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The Brain, within its Groove


The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly—and true—
But let a Splinter swerve—
'Twere easier for You—

To put a Current back—
When Floods have slit the Hills—
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—
And trodden out the Mills—

by Emily Dickinson

- from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955)

As with all Dickinson poems, interpretations range widely. Is she talking about a mechanistic model of a brain here, which catastrophically stops functioning if parts of it are ruptured, never to be whole again? Is she musing metaphorically about a descent into mental illness, describing the fragility of our cognitive apparatus and our ability to maintain mental stability? Or is she referring to a sudden rush of ideas and speculations, when we are distracted from our train of thought, wildly drawn in different directions, unable to close the floodgates? You tell me.

I’ve been thinking about brains this weekend. About those that seemingly stopped running “evenly – and true – and delivered some huge cognitive dissonance instead. And about those that are not really fully formed brains, yet display a surprising amount of human brain function, set in recognizable grooves and growing towards a more and more familiar shape.

The first category arose from the 76th Berlin Film Festival, with someone who stunned with statements during the opening press conference that directly contradicted what they had said previously. Jury president Wim Enders (yes, that Wim Wenders) was asked about the “selective” solidarity shown to Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and other war torn regions around the world, with Gaza willfully ignored. His answer?

“We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics,” he said. “But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

This is the same brain that announced 2 years ago: “The Berlinale has traditionally been the most political of the major festivals, and it is not staying out of politics now, nor will it do so in the future.”

Cognitive dissonance in the service of avoiding engagement in the genocide debate, of combating the fear of being called anti-Semitic for any word uttered on behalf of Palestinians, of yielding to the pressure of having to align with Germany’s “Staatsräson.” How does an intelligent brain cope with this?

Arundathi Roy withdrew from the festival in protest. “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping. It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and film-makers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”

I could not agree more.

***

The second category of brains are really minuscule little brain balls or so called  “Human Brain Organoids (HBOs),” tiny, 3D versions of a human brain the size of a peppercorn. The unexpected discovery of these things during research with stem cells in 2011 led to a flurry of research programs, from understanding how brains develop in a fetus, to possible ways to combat cancer.

These organoids mimic the developmental trajectories, cellular composition, neural circuits, and anatomical structures of the in vivo human brain (Seto and Eiraku, 2019). Some of them develop spontaneously from cell cultures, grow on their own and have the characteristics of multiple brain regions. Others are manipulated by scientists gearing them towards specific brain functions, and still others are “assembloids, fusing various specific brain regions, or organdies from non-brain regions, like muscles or retinas.

No longer science fiction: you can take material from donors with certain neurological diseases, including microcephaly, Alzheimer’s disease, or Timothy syndrome, grow these HBOs from their stem cells, and then subject them to any imaginable medical intervention/drug/manipulation to see if you can figure out a way to combat the disease. No worry about side effects or dangers to a living person, all trials done just on these brain balls in the lab.

Researchers have lately been able to transplant these organoids into animals, mice, rats and monkeys among them, and have shown that they can restore malfunctions in those host animals – helping them to reestablish motor functions that were damaged, improve memory in those that had memory and learning difficulties, and helped with healing of the visual cortex in rats that were blind.

Scientists have even, believe it or not, been able to produce interphases with these HBOs and computer systems, allowing them to play a simplified version of computer games. Theoretically, you could build systems where these neuronal structures power computers on a large scale, making the significant energy demands from current AI systems obsolete.

A groove made from a combination of biological substance and silicone…. what could go wrong? What swerving splinters will create havoc?

One big unknown, hotly debated, is the question of HBOs developing consciousness, and the associated ethical issues.

I am not going into the whole consciousness debate today. Let me just sketch the basic definitions psychologists use to distinguish types of consciousness. One is phenomenal consciousness – having the raw experiences that go with sensations and emotions.

The other is access consciousness. An entity has access consciousness when it has access to information and in most cases can use that information in some fashion. Access is obviously a matter of degree. A thermostat has limited access – it registers the temperature and reacts accordingly, by clicking on or off. We would obviously not call that consciousness. We use the general term access consciousness only if there is a fairly broad range of access and also a broad range of ways in which that information gets used.

Consider Tina who is now aware that Thai food is extremely spicy. Her knowledge comes from just having read about the way Thai food is prepared. Or her knowledge is derived from the pain in her mouth after her first bite, reaching for a glass of milk to handle it. The former is access, the latter phenomenal consciousness.

Given those different kinds, scientists do wonder where the line is for non-human entities to display access consciousness, or for animals, who we often grant even phenomenal consciousness. The organoids have access to information and act on it in predictable fashion, in complex ways.

Once you acknowledge a form of consciousness, all kinds of ethical principles kick in. Here is the long version of the arguments applied to human brain organoids for those who are interested.

Pandora’s box comes to mind, if you ask me. But then again, my brain is perhaps too small to calibrate the relative merits and flaws of creating brains in a dish.

Music today tells part of the story.

Photographs from the Hunting Gardens in Pasadena, CA, all about grooves.