CEREBRART - painting the island of Reil

The human insula (or island of Reil) is an evolutionary old (paleocortex) and entirely hidden brain structure, a polymodal integrative zone, implicated in a large number of different functions and dysfunctions. E.g. insular cortex is intensely activated by painful stimuli or foul stimuli such as rotting fish and is responsible for the processing of social emotions related to the current motivational state. In the mature brain the insular cortex is situated in the depths of the lateral sulcus and revealed only when the banks of the lateral sulcus are partially separated or when the brain is dissected. The insula passed through a progressive differentiation during terrestrial vertebrata evolution, and is greatly expanded in humans playing an important role in the extended integrated action cycle (that starts in Integration, Information, Motivation, Intention and Volition, and culminates in Action and Reflection).

Fishes use a special sensory system to obtain information about minute water movements: the lateral line system. The lateral line system decodes the information in the water surrounding the fish to enable the fish to identify and localize the source of the perturbation. From the lateral-line system of fishes evolved the vestibular system of terrestrial vertebrata which deals with equilibrium and position in space and ascending thalamocortical projection from the vestibular nuclei to the insular cortex which is important in the conscious awareness of head motion, balance, orientation, appropriate actions and integration/memorization of the paths taken. Likely, the insula is one of the most changed regions of the human brain. This CEREBRART work illustrates an evolutionary trend in the island of Reil development.

 

CEREBRART - PAIN INFORMATION

Pain (an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential damage, or described in terms of such damage) gives nociceptive information to the brain about injuries, helps to survive and is probably far more complicated than the other perceptual modalities. The three stages of pain information transmission can be recognized. Firstly, pain information is generated using peripheral receptors (nociceptors). Secondly, transmission of pain information from the periphery to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. Passage of pain information to higher brain centers, leading to the third stage of pain affect, motivation to reduce pain  and appropriate action. Humans do something because it gives them pleasure or because it helps to avoid pain.

So, pain information generates both sensations and motivations to act and is distributed to many brain areas, which reflects its tremendous evolutionary significance for survival. The central processing of pain information includes transmission to brain stem centers, where autonomic nervous system responses are recruited, to the limbic system, where the emotional components of pain are experienced, and to the cortex, where pain information is perceived and interpreted, It has been shown that painful stimuli activate a vast network of cortical areas, involved in the generation of painful percepts and including the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, the insula, posterior parietal cortex, anterior and mid-cingulate cortex, and parts of the prefrontal cortex. This CEREBRART work illustrates nociceptive regions in parasylvian cortex that are involved in processing pain information.

CEREBRART - DESTRUCTIVE ACTION

The most evolutionary ancient part of the brain, the brain stem is made up of three basic regions-midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata. Evolutionary highly conserved and the most primitive brainstem system, which extends from the spinal cord to the basal diencephalon, links the “higher-order” brain to the spinal cord and controls communication between the cerebral cortex and the spinal cord and peripheral nerves. The brainstem system controls basic drives and reactions that appeared far back in evolutionary time, with the emergence of terrestrial vertebrates. E.g. many involuntary actions, such as swallowing, are controlled by nervous cells of the brain stem. Human unmotivated destructive actions may be seen as a reaction to perceived threat that is mediated by the threat-response system in the brain stem. Now, an experiment is in progress with the planet, devised to test its ability to sustain and tolerate the burden of human unmotivated and not properly reflected destructive actions. No human brain has ever openly declared this experiment or supported it, but its elementary destructive actions are nonetheless carefully planned, actively pursued and strongly supported by lots of conscious cerebral cortexes. This CEREBRART work illustrates artistically an idea that human destructive actions biologically rooted in our evolutionary ancient past may induce not only destruction of our external environment but also destruction of our own brains.

CEREBRART - Hallucination

Hallucinations are well-known examples of informational chaos in the brain - perceptions that occur in the absence of external stimuli produced by the spontaneous activity of nerve cells in the visual or auditory cortex and thought to be due to the chaotic nature of the autoactivation process and to the failure to recognize them as unreal - to distinguish inner and outer. People who have auditory hallucinations hear sounds and voices that seem to come from outside their heads and cannot recognize that the sounds are actually coming from within.

This CEREBRART work shows two activated brain areas that runs the neurocognitive system into chaotic hallucinatory iteration. Broca’s area (areas 44 and 45) is a region of the inferior frontal lobe with functions linked to speech production. And the auditory cortex of the superior temporal gyrus, the brain area that helps people hear sounds. Continuous feedback information flow between frontal lobe and auditory areas of the temporal lobe are extremely important for volitional speech production. Conversely, impairment of this feedback information flow, as shown here artistically, might be related to hallucinatory phenomena - people hear sounds produced by their own brains.

Boris Strugatsky: In Memoriam

A famous writer Boris Strugatsky died in Saint Petersburg today on November 19, 2012. The Strugatsky brothers - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - were highly influential for my personal development and intellectual interests, and traces of their works are here, embedded in my cerebrart blog posts - visible or invisible...

CEREBRART - FREE WILL

Is there no room for genuine free will?

 Ancient philosophers held many conflicting views about the nature of free will. Free will problem is actually a tricky problem, to which the solutions aren't clear - it matters how one defines "Free Will". Most people intuitively accept that free will exists. But because the human brain is composed of physical objects, and their behavior is governed by the laws of nature, some contemporary scientists maintain that free will is just an illusion and we are merely puppets.

 Brain sciences give us some opportunities to study the biological processes that surround free will and we have a growing number of experiments which state free will is an illusion and the very notion of free will is incoherent. Well, these experiments raise interesting questions about the concept of free will. However, there are lots of theoretical problems.

 There remain some sharp criticisms of recent experiments. Some data have no serious relevance to free will problems. Unfortunately, very few scientists have said exactly how these experimental data are supposed to undermine free will. Much more importantly - these experiments based on purely mechanistic models are very far away from our real lives and real decisions.

Therefore, I suggests that we ought to focus on real important actions and real important decisions that are grounded in our metadisciplinary extended integrated model of brain where Volition is
not the whole thing but merely a part of a chaotically connected dynamic networks of seven modules: Integration, Information, Motivation, Intention, Volition, Action and Reflection. This CEREBRART work will prompt readers to seek new serious arguments for discussing free will problem.

I believe there is enough room here for serious discussion.

CEREBRART - EVOLUTIONARY ATTRACTOR

The term attractor is used to mean the set of states towards which other states in a given basin of attraction asymptotically approach in the course of evolution - the trajectory will always fall onto the same attractor. Many natural systems can be characterized as being chaotic - cosmic, meteorological, heart and brain of living organisms and so on. For a chaotic system, its strange attractor represents the envelope of possibility within which its future motion will be contained. These considerations make the attractor concept very useful in evolution studies, including the brain evolution studies. Brain evolution is a complex chaotic weave of processes bound by diverse rules and principles, and the factors driving evolutionary changes in brain structures probably changed over time. Nevertheless, brain evolves not altogether randomly, but in accordance with a set of leading laws or principles and human brain shares the same basic anatomical plan which is found in all mammals and even in amphibians and reptiles. Thus, nature has provided us with a robust message that the brain could be seen as an attractor over the course of evolution. In other words, biological evolution of higher animals is directed by their brain. Hopefully, these chaotic considerations and my humble CEREBRART work will prompt readers to seek more supporting evidence for the chaotic brain evolution theory.