Building a picture of the brain

Daedalus

Volumn 127, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 37-69

  Edelman, Gerald M ^a,b  

^a Neurosciences Institute   (United States)

^b SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0003377404     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. By the time of the French Revolution a picture was emerging of what was in the head, although almost a century would have to pass for the emergence of what we would accept as scientific data. An amusing indication of an earlier view can be found in Le Rêve de d'Alembert by Denis Diderot, in which d'Alembert's mistress, Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, queries the physician, Dr. Bordeu, about the causes of d'Alembert's disturbed dreams: BORDEU: Because it is a very different thing to have something wrong with the nerve-center from having it just in one of the nerves. The head can command the feet, but not the feet the head. The center can command one of the threads, but not the thread the center. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: And what is the difference, please? Why don't I think everywhere? It's a question I should have thought of earlier. BORDEU: Because there is only one center of consciousness. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: That's very easy to say. BORDEU: It can only be at one place, at the common center of all the sensations, where memory resides and comparisons are made. Each individual thread is only capable of registering a certain number of impressions, that is to say sensations one after the other, isolated and not remembered. But the center is sensitive to all of them; it is the register, it keeps them in mind or holds a sustained impression, and any animal is bound, from its embryonic stage, to relate itself to this center, attach its whole life to it, exist in it. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: Supposing my finger could remember. BORDEU: Then your finger would be capable of thought. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: Well, what exactly is memory? BORDEU: The property of the center, the specific sense of the center of the network, as sight is the property of the eye, and it is no more surprising that memory is not in the eye than that sight is not in the ear. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: Doctor, you are dodging my questions instead of answering them. BORDEU: No, I'm not dodging anything. I'm telling you what I know, and I would be able to tell you more about it if I knew as much about the organization of the center of the network as I do about the threads, and if I had found it as easy to observe. But if I am not very strong on specific details I am good on general manifestations. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: And what might these be? BORDEU: Reason, judgment, imagination, madness, imbecility, ferocity, instinct. . . . BORDEU: And then there is force of habit which can get the better of people, such as the old man who still runs after women, or Voltaire still turning out tragedies. (Here the doctor fell into a reverie, and MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE said:) Doctor, you are dreaming. BORDEU: Yes I was. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: What about? BORDEU: Voltaire. MADEMOISELLE DE L'ESPINASSE: What about him? BORDEU: I was thinking of the way great men are made.
2. Two reasonably elementary books for a lay reader are Gordon M. Shepard, Neurobiology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)
3. and Gordon M. Shepard, The Synaptic Organization of the Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
4. Gerald M. Edelman and Vernon Mountcastle, The Mindful Brain: Cortical Organization and the Group-Selective Theory of Higher Brain Function (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978);
5. Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (New York: Basic Books, 1987);
6. Jean-Pierre Changeux and Antoine Danchin, "Selective Stabilization of Developing Synapses as a Mechanism for the Specification of Neuronal Networks," Nature 264 (December 1976): 705-712.
7. Shepard, Neurobiology and Shepard, The Synaptic Organization of the Brain;
8. Eric Kandel, James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell, eds., Principles of Neural Science (New York: Elsevier, 1991).
9. Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, "Reentry and the Problem of Integrating Multiple Cortical Areas: Simulation of Dynamic Integration in the Visual System," Cerebral Cortex 2 (July/August 1992): 310-335.
10. Edelman, Neural Darwinism;
11. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "Reentry and the Problem of Integrating Multiple Cortical Areas";
12. Gerald M. Edelman, The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
13. Edelman, Neural Darwinism.
14. Edelman and Mountcastle, The Mindful Brain.
15. Edelman and Mountcastle, The Mindful Brain. Ibid.;
16. Gerald M. Edelman, "Through a Computer Darkly: Group Selection and Higher Brain Function," Bulletin of the Academy of Arts and Sciences 36 (October 1982): 20-49;
17. Gerald M. Edelman, "Neural Darwinism: Selection and Reentrant Signaling in Higher Brain Function," Neuron 10 (February 1993): 115-125.
18. Edelman and Mountcastle, The Mindful Brain;
19. Edelman, Neural Darwinism;
20. Edelman, The Remembered Present;
21. Gerald M. Edelman, Topobiology: An Introduction to Molecular Embryology (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
22. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "Reentry and the Problem of Integrating Multiple Cortical Areas";
23. Olaf Sporns, Giulio Tononi, and Gerald M. Edelman, "Modeling Perceptual Grouping and Figure-Ground Segregation by Means of Active Reentrant Connections," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 88 (January 1991): 129-133;
24. George N. Reeke, Jr., Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, "Synthetic Neural Modeling: The 'Darwin' Series of Recognition Automata," Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 78 (September 1990): 1498-1530;
25. Karl Friston et al., "Value-Dependent Selection in the Brain: Simulation in a Synthetic Neural Model," Neuroscience 59 (March 1994): 229-243.
26. Charles M. Gray and Wolf Singer, "Stimulus-Specific Neuronal Oscillations in Orientation Columns of Cat Visual Cortex," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 86 (March 1989): 1698-1702
27. and Michael M. Merzenich et al., "Topographic Reorganization of Somatosensory Cortical Areas 3b and 1 in Adult Monkeys Following Restricted Deafferentation," Neuroscience 8 (January 1983): 33-55.
28. Two nontechnical books are M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992)
29. and Roger Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York: Macmillan, 1992).
30. Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, "A Measure for Brain Complexity: Relating Functional Segregation and Integration in the Nervous System," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 91 (May 1994): 5033-5037
31. and Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, "A Complexity Measure for Selective Matching of Signals in the Brain," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 93 (April 1996): 3422-3427.
32. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "A Measure for Brain Complexity."
33. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "A Complexity Measure for Selective Matching of Signals in the Brain."
34. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "Reentry and the Problem of Integrating Multiple Cortical Areas";
35. and Sporns, Tononi, and Edelman, "Modeling Perceptual Grouping and Figure-Ground Segregation."
36. Daniel L. Schacter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
37. Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
38. Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind ( 1992). Ibid.
39. Edelman, The Remembered Present.
40. Tononi, Sporns, and Edelman, "Reentry and the Problem of Integrating Multiple Cortical Areas";
41. Sporns, Tononi, and Edelman, "Modeling Perceptual Grouping and Figure-Ground Segregation."
42. Edelman, The Remembered Present.
43. Edelman, The Remembered Present. Ibid.
44. John R. Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness (London: Granta, 1997).
45. In making this distinction, I am aware of the fact that certain scientists in neurobiology proper would agree, more or less, with the radical view. The fact remains, however, that many neurobiologists talk of the brain's carrying out of computations utilizing codes. In doing so, they do not account for the brain's enormous structural and dynamic variability. Moreover, cognitive psychologists, workers in artificial intelligence, and a good number of linguists all hew to the notions I have bundled together as the received view. Naturally, there are as many variants in each position as there are individual scientists but the two positions are, I believe, usefully contraposed.
46. George N. Reeke, Jr., and Gerald M. Edelman, "Real Brains and Artificial Intelligence," Dædalus 117 (1) (Winter 1988): 143-173.
47. Edelman, Neural Darwinism.
48. It is not possible to predict precisely what we will learn about the brain in the future. Consistent with my position here, I will put forth the conjecture that in carrying out a function such as speech, the interaction of the parts of the brain will not resemble those of an orderly machine but will more resemble a crazy quilt, the parts of which are connected in no uniformly systematic fashion. Evolution tinkers, it does not plan, and natural selection acts on functional outcomes of the individual organism, not on design drawings. I will also hazard a guess: as has been the case in other domains of science, once we know the facts and principles of brain function and structure more securely we will be able to imitate nature to a limited extent. At such a time, we will construct a conscious artifact. If we can give it the basis for language, we will be able to ask whether it categorizes or "carves nature at the joints" the way we do. The answer will perhaps provide as exciting or terrifying a prospect as hearing from intelligent life somewhere else in the galaxy. The ethical implications are obvious, if not easily resolvable. A more modest prediction is that we will build devices that incorporate what we have learned about brain functions and structures into new kinds of artifacts, mixing what we already know about computers with components capable of perceptual functions. This is already on its way.