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No Place Left for the Soul to Hide?
with Jez Nelson
Man : Right,now I need to draw some lines on your
face.Three lines one on each side of your face and one across your forehead.
Jez Nelson : Lying horizontal,my head marked up waiting for the PET
scan to begin.It's a peculiar feeling, knowing that these scientists at the
Wellcome Institute of Cognitive Neurology are about to watch my brain in
action.To detect the subtle changes caused by my thoughts,to watch my gray
matter at work.Susan
Greenfield,Director of the
Royal Institution of Great Britain and
Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University
explained to me how brain imaging techniques are revolutionising neuroscience
and our understanding of what goes on inside our heads.
Susan Greenfield : The umbrella word for about four different techniques
is so -called brain -imaging,and brain - imaging has been very exciting because
it enables scientists now,and neurologists to study the human brain at work
in a painless situation,therefore in a conscious subject or in a conscious
patient.Now this has been invaluable diagnostically in seeing where things
are going wrong,and in order for example to see changes in the brain that
are very subtle,for example with depression you can see differences in activity
of certain brain regions.Now by activity what I mean is how much oxygen or
glucose different brain regions might be using.The differences in blood flow
therefore that will be going to those different areas,and by exploiting that
fact,by exploiting the fact that your brain is greedy for oxygen and glucose
and that the hardest working bits will be the greediest,you can actually
by the wonders of modern technology and computing literally see the brain
light up.You can see a screen with a vision,if you like,of the human brain
in a particular section and you can see different bits lighting up.
Jez Nelson : So seeing how the greedy brain uses more oxygen or more
glucose when its at work allows neurologists to see which bits of the brain
are active when we carry out particular actions or think about particular
things.
Peter Fenwick : The impact that these techniques had was amazing.It
is if you like the new phrenology of the brain, that is instead of feeling
lumps and bumps on the scalp,what you do is you look at hot patches or patches
in the brain where blood flow is greatest in the scans,and so the first dramatic
advance is the fact that the brain is very modular.We have bits of the brain
which observe functions which are very specific.If you have a verbal thought,it's
in one area,if you have a spatial thought it's in another area,if you have
a thought which carries emotion,then that will be a combination of areas
and so on.
Jez Nelson : Peter Fenwick,Consultant Neuro
- Psychiatrist. Of course,you don't actually see the emotion or the thought,all
scientists are watching is the changes that result from that thought,and
perhaps predictably it's not quite as simple as a different bit lighting
up for each different type of thing we think about.
Susan Greenfield : The technique of imaging is awesome, and it's really
progressed in leaps and bounds.The interpretation however is much harder.Now
when people first started doing this they thought they might see the centre
for this,or the centre for that,possibly lighting up,because we like to think
that you have one brain function - one area and so on,and much to everyone's
mystification,it seemed that far more brain regions were active at any one
time,for any one task than would have been anticipated,that's the first thing.The
second is that there's no one brain region for one function.Any one brain
region will participate in many different types of functions,and similarly
any one function, for example let's say vision,there's at least 30 areas
in the outer layer of the brain alone that is involved in the function of
vision.So we have no one on one matching,any one brain area can participate
in many different types of things,it seems,and any function is divvied up
among many brain regions.
Jez Nelson : Nevertheless,scientists have identified certain parts
of the brain that are active when we're afraid,or when we find something
funny,even when we have a religious or spiritual
experience.
Susan Blackmore : There's lots of talk about
a "God centre" in the brain.A part of the brain where you can produce mystical
and spiritual experiences,but we're a long way from actually seeing what
happens in a brain during those experiences.What we do know is that stimulating
certain parts of the brains temporal lobe,can produce
out of body experiences,sense of mystical unity and other traditional or
mystical type experiences,and we do know that certain parts of the brain
are more active in people who frequently have those experiences,but we haven't
got as far yet,as tying the whole story together.I expect we will.
Jez Nelson : Dr
Susan Blackmore is a Psychologist at the University of the West of
England,she's spent over 20 years investigating the idea that there could
be more to human consciousness than can be accounted for by looking at the
chemistry of the brain.She's carried out rigorous experiments to see if it's
possible to explain the nature of such things as out of body and near death
experiences,and spiritual transformation.Her conclusion is that everything
we experience whilst conscious can be explained by the workings of the brain
and brain chemistry.
Susan Blackmore : Yes,it can be attributed to it,but that doesn't
mean that you can understand it always by a reductionist process.I mean going
down to the nitty gritty,nuts and bolts of the brain,won't always give you
the answers,I mean if you want to say,why are people transformed by mystical
experiences? You know someone sits on a mountain and gets this overwhelming
sense of being one with the world and a loss of self,a disappearance of the
sense of self.This can be quite a life transforming experience.Now I believe
[because she can't prove it - LB] that it's all rooted in what's happening
in the brain,but you're never really going to understand it unless you can
talk about why we have an illusion of a self [Ref: D.Zohar
"The Quantum Self"],how that illusion can dissolve,and
so on.
Jez Nelson : So we can watch the brain changing its activity depending
on the kind of things going through our minds,but as Dr Barry Smith,a philosopher
of mind from Birkbeck College at the University of London explains,we perhaps
shouldn't expect to be able to identify exactly what the scanned brain is
thinking about.
Barry Smith : We can't look at the brain and study the brain and thereby
read off what we're thinking about. This is rather like supposing when we've
got a painting in oils that a full description of how the oil is put on the
canvass and how the brush was presented across the canvass in a certain direction
could tell us what the painting was about.But it won't.You could have a very
elaborate,intricate description of exactly how the paint lies on the canvass,but
you need to know what the painting represents,who the sitter was,if it's
a portrait,and for that you need to know a relation between the painting,the
painter and the sitter.There's no way that just looking at the details on
the surface of the canvass can give you any information about what's thereby
represented,and I think the same is true with the brain.If you look inside
our brain,you'll know that we have to have those materials and we have to
have them in a certain configuration and order,but it's not obvious that
looking at that configuration and order tells us what that thought is a thought
about,or what those memories are memories of.We might have to be in those
states to have thoughts,to have memories,to be able to reason,but we won't
know what they're reasons or thoughts about. (Ethereal electronic music plays)
Susan Blackmore : These techniques are wonderful in allowing us to
see which parts of the brain are involved when we are doing different
activities,but that doesn't tell us about subjective experience, how it feels
to be alive,consciousness.We are a long,long way from understanding the
relationship between what's going on in the brain and those experiences and
we need to study both,until I think some kind of big step will be taken in
science which enables understand consciousness better than we do now.
Jez Nelson : According to Peter Fenwick,what's needed is a new science
[Ref: R.Penrose "ENM" & "Shadows of the Mind"]
to explain the subjective [Ref: S.Greenfield Iotm11].
Peter Fenwick : In my view, it's because we need a new science,that's
a science of the subjective a science of consciousness. (Ethereal electronic
music plays)
Susan Greenfield : Up until now the study of consciousness,which is
what you're talking about effectively,which is quintessentially a subjective
phenomenon,has been an anathema to many scientists who thought it was something
to do with the mystic,and therefore shied away from it, because scientists
are brought up to be objective,to have impartial or impersonal access to
something,where you can measure something,that's what we're all told at school
that science is about, therefore coming up against something like
love,or someone's feelings makes it very hard to quantify and to measure
and to monitor,and to try and understand, because you can't hack into somebody
else's first hand experiences of those things [Ref:
Behind the Brain].I think increasingly,we are
going to, as neuroscientists,be able to,not look at causality,not how one
thing causes another,but how things match up,at correlations.I think
increasingly,with brain imaging, especially when it gets better,both in its
resolution of time and space,with brain imaging and also with adroit use
of drugs, we'll be able to see experimentally - I'm not advocating of
course,drugs of abuse here,I'm just trying to understand how drugs are working
on the brain and can be use as an experimental tool,because we know that
drugs change how people feel,and because we know how drugs work,to a certain
extent on the neurochemistry of the brain,we can then "match up" these chemical
events with what people are feeling,and I think,increasingly,if that is then
matched up with various markers of their immune system,and their blood stream
with brain scans,we'll get a feel for at any one moment what a type of
consciousness is related to,correlated to,and you could call that,if you
like,the sciences of the subjective,because really it's more just the science
of consciousness.
Jez Nelson : A new science of
consciousness.It's all very exciting,but somehow,it's also rather unsettling
isn't it? When they've got it together,will neuroscientists at last be able
to solve the problems that have perplexed us for millennia? The
concept of the soul,of the individual.To what
extent we have freewill or are governed by the
fates as the ancient Greeks believed? Once again,it's possible that we may
be labouring under a misconception of what science can and can't tell us.
Susan Greenfield : I think there's a confusion of terms here.Let's
unpack several words: Brain, Consciousness, Mind and Soul.Now many people
put equal signs between those four words and then get very upset,you know,some
scientists will say the brain is the mind,and other people say "well where's
the soul gone,if all these horrible scientists start dissecting and pointing"
and so on.Now I think that the problem here lies in exactly what we mean
by those terms.So let's just unpack those. Brain for me is the physical
organ.When we talk about the mind,it's a much more personalised aspect that
we're emphasising,our brains we might argue are similar,you mind is different
from my mind, yes? Now,my own view,is that there is a very simple way of
regarding the mind,it's not some airy - fairy alternative, beamed in from
Zog or somewhere.All it is,is the personalisation of the brain,and this is
something that people hadn't realised so much.Just because brains look the
same at the macro level,doesn't mean to say they're entirely the same.Your
brain and my brain,everyone's brain is very different,because the neuronal
circuits that are growing after we're born,will configure in very different
ways from one person to another as a result of our experiences. Consciousness,to
my mind,is something else.Now the mind can determine what kind of consciousness
you have,but it's your ongoing state,it's the thing you're going to give
up tonight,it's the thing you're going to give up if you go and see an
anaesthetist.Consciousness is something that,like a light, is going on or
off,or as I prefer,like a dimmer switch,is growing throughout your life.
Then we come to the hardest one of all,which is the soul.[Ref: "SOUL" Video:
H1]
Jez Nelson : So does that mean there is still a place for the soul
to hide?
Peter Fenwick : Two questions.The first one is the soul one's sense
of identity or is the soul something different? I think we're beginning to
get a good idea of those brain functions which underpin identity.If one starts
talking about soul,one's arguing that there is a principle which is involved
with brain in some way,and which carries personal information about you when
the brain dies.Now from the point of view of our current science,that's an
impossibility.
Susan Blackmore : I think there's no place left for the soul to
hide at all.Even though we don't understand an awful lot about
consciousness,the idea of a soul doesn't help at all.As for the spirit,if
by spirit you mean something that leaves the body,I think no place
either.But there is a place for spirituality.There are people who live
more or less spiritual lives,and by that I mean,lives not devoted to their
own petty self,self-centred lives,but lives that are more open and let go
of selfishness if you like.So I wouldn't wipe out all of spirituality,but
I would say there's no hiding place for a soul.
Susan Greenfield : When people ask me about the soul,in a sense,there
is that place in the Bible of Caesar's things,you know "render unto Caesar
the thing that are Caesar's but unto God the things that are God".In a sense,I'm
like invoking this argument of Caesar's things,in that,if you believe in
a soul..... one point about souls is that they are immortal,if they're there.The
one thing is that they are immortal which no one would dispute,so if one....if
one believes in a soul,one therefore one is buying into this concept of an
immortal soul.Now the brain is not immortal,it's going to die,no one would
deny that.Has any one shown you a brain that has survived death,of
course not. [That would be a contradiction in terms since death is defined
by the death of the brain-LB] Now if we've said that the mind is the
personalisation of the brain,that too will perish I'm afraid.So if people
wish to believe in the soul,I respect that enormously,that's their view,and
they have their reasons and their feelings for doing this,but they shouldn't
confuse it with the brain and the mind, because that is a perishable thing.The
soul is not perishable,and I think that consciousness which goes along with
the baggage of the mind and the brain,sadly too,will go.So those three things
are all interlinked,but the soul is not interlinked because it is not a
perishable item. (Ethereal electronic music plays)
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