Lisa F. Barrett, "Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain

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 Lisa Feldman Barrett, "Seven and a Half Lessons about Brain" (2020)

 

저자의 Extended Notes

 

 

The Half-Lesson: Your Brain Is Not for Thinking

 

"Your brain's most important job is to control your body -- to mange allostasis -- by predicting energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive." (p. 10)

 

Lesson No. 1: You have One Brain (Not Three)

 

"Scientists have recently discovered that the brains of all mammals are built from a single manufacturing plan." (p. 21)

 

"[T]he manufacturing process runs in stages, and the stages last for shorter or longer durations in different species. The biological building blocks are the same; what differs is timing. (p. 21)

 

"The triune brain idea and its epic battle between emotion, instinct, and rationality is a modern myth." (p. 24)

 

Lesson No. 2: Your Brain Is a Network

 

"It's also the case that different groups of neurons can produce the same result." [degeneracy] (p. 38)

 

Lesson No. 3: Little Brains Wire Themselves to Their World

 

"[B]ut little human brains are born under construction. They don't take on their full adult structure and function until they finish their wiring, a process that takes about twenty-five years." (p. 47)

 

"To a remarkable extent, a baby's genes are guided and regulated by the surrounding environment." (p. 48)

 

"A human embryo creates twice as many neurons as an adult brain needs, and infant neurons are quite a bit bushier than neurons in an adult brain.... Pruning these extra connections makes room for more learning -- that is, for more useful connections to be tuned." (p. 51)

 

Lesson No. 4: Your Brains Predict (Almost) Everything You Do

 

"It's just a barrage of light waves, chemicals, and changes in air pressure with no inherent significance....Your brain must somehow make meaning from the onslaught of sense data it's receiving." (p. 66)

 

"The painter Marcel Duchamp once said that an artist does only 50 percent of the work in creating art. The remaining 50 percent is in the viewer's brain." (p. 70) [시도 그렇다는 얘기다.]

 

"Neuroscientists like to say that your day-to-day experience is a carefully controlled hallucination, constrained by the world and your body but ultimately constructed by your brain.... This whole constructive process happens predictively." (pp. 70-71) [경험이 나니 '나'는 내 뇌의 진행형 프로젝트다. 나는 내가 쓰는 시다.]

 

"But in your brain, sensing actually comes second.... Yes, your brain is wired to initiate your actions before you're aware of them." (pp. 76-77)

 

"It is also possible to change predictions to cultivate empathy for other people and act differntly in the future. An organization called Seed of Peace tries to change predictions by bringing together young people from cultures that are in serious conflict, like Palestinians and Israelis." (p. 79)

 

Lesson No. 5: Your Brain Secretely Works with Other Brains

 

"Little by little, your brain becomes tuned and pruned as you interact with others." (p. 84)

 

"The power of words is not a metaphor. It's in your brain wiring." (p. 90)

 

Lesson No. 6: Brains Make more than One Kind of Mind

 

Lesson No. 7: Our Brains Can Create Reality

 

 

십 년 넘게 뇌 특히 의식(consciousness)에 관한 책들을 읽어 오는데, 올봄에 읽고 포스팅한 Patricia S. Churchland, "Conscience" (2019) 이후로는 이 책이 처음이다. 지난주 샌님의 블로그 포스트 "이토록 뜻밖의 뇌과학"에서 알게 된 책이다. 최근에 나온 이 두 책이 다 energy requirement 또는 body budget 그리고 유소년기의 'nurture'를 통한 뇌의 성숙에 대해 좀 많이 언급하고 있는 것은 우연이 아닌 것 같다. 이전 "Conscience" 포스트에 인용했던 한 구절을 다시 읽어본다:

 

"Infant human brains make about  10 million synapses (neural connections) each second. By puberty, the human brain has increased its weight fivefold over its birth weight.... The nature of the cortex is to modify its connectivity so as to map the effects of nurture."  (p. 35, "Conscience")