and Ricoeur, P., "What Makes Us
Think?", Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 78.)
[v]
Chicago Tribune Nov. 25, 2001 Perspective: Brain: Research suggests new powers
p. 10 .
[vi] Statistic from Changeux, J-P. and
Ricoeur, P., "What Makes Us Think?", Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2000, p. 78.)
[vii]
The Brain a& Belief by James B.Ashbrook p. 103
[viii]
Maps of the Mind p. 90 quote from Julian Jaynes [Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)
[x]
Maps of the Mind p. 82
[xi]
Bruggeman Message of the Psalms cover: disorientation, discombobulate,
discomfit, discommode, disturb, disconcert, disequilibrium, disconnect,
dismantle, discontinuity, discord, discourage, disease, disestablish, disgrace,
disjoint, disjunction, dislocate, dismantle, dismember, disorder, displace,
disquiet, disinterest, distemporaneous, dispassion, disrupt, disturb, distance,
dissonant, dissolve, dissolution, disassociate, de construct, di-vide
[xii]
Maps of the Mind p. 83
[xiii]
Maps of the Mind p. 80
[xiv]
James B, Ashbrook The Humanizaing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet
p. 60
[xvi]
National Geographic June 1995 "Quiet Miracles of the Brain p. 10
[xvii]
Internet html main areas involved with emotions
[xviii]
Ashbrook, The Brain & Belief pp. 169-192
[xix]
Chicago Tribune Nov. 25, 2001 Perspective: Brain: Research suggests new powers
p. 10
[xx]
Maps of the Mind p. 85
[xxii]
Miroslav Volf.Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of
Identity. Otherness, and Reconciliation, p.252-253
[xxiii]
Miroslav Volf.Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of
Identity. Otherness, and Reconciliation, p. 141
[xxiv] Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics from
"South Pacific:" You've got to be taught to hate and fear. You've got
to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
You've got to be carefully taught! You've got to be taught to be afraid of people
whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a different shade, You've
got to be carefully taught! You've got to be taught before it's too late,
before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives
hate, You've got to be carefully taught!
[xxv]
Hope is a Thing with Fethers, Emily Dickenson
