Blogging on the Brain is Hard

Aiming to distinguish myself from the horde of left-of-center bloggers, I had hoped to blog about subjects other than politics. Since I have fairly varied interests, I thought achieving a breadth of high-brow content would be fairly easy.

It isn't. To illustrate this, consider my attempts to post about neuroscience, a subject whose literature I'm becoming conversant in. The difficulty with making intelligent observations about neuroscience is that... the brain is really complicated, and our understanding of its workings constantly evolves through new research. Whereas a single monograph in the New York Review of Books can provide a succinct and thorough overview of, say, health-care economics, even the most articulate neuroscientists such as Michael Gazzaniga require full-length books to convey their ideas appropriately.

If I cannot add anything to even lay debates about neuroscience, I least I can relay useful summaries of the specialized knowledge one must have to even comprehend what the debates are about. Here is Gazzaniga's conclusion to quick-and-dirty overview of neuro 101 (The Social Brain p. 25).

These few glimpses into basic brain mechanisms are sufficient to tell us what we need to know about the basic nature of the issue. Four principles emerge: (a) the brain develops under tight genetic control; (b) its basic architecture can be modfied only very early in life and then only in a negative way; (c) it is organized in such a way that relatively independent processing modules exist everywhere throughout the brain system; and (d) it has methods of self-modulating influences from the environment through an intricate, self-governed brain chemical system.

Translation:

• (a) genes largely determine brain development;
  
• (b) environment cannot measurably improve the brain, but can harm it, such as a head injury decreasing verbal IQ (and the brain is most susceptible to such injury in the first year of life);
  
• (c) when there is sensory input to the brain, it is not processed once-at-a-time in different areas, but rather processed simultaneously in many areas (the brain as a parallel processor as opposed to a factory line);
  
• (d) the body's chemical system mediates environmental influence to modulate pain and pleasure. For example, the (p.14) "self-produced opiates called endorphins which are crucial to a body's well-being. These chemicals are activated under conditions of bodily stress and serve to curb some of the pain we would otherwise feel in their absence. There is no doubt that we would feel more pain without them."
  

Feeling smarter yet?

The Old Shall Inherit the Earth - Even if They Won't Remember Doing It

Michael Gazzaniga's The Ethical Brain contains a fascinating discussion of aging and the causes of memory loss. He motivates the social import of this issue with the following statistic (p. 23):

According to a recent report on the demographics of aging, in the year 1900 3 million people were over the age of 65, 4.1 percent of the population. By midcentury, 12.3 million people, or 8 percent of the population, were over 65. Now 34 million people in the United States are older than 65; soon that number will climb to 15 percent of the population, The number will double by 2030. [emphasis added]

Because of potential brain enhancements that Gazzaniga discusses, 65 year olds in 2030 will likely have mental faculties superior to those of contemporary 65 year olds. Nonetheless, we ought to contemplate what it will be like to live in a society where 30 percent of the population is 65 or older. I, for one, am ready. Swimming and lunching at the 92nd Street Y allows me to effectively visit the future each morning (albeit in slightly exaggerated fashion, since about 90 percent of these people are over 65). Let me say this: it can be eye-opening. First, I've learned that vanity never dies. These silverbacks seem to lift weights for hours on end! It would be nice if more of them did so in full clothing - as opposed to jockey shorts and headphones, the preferred workout gear of this set - but I guess it's reassuring to know that basic human traits never diminish.

I've also noticed that older people do not seem any more sensitive to the passing of time. For example, today I witnessed a perfectly sentient older gentleman spend about half an hour trying to convince some toddler -presumably his grand son - that scraping peanut butter off of a bagel with a knife was less efficient than simply biting the bagel. The man's effort was futile, but not for want of trying. This also reassures me - never too old to waste time.

Surely the Y will teach me much more about our seniors, and I will not hesitate to pass this knowledge along.