The HumanNervous System

Part 2

Let’s go back to our discussion of dopamine as a launching point for discussing the neuroscience of self. The neurons firing in your brain, creating your experiences, work because chemical ions, for example, sodium ions, cross over the neuron cell membranes causing a change in their electrical potential. We wouldn’t say we are addicted to sodium, that we are sodium junkies, and saying that about dopamine is just as pedantic. It’s not the right level of analysis to explain our behavior. Our brain is not responsible for our behavior, neither are our genes. We are responsible for our behavior.

The actions of dopamine in the brain are complex, as is explaining our behavior, explaining who we are. We need the right level of analysis to find ourselves, to create a language that talks about why we are distracted, why we disconnect from our present state, from our present others. A language to bridge neuroscience and everyday behavior, to bridge the self, the body, the mind, the spirit. A language that helps us talk about, understand, and help each other, and ourselves.

The myth of dopamine is the illusion we create when we attribute our happiness, our behavior, to the workings of chemicals and cells. That illusion ties us to a irreproachable cause for everything we do.

The cellular level of the brain and the biochemical level of our DNA can have profound effects on us, especially when there is some dysfunction. Our actions are constrained by our biology, not sufficiently caused. We can’t find responsibility, or motivation, or love in the cells, or even clusters of cells. We need a language to describe you, to describe us, the essence of us. That person in your head who keeps talking.

So, what are you? You are not your brain, or your genetic code. Are you your body? Your mind, your spirit, or soul? And what exactly are those things, if they are things. What can science tell us about the body, mind, and soul?

You started out as a single cell that divided to become two cells. Congratulations. You were hundreds of cells in a few days. By birth, you are a billion cells. Each of those cells became dedicated to your wellbeing. The muscle cells in your heart squeeze and pump 75 to 100 gallons of blood per hour just to keep it all going. You are a sextillion atoms, some of which were created an eternity ago, in an exploding star.

Each of those atoms is composed of subatomic particles, that don’t seem to behave like atoms. All these atoms are organized into cells, and these cells are organized into tissues, and organs, and a skeleton, and into you.

But you are not those cells. Our bodies are the organization of those cells into systems, and the processes involved in keeping the body alive. Your body, at least while alive, is not a thing, not an object. It is an activity, constantly changing, turning over cells and connections. Your body is a set of processes enacted by organs, tissues, and cells.

Your mind is also a set of processes enacted by cells, nervous system cells. To understand it requires a different level of description, of analysis. The brain is made of neurons and glia, specialized cells, and they work because ions flow back and forth across their membranes.

Emotion is not the flow of ions across cell membranes; it is a product of that flow. The mind is what the brain does, it is a process, an activity. Understanding the mind takes a different level of analysis and description from cell biology. The mind is more than those cells that it emerges from. Psychology gives us some insight into our behavior, our emotions, our thinking, but psychology still does not give us the language we need to talk about the emergent properties of our nervous system. We are stuck with terms in the table of contents of every psychology 101 text. We want to talk about our spirits, our souls, that center of self-gravity where the “I” lives.

The explanation of why someone thinks something, for example, holds a racist opinion, is inadequate at the biological level. We can’t do anything about it. The explanation needs to move up a level, to include the novel characteristics of the mind that are not present in the individual parts.  The explanation needs to include intentionality, critical thinking, and free will. An explanation without those things is, in my opinion, not interesting at best, and dangerous at worst. We, the royal we, are more than a collection of cells, and more than the activity of those cells. We are not objects. Our body and our mind are novel properties, products of biology, complicated biology. We are all very different, and we are all very much the same.

That leaves us with the spirit, the soul, to try and understand, to try and develop a language to meaningfully communicate about it. It certainly is not the language of dopamine. We can dismiss the soul as a temporary illusion, a mass hallucination perpetuated by religion and an evolved need for things beyond our understanding. Or we can turn the lens of cognitive science inward to explore, to look for the soul. That is the subject of the next blog: the Butterfly Within.