–Mohammad Orooj Azmi
‘The Brain: The Story Of You’ is a marvelous book on brain written by the renowned Neuroscientist David Eagleman, who is currently an adjunct professor at Stanford University after directing a neuroscience research laboratory for 10 years at Baylor College of Medicine. Well known for his research in the field of neurobiology, he has also appeared in various platforms such as BBC and Ted Talks to indulge more and more people in understanding the beauty of the inner cosmos that defines us, our lives and our identities.
‘The Brain: The Story Of You’ was a book I read after almost a period of 2 years throughout which I engaged myself in academics without having been able to read any books outside my curricular and this book was probably the best choice to reignite my habit of reading. The Brain is a journey that takes you into the cosmos that resides within you, precisely within your skull, a journey that tells the story of you, the story of how your life shapes your brain and consequently how your brain shapes your life.
Reading this book is like taking the deepest dive into the ‘Ocean of Knowledge’ or perhaps, I should say, the infinitely large cosmos itself. The author begins the book by discussing the fact that how far behind we seem to be in terms of development when compared to other members across the animal kingdom, for example, a zebra learns to run after forty five minutes of it’s birth, giraffes learn to stand within hours and dolphins can swim from the moment they are born yet human babies take months before they can stand up and walk.
He points out these facts that seems to show that we are inferior to other species but in fact, being born ‘unfinished’ is our greatest advantage in this world. It gives us the ability to ‘wire’ the circuitry of the brain according to the surrounding we live in and thus makes us the most adaptable species on Earth.
The author makes us aware of processes such as ‘pruning’ and ‘strengthening’ of the circuitry taking place in our neural matter and how our lifestyles plays a major role in the aforementioned processes which eventually defines us – our behavior, our personality and identity.
We get to know the mechanism of how our brain develops the way it does, how the circuitry changes according to the environment we live in when we are mere children, according to the people we stay with, the conversations we have, the lifestyles we adopt as newly fledged adults and even according to the movies we watch!
As a proof, the author gives us details about his researches – one such research was where he studied the brain activities of London Cab drivers who undergo four years of intensive training to pass the “Knowledge of London”, one of society’s most difficult feats of memory and also gives us insight to Einstein’s brain, one of 20th century’s most valuable neural matter, and how his love for playing violin also had an effect to the circuitry of his brain.
These were only the topics discussed in the beginning chapters of this brilliant book, and as the book goes on, it covers more and more immersive topics such as plasticity of the brain, fallibility of memory, pathological changes in the brain that makes people do things they wish that they hadn’t, he also takes us to a journey where we meet people with unique disorders such as synesthesia, alien hand syndrome etc. and how their life, their experiences and the adaptations made by their brains sheds light on the unimaginable ability of the cosmos inside us – The Brain.
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He also discusses about consciousness and unconsciousness, he explains eloquently that how the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg of our neural cosmos and there lies a much greater portion that lies beyond our control, that is, the unconscious part of the brain which is influenced by our lifestyle, habits, company and thoughts.
How most of the time we are controlled by the unconscious portion of the brain, staying in ‘autopilot’ for most of the time and how there lies a difference between the synchronicity of the neurons in our brain that differentiates between the two (consciousness and unconsciousness).
How we are able to tell that “this is reality” and conclude that whatever we saw while we were asleep “was a dream”. He makes us go through several thought experiments such as ‘The Chinese Room Argument’, ‘The Trolley Dilemma’, ‘The Blue Eyed – Brown Eyed Experiment’ and many more that leaves us wondering and in awe.
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One of the topics which he spoke on was the occurrences of mass genocides across history such as the Holocaust, perpetrated by the Nazis in which the Jews were used as scapegoats. The systematic killing of over a million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, the Nanking massacre of 1937, the killing of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda largely by machetes and also the most recent event, the killing of over 100,000 Muslims by the Serbians in the Yugoslav War between 1992 and 1995 which came to be known as ‘ethnic cleansing’.
You might’ve seen the aforementioned dark events in history from a political perspective for sure but, David Eagleman in his book sheds light on these events from the neurological point of view – the changes in the brain that led to these occurrences and made these act seem ‘ok’ to the public, like there is nothing wrong with it.
To explain it he discusses the concept of ‘dehumanization’, which is essentially a process in which people are manipulated on a neurological level which makes them perceive the victims not as ‘fellow humans’ but as mere ‘objects’. Dehumanization is a key component of mass genocide and just as the Nazis perceived the Jews as some lesser beings, the Serbs in Yugoslavia viewed the Muslims in the same way.
Such wars, like all others, are fueled by an effective form of neural manipulation, one that has been practiced for centuries, writes Eagleman, and that is – Propaganda. During the war, the major media outlets were directly under the control of the Serbian government and they consistently presented distorted news stories as factual.
They made reports of ethnically motivated attacks by Bosnian Muslims and Croats against the Serbs. They continuously demonized Bosnians and Croatians and used negative language in their descriptions of Muslims. The media outlets even went to the length of broadcasting an unfounded story that Muslims were feeding Serbian children to hungry lions at the zoo.
This was truly a magnificent perspective to a matter of such grave degree and sadly enough, these practices of dehumanization is still in play in today’s society as well and in many countries, including the one where we are today. So, to avoid these kinds of dark incidents in the coming future the public needs to be educated and be made more vigilant so as to not fall for propaganda and thus not be manipulated on a neural level unconsciously.
Towards the end of the book the author discusses about how far human civilization has come and how the beautiful brain is responsible for the success of our species and points out stupendous achievements in technology such as cochlear implants, retinal implants, tools that are being designed for sensory substitution and discusses future prospects of technology such as preserving memory of notable personalities to come and laments upon the inability to do so currently as the current generation itself has seen geniuses like Einstein, Hawking, Crick and many more.
This book was certainly a magnificent read and undoubtedly worth the time and effort as every topic left me wondering and in awe. I recommend this book to whoever reads this article. Whether you are a student, a parent, a doctor, an engineer or anything else, you should read this book so as to understand yourself, the mechanism that governs you that gives you your personality and identity and also others around you.
Published By: Canon Gate Publishers Edinburgh, London
(M. Orooj Azmi is Kolkata based independent writer.)
