an extremely random thought about brains

i was thinking about brains the other day

it seems like we identified brains as being the source of thought long before we had any real evidence for doing so and i was wondering why this was,

it could be just instinct, because we have an instinct to protect the brain and head and therefore would have realised that it is important, but then, we misidentified the heart as the source of emotion just because it seems to react to emotional situations, so it can't just be that we have an instinct for knowing which organs do what in the body, there must be more to it than that.

is it because we "feel" like thoughts originate in the brain? and if so, do we "feel" like thoughts originate in the brain at all, or is it simply that we feel that way because the eyes and other sensory organs are in the head, and thats where we "look out" on the world?

if we had evolved so that our eyes, ears and noses were in our torsos, would we still have identified the brain as the source of cognition, or would we have ascribed that to another mysterious organ, the liver or kidneys, for example. if our primary sensory organs were located elsewhere, would we still feel like our thoughts originated in the head?

like a say, an extremely random thought, just thought i'd share.

 

It's probably because ancient people realized that a blow to the head shut everything down pretty quick, but a broken arm or leg didn't.

 

Recommended reading:

Rupert Sheldrake: A new science of life (1981) He proposes that memories are not stored in the human brain, and the template on which the human body is created from egg to embryo to child is dependent on subsequent organisms which come under their collective influence.




Hotwater

 

but a blow to the heart would have similar effects... i suppose they might have noticed that blows to the head can affect the ability to think, whereas other wounds didn't..

 

thanks for sharing

 

just wanted to emphasise, i do KNOW that the brain is responsible for thought, it just puzzles me how we figured that out so quickly.

 

I'm sure they'd of figured it out when they skinned their first meal. Lopped off the head, looked at the brain and realized that the brain functions thought, not their toes or fingers.
Even in the oldest scriptures of the oldest religions, there's always tales of lopping off a head and keeping it as an oracle or such.

 

yeah but how would they figure that out simply by looking at it? i suppose they could have noticed that the central nervous system seems to connect the brain to everything else, but i'm not so sure that that would have been so obvious a route of thought, had not their eyes, ears, nose and mouth also been situated on the head.

say if evolution had taken a path by which our eyes, ears, nose etc had all been on our torso's, do you think that it would still be the head which was kept as oracle? (not the mouth, since, presumably, a dumb oracle isn't much use to anyone)

i'd suggest that where your eyes are would be a huge factor in determining where you thought thinking occured. one of the biggest, in fact.

 

I think u can look at it on different levels.
1)Shut down key parts of the brain, and you shut everything down.
Whereas arms, legs, liver etc can be removed or replaced.
So it tells us a lot.

2)Eastern branches of science add an extra consideration. The argument is that you use other organs while thinking. That includes the concept of the "gut feeling" etc

3)Finally, the brain itself is just proteins and water.And you can cut away large chunks of it and still fucntion. What firing it all?

I think its fair to say, some kind of energetic phenomenon - a soul, call it what you will? Does that reside in the brain proteins? Well, we can only understand things in 3 dimensions. The universe might have 7 or many more.

Who knows, maybe theres a theory like Sheldrake's that has some sort of validity?(altho I've no doubt I'd prefer other theeories).

I heard that the Church was originally analysing bodies by dissection.
FInally a compromise was reached and they agreed to dissect organs EXCEPT the brain. So the argument goes, this is why we understand so little of the brain...

 

I think you've foregone alot of history. For example, 1st c. Roman physician Galen understood that heart didn't contain fire, but blood; however it wasn't until Da Vinci that a full understanding of cardio-pulmonary circulation came into being. Conversely, our deepest thinkers as far back as Ancient Greece and Egypt had some concept that thoughts (irrespective of intrinsic or extrinsic influence) occurred in the brain. Substantiation is only more recently. Most ancient cultures had "shamans" or "visionaries" or philosophers that through introspection and perspicacity understood that the "mind's eye" and that "Jimney cricket" voice is something WE ALL have. It's an indication that all neural functioning is working and they grasped the logic of "feelings point to locations". Descartes best summed it with "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am?)
Da Vinci once said "there are worlds created and destroyed in the mind that are more wonderful than anything on earth!".
And no, according to the "call and response" functioning of basic neuroscience, if our "mind" was in another locale or several (like some species) we'd perceive it elsewhere. And what a mixed up homonculous
that would be!!!
Keep searching young padawan!

 

I imagine our knuckle dragging ancestors figured out that things were going on upstairs when like if they didn't eat they'd get a headache. Or if they ate this one particular plant their head would spin, lol.

Way back when, some doctor type dude noticed these things going on with peoples heads and decided to dig a hole in someones skull to see what was going on in there.

Check out 'ancient brain surgery': http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...-top&fr=slv8-yie8&pqstr=ancient brain surgery

 

These days we have several different brain imaging techniques, like fMRI's for instance that can measure and highlight VIA a computer specific regions of the brain that are activated during particular activities that involve thought.

Head injuries have been known to disturb individuals thinking, this has probably been witnessed since ancient times, to the case of Phineas Gage, to concussions in football. I'd guess that aside from intuitively feeling like thinking is within the head, head injuries were probably some of the initial sources of confirmation.

This is not strictly an eastern concept. It's known that chemical messengers such as serotonin which functions as a neurotransmitter are also located in the stomach, So its understood that areas outside the brain can influence thought.

 

true, true. one of the questions that interests me in all this is: do we "intuitively feel" like thinking is in the head, or is this simply a mixture of the psychosomatic (we know that the brain is responsible for thought, therefore we imagine the feeling in the head, when we're old enough to think about it) and the fact that our primary sensory organs (the eyes) are there.

if, for example, our primary sensory organ was a sensitive nose, like a bloodhound, or even if we were blind, like moles and mainly used tactile sensations and vibrations to figure out where we are, would we intuitively feel that our thoughts originated in the head, or all over our skin?

do we really feel thoughts happening? or do we merely ascribe the sensation to being behind our primary sensory organ?

 

Eventhough we have confirmation that the brain is responsible for thought now, I'd guess for the past several thousand years prior to being able to test that, we had an intuitive sense that our thoughts originate there. Most are senses are located around the head, eyes for sight, nose for smell, ears for hearing, mouth for taste. So with that much concentration of key aspects of our existence, I think we probably develop a natural intuitive sense thoughts originate around there as well since they feel as if they do. I think we benefit from the versatile capability of being able to think about thoughts and process thoughts in a more autonomic way via sensations to our senses.

Assuming our frontal lobes were still as developed as a humans are then Id say yes, For instance most blind people ive talked with still look at you when you talk to them, I have even discussed the mind and thoughts a couple times with blind individuals. I obviously can't know for sure where a bloodhound senses its thoughts but if it can think about thinking in any capacity, I'd suspect it also feels its thoughts are in its head as the olfactory bulb which is mostly responsible for registering smells is located in the brain.

 

All this boring text is making my abdomen hurt.