The Ghost in the Machine? Don’t look Behind the Curtain!

Traditionally, religious and non-religious thinkers promoted the idea that everyone had a “soul” or “ghost in the machine” that controlled the person’s higher functions. It is not unusual for most of us to feel that there is a single “I” in control, however, neuroscience has challenged this. It has put forward the idea that the self aside from being an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, is actually a network of brain systems.1

The first hints of this occurred after a 19th century fellow, Phineas Gage, suffered an injury by having a spike go through his cheek and through his brain. Phineas’s perception, memory, language and motor functions were intact, but “Gage was no longer Gage.” He had turned from a courteous, responsible and ambitious person to one who was rude, unreliable and shiftless. Gage’s damage was to his ventromedial prefrontal cortex (the brain region above the eyes now known to be involved in reasoning about other people. Together with other areas of the prefrontal lobes and the limbic system (the seat of the emotions), it anticipates the consequences of one’s actions and selects behaviour in line with one’s goals.

Neuroscientists have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does what the ghost is supposed to do – review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. While the brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulated cortex, which can push the buttons of behaviour and override habits and urges, these systems are more like quirky gadgets that are quite limited. They are not implementations of a rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or self.

A demonstration of the illusion of the unified self

Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry showed that when one cuts the corpus callosum (the bridge between both hemispheres), they literally cut the self in two.

{MRI by Dr. Ed Riley, San Diego University}

Each hemisphere can exercise free will without the other’s advice or consent.

Even more disconcertingly, the left hemisphere continuously weaves a coherent but false account of behaviour chosen by the right hemisphere (without the left’s knowledge).

For example, if an experimenter flashes the command “WALK” to the right hemisphere (by keeping it in the part of the visual field that only the right hemisphere can see), the person will comply with the request and begin to walk out of the room. But when the person (specifically, the person’s left hemisphere) is asked why he just got up, he will say in all sincerity, “To get a Coke” – rather than “I don’t really know” or “The urge just came over me” or “You’ve been testing me for years since I had the surgery, and sometimes you get me to do things but I don’t know exactly what you asked me to do.”

Similarly, if the patient’s left hemisphere is shown a chicken and his right hemisphere is shown a snowfall, and both hemispheres have to select a picture that goes with what they see (each using a different hand), the left hemisphere picks a claw (correctly) and the right picks a shovel (also correctly). But when the left is asked why the whole person made those choices, it blithely says, “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”








Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, points out that the spooky part is that we have no reason to think that the baloney-generator in the patient’s left hemisphere is behaving any differently from ours as we make sense of the inclinations emanating from the rest of our brains. It appears that the conscious mid – the self or soul – is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.

I have to admit, a lot of these ideas kind of freak me out, but its better to face it than not.

(1. All ideas found here come from Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine”, Viking Press, 2002)

The Disappearance of Play

My three year old likes to use stones to stand-in for people in different scenarios. His playing this way is taken very seriously by him.

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor mentioned that the concept of "unstructured, self-initiated play" is vanishing from our culture. [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0718/p13s02-lign.html].

A professor of child development states: "Many young people today don't know how to play. Their time has been so programmed, so structured that they have had little time or opportunity to engage in self-­initiated activities."

He suggests that lack of play hurts one's success in higher-level math and science, as these ultimately require fantasy, curiousity and imagination.

Also, that when adults play with children, it allows children to see parents in a new way other then as power figures. "...when you are playing, you and the child are more equal," "This makes it easier to communicate," and both parent and child learn about each other.

And, while they may not verbalize it, children see parents giving up something to be with them. They see this as evidence that they are important and that the parent cares deeply about them.

The professor,sums up what parents can do in one word: Share. "Share your passions, share your experience, share your humor, share your decisionmaking and, most of all, share, your time," he says.



A brief list of play ideas:

All ages: Have daily chores; help someone else; read; play sports; joke; share stories about when you were a child; take walks or bike rides.

Preschoolers: Go to the playground.

Kindergarten to age 7: Make an art corner with paper, glue, ribbons, sparkles, fabric, boxes, string, and clay; make a fort; sleep out in a tent; play board games; play ball games, like catch; tell riddles and knock-knock jokes; cook and bake.

Ages 8 to 10: At this age, children are very much into playing with peers. Provide opportunities and materials (games, etc.) for such play, but don't intrude.

Ages 10 to 12: Again, preteens are very much into their friends, but they are happy to play catch or more sophisticated card games like poker or hearts with parents. Don't feel hurt if children prefer to play with friends.

Ages 13 and up: Now young people feel comfortable doing grown-up activities with parents: softball, golf, bowling, skiing, sailing, or hiking.

I want it to last and last...

Gunnar Madsen is an interesting kid's musician, likened to "Frank Zappa for the sippy set" (http://www.gunnarmadsen.com/) Before doing kid's music, he was in a group called The Bobs and in 1990 they wrote a song "Welcome to my Fog."

Some lyrics from this song have stayed with me:

when I go for a drive
I feel lucky to be alive
the air feels so good
coming off of the hood
and I don't go very fast
I want it to last
oh yea
strangely enough
it does

I think he's hit on something here, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. It's like some kid's proustean recollection of things past...where the goal is to remember experiences that transcend time. Whereas in our day to day lives, we often parcel out time throughout the day while events slowly grind us down. The poor blighters attached to Blackberries can't even turn time off without penalty.

I find the above lyrics simple but sensitive and sublime in what they are trying to capture.

I can't even remember my childhood or of things of importance from that time. It makes me want to ask others if they can remember theirs.

I wonder too how one holds onto these experiences without romanticizing childhood...?

I welcome any thoughts on any of this.