One thing I have always struggled with in reading philosophy is the doctrine of Innatism, which holds that the human mind is born with ideas or knowledge. This belief, put forth most notably by Plato as his Theory of Forms and later by Descartes in his Meditations, is currently gaining neuroscientific evidence that could validate the belief that we are born with innate knowledge of our world.

The predominant belief and assumption about human learning and memory is that we are born as a “blank slate,” and we gain our knowledge and ideas through new experiences and our memory of them. This belief is known as Empiricism and, although dates back to Aristotle, has been supported by many famous philosophers such as John Locke and Francis Bacon. However, a study published in last March’s Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS) may, to an extent, discredit this main theory of knowledge collection. The research, conducted by the Blue Brain Group in Switzerland, explored the remarkable similarities in the neuronal circuitry in the neocortices of all brains. The study, summarized in this article in PNAS, essentially “discovered a synaptic organizing principle that groups neurons in a manner that is common across animals and hence, independent of individual experiences.” This discovery may have huge implications on our understanding of learning, memory, and development. The groups of neurons, or cell assemblies, appear consistently in the Neocortices of animals and are essentially cellular “building blocks”. In many animals then, it may hold true that learning, perception, and memory are a result of putting these pieces together rather than forming new cell assemblies. According to Dr. Markram, “This could explain why we all share similar perceptions of physical reality, while our memories reflect our individual experience.” This is a remarkable example of the ways in which neuroscience and its research is revolutionizing our understanding of the ways in which we come to know and perceive our universe, while simultaneously answering major philosophical questions. While these findings may go against the incredibly popular empirical view of knowledge, they lend themselves very well to the notion of innate ideas. Plato and Descartes used this general theory to explain human reasoning. Plato believed that the human soul exists eternally, and exists in a “world of forms (or ideas)” before life; all learning is the process of remembering “shadows” of these forms here on Earth. While this idea is still a little out there for me at least (and it may take a little more scientific evidence to support that claim), Descartes’ claims seem very consistent with the Blue Brain Group’s findings.
Descartes proposed that the inborn ideas that we possess are those of geometric truths and all of our intelligence can be accessed through reason. Discussing ideas in his fifth meditation, he states “We come to know them by the power of our own native intelligence, without any sensory experience. All geometrical truths are of this sort — not just the most obvious ones, but all the others, however abstruse they may appear.” Another study supporting this notion is the result of research on “intuitive physics,” or the seeming understanding we possess of the physical behavior of objects in our universe without even thinking about it. In an article summarizing the study, Janese Silvey provides the example that “if a glass of milk falls off a table, a person will try to catch the cup but not the liquid spilling out. That person is reacting rather than consciously thinking about what to do.” The report on the actual experiment, by Susan Hespos and Kristy vanMarle, showed that infants possess expectations that, for example, objects still exist when they are hidden, and are surprised when these expectations are not met (surprise was indicated in the study by a longer looking time). Other experiments were conducted to demonstrate the understanding that infants from 2-5 months old have of cohesive properties, solidity of materials, and other basic physical characteristics of objects. The full report of the findings can be found here.
For me, the best news that comes out of this is that these new findings compromise both the philosophical doctrines of innatism and empiricism, opening up new discussions of exactly what knowledge and learning mean.

Markram’s Study on Synaptic Organization-PNAS

Physics for Infants-WIREs Cognitive Science

Descartes’ Theories of Innate Ideas-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Plato’s Theory of Forms and Thoughts on Innate Ideas-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Infants Understand More Than Thought-Columbia Daily Tribune

New Evidence for Innate Ideas-Blue Brain Group

Art is popular. There are many people that enjoy, support, or make a living off of art. It has the power to evoke emotion and also to allow one to express emotion through shapes, color, and patterns. Brains are popular too, but in a different sense. Everyone has a brain. Some may use it more than others, but it is something that all humans possess.  This is, of course, excluding the various other life forms on earth that  make use of a brain. What is not so popular is brain art. Especially brain art that is anatomically correct. The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art claims to be the largest collection of anatomically accurate representations of the brain made entirely from fabric. How exciting! The inspiration for each piece comes from dissections of the brain, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscience research, and positron emission tomography or PET (another medical imaging technique). These self-deemed “neuroartists” employ traditional art techniques such as quilting, knitting, and rug hooking to create their cranial masterpieces. Although extremely talented, these artists do warn not to use the accuracy of their art as a guide for any kind of surgical medical endeavor.

Check out one of the pieces:

"The Knitted Brain" by Karen Norberg

Check out some more of the collection here:

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Brain Art

I have some news that might be a bit disappointing to…well, pretty much anyone who would find themselves on a blog dedicated to the mind and brain.  Bear with me (or not, if you’d like, really), but this is a post primarily about the heart.

I was recently introduced via a grad student in the (yes, neuroscience) lab I work in to the latest advancement in the race to perfect an artificial heart. That link is to an NPR article that really tells you everything you need to know…and you should absolutely read it.  But to summarize the details you need to know for my purposes here, the design is completely novel, and unlike previous designs, it doesn’t use nature as its inspiration.

All previous artificial hearts have attempted to mimic the beating of a natural heart, but the moving parts can wear down or cause problems such as blood clots.  Instead, this implant has only two moving rotors, spinning to move the blood continuously rather than in pulses.  Let that sink in for a second.  Yes, transplant recipients have no heartbeat.  And the first recipient lived for over a month in this state before dying of underlying problems, the “heart” still working perfectly.

So here, finally, is what all of this has to do with the brain.  The main message I took home from the NPR article and subsequent discussion (aside from, as the aforementioned grad student pointed out, the fact that one with such an implant should never accidentally fall asleep in public) is that while our instinct has previously been to imitate nature, that might not always be the most efficient logistical solution. Dr. Billy Cohn, one of the creators of the device, put it very well when he pointed out that many of the earliest attempts at flying machines had flapping wings before we realized that what works for birds and insects isn’t necessarily the best answer for us.

I decided to pass this information on to my mom, a cardiac catheterization lab RN, and someone as in love with the heart as I am with the brain.  Her eyes lit up when she realized that systole and diastole, that is, the heart’s pulsations serve no purpose aside from the maintenance of the heart itself, and the flow of blood—there’s no reason it can’t be continuous and steady if the heart itself is artificial.  “You might start seeing these soon,” I told her, “they’re the future of your field.”  “So what about you?” she replied, “How far off are artificial brains?”  I rolled my eyes at her joke.  Then it slowly occurred to me that, while still absurd for discussions of transplant purposes, just because something doesn’t function in the same way as its natural counterpart, doesn’t mean it isn’t the same thing.

So aren’t we already pretty close?

Research has been conducted that proves that our thoughts can control the rate of firing of neurons in our brain. This research reveals the crucial advancement of brain-operated machines in the field. John P. Donoghue at Brown University has conducted research that uses neural interface systems (NISs) to aid paraplegics. NISs allows people to control artificial limbs; individuals simply need to think about commanding their artificial limbs and signals are sent down from their brain to control the movement of these limbs! This great feat is not the only applicable result of current research done by brain-machine interfaces. Dr. Frank Guenther of Boston University uses implanted electrodes in a part of the brain that controls speech to tentatively give a voice back to those who have been struck mute by brain injuries. The signals produced from these electrodes are sent wirelessly to a machine that is able to synthesize and interpret these signals into speech. This is specifically useful for patients suffering from locked in syndrome, wherein an individual with a perfectly normal brain is unable to communicate due to specific brain damage, and thus allowing these individuals to communicate with the world! These discoveries are not only incredibly useful, but they also reveal the astonishing feats that the field of computational neuroscience is accomplishing in the world today.

On-line, voluntary control of human temporal lobe neurons

Guenther, Boston University

Donoghue, Brown University