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Don’t blame your brain for what society makes you

By: Moisha Israel

KARACHI: The citizens of Karachi are the way they are, not because there’s something wrong with our collective brains. Our lack of respect for punctuality, and the general apathy, etc., are more a result of social conditioning than neurological imbalances or imperfections, said Dr Saad Shafqat Tuesday during a session on the human brain organised as part of The Second Floor’s (t2f) monthly Science ka Adda series.

Dr Shafqat is an associate professor of Neurology at the Aga Khan University (AKU). Apart from authoring over 30 scientific articles in leading medical journals, he is also a cricket writer and analyst. He contributes to daily Dawn and Cricinfo.com, and has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography, ‘Cutting Edge’. He also writes on social issues in a number of Pakistani publications.

Neuroscience (the study of the human brain) has come a long way today since the time when Aristotle assumed that the main purpose of the brain was to cool blood. During the evolution of neuroscience, came a time when the pseudoscience of phrenology was all the rage. “This science dictated that a person could feel the bumps on another person’s head, and locate the various performance centres of the brain,” Dr Shafqat explained. While most of it was tomfoolery, and phrenology was discarded pretty soon, this “pseudoscience” was actually based on a fact: different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions.

The amount of space dedicated in the brain for different parts of the body depends on the importance of that part. The thumb, for instance, has more space dedicated to it than the trunk.

A number of experiments conducted separately by Camillo Golzi and Santiago Romony Cajal showed that the brain consisted of cell masses, which were connected to other cell masses by a network of “fibres.” The two scientists saw this structure by putting silver solution on slabs obtained from brains and viewing them under microscopes. “When silver solution is put on other cells from the body, the entire mass shows up black under a microscope. In the brain, however, very few cells absorb the silver solution. This is how the two scientists were able to view what we now know as brain cells. The two did not agree over the functioning of what they saw, however – that was settled later through further research.”

Dr Shafqat then related the story of Phineas Gage, a railway man who ended up with a rod that went into his forehead, right through his brain as a result of an on-the-job accident. Miraculously he survived, and resumed his life after the rod was removed. Gage’s personality changed, however. Previous to the accident, he had been known to be a responsible, illustrious worker. After the accident, he became irresponsible, could not manage his personal affairs, was fired from the job, and eventually died penniless and homeless. This, Dr Shafqat said, showed that some portions of Gage’s brain, which were responsible for specific personality traits, had been damaged in the accident.

Another case was that of a man known only by his initials, H.M. He used to have epileptic seizures, “and then somebody had a ‘brilliant’ idea. They said, why don’t we remove his hippocampi,” Dr Shafqat said. Hippocampi are parts of the brain. After they were removed, H.M. recovered physically. His seizures were gone. Also gone, however, was his memory, and his ability to form any new memories. This showed that the hyppocampi are somehow related to memory functions.

Alois Alzheimer studied a 55-year-old patient at a mental asylum. The patient, a female, initially suffered from paranoia, and kept saying that her husband was having an affair. This wasn’t true. Her paranoia kept getting worse, however, and eventually the woman started losing memory and then motor functions, so much so that she became bed-bound. After she died, Alzheimer compared her brain with that of a healthy individual. The patient’s brain was visibly different: it had a number of “empty, canyon-like cavities” where a healthy brain is absolutely closely packed. Alzheimer concluded that this was because the patient’s cortex had shrunk on account of a “mass death” of brain cells. The phenomenon was named after Alois Alzheimer, and is now knows as Alzheimer’s Disease.

The discussion then turned towards “consciousness,” and the difference between the dualist view and the reductionist view: Is consciousness the result of a ‘soul,’ or is it merely the result of specific chemical stimuli? While each view has some evidence support it, there is nothing conclusive right now to prove whether Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo Sum” (I think, therefore I am), is absolute, Dr Shafqat said.

He concluded with a quote of Einstein’s: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is to believe that nothing is a miracle. The other is to believe that everything is.” An exchange of ideas in the question-and-answer session following the lecture showed that Einstein’s use of the word “miracle” did not necessarily point to the presence of a Higher Order in things.

Another issue brought up during the Q-and-A session was the difference between human behaviour which is a result of sociological influences and human behaviour from the point of view of neuroscience.

The concepts of extrasensory perception (ESP), etc cannot be explained by science – yet, Dr Shafqat said. Déjà vu, however, is probably the result of the memory centres of the brain (the hippocampi) being stimulated for some reason, he said. Déjà vu also marks the onset of epileptic fits.

The discussion ranged from a healthy dose of irrefutable science, to sociology, to Freud, parapsychology, all the way to exorcism and its standing in neuroscience. Not all questions could be answered, though, as one audience member pointed out. “Dr Shafqat just said ‘no one knows,’ ‘God knows,’ etc to stuff that I wanted to know about,” he exclaimed. Such is the limitation of science, however, he was told. Not everything can be answered conclusively in black-and-white terms, especially in a subject that is as evolving as neuroscience is.