Chris Fried is the brain and soul. Frith Christopher
The book was published by the Astrel publishing house in the “Elements” series of the Dynasty Foundation (this is an inter-publishing series of scientific literature), circulation 5000 copies. Subtitle: “How neural activity shapes our inner world.” (Chris Frith. Making Up the Mind. How the Brain Creates our Mental World.)
In the “Dynasties” series, I have yet to come across uninteresting books, and here is also a popular science book on psychology, which is rare (after all, Carnegie, etc. have no real relationship to psychology as a science).
I wasn't disappointed. In a sense, this book rehabilitated psychology for me as a science, and even as a natural science, similar to physics, chemistry and biology. And that psychology and Freudianism are different things. (" In order not to spoil my evening, I refrain from expressing the idea that Freud was an inventor, and his thoughts about the human psyche have little relevance."). Unfortunately, Freudianism and other “vulgar psychology” have become so ingrained in the public consciousness that the author himself prefers to introduce himself as a “cognitive neuroscientist.” This book is a story about what people actually do.
It turns out that psychologists are actively using the latest tools - various tomographs - to objectively study the processes occurring in the brain. Moreover, now on tomographs you can observe not only photographs of the brain, but also see the process of activation of various parts of the brain over time. And thanks to this, you can, for example, see that if a person imagines a face in his head, then the same parts of the brain are activated as if he saw this face in reality. However, tomographs are only one of the tools.
It turns out that our brain doesn’t tell us anything about many things. For example, they studied a woman who suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, as a result of which the part of her brain responsible for the perception of shape was damaged. She vaguely saw light, color and shadows, but could not recognize anything. She was given a stick, and asked how she was given the stick - vertically or horizontally. The woman, naturally, could not say this, she did not see. But when asked to take a stick, she extended her hand correctly, depending on whether it was horizontal or vertical. It turns out that the brain saw the stick, but did not want to share this information with consciousness at all.
The book talks about a lot of experiments, including quite simple ones (for some reason I didn’t know how to detect a blind spot, I was impressed by the missing finger). In general, we do not directly receive any information about the world around us. We communicate only with our brain, and it builds ideas about the world around us, and it adds and completes many things; the brain’s attempts to predict the world around us are very important. Hence, by the way, optical illusions, and hallucinations too. But from here comes the feeling of empathy, the ability to understand what another may feel.
It is interesting that the author very carefully avoids the question of free will, about how much control a person can have over his brain. It seems that this question is still outside of science. The key word is “yet.” (By the way, there is no “soul” in the original English title of the book!)
As a summary: it’s a pity that such There are few books on psychology. And what is the big difference between what psychology really studies and the everyday idea of psychologists? I even have doubts that our university psychology departments actually train psychological scientists. I wish there were more books like this!
Chris Frith (Christopher Donald Frith, born in 1942 in England) is an outstanding British neuroscientist working primarily in the field of neuroimaging.
Since 2007 - Emeritus Professor at the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at University College London and visiting professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. His main scientific interest is the use of functional neuroimaging in the study of higher human cognitive functions.
He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University and defended his dissertation on experimental psychology in 1969.
Author of more than 400 publications, including seminal books on neurobiology, such as the classic “Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia” (1992). The popular science book “Making up the mind” (2007) was longlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Award.
Books (2)
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia, a common mental illness, affects the lives of one in a hundred people and has a devastating impact on those who suffer from it and their families.
This book tells what the disease really looks like, how it progresses and how it can be treated. The authors of the book summarized the latest research into the biological basis of schizophrenia.
Brain and soul
Brain and soul. How nervous activity shapes our inner world.
The famous British neuroscientist Chris Frith is well known for his ability to talk simply about very complex problems in psychology - such as mental functioning, social behavior, autism and schizophrenia.
It is in this area, along with the study of how we perceive the world around us, act, make choices, remember and feel, that today there is a scientific revolution associated with the introduction of neuroimaging methods. In Brain and Soul, Chris Frith talks about all this in the most accessible and entertaining way.
Reader comments
Gurka Lamov/ 11/10/2016 No matter how large the number of material (brain) correlates of the functioning of consciousness is, none of them explains the cause of these dependencies. For example, explaining the existence of such dependencies by the origin of consciousness from the material activity of the brain is only one of the possible hypotheses. One can imagine other reasons that are equally legitimate.
Alexey/ 06/30/2010 A good popular science book. How is the disease determined? The history of the emergence of the concept of schizophrenia. The causes and scientific searches for a solution to this problem. The book is small in volume (200 pages) and will be useful and understandable to an unprepared reader.
Chris Frith
Brain and soul
How physiology shapes our inner world
(Christopher Donald Frith.
Making up the mind. How the brain creates our mental world)
CORPUS, 2010
Series: Elements
Pages: 288, hardcover, 145x217
ISBN: 978-5-271-28988-0. Circulation: 4000.
Translation from English by Peter Petrov.
The famous British neuroscientist Chris Frith is well known for his ability to talk simply about very complex problems in psychology - such as mental functioning, social behavior, autism and schizophrenia. It is in this area, along with the study of how we perceive the world around us, act, make choices, remember and feel, that today there is a scientific revolution associated with the introduction of neuroimaging methods. In Brain and Soul, Chris Frith talks about all this in the most accessible and entertaining way.
Chapter 5. Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality
The kind of learning discovered by Pavlov and Thorndike serves us well, but it works very crudely. Everything in the world around us is divided into only two categories: pleasant and unpleasant. But we do not perceive the world in such crude categories. When I look at the garden outside my window, I immediately see such a wealth of different colors and shapes that it seems a hopeless idea to try to convey this feeling in its entirety to anyone else. But at the same time that I experience all these colors and shapes, I also see them as objects that I can recognize and name: freshly trimmed grass, primroses, old brick pillars and, at this particular moment, a magnificent green woodpecker with a bright -red cap. These sensations and recognitions go far beyond the simple categories of pleasant and unpleasant. How does our brain discover what is in the world around us? How does our brain know what causes our sensations?
Our brain gives us a feeling of ease of perception
The remarkable thing about our perception of the material world in all its beauty and detail is that it seems so easy to us. If we believe our senses, the perception of the world around us is not a problem for us. But this feeling of lightness and instantaneity of our perception is an illusion created by our brain. And we didn't know about this illusion until we tried to make machines that could perceive.
The only way to find out whether it is easy or difficult for our brain to perceive the world around us is to make an artificial brain capable of perceiving the environment. To make such a brain, you need to determine what components it should consist of and find out what functions these components should perform.
Information revolution
The basic components of the brain were discovered by neuroscientists at the end of the 19th century. The fine structure of the brain was determined by examining thin sections of brain tissue under a microscope. These sections were stained in different ways to show different aspects of the brain's structure. Research has shown that the brain contains many nerve cells and a very complex network of interconnected fibers. But the main discovery in the field of studying the main components of the brain was made by neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Through detailed studies, he showed that the fibers of this network grow from nerve cells and, most importantly, there are gaps in this network. A fiber growing from one cell comes very close to the next cell, but does not merge with it. These gaps are the synapses described in the previous chapter (see Fig. 4.3). From the results of his research, Ramon y Cajal concluded that the main element of the brain is the neuron, that is, the nerve cell, with all its fibers and other processes. This concept gained widespread acceptance and became known as the "neural doctrine".
 Rice. 4.3. Synapse. The site of signal transmission from one nerve cell to another |
But what exactly do neurons, these basic elements of the brain, do? In the mid-19th century, Emile Dubois-Reymond demonstrated the electrical nature of nerve impulses. And by the end of the 19th century, David Ferrier and other researchers showed that electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain causes specific movements and sensations. Electrical impulses traveling along the fibers of neurons carry signals from one part of the brain to another, activating other neurons there or suppressing their activity. But how can such processes underlie the operation of a device capable of perceiving objects in the surrounding world?
A serious step towards solving this problem was taken not even by neurophysiologists, but by telephone line design engineers. Telephone lines are like neurons: electrical impulses travel through both. In a telephone line, electrical impulses activate the speaker at the other end of the line in the same way that impulses from motor neurons can activate the muscles to which the projections of those neurons lead. But we know that telephone lines are not for transmitting energy, but for transmitting messages, whether in the form of speech or in the form of dots and dashes in Morse code.
 Rice. 5.1. A great tangle that has been unraveled. Nerve cells are the elementary units that make up the brain. This drawing by Santiago Ramon y Cajal shows cortical nerve cells stained using a technique developed by Camillo Golgi. Numerous neurons of different types and their processes are visible. |
Engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories were searching for the most efficient way to transmit telephone messages. During their research, the idea arose that telephone wires actually serve to transmit information. The whole point of transmitting a message is so that we know more after receiving it than we did before.
 Rice. 5.8. The illusion of a convex mask. Photos of Charlie Chaplin's rotating mask (sequence from right to left and top to bottom). The face on the lower right is concave because we are looking at the mask from the inside, but we involuntarily perceive it as convex, with a protruding nose. In this case, our knowledge that faces are convex takes precedence over what we know about light and shadow. |
How our actions tell us about the world
For the brain, there is a close connection between perception and action. Our body serves us to understand the world around us. We interact with the world around us through our body and see what comes of it. This ability was also lacking in early computers. They just looked at the world. They didn't do anything. They didn't have bodies. They didn't make predictions. Perception was so difficult for them, also for this reason.
Even the simplest movements help us separate one perceived object from another. When I look at my garden, I see a fence with a tree behind it. How do I know which brown spots are from the fence and which are from the wood? If, according to my model of the world, a fence is in front of a tree, then I can predict that the sensations associated with the fence and the tree will change differently when I move my head. Since the fence is closer to me than the tree, the fence fragments move faster in front of my eyes than the tree fragments. My brain can connect all these pieces of wood because of their coordinated movement. But it is I, the perceiver, who moves, not a tree or a fence.
 Rice. 5.9. We can figure out where things are through movement. When we move past two trees, the tree that is closer moves in our field of vision faster than the leafy tree that is further away. This phenomenon is called motion parallax. It helps us understand that the Christmas tree is located closer to us than the deciduous tree. |
Simple movements help our perception. But movements made with some purpose, which I will call actions, help perception even more. If there is a glass of wine in front of me, I am aware yu, what shape it is and what color. But I don’t realize that my brain has already calculated what position my hand should take in order to take this glass by the stem, and anticipates what sensations will arise in my fingers. These preparations and premonitions occur even if I do not intend to pick up this glass (see Fig. 4.6). Part of the brain maps the world around us in terms of our actions, such as the actions needed to leave a room or to pick up a bottle from a table. Our brain continuously and automatically predicts what movements will be best to carry out this or that action that we may need to perform. Every time we take an action, these predictions are tested, and our model of the world is improved based on the errors in such predictions.
 Rice. 4.6. Our brain automatically prepares action programs in accordance with the surrounding objects. Umberto Castiello and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments showing how various objects in the visual field cause the automatic activation of reactions (action programs) required to reach out and pick up each of these objects, even if the person has no conscious intention to take them in your hands. This was done by very accurately measuring the movements of the subjects' hands when grasping various objects. When we take something with our hand, the distance between the thumb and the other fingers is adjusted in advance to the size of the object. When I reach for an apple, I open my hand wider than when I reach for a cherry. But if I reach for a cherry, while there is also an apple on the table, in addition to the cherry, then I open my hand wider than I usually do to take the cherry. The action required to pick up a cherry is influenced by the action required to pick up an apple. This influence of a possible action on the performed one shows that the brain simultaneously prepares programs for all these actions in parallel. |
The experience of handling a glass of wine improves my understanding of its shape. In the future it will be easier for me to understand what shape it is through such an imperfect and ambiguous sense as vision.
Our brain understands the world around us by creating models of this world. These are not some arbitrary models. They are constantly being improved to give us the best possible predictions of our feelings as we interact with the world around us. But we are not aware of the workings of this complex mechanism. So what are we even aware of?
We perceive not the world, but its model created by the brain
What we perceive are not the raw and ambiguous signals coming from the world around us to our eyes, ears and fingers. Our perception is much richer - it combines all these raw signals with the treasures of our experience. Our perception is a prediction of what should be in the world around us. And this prediction is constantly verified by actions.
But any system, when it fails, makes certain characteristic errors. Fortunately, these errors are quite informative. Not only are they important to the system itself in that it learns from them, but they are also important to us when we observe that system to understand how it works. They give us an idea of how this system works. What errors will a predictive system make? She will have problems in any situation that allows for an ambiguous interpretation, for example, when two different objects in the surrounding world evoke the same sensation. Such problems are usually solved due to the fact that one of the possible interpretations is much more likely than the other. It is highly unlikely that there is a rhinoceros in this room right now. But as a result, the system is deceived when the unlikely interpretation is in fact the correct one. Many of the visual illusions that psychologists love work precisely because they trick our brains in this way.
The very strange shape of Ames's room is designed to give us the same visual sensations as an ordinary rectangular room (see Fig. 2.8). Both models, the oddly shaped room and the regular rectangular room, are equally good at predicting what our eyes see. But in experience we have dealt with rectangular rooms so much more often that we inevitably see Ames’s room as rectangular, and it seems to us that the people who move along it from corner to corner grow and shrink in an unimaginable way. The prior probability (expectation) that we are looking at a room of such a strange shape is so small that our Bayesian brain does not take into account unusual information about the possibility of such a room.
But what happens when we have no a priori reason to prefer one interpretation over another? This happens, for example, with the Necker cube. We might see it as a rather complex flat figure, but in experience we have dealt much more often with cubes. That's why we see a cube. The problem is that these may be two different cubes. One has the front side located at the top right, and the other has the front side at the bottom left. We have no reason to prefer one interpretation to another, so our perception spontaneously switches from one possible cube to another and back again.
 Rice. 5.10. Ambiguous images. |
Even more complex images, such as the figure of Rubin and the portrait of a wife or mother-in-law, demonstrate spontaneous switching from one perceived image to another, also due to the fact that both interpretations are equally plausible. The fact that our brains respond this way to ambiguous images is further evidence that our brains are Bayesian devices that understand the world around us by making predictions and looking for reasons for our sensations.
Colors only exist in our heads
You could argue that all these ambiguous images were invented by psychologists. We don't see such objects in the real world. That's true. But the real world is also characterized by ambiguity. Let's consider the problem of color. We recognize the color of objects solely by the light they reflect.
The color is determined by the wavelength of that light. Long wavelengths are perceived as red, short wavelengths as violet, and intermediate wavelengths as other colors. We have special receptors in our eyes that are sensitive to light of different wavelengths. Therefore, the signals coming from these receptors tell us what color the tomato is? But here comes the problem. After all, this is not the color of the tomato itself. This is a characteristic of the light reflected by the tomato. If you shine white light on a tomato, it reflects red light. That's why it looks red to us. But what if you light a tomato blue? Now it can only reflect blue. Will it look blue now? No. We still perceive it as red. Based on the colors of all visible objects, our brain decides that they are illuminated blue and predicts the “true” color that each of these objects should have. Our perception is determined by this predicted color, not by the wavelength of light entering our eyes. Given that we see this predicted color and not the "true" color, it is possible to create spectacular illusions in which elements of the design that produce color at the same wavelength appear to be colored differently.
Perception is fantasy that coincides with reality
Our brain builds models of the world around us and constantly modifies these models based on signals reaching our senses. Therefore, in fact, we do not perceive the world itself, but rather its models created by our brain.
These models and the world are not the same thing, but for us they are essentially the same thing. We can say that our sensations are fantasies that coincide with reality. Moreover, in the absence of signals from the senses, our brain finds something to fill the gaps that arise in the incoming information. There is a blind spot in the retina of our eyes where there are no photoreceptors. It is where all the nerve fibers that carry signals from the retina to the brain come together to form the optic nerve. There is no place for photoreceptors there. We don't realize we have this blind spot because our brain is always finding something to fill that part of our visual field. Our brain uses signals from the retina immediately surrounding the blind spot to make up for this lack of information.
Place your finger directly in front of your eyes and look at it carefully. Then close your left eye and slowly move your finger to the right, but continue to look carefully straight ahead. At some point, your fingertip will disappear and then reappear, passing the blind spot. But when there's a blind spot on your fingertip, your brain will fill in the gap with a pattern on the wallpaper against which the fingertip is visible, rather than with the fingertip itself.
But even what we see in the center of our visual field is determined by what our brain expects to see in combination with the actual signals coming from our senses. Sometimes these expectations turn out to be so strong that we see what we expect to see, and not what actually is. This is demonstrated by a spectacular laboratory experiment in which subjects are presented with visual stimuli, such as the letters of the alphabet, so quickly that their vision can barely distinguish them. A subject who expects to see the letter A will sometimes remain convinced that he saw it, even if in fact he was shown the letter B.
We are not slaves to our feelings
It may seem that the tendency to hallucinate is too high a price to pay for our brain's ability to build models of the world around us. Couldn't it be possible to configure the system so that signals coming from the senses always play a major role in our sensations? Then hallucinations would be impossible. But this is actually a bad idea for a number of reasons. The signals coming from the senses are simply not reliable enough. But more importantly, their dominance would make us slaves to our feelings. Our attention, like a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower, would constantly be distracted by something new. Sometimes people become such slaves to their feelings because of brain damage. There are people who are involuntarily distracted by everything that their gaze falls on. A man puts on glasses. But then he sees other glasses, and puts them on too. If he sees a glass of wine, he must drink it. If he sees a pencil, he must write something with it. Such people are unable to implement any plan or follow any instructions. It turns out that they usually have severe damage to the frontal lobes of the cortex. Their strange behavior was first described by Francois Lhermitte.
Patient<...>came to my house.<...>We returned to the bedroom. The bedspread had been removed and the top sheet folded back as usual. When the patient saw this, he immediately began to undress [including removing his wig]. He climbed into bed, covered himself with the sheets up to his chin and prepared to go to bed.
Using controlled fantasies, our brain escapes the tyranny of the environment. In the Babylonian pandemonium of a college party, I can hear the voice of the English professor arguing with me and listen to what she says.
I can find her face among a sea of other faces. Brain imaging studies show that when we decide to pay attention to someone's face, there is an increase in neural activity in the area of our brain associated with the perception of faces, even before the face comes into our field of vision. Activity in this area increases even when we just imagine someone's face (see Figure 5.8). That's how strong our brain's ability to create controlled fantasies is. We can anticipate the appearance of a face in our field of vision. We can even imagine a face when in reality there is no face in front of us.
How do we know what is real and what is not?
There are two problems with our fantasies about the world around us. First, how do we know that the model of the world our brain creates is correct? But this is not the most serious problem. For our interaction with the world around us, it does not matter whether the model built by our brain is correct. The only thing that matters is whether it works. Does it allow you to act adequately and live another day? In general, yes, it does.
As we will see in the next chapter, questions about the “correctness” of our brain’s models arise only when it communicates with the brain of another person, and it turns out that his model of the world around him is different from ours.
Another problem was revealed to us during those tomographic studies of face perception. The area of the brain associated with the perception of faces is activated when we see or imagine a face. So how does our brain know when we're actually seeing a face and when we're just imagining it?
In both cases, the brain creates an image of a face. How do we know if there is a real person behind this model? This problem applies not only to faces, but also to anything else.
But this problem can be solved very simply. When we first imagine a face, our brain does not receive signals from the senses with which it can compare its predictions. No errors are tracked either. When we see a real face, the model created by our brain always turns out to be slightly imperfect. The brain constantly refines this model to capture all the fleeting changes in the expression of that face and all the plays of light and shadow. Fortunately, reality is always full of surprises.
Imagination is a very boring thing
We have already seen how visual illusions help us understand how the brain models reality. The aforementioned Necker cube is a well-known visual illusion (see Fig. 5.10). We can see in this picture a cube, the front side of which is directed to the left and down. But then our perception suddenly changes, and we see a cube, the front side of which is directed to the right and upward. This is explained very simply. Our brain sees this picture as more of a cube than the flat figure that actually is there. But as an image of a cube, this drawing is ambiguous. It allows for two possible three-dimensional interpretations. Our brains spontaneously switch from one interpretation to another in a relentless attempt to find an option that better matches the signals coming from our senses.
But what happens if I find an inexperienced person who has never seen a Necker cube before and does not know that it appears to point one way or the other? I will show him the drawing for a short time so that he can see only one version of the cube. Then I will ask him to imagine this figure. Will there be a switching of images when he looks at this figure in his imagination? It turns out that in the imagination the Necker cube never changes its shape.
Our imagination is completely uncreative. It makes no predictions or corrects errors. We don't create anything in our heads. We create by putting our thoughts into sketches, strokes, and rough drafts that allow us to take advantage of the surprises that reality is full of.
It is thanks to these inexhaustible surprises that interaction with the world around us brings us so much joy.
This chapter shows how our brains understand the world around us by building models and making predictions. It builds these models by combining information from the senses with our a priori expectations. For this, both sensations and expectations are absolutely necessary. We are not aware of all the work our brain does. We are only aware of the patterns that result from this work. That’s why it seems to us that we perceive the world around us directly, without making much effort.
© Chris D. Frith, 2007
All Rights Reserved. Authorized translation from the English language edition published by Blackwell Publishing Limited. Responsibility for the accuracy of the translation rests solely with The Dynasty Foundation and is not the responsibility of John Blackwell Publishing Limited. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the original copyright holder, Blackwell Publishing Limited.
© Dmitry Zimin “Dynasty” Foundation, edition in Russian, 2010
© P. Petrov, translation into Russian, 2010
© Astrel Publishing House LLC, 2010
Publishing house CORPUS®
All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.
© The electronic version of the book was prepared by liters company (www.litres.ru)
* * *
Dedicated to Uta
List of abbreviations
ACT – axial computed tomography
MRI – magnetic resonance imaging
PET – positron emission tomography
fMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging
EEG – electroencephalogram
BOLD (blood oxygenation level dependent) – depending on the level of oxygen in the blood
Preface
I have an amazing labor-saving device in my head. My brain, better than a dishwasher or a calculator, frees me from the boring, repetitive work of recognizing things around me and even frees me from having to think about how to control the movements of my body. This gives me the opportunity to focus on what really matters to me: friendship and the exchange of ideas. But, of course, my brain does more than save me from the tedium of everyday work. It is he who shapes that me whose life is spent in the company of other people. In addition, it is my brain that allows me to share the fruits of my inner world with my friends. This is how the brain makes us capable of something more than what each of us is capable of individually. This book explains how the brain performs these miracles.
Acknowledgments
My work on the mind and brain has been made possible by funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Medical Research Council gave me the opportunity to work on the neurophysiology of schizophrenia through financial support from the Tim Crowe Psychiatric Unit at the London Northwick Park Hospital Clinical Research Center in Harrow (Middlesex). At that time, we could judge the relationship between the psyche and the brain only on the basis of indirect data, but everything changed in the eighties, when tomographs were invented to scan the working brain.
The Wellcome Trust enabled Richard Frackowiak to establish the Functional Imaging Laboratory and provided financial support for my work in that laboratory on the neurophysiological basis of consciousness and social interaction. The study of mind and brain lies at the intersection of many traditional disciplines, from anatomy and computational neuroscience to philosophy and anthropology. I have been very fortunate to have always worked in interdisciplinary – and multinational – research groups.
I benefited greatly from my association with colleagues and friends at University College London, especially Ray Dolan, Dick Passingham, Daniel Wolpert, Tim Shallies, John Driver, Paul Burgess and Patrick Haggard. In the early stages of working on this book, I was helped by repeated fruitful discussions concerning the brain and psyche with my friends in Aarhus, Jakob Hovü and Andreas Röpstorff, and in Salzburg, with Josef Perner and Heinz Wimmer. Martin Frith and John Law have been arguing with me about everything in this book for as long as I can remember. Eve Johnstone and Sean Spence generously shared with me their professional knowledge of psychiatric phenomena and their implications for brain science.
Perhaps the most important inspiration for writing this book came from my weekly conversations with past and present breakfast groups. Sarah-Jane Blakemore, Davina Bristow Thierry Chaminade, Jenny Kull, Andrew Duggins, Chloe Farrer, Helen Gallagher, Tony Jack, James Kilner, Haguan Lau, Emiliano Macaluso, Elinor Maguire, Pierre Macquet, Jen Marchant, Dean Mobbs, Mathias Pessiglione, Chiara Portas, Geraint Rees, Johannes Schulz, Suchi Shergill and Tanja Singer helped shape this book. I am deeply grateful to them all.
I am grateful to Karl Friston and Richard Gregory, who read parts of this book for their invaluable help and valuable advice. I'm also grateful to Paul Fletcher for supporting the idea of introducing an English professor and other characters who argue with the narrator early on in the book.
Philip Carpenter has contributed selflessly to the improvement of this book with his critical comments.
I am especially grateful to those who read all the chapters and commented in detail on my manuscript. Sean Gallagher and two anonymous readers have provided many valuable suggestions for how to improve this book. Rosalind Ridley forced me to think carefully about my statements and be more careful with my terminology. Alex Frith helped me get rid of jargon and lack of coherence.
Uta Frith was actively involved in this project at all stages. Without her example and guidance, this book would never have been published.
Prologue: Real scientists don't study consciousness
Why are psychologists afraid of parties?
Like any other tribe, scientists have their own hierarchy. The place of psychologists in this hierarchy is at the very bottom. I discovered this in my first year at university where I studied science. It was announced to us that college students - for the first time - would have the opportunity to study psychology in the first part of the natural sciences course. Encouraged by this news, I went to our team leader to ask what he knew about this new opportunity. “Yes,” he replied. “But it never occurred to me that any of my students would be so stupid that they would want to study psychology.” He himself was a physicist.
Probably because I was not entirely sure what “clueless” meant, this remark did not stop me. I left physics and took up psychology. From then until now I have continued to study psychology, but I have not forgotten my place in the scientific hierarchy. At parties where scientists gather, the question inevitably comes up from time to time: “What do you do?” - and I tend to think twice before answering: “I’m a psychologist.”
Of course, a lot has changed in psychology over the past 30 years. We have borrowed many methods and concepts from other disciplines. We study not only behavior, but also the brain. We use computers to analyze our data and model mental processes. 1
Although I must admit that there are some retrogrades who generally deny that studying the brain or computers can tell us anything about our psyche. – Note auto
My university badge doesn’t say “psychologist,” but “cognitive neuroscientist.”
Rice. clause 1. General view and section of the human brain
Human brain, side view (top). The arrow marks the place where the cut was made, shown in the bottom photo. The outer layer of the brain (cortex) consists of gray matter and forms many folds, allowing you to fit a large surface area into a small volume. The cortex contains about 10 billion nerve cells.
And so they ask me: “What do you do?” I think this is the new head of the physics department. Unfortunately, my answer “I am a cognitive neuroscientist” only delays the outcome. After my attempts to explain what my work actually is, she says: “Oh, so you’re a psychologist!” - with that characteristic facial expression in which I read: “If only you could do real science!”
An English professor joins the conversation and brings up the topic of psychoanalysis. She has a new student who “disagrees with Freud in many ways.” In order not to spoil my evening, I refrain from expressing the idea that Freud was an inventor and that his thoughts on the human psyche have little relevance.
Several years ago, the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry ( British Journal of Psychiatry), apparently by mistake, asked me to write a review of a Freudian article. I was immediately struck by one subtle difference from the papers I usually review. As with any scientific article, there were many references to the literature. These are mainly links to works on the same topic published earlier. We refer to them partly in order to pay tribute to the achievements of predecessors, but mainly in order to reinforce certain statements contained in our own work. “You don’t have to take my word for it. You can read a detailed explanation of the methods I used in the work of Box and Cox (1964).” 2
Believe it or not, this is a link to an actual paper that establishes an important statistical method. Bibliographic information for this work can be found in the bibliography at the end of the book. – Note auto
But the authors of this Freudian article did not at all try to support the facts cited with references. References to literature were not about facts, but about ideas. Using references, it was possible to trace the development of these ideas in the works of various followers of Freud right up to the original words of the teacher himself. At the same time, no facts were cited by which one could judge whether his ideas were fair.
“Freud may have had a great influence on literary criticism,” I tell the English professor, “but he was not a real scientist. He wasn't interested in facts. I study psychology using scientific methods.”
“So,” she replies, “you are using a monster of machine intelligence to kill the human element in us.” 3
She is a specialist in the work of Australian writer Elizabeth Costello. – Note auto(Australian writer Elizabeth Costello is a fictional person, a character in the book of the same name by South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee. – Note translation)
From both sides of the divide that separates our views, I hear the same thing: “Science cannot study consciousness.” Why can't it?
Exact and inexact sciences
In the system of scientific hierarchy, “exact” sciences occupy a high position, and “inexact” ones occupy a low position. Objects studied by exact sciences are like a cut diamond, which has a strictly defined shape, and all parameters can be measured with high accuracy. “Inexact” sciences study objects similar to a scoop of ice cream, the shape of which is not nearly as definite, and the parameters can change from measurement to measurement. Exact sciences, such as physics and chemistry, study tangible objects that can be measured very precisely. For example, the speed of light (in a vacuum) is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. A phosphorus atom weighs 31 times more than a hydrogen atom. These are very important numbers. Based on the atomic weight of various elements, a periodic table can be compiled, which once made it possible to draw the first conclusions about the structure of matter at the subatomic level.
Once upon a time, biology was not such an exact science as physics and chemistry. This state of affairs changed dramatically after scientists discovered that genes consist of strictly defined sequences of nucleotides in DNA molecules. For example, the sheep prion gene 4
Sheep prion– a protein, the modified configuration of whose molecules causes the development of a disease in sheep similar to mad cow disease. – Note translation
It consists of 960 nucleotides and begins like this: CTGCAGACTTTAAGTGATTTSTTACGTGGC...
I must admit that in the face of such precision and rigor, psychology appears to be a very imprecise science. The most famous number in psychology is 7, the number of items that can be held simultaneously in working memory. 5
Working memory- This is a type of active short-term memory. This is the memory we use when we try to remember a phone number without writing it down. Psychologists and neuroscientists are actively researching working memory, but have yet to agree on what exactly they are researching. – Note. auto
But even this figure needs clarification. George Miller's article on this discovery, published in 1956, was entitled "The Magic Number Seven - Plus or Minus Two." Therefore, the best measurement result obtained by psychologists can change in one direction or another by almost 30%. The number of items we can hold in working memory varies from time to time and from person to person. When I'm tired or anxious, I'll remember fewer numbers. I speak English and can therefore remember more numbers than Welsh speakers. 6
This statement is not at all a manifestation of any prejudice against the Welsh. This is one of the important discoveries made by psychologists who studied working memory. Welsh speakers remember fewer numbers because it takes longer to say the names of a series of numbers out loud in Welsh than to say the names of the same numbers in English. – Note auto
“What did you expect? - says the English professor. – The human soul cannot be straightened out like a butterfly in a window. Each of us is unique.”
This remark is not entirely appropriate. Of course, each of us is unique. But we all have common mental properties. It is these fundamental properties that psychologists are looking for. Chemists had exactly the same problem with the substances they studied before the discovery of chemical elements in the 18th century. Each substance is unique. Psychology, compared to the “hard” sciences, had little time to find what to measure and figure out how to measure it. Psychology as a scientific discipline has existed for only a little over 100 years. I'm sure that over time, psychologists will find something to measure and develop devices that will help us make these measurements very accurate.
Exact sciences are objective, inexact sciences are subjective
These optimistic words are based on my belief in the unstoppable progress of science. 7
The English professor does not share this belief. – Note auto.
But, unfortunately, in the case of psychology there is no solid basis for such optimism. What we are trying to measure is qualitatively different from what is measured in the exact sciences.
In exact sciences, measurement results are objective. They can be checked. “Don't believe that the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second? Here's your equipment. Measure it yourself!” When we use this equipment to take measurements, the results will appear on dials, printouts and computer screens where anyone can read them. And psychologists use themselves or their volunteer assistants as measuring instruments. The results of such measurements are subjective. It is impossible to check them.
Here's a simple psychological experiment. I turn on a program on my computer that shows a field of black dots continuously moving downward, from the top of the screen to the bottom. I stare at the screen for a minute or two. Then I press “Escape” and the dots stop moving. Objectively, they no longer move. If I put the tip of a pencil against one of them, I can make sure that this point is definitely not moving. But I still have a very strong subjective feeling that the points are slowly moving up. 8
This phenomenon is known as the waterfall effect or motion aftereffect. If we look at the waterfall for a minute or two and then look at the bushes to the side of it, we get the distinct feeling that the bushes are moving upward, even though we can clearly see that they are staying in place. – Note auto
If you walked into my room at this moment, you would see motionless dots on the screen. I would tell you that it looks like the dots are moving up, but how do you check that? After all, their movement occurs only in my head.
A true scientist wants to independently and independently verify the results of measurements reported by others. “Nullius in verba” 9
Literally: “No one’s words” (lat.). – Note translation
- this is the motto of the Royal Society of London: “Do not believe what others tell you, no matter how high their authority.” 10
“Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri” - “Without swearing allegiance to the words of any teacher” (Horace, “Epistle”). – Note auto
If I followed this principle, I would have to agree that scientific research into your inner world is impossible for me, because it requires relying on what you tell me about your inner experience.
For a while, psychologists posed as real scientists by studying only behavior—taking objective measurements of things like movements, button presses, reaction times. 11
These were followers of behaviorism, a movement whose most famous representatives were John Watson and Burres Frederick Skinner. The zeal with which they promoted their approach indirectly indicates that all is not well with it. One of the professors I studied with in college was a passionate behaviorist who later became a psychoanalyst. – Note auto
But behavioral research is by no means sufficient. Such studies ignore all that is most interesting in our personal experience. We all know that our inner world is no less real than our life in the material world. Unrequited love brings no less suffering than a burn from touching a hot stove. 12
Moreover, judging by the results of tomographic studies, the same part of the brain is involved in the reactions of physical pain and suffering of a rejected person. – Note auto
The workings of consciousness can influence the results of physical actions that can be objectively measured. For example, if you imagine yourself playing the piano, your performance may improve. So why shouldn't I take your word for it that you imagined yourself playing the piano? Now we psychologists have returned to the study of subjective experience: sensations, memories, intentions. But the problem has not gone away: the mental phenomena that we study have a completely different status than the material phenomena that other scientists study. Only from your words can I learn about what is happening in your mind. You press a button to tell me you saw a red light. Can you tell me what shade of red this was? But there is no way I can penetrate your consciousness and check for myself how red the light you saw was.
For my friend Rosalind, each number has a certain position in space, and each day of the week has its own color (see Fig. CV1 in the color insert). But maybe these are just metaphors? I've never experienced anything like this. Why should I believe her when she says these are her immediate, uncontrollable sensations? Her sensations relate to phenomena of the inner world that I cannot verify in any way.
Will big science help inexact science?
Exact science becomes “big science” 13
“Big Science” (big science) - expensive scientific research in which large scientific teams are involved (a colloquial term in modern English). – Note translation
When he starts using very expensive measuring instruments. Brain science became big when brain scanners were developed in the last quarter of the 20th century. One such scanner typically costs over a million pounds. Thanks to pure luck, being in the right place at the right time, I was able to use these devices when they first appeared, in the mid-eighties 14
The decision by the Medical Research Council to close the Clinical Research Center, where I had worked for many years on schizophrenia, prompted me to take a risk and significantly change the direction of my psychological research. Subsequently, both the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust showed a high degree of foresight in providing financial support for new research in the field of encephalography. – Note auto
The first such devices were based on the long-established principle of fluoroscopy. An X-ray machine can show the bones inside your body because bones are much harder (dense) than skin and soft tissue. Similar density differences are observed in the brain. The skull surrounding the brain is very dense, but the tissue of the brain itself is much less dense. Deep in the brain there are cavities (ventricles) filled with fluid; they have the lowest density. A breakthrough in this field occurred when axial computed tomography (ACT) technology was developed and the ACT scanner was constructed. This machine uses X-rays to measure density, then solves a huge number of equations (requiring a powerful computer) to produce a 3D image of the brain (or any other part of the body) showing differences in density. For the first time, such a device made it possible to see the internal structure of the brain of a living person - a voluntary participant in the experiment.
A few years later, another method was developed, even better than the previous one - magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI does not use X-rays, but radio waves and a very strong magnetic field. 15
Don't think I actually understand how MRI works, but here's one physicist who does: J.P. Hornak, The Basics of MRI(“MRI Fundamentals”), http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri/index.html. – Note auto
Unlike fluoroscopy, this procedure is not at all dangerous to health. An MRI scanner is much more sensitive to density differences than an ACT scanner. In images of the brain of a living person obtained with its help, different types of tissue are distinguishable. The quality of such images is no lower than the quality of photographs of the brain, after death, removed from the skull, preserved with chemicals and cut into thin layers.
Rice. clause 2. An example of an MRI structural image of the brain and a section of a brain removed from a cadaver
Above is a photograph of one of the brain sections removed from the skull after death and cut into thin layers. Below is an image of one of the layers of the brain of a living person, obtained using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Structural brain imaging has played a huge role in the development of medicine. Brain injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents, strokes, or tumor growth can have profound effects on behavior. They can lead to severe forms of memory loss or serious personality changes. Before the advent of CT scanners, the only way to find out exactly where the injury occurred was to remove the lid of the skull and look. This was usually done after death, but sometimes in a living patient - when neurosurgery was required. Tomography scanners now make it possible to accurately determine the location of an injury. All that is required of the patient is to lie motionless inside the tomograph for 15 minutes.
Rice. clause 3. Example of an MRI scan showing brain damage
This patient suffered two strokes in a row, as a result of which the auditory cortex of the right and left hemispheres was destroyed. The injury is clearly visible on the MRI image.
Structural tomography of the brain is both an exact and a big science. Measurements of brain structural parameters made using these methods can be very accurate and objective. But what do these measurements have to do with the problem of psychology as an “inexact” science?