"The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Monday, October 26, 2009

12. Recollections [III] and Philosophy

The first part of Cajal's Recuerdas de mi vida is essentially the aubiographical bildüngsroman of a young romantic. Think of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, very much a mocking indictment of idealism. But unlike Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's pretentious protagonist, Cajal reaches the full potential of maturity. Though his name signifies the mythological artificer of wings, Stephen Dedalus fails to fly, whereas Cajal stays grounded all the while, with his eyes turned down to the earth. In this post, I will focus on Chapter II of Part II of Cajal's book: "The Story of My Scientific Work." Notice that Cajal believes the story of his life to be his work concerning nature, and not his personal development.
            During the years from 1884 to 1885, Cajal published a collection of scientific articles called "The marvels of histology" in a professional weekly in Zaragoza that was edited by a classmate and friend. Rather popular, these writings were re-printed in a journal in Valencia, where Cajal then lived and worked. Cajal reveals that these outputs were "overflowing with fantasy and ingenuous lyricism"[293], and seems embarrassed by them. Thus, he detached himself, signing the pieces Doctor Bacteria, a name that he "used for [his] philosophic-scientific temerities and [his] semiserious critiques"[293]. Also, we know, for his fiction: Vacation Stories. It is clear that Cajal, ever self-aware in his maturity, neatly separated the functions of his mind. On the one hand, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a gifted scientific scholar; on the other hand, Doctor Bacteria was a mediocre literary artist. This duality, emergent from his childhood and youth, defined his intellectual existence.
            But Cajal had an undeniable flare for the philosophical. In my last post, I vowed that I would silence my own ideas in favor of Cajal's. In Chapter II of his autobiography he presents some beautiful and honest ideas from his early career. One concerns our composition:

"'This uniformity in the composition of organic tissues, liquid as well as solid, in the muscle as well as in the nerve, in the stem as well as in the flower; this precise repetition of the same melodic theme forms the primordial truth of histology'"[295].

Then, acknowledging the threat that this internal multiplicity poses to individual unity, Cajal consoles with a powerful appeal:

"'Can it be that within our organic edifice there dwell innumerable inhabitants which palpitate feverishly, with impulses of spontaneous activity, without our taking any notice of them? And our much talked of psychological unity? What has become of thought and consciousness in this audacious transformation of man into a colony of polyps? It is certain that millions of autonomous organisms populate our bodies, the eternal and faithful companions of glories and of toils, of which the joys and sorrows are our own; and certain also that the existence of entities so close to us passes unperceived by the ego; but this phenomenon has an easy and obvious explanation if we consider that man feels and thinks by means of his nerve cells and the not I, the true external world, already begins for him at the frontiers of the cerebral convolutions'"[295].

In other words: I am my brain.

Next, he discusses competition using the example of spermatozoa, only one of which can succeed. He calls this a "depressing truth (the universal struggle):"

"Thus, as in every civilized nation the vital competition is done away with or greatly attenuated by the division of labour which makes the citizens have common interests and aspirations, so also in the organic state, thanks to the foresight of the nerve cells, to the allotment of function rôles, and finally to the suppression of idleness and of excessive individual liberty, etc., the struggle disappears or is moderated, appearing only when the communal nourishmen (of organs or cells) is seriously threatened from either internal or external causes"[297].

Politically, Cajal was a socialist. Here we see why; he would like government to operate like healthy nerve cells. It should be noted that all of his intellectual positions were formed from under a microscope.

Cajal also addresses individual death in a world where nature is concerned only with the life of the species:

"'A single life, however great it may be, even though ennobled by the fires of genius, signifies nothing in the eyes of Nature. That a whole town should succumb; that entire races should be annihilated in the struggle for existence; that zoological species formerly powerful should be sacrificed in the barbarous battle matters little to the controlling principle of the organic world. --The essential thing is thing is to win the conflict, to reach the goal which is the final objective of organic evolution'"[298].

Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act V, Scene Five:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing"

The latter never looked through a microscope, but there is more than one way to find at truth. Cajal's material observations are especially convincing, though.

Lastly, I will transcribe Cajal's biggest idea. It is for those who have made it to the end of the blog. Enjoy:

"'Let us console ourselves with the consideration that if the cell and the individual succumb, the human species, and above all the protoplasm, are imperishable. The accident dies, but the essential, that is the life lives on. Comparing the organic world with a tree of which the trunk is the original protoplasm, of which the branches and leaves represent all the species produced later by differentiation and improvement, what does it matter that some twigs are broken off by the storm if the trunk and the basic protoplasm persist with unabated vigor, giving promise of shoots of ever greater beauty and luxuriance? Critically speaking, there are no independent individuals, alive or dead, but only one single substance, protoplasm, which fills the world with its creations, which grows and ramifies and moulds itself temporarily into ephemeral individuals, but which never dies. In our being there moves still that ancient protoplasm of the archiplast (that is to say, the first cell which appeared in the cosmos), the point of departure, perhaps, of the whole of organic evolution.

. . .

This protoplasm filled both space and time with its creations; it crawled in the caterpillar, dressed itself with rainbow colours in the plant, adorned itself with the crown of intelligence in the mammal. It began unconscious and ended conscious. It was the slave and plaything of the cosmic forces and it ended as the driver of nature and the autocrat of creation.

. . .

Has it reached its limit and exhausted its fecundity in the human organism or is it keeping in its portfolio plans for still higher organisms, for beings infinitely more intelligent and understanding, who are destined to rend the veil which covers first causes and to do away with all the laborious polemic of scientists and philosophers?

. . .

Who knows? Perhaps this demigod, protoplasm, will also died on that sad, apocalyptic day when the torch of the sun is quenched, when the embers in the heart of our globe become cold and there remain upon its crust only funerary debris and barren ashes! Day of horror, solitude filled with anguish, night of utter darkness, that in which, with the light of the Universe, the light of thought is extinguished! But no! This is impossible! When our miserable planet is worn out and frigid old age has consumed the fire at its heart, and the earth becomes a glacial and unproductive desert, and the red and dying sun threatens to overwhelm us with everlasting darkness—organic protoplasm will have attained the culmination of its work. Then the king of Creation will abandon forever the humble cradle which rocked his infancy, will boldly attack other worlds, and will solemnly take possession of the Universe!'"

Have a good night.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

11.

            There are tens of thousands of words on this blog, neatly arranged. They represent my best attempts to share the soft, weak thoughts that I have tried to shape into elementary sentences. But I feel that this blog has thus far been no more than a convenient repository for my own crude ideas, which are irrelevant and unfounded. I stared this blog for Cajal, and I must remember to engage his materials and resist my theorizing. He is the wise one, and I am ignorant. I need to listen and read more, and talk and write less. And I must elevate my studies, my work, above the quotidian chaos of decision-making and personal life. There is so much noise and distraction in the world that hinders our progress.
            But eleven is a new beginning; from now on, I will train my focus on research topic: the unification of artistic and scientific thought, as seen in the life and work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. He was a complicated man with flaws and defects. Yet he overcame in order to achieve intellectual greatness. In the process, he gave the world an abundance of truth. My working thesis is that his discoveries re-direct the light of Truth like mimetic mirrors, clear, refined glass surface in which we might see and understand ourselves clearly and acquire the natural wisdom of self-knowledge.

My next post will address the second part of Cajal's autobiography: "The Story of My Scientific Work."


Friday, October 23, 2009

10. Recollections [II] and Romanticism

            First, a word about the quote I have permanently added to the page. In his writing, Cajal quotes and cites Goethe perhaps more than any other literary figure. This is a man who mistrusts most in the humanities. But, of course, Goethe is one of the greatest writers who has ever lived, having penned the romantic The Sorrows of Young Werther [so powerful that it is believed to have contributed to the rise in a generation's suicide rate] and the classic Faust [the protagonist seeks that which, "deep within it, binds the universe together"(382-3)]. The symbol of the rainbow in Faust II, Act 1 is as brilliant as in The Book of Genesis itself. But few know that Goethe was also a scientist; his most fascinating work was on color theory [no surprise, now, that he chose a rainbow as the "changing-unchanged" element, rising above this wordly turbulence]. I propose a definite intellectual kinship between Cajal and Goethe, both of whom undertook joint investigations of science and art and, in the process, dissolved the artificial barrier between the two. As young men, both endured phases of intense romanticism, but their greatest and most enduring contribution to the progress of human understanding came later, in maturity. The two geniuses agree on many things, including the faith in work and the futility of words. Perhaps one day I will venture a more in-depth comparison. But for now, I'll just joyfully read Faust once more. When I open the book, light pours out. That is despite the fact that it is more or less impossible to understand what is going on in that chaotic closet drama. Quite an achievement!

            For my bar-mitzvah in May 200, I received a book from our dear family friends. Their patriarch was a distinguished philosopher, Milton Munitz, whose first work on cosmology my mother helped publish. I remember that Milton was a warm and lovely man who happened to be brilliant. The book that his family gave me was called The Story of Philosophy, by Brian Magee [DK Publishing, 1998]. I just found it; I have it here before me. I opened the book, after ten years, to find the publisher's information and saw this inscription:

"Dear Ben, May you always search deeply for wisdom."


            I loved this book even though I did not understand it. One of my favorite philosophers was Søren Kierkegaard [I think I liked the swashbuckling slash through his first name's "o"]. Once, at the dinner table, I was talking about some idea I had read and my sister put down her fork emphatically and said "I DON'T CARE ABOUT KIKIKI!!! SHUT UP!" All of us had a big, healthy laugh. I love my sister because senses bullshit and will not stand for it. I still have read no Kierkegaard. Some guy in my Dostoevsky seminar at Middlebury invoked his name and drew a triangle on the board one day but it was too much of a stretch; I was hardly listening. One can get lost in the language of philosophy. Cajal describes it as a "mania."
            Anyway, looking in this book, Kierkegaard "proposed that the individual is "the supreme moral entity and that decision-making is the most important human activity -- through making choices we create our own lives"[209]. I agree with this, and so would Cajal. So maybe there is a [hyper]link here. But the real reason that I mention Kierkegaard is not to name-drop, or for association, but because I found a great quote from about genius:

"There are two kinds of geniuses. The characteristic of the one is roaring, but the lightning is meagre and rarely strikes; the other kind is characterized by reflection by which it constrains itself or restrains the roaring. But the lightning is all the more intense; with the speed and sureness of lightning it hits the selected particular points - and is fatal."

This is very insightful stuff. The first kind of genius is the one our discourse features most prominently. It is a very romantic concept of genius. Just look in your mind right now and describe what you see. Or, all we might need to do is think of the immediate associations. Or we could look on the wall or Facebook profile of a number of young people for Jack Kerouac's famous quote: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to etc." etc. etc. blah blah blah it's the Benzadrine talking. Pure emotion, like a drug, fast-acting but not long-lasting. But it feels great. Yes, it is always great if girls put your picture on their wall. Or tattoo your words on their arm.

I will admit: Also for my bar-mitzvah [an unexpected theme of this post] I received a copy of On the Road from my mother's best friend of fifty years for my bar-mitzvah. I devoured it. Me and three friends planned a cross-country trip. We found a wooden box, to which we each contributed a dollar-or-two a day, and buried it under our favorite graffiti tag [REBS] near the bus stop. [It was promptly stolen].

But for the love of a Literary God, when we talk about this important mania, romanticism, let's start to remember Nietzsche's even more beautiful, but less sexy quote, from Thus Spake Zarathustra:

"For I would rather have din and thunder and stormy cursing than this deliberate, dubious cat calm; and even among humans the ones I hate most are the soft steppers and half-and-halfs and dubious, dawdling drift-clouds."

[Oh boy . . . you feel the charge going through you? I do. Those are powerful, focused words. Because Nietzsche is such a careful wordsmith, that word "hate" is throbbing with real feeling like an angry heart. Most importantly, though he is an eminently skilled crafter of sentences, Nietzsche's stylization does not overtake his meaning. His words are solid and sweet, like hard candy. And I believe that naturalist imagery is always more purely accessibly than any other. Lightning is Nature's ultimate Roman candle. Sorry, Jack. I will still and always love you, like an old girlfriend].

           As a youth, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was as romantic as the protagonist of some nineteenth century French novel. In fact, he loved those books, which he found in his neighbor's house. His father, a "pure intellectual," did not allow fiction, or any fanciful flights of imagination for that matter. This included drawing, one of Cajal's gifts. Cajal had a "madness over drawing"[41]. In a truly hilarious episode, his father sought the advice of an artistic expert in order to paralyze his son's dreams. The only man available was a traveling house painter who was in town to whitewash the church's fire-burned walls. Young Santiago, eight years old, timidly presented drawing of an Apostle. The categorical verdict: "What a daub! Neither is this an Apostle, nor has the figure proportions, nor are the draperies right -- nor will the child ever be an artist"[40].
           But Cajal's art was not merely a hobby, it was a fever. He was addicted to the experience of Nature, "the intoxication of the aesthetic instinct,"[130] and would often take long walks by the Aragon river and contemplate adventure. "I gave rein joyfully to my romantic dreams and consoled myself for my sentimental solitude"[61]. In fact, the author uses a completely new vocabulary to describe his feelings, as though he were a different person under their influence. His words are from the vocabulary of sickness, learned, perhaps from his father. He regarded these indulgences as "frivolity and irregular behavior"[154]. Eventually, hepronounces himself "cured of his artistic madness"[129].
            He describes himself as having a "foolishly quixotic character"[213]. [More on Cajal's relationship to the Spanish hero at a later date]. Other terms: "determined and troublesome artistic tendencies"[99], "incorrigible idealism"[104], "dreamy sentimentality"[85]. Cajal was a very emotional youth, but, eventually, his powers of reason prevailed. I am learning a lot about his psychology and look forward to learning more as I receive more material. Apparently, in his youth, Cajal wrote poetic verses and an adventure novel; I have inquired as to their whereabouts. It is essential to remember that Cajal never lost his instincts, he only controlled them. As he says: "natural impulses, when they are very strong, may be modified somewhat, and often concealed themselves, but are never obliterated"[44]. Ain't that the truth!?

            In the second part of the autobiography, I look forward to reading about Cajal's incorporation artistic instincts into his scientific work. This is the nature of my investigation. It must have been a delicate balance.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

9. Recollections [1] and Kieslowski

There is more than one way to treat life, the softest tissue. The most beautiful memoir that I have ever encountered is Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory; the most truthful autobiography that I have ever read is Santiago Ramón y Cajal's Recuerdas de mi vida [Recollections of My Life, The MIT Press]. That vital document, is divided into two parts. The first, "My Childhood and Youth," accounts for the primitive history of a great mind. Cajal's literary method is pure illumination, including honest admission of imperfection. But it is the evolution of his elemental insight that drives the narrative, written truthfully and, at times, beautifully. [Sometimes it is naturally so].

            The greatest personal influence on Cajal's development came from his father, Justo Ramón y Cajal, a traditional, self-made doctor. From his father, Cajal acquired the traits of character to which he claims to owe "everything that [he] is"[4]. These traits are:

"a profound belief in the sovereign will; faith in work; conviction that a persevering and deliberate effort is capable of moulding and organizing everything, from the muscle to the brain, making up the deficiences of nature and even overcoming the mischances of character -- the most difficult thing in life"[4].

Moreover, Cajal's father presented to him "the beautiful ambition to be something worth while, and the determination to spare no sacrifice for the fulfilment of my aspirations, nor ever to deviate from the direct path on account of secondary motivates or minor reactions"[4-5]. By the end of his life, when he wrote Recuerdas, Cajal understood the inherent beauty of the our endeavors for meaning, the importance of nearly monastic dedication, and the proper judgment of importance. And, concerning his career, a dogged resolution will later focus his scientific vision. These are the foundations of his character. "There is no doubt that, aside from hereditary influence, the ideas and example of a father are factors of decisive importance in the education of his children," Cajal states, "and therefore are essential determinants of their tastes and inclinations." The relationship of Cajal to his father is undoubtedly the principle external formative force upon his plastic brain. No understanding of Cajal's life and work is complete without a paternal examination.
            But Cajal was also compelled by an inborn force he more than once calls the devil: the childish instinct to make mischief. It began naturally and innocently but became downright delinquent. "In the realm of the inclinations and tendencies of my mind," Cajal writes, "I was, like the majority of youngsters brought up in the small towns, an enthusiast for the open-air life and a tireless cultivator of games of strength and agility"[15]. This leads to an unconcern for the closeting classroom and a compulsion for physical activity that brings Cajal harsh punishment, even imprisonment, during his youth. "I was in my childhood a wayward creature, excessively mysterious, secretive, and unlikable," he admits[16]. But while the stories of his scampishness are entertaining and endearing [think of Antoine in Truffaut's Les Quatres Cents Coups], they are counterproductive to his success. Such is the process of growing up after all, a process of pushing against one's self although it feels as weighty as the world.
             Cajal experienced this human struggle, but I will save the retelling of anecdotes. I am concerned here and now with his mental life. So, Cajal believes two predominant natural inclinations lent to his character "a somewhat strange aspect"[16]. I would forego humility and say "special." These  are: "the investigation and contemplation of natural phenomena and a certain incomprehensible antipathy for social intercourse"[16]. Cajal is a naturalist thinker and writer; his sublime descriptions of walks along the Aragon River, a central and transformative metaphor in his life, are as fine as the finest literature. He writes, beautifully:

"Often, through long hours of contemplation I fell into a sweet lethargy; the gentle murmur of the ripples and the splashing of the water as it glided over the pebbles paralyzed my pencil, insensibly clouded my eyes, and produced in my brain a state of subconsciousness favorable for fantastic recallings of the past. The sound of the stream acquired little by little a quality of martial trumpets and the swish of the wind seemed to bear from the blue shores of the past the voice of tradition overflowing with heroic ballads and golden legends[61-2]."

The man gave his attention to the infinitely small. Even the physical descriptions of his characters in Vacation Stories are testament to this devotion to detail, which reminds me of Proust and Nabokov. Yes, his inter-personal intuition, as he readily admits, is not as shining [he awkwardly refers to his father as his "progenitor"]. But in his case, it hardly matters.
            Cajal explains that at the age of seven or eight occurred three events "which had a decisive influence upon [his] later ideas and feelings"[19]. This sort of scientific organization makes factual research easy and breezy. These events almost symbolize themselves; a writer only has to add tiny but valuable insights and thin but sturdy bridges. The three events were:

1) "the commemoration of the glorious victories in Africa"[19], after the 1860 victory over the Moroccans at the Battle of Tetuan. This was a national apotheosis, and the initiation of strong and important patriotic feelings in Cajal. In the beginning, this included antipathetic instincts towards Moroccans, "the other." But later, he writes, he corrected this defect: "As time passed and I gained in understanding, I came to realize that, in respect of unjust and impetuous aggressions, all peoples are alike"[19].

2) "the falling of a thunderbolt upon the school and the church of the town"[19] which, I hardly believe, happened just as the children were "in the midst of the deep abstraction of the prayer . . . 'Lord deliver us from all evil'[19] and killed a priest. "For the first time there crossed my mind, already deeply moved," Cajal writes, "the idea of disorder and lack of harmony"[23]. The chaotic intervention explains Cajal's aversion to spiritualism, whose Good God he believes is falsely featured to be "a most tender father and a sublime artist"[23]. Fortunately, Cajal explains, he was not distracted by abstraction; he continued "strengthening the mind by continuous observation of the spectacle of nature"[24]. He exhibits an unflagging material focus.

3) "the eclipse of the sun in the year 1860," about which Cajal admits he had doubts. "Will science be mistaken?" he asks. But the moon appeared as predicted, as though the scientists had pushed it there. Scientific method managed to gain understanding of the unknown. His father drew his attention to "the kind of fear and of indefinable anxiety which takes possession of the whole of nature" when an event so seemingly "opposed to reason" occurs. How can nature be ignorant of our interests? This is Job's teleological, but essentially self-centered, question.

Summarily: "The eclipse of 1860 was a brilliant revelation for my youthful intelligence. I now realized that man, helpless and unarmed before the irresistible power of cosmic forces, possesses in science a heroic redeemer and a powerful and universal instrument of foresight and dominion"[25].

This is what a prophet of science saw and felt.



For more on these ideas, I direct you to perhaps the most powerful piece of cinema I have ever seen, the first installment of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's masterpiece The Decalogue, ten short filmic interpretations of the Ten Commandments. When a young boy and his father [like Cajal and his] choose to have faith in science, the message, from Deuteronomy 5:6, turns out to be quite different from Cajal's: Lo y'yeh l'cha elohim achairim, al pani [Thou shalt have no other gods before Me]. So thought-provoking and brilliant. Trois couleurs is a work a serious genius, too. Caveat spectator; they are profoundly moving of the innermost physical mechanisms, wrenching the heart and stirring the soul. Like the best art, they incite powerful feelings.


Interestingly, it seems to me that Kieslowski's teleological meditation, upon the existence of a cruel God, affirms Chaos theory. In his film, scientific calculation is a futile contrivance of man that fails to predict volatile nature. Cajal's interpretation of the uncontrollable, on the other hand, is positivistic. The Neuron doctrine, the fundamental idea of modern neuroscience, seems to affirm the absolute belief, which Cajal learned from his father, in free will as a tool to achieve progress. I propose a basic, but amoral, tension between Neuron theory and Chaos theory. In the brain of each individual, this struggle is constant. As capable beings, ourselves like the gods we have imagined, we have the potential to either create or destroy. I gather that the Hindu God Vishnu can represent creation and destruction. Inventors of religious story have understood this dual nature of the cosmos and the self [this is not reductive: one part of the philosophy allows for infinity].

For the utterly awful fear of God is really a fear of one's self, of that part that might "transgress." Look at how our species continues to destroy each other and our planet; we can get sick and do sick things. We invented the Apocalypse. See the warfare and the warming. The Bible contains a warning about our human nature that Kielowski inverts and updates. But the message is the same: we ought to be constantly aware of our relationship with the universe and our own ideas. Good art is reflective in that way, as a pool or a mirror. It illuminates experience, so that we can understand what exists and may impossibly attempt to define the word impossible. Cajal and Kielowski interpret omnipotent God in opposite ways, as Progress and as Chaos. Along the unraveling line of time's balled yarn, I hope that we shall at some point eventually know who reigns supreme. In the meantime, the artist must find a way to make these two chords, one major and one minor, Progress and Chaos, concord and then he must play for as long as he humanly can.

That's enough for now. I have only covered a small number of chapters from Recuerdas. Still to come are Cajal's affairs with art and his reflections upon death. I am truly enjoying this book. Cajal's fiction was admittedly [by him] mediocre, but so far his autobiography has real literary value. I will continue to share his insights. Thanks.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

8 1/2. Pilsen

In this half-post, I wanted to share the personal experience of my trip. I was lucky to stay with a warm, friendly couple named Lindsey and Justin in the awesome Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. It is an area with heavy Mexican influence and one that boasts incredible art, sprayed all over what seems, while walking, to be every singe wall. When looked at together, the buildings resemble a row of an old homeless man's teeth, each shaped uniquely and sharpened by the weathering world. One could study them for a long time; there are countless stories ready to be told. In short, the place has character. And so I admit that I love Pilsen, and here is why:

THE HOOD



 
 


THE MURALS







 

 







THE STATION




 

 

 

 

  

So there it is. But the last thing that I want to say is: God bless CouchSurfing!

8. Ha'aretz & España

This morning I had the distinct pleasure of breakfasting with Dr. Illana Gozes, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at Tel Aviv University, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, and President of the Israeli Society for Neuroscience [ISFN]. She is here presenting her research on Plasticity and Memory with a poster called "PolyADP-ribosylation is required for long-term memory formation in mammals." The work, which she told me is "out of left field" [my favorite field!], has exciting implications for Alzheimer's treatment. One found protein is currently undergoing clinical trials.

Dr. Gozes kindly invited me to the gathering of the ISFN tonight at the Hilton Chicago. Unfortunately, I could only spend about twenty minutes noshing and mingling. Some Israeli scientists had put up their posters at the event, and I spoke to a fellow named Volodya Yakolev about his, called "Learning to recognize numerous images." There are many Israeli abstracts that interest me as topic for potential articles, especially "Exploring the brain mechanisms of courage," from U. Nili and Y. Dudai of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Have scientists finally discovered what the poor Cowardly Lion lacked? Can we prevent this horrible disorder in the future?!? After all, lions should be fiercely pensive or pensively fierce, as in the title photo of this blog and the statues in front of The Art Institute of Chicago that I offered in post seven.

After the Israeli gathering, I traveled to Spain. I mean, I traveled to the Hyatt Regency Downtown to meet with Dr. Javier DeFelipe, Professor at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid and lead author of the new book "Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul: Science and Art" [Oxford University Press]. I bought my copy today; it is a stunningly gorgeous work with two-hundred-and-eighty-eight indelible images. Anyone who is in need of content for their coffee table, this is it. The illustrations are just breathtaking, purely and simply and, of course, naturally. It is expensive, but invaluable. I highly recommend it; there is brilliant text as well.

Dr. DeFelipe and I spoke for about twenty minutes before his presentation. He told me about the Instituto Cajal and their materials, and invited me to come to Madrid in order to investigate the "Legacy of Cajal" exhibit, which, although now homeless, includes letters and drawings. Apparently, there are now a couple of people excavating and translating Cajal's letters, which include correspondences with rival Nobelist Camillo Golgi. I was excited to learn that within the next three years there will be an English collection of Cajal's letters.

Dr. DeFelipe then gave an elegant presentation about Cajal's scientific art, or artistic science. Dr. DeFelipe quoted Cajal: "Only artists are attracted to science." The small audience chuckled, but this is not paradoxical, and that is precisely the point. I am currently one-hundred pages into Cajal's autobiography Recollections of My Life [The MIT Press]. In it, Cajal recounts his childhood obsession with art, which greatly disturbed his rigid, traditional father. In order to put an end to his son's untenable dream, Cajal's father solicited the opinion of the only "expert" around: a house-painter visiting the town of Ayerbe in order to whitewash the church's fire-damaged walls. Cajal timidly presented to the man his drawing of an Apostle. The house-painter proclaimed: "This child will never be an artist!" Cajal was eight years old. That gentleman was oh-so-wrong.

Moreover, Cajal made literary contributions to scientific language, coining numerous poetic, but truthful, names and descriptions of the human brain. He called our tangled web of neurons selva temerosa, or "dark and frightful jungle." Pyramid cells, which stand closely together in columns, the cells that I assume were the ones imaged in the Blue Brain Project movie I mentioned in an earlier post [Four] that I saw, he called las mariposas del alma: "butterflies of the soul." Thus, my favorite term and DeFelipe's title. Cajal called the little protrusions from dendrites, which Golgi and others dismissed as unimportant [but nothing is secondary in Nature, Cajal writes in Advice], las espinas, or "the spines," because they look like a rose's thorny stem. Que linda . . .

Dr. DeFelipe also made a memorable reference to Michelangelo. About his famous "Angel" statue, the Italian master said: "I saw an angel in the stone and carved until I set him free." So it is with our plastic brains, as well. As Cajal says in Advice, "man can be the sculptor of his own brain." I guess that we possess an Uncarved Block [P'U], to use a Taoist concept I learned long ago in a lovely book by Benjamin Hoff called The Tao of Pooh. It holds this potential for change in our brains, the plasticity that fascinated Cajal. Dr. DeFelipe will be sending me his own article from a few years ago in Nature Neuroscience called "Cajal and Plasticity." From his own disturbing educational experience, which I will relate in my next post, Cajal knew that, when treated rightly, the brain can be shaped over time. But he did not believe, theoretically, that the existing idea of the rigid reticulum would allow for such give-and-take. This was long before he became the first scientist to illuminate the material mechanisms, neurons, that facilitate the plasticity that defines our humanity. After learning about my specific interests, Dr. DeFelipe was adamant that I would love this particular article, which talks about all of this and more. I trust him.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's true gift was vision. He uses the verb "to see" so often in his writing, a likely unconscious technique that reveals his chief concern. Cajal understood that the eye interprets external reality, that knowledge is necessarily removed. This is no tragedy, though. Cajal's clarity allowed for faithful representation of our world. According to Cajal, there is no ordering art and science. After all, to restate his egalitarian principle, nothing in Nature is secondary. According to Cajal, art and science are "pieces of reality." Just pieces, sharp pieces, to an infinite puzzle.

I had an excellent time in Chicago, although the conference events were difficult at times. Thirty-thousand people can overwhelm a novice, no matter how tall he is. Plus, I am now nearly broke. But I learned a lot, and that was my goal. Moreover, I leave here with renewed focus on my goal: to discover the secret to Cajal's clarified vision, and to learn how one might live an intelligent life in this world. Now I must procure a grant in order to facilitate this process.

My team of experts [sorry, I guess cable news has penetrated my vernacular], now includes Dr. DeFelipe, who has offered to guide me to certain materials and help me with a formal letter of support. I am very grateful for this. He also introduced me to his colleague Virginia, a visual artist herself. Along with her boyfriend Pablo, who now studies at the School of Visual Art in New York City and is preparing an exhibit on Cajal, Virginia prepared some spectacular content in Dr. DeFelipe's presentation and the book itself, I believe. I look forward to meeting Pablo back in NYC.

Also, sometime soon, I will be doing a podcast for a new series of neuroscience-themed content for the lay public that Noah is launching. More on that when there is more on that . . .

I will post next about Cajal's autobiography, which is fascinating. He is a more-than-capable writer; some of his rapturous descriptions of the outdoors are truly sublime.

Thanks for reading, Mom!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

7. Sun's Day & Bus #51



Like an East-born extrovert with round face all alit on his Name Day, the Chicago Sun showed itself at all Times this morning. Paradoxically, it reminded me of my first night in town. I sat alone at a bar self-spoon-feeding ice-cream and watching the Yankees game when a friendly, forthright, forty-year-old blonde began to mock me. "How's your sundae?" she teased.

Shining . . . shining. 

Today's morning lecture, titled "Moving in an Uncertain World," was delivered by Daniel Wolpert, from the University of Cambridge. He applied Bayesian probability models to explain how the brain predicts and prescribes action. The inter-disciplinary nature of this conference continues to fascinate me. Creative scholars like Wolpert cross-pollinate multiple fields with potent data and information. Wolpert's research shows that the brain processes prior knowledge [e.g. memory] in addition to data [e.g. sensory input] in order to produce "beliefs" or, in mathematical language, "probabilities." Bayes's Rule is:

P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)
               __________
                     P(B)

P( ) means "probability of" and | means "given."

Then, in a deft, symbolic switcheroo, he plugged in the appropriate neuroscientific concepts, where:

A=state
B=sensory input

Now substituted:

P(state|sensory) = P(sensory|state)P(state)
                             ___________________
                                       P(sensory)

The expressions translate thusly:

The posterior of the equation, P(state|sensory), is the belief after, the brain's product after synthesizing information. P(sensory|state), the likelihood, represents the noise in our own senses, the information that makes the process unnecessarily complicated, I guess. P(state) is prior belief, the statistics of the task. In other words, if I are preparing to hit a tennis ball, my brain uses the information from every tennis ball that has ever been hit to me by that opponent. In predicting what will occur, Wolpert proves that we ought to shift towards the mean of prior, to compensate for the "noise" of likelihood. If a good tennis player usually hits the ball to the baseline, I ought to shift there despite the fact that the naked probability dictates that it will arrive towards the center of the court. "Noise" is a fundamental limit on performance. Don DeLillo's novel "White Noise" comes to mind. His protagonist leads a difficult life, while the television at times spews voluminous nonsense in the background. Good thing that is not the case today . . . ha! Again, good art intuitively understands human phenomena. The languages are just different. One is true, one is fiction. So what? Brian Boyd's argument, through which I am slowly making my way, convincingly asserts that art is an adaptive trait. I will get to that all once I finish the book.


Anyway, I tried to pay excellent attention to Wolpert's lecture, and it exhausted me. SO, I decided to skip some lectures [Bueller? Bueller?] and take a cab to the Art Institute of Chicago for A Sunday Afternoon on Michigan Avenue. After a day and a half of arid, acronymic description, I sought some rich artistic expression to revitalize my soul. Monet and Picasso's interpretations of the human being in the universe are just as valuable as scientific discovery; one cannot exist without the other. As an Adidas commercial tautologically proclaimed: "Only greatness equals greatness." Greatness understands it, with a paint brush or a microscope. Greatness transcends. Greatness is never forgotten? Not always . . .

Toward the end of my her ninety-five-year-long life, my beloved Bubbie developed dementia. It was a slow process; she began forgetting in her mid-eighties. But at that time, early on, there was one seemingly insignificant fact she always knew. When she traveled to Israel [in the early 1960s], she rode Bus #51 to her cousins's house. We were all amazed. #51, she said each time we asked. I chalked it up to her devotion to detail. But it was hard not to wonder: How could she remember this, but forget something monumental such as her husband's premature death?

Well, now I know why, because science does. Richard Morris explained in his lecture "Brain Systems of Learning and Memory." I am sure that only a handful of people in the whole auditorium understood the entire presentation. But I was able to hook on, most likely because of my own memory, to this one hold. It had long been thought that long-term memory of inconsequential events did not exist. But Morris challenged this with two undermining words: not always. OK, here goes my attempt at an explanation. In experiment, strongly-tetanized neural pathways in the presence of a low concentration of something called KN-93 fail to stabilize. In other words, "important" events are prevented from being encoded by the brain. When, immediately following this, a second pathway is weakly-tetanized, its receptors bind to proteins left-over from the failed first attempt. Morris used the word "paradoxical" to describe this. Just think: a failed memory of the love-of-your-life could contribute to the indelible image of an unromantic fact of daily-life. The former is lost forever while the latter lingers on. Because, after the receptors from the weakly-tetanized pathway bind to the first pathway's proteins, long-term potentiation [LTP] stabilizes. Memory is formed. My Bubbie's memory, now mine, of Bus #51 immediately struck me as a perfect example of this. Who knows what important information, forever lost, produced proteins that paved the way for the Bus. Cajal says that there is no primary and secondary in Nature; every link in the chain proves equally valuable. Morris's findings on memory support this egalitarian theory.

A former SUNday school teacher, my Bubbie was my first teacher, supervising penmanship drills when I was young. I am proud to say that I still pen elegant characters, even in the notes I wrote during a lecture that reminded me of her. I loved her and am thankful for my memories, all that remains from nearly a century of life. I will not soon forget her; she keeps springing spritely up off of my trampoline hippocampus.

Plus, her daughter is my mother and I am my mother's SON, who likes to play with words.

Thanks for reading.

6. Magic & the Midwest

On page three of his Advice, Santiago Ramón y Cajal cites the German physicist Emil du Bois-Raymond, writing:

"We must resign ourselves to the state of ignoramus, or even the inexorable ignorabimus."

My Society for Neuroscience badge might as well have read Benjamin Ehrlich: Ignoramus. Instead, I received a yellow [no positive associations, after reading Dostoevsky], non-member badge with my comparatively lowly degree: BA. As I said, one ignoramus, among thirty thousand scientists. But, as one of my many basketball coaches over the years once told some of us kids, "God gave you two ears and one mouth. Do you know what that means? [No answer]. It means you should do twice as much listening as you talking." Today I listened at least twice as much as I talked, and scribbled more notes than I thought possible.

One of my religious school teachers once told me a story about his friend the College Philosophy Student. This fellow wrote a paper arguing that when you get on a plane, and the cabin rattles, and the shades are down, it is necessarily (that word again) taking off from the ground and flying through the air from Point A to Point B. The professor marked the paper an F. It is impossible to logically disprove even the absurd counterargument. But we can certainly imagine it. They close the windows, shake the cabin, and change the scenery. Philosophically speaking, then, flying could be an illusion. [Now, it can be validly argued that such an abstract technicality does not really matter. But that is another story entirely].

These are the types of questions I anticipated from the first lecture of the conference, called "Magic, the Brain, and the Mind." The two performers/speakers were Eric Meade, mentalist, and Apollo Robbins, thief. Meade spoke about manipulating remembrance by planting false memories [Proust is rolling in his grave]. Meade also mentioned the work of Elizabeth Loftus. But there was little science in his presentation; he ended by urging the audience to investigate some of the phenomena he and other magicians had noticed during their careers.

Robbins spoke about controlling attention and inducing lapses of focus. He claimed a "grift sense," a sort of biofeedback that allowed a good magician to receive information from his audience and adjust. The three aspects he noted were proximix/personal space [putting the mark on defense], movements [misdirecting], and interior dialogue [confusing]. He ended by misquoting Albert Einstein, saying "Reality is an illusion, but a good one." [Actual quote: Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one]. All in all, I would have rather just watched Les Mozarts des pickpockets. Neither presentation was so substantive.

Next, I attended the Public Symposium: In Celebration of Darwin: Evolution of Brain and Behavior. This was fascinating, although at times too technical for me [and many others, whom I noticed were bored or confused]. In the introduction, the speaker framed the event by altering the famous Theodosius Dobzhansky quote: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." The speaker proposed that the same could be said about neuroscience.

All presenters offered brilliant data for arguments about behavior, function, and evolution of the nervous system. All integrated the discoveries and conclusions of their peers. Molly E. Cummings from the University of Texas at Austin spoke about monogamy. Only 3% of species are monogamous. Ecology predicts monogamy; when resources are sparse, creatures bond in pairs. Something must cue the brain to the environment. That something is the neuropeptide arginine vasopressin [AVP], which acts is an antidiuretic hormone, affecting water balance. In voles, AVP corresponds with time spent huddling with partners. Then it got complicated [re: V1a receptor, 334 allele], but Cummings eventually used inter-specific analysis to draw sound conclusions about human behavior. Monogamous tendency is genetic. And our microsatellite region upstream of the AVP gene shows variation, as in voles. I was scribbling so fast I am still not sure that I understand, but it was awesome.

Lastly, as an example of intra-individual [within a lifetime, phenotypic] evolution, Cummings spoke about maternal care, citing the work of Michael Meaney with Norway rats. It seems that Lamarckian theory is making an "exciting" comeback in the field of evolutionary biology. FASCINATING! Parental investment is defined as "any investment that increases the offspring's chance for survival at the cost of the parent's ability to have more offspring." It is a question of now versus later. Data show that better quality mothers, rats who perform the behaviors licking and grooming of offspring with higher frequency, produce offspring that are in turn higher quality mothers. And genotype does not predict this; quality of the rearing mother does. Change is affected in the stress region of the brain upon emotions such as fear. The chemical process of methylation, which prevents gene transcription, occurs with high frequency in low quality mothers, and with low frequency in high quality mothers. It is variation in care of offspring that determines adult phenotype. Epigenetics allows for plasticity in environment without a DNA change. Again, I caught everything that I could.

Ralph Greenspan of The Neurosciences Institute spoke about fruit flies, with whom humans share genes, cellular mechanisms/pathways, and synaptic plasticity. He spoke about aggression, a behavior that underlies humans and fruit flies despite their different anatomies. One of the regulatory systems for fighting is called the Y system [in flies, NPF], which also governs courtship, sensitivity to alcohol, and feeding. The same suite of behaviors occurs in diverse species, a fact which, combined with a couple of other facts that I did not understand well enough to repeat [one has to do with EGFR ligand regulation of sleep/wake cycles, the other has to do with the hypothalamus and pars intercerebralis being "cousins"], leads Greenspan to conclude that there is a common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates. In fact, he concluded his talk with a poem by William Blake, "The Fly" [Greenspan stopped after the second stanza, I give here the entire poem:

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.


The evening lecture was called "Origins of Abstract Knowledge: Number and Geometry." It was delivered by Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University. It was brilliant; I have pages and pages of notes. Her goal is to arrive at a natural number and natural geometry, which would apply to everything, lie beyond perception and action, and be uniquely human. Her research, and the research of others in the field, is tireless and scrupulous. She revealed that there are two core systems of numbers [1-3 objects and sets, with approximate cardinal values] and two core systems of geometry [navigation and form analyses]. There were found to be five signatures of performance in human infants: ratio of dependence [newborn 1:3, 6 mo. 1:2, 9 mo. 2:3], modality and format invariance, addition equals comparison [by the same ratio as signature #1], the ratio in substitution is less than that of addition, and number is linked to length.

The same signatures are present in human adults. Ratio=approx. 7:8, all other signatures present. They are also present across cultures [i.e. remote Amazonians], which means that it is fair to say they are universal. In the brain, this corresponds to activity in a region of the parietal cortex hIPS [in humans]. Monkey IPS responds in the same way. Something theoretically big is building here.

Then Spelke talked about four important findings in humans. The first deals with symbolic arithmetic, during which fMRI testing shows activation in the same region [hIPS]. The second: better students are shown to have sharper nonsymbolic number representations [they tracked fourteen-year-old students from kindergarten and controlled for things like verbal ability]. Third: before kids learn symbolic arithmetic, they draw on the approximate number system to solve symbolic number problems. Last: children who are better at nonsymbolic arithmetic go on to greater achievement in first-year school math.

Non-human animals also have a system founded on nonsymbolics. But this system is inevitably incomplete because it has no exact cardinal values and no operation of "adding one." SO, enter the second core system of number, small, exact number of objects. There are limits: set sizes of only up to 3, must be cohesive objects [i.e. no piles of sand], and it offers no explicit cardinal values [ball and ball, not 2 balls].

Guess what? Studies show that children combine these systems when they master verbal counting. It is language that synthesizes abstract knowledge. Intuitive conclusion, but nonetheless cool for a writer to learn.

That's it. I'm exhausted. Thanks!

Monday, October 12, 2009

5. Vacation (II) & the Prince of Denmark

The woman next to me was snoring. That's right, snoring, in the middle of Hamlet! Apparently, tragedy bores some to sleep.



I had excellent, centered orchestra seats for Saturday's Broadway performance of Shakespeare's classic. Between that woman's steady, equine, nasal choking and the untimely, shrill, trilling laughter of the rest of the audience, I tried to remind myself that in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare's new plays were rowdily attended by all segments of society, even the dreaded "riff" and "raff." These days, the Bard of Avon is usually confined to an Ivory Tower. But I believe in the shared artistic experience. I took a class in college on the television show The Wire, the most brilliant and inspirational series in history, as great as many great films and novels. We viewed every single episode together, as a class. I had already seen all the content, but, in the company of my peers, I appreciated new aspects of the work, especially humor. I suppose the same phenomenon of collective viewing occurs at the theater. Hamlet is indeed fermented in the fast-acting, black serum of sardonicism. I only think that, in a perfectly valid humorous reading, more of Shakespeare's jokes are on the Prince of Denmark himself than Law's overly-demonstrative, Vaudeville/Hollywood command-of-expression allowed. But I have no objection to jokes on a serious stage; any Jewish person could tell you that humor is an adaptive trait. Without laughter, the best medicine, chasing down to our sensitive stomachs, the public might not want to swallow such an intoxicatingly depressing pill as Hamlet. A few particularly pessimistic peptides:

I have of late, but / wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all / custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems / to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy / the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, / appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent / congregation of vapours[2.2,297-305. I cite from the Arden edition, 2001].


[I hope nobody thought that they were there to see Memphis. The lines mingled outside. Many people do visit Broadway on vacation, after all].

Speaking of "vacation," the fourth story in Santiago Ramùn y Cajal's short-fiction collection Vacation Stories, titled "The Corrected Pessimist," happens to pertain to Shakespeare. The protagonist, a twenty-eight-year-old doctor named [rather uncreatively] Juan Fernández, is a paper thin re-creasing of Shakespeare's archetypical origami swan-prince, with some spilled-inky shades of Moliere's "Misanthrope." As the story begins, Cajal immediately reads us in on the case. We are told that Fernández is "suffering from a fresh wave of nausea toward life and indifference toward society"[122]. He has ceased to practice medicine and begun to neglect his friendships. For slight, self-affirming pleasure, he reads Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, pictured left, who share his negative opinions. In short, the protagonist is feeling what jazz men would call "blue." "For unhappy Fernández," Cajal summarizes, "life was a tasteless, endless bad joke that Nature was playing for no apparent reason or purpose"[123]. And, on top of it all, his career is a failure and he is unsuccessful in love.

At the climax of his misery, at four o'clock in the morning, Fernández drearily discourses on doom. "Humanity, which arose from death, must end in death," he states[128]. He calls the Sun an "unfeeling, habit-ridden star"[128]. Then he directly addresses a divinity, whom he calls the Prime Mover, asking a theodical question: "Why did you create the enemies of life, the cruel insidious pathogenic bacteria"[128]? Furthermore, Fernández claims, we had no chance of combating these diseases because our senses and intelligence are weak and faulty. Man himself is "as weak and overwhelmed as some bird transfixed by a snake"[130]. All in all, the speech lasts four outrageously pessimistic pages before finally finishing with two disillusioned exclamations: "What a cruel sarcasm! What a bloody irony"[130]!

However, "the Corrected Pessimist" suddenly pivots when, like Goethe's Faust, Juan is visited by an insightful, inciting spirit. After his final words, thunder roars, and the shadow of an old man appears in a purple cloud. "I am the spirit of science," the man says, "sent by the Great Unknown to enlighten men's minds and sweeten the sad fate of every living creature, in gentle gradations"[131]. He lists the different names that different men have called him: intuition [philosopher], fortunate coincidence [scientist], inspiration [artist], and luck [merchant]. The spirit of science speaks wisely and from a divine perspective, telling Juan that he and our species are "merely the means, rude links in an endless chain, simple terms in an endless progression"[131]. Moreover, according to the spirit, we will never understanding the whole course, for "the Cosmos is a great system of hieroglyphics, of which scholars from each epoch will laboriously decipher only a few phrases"[132]. After setting the scale straight by focusing on our smallness, the spirit of science decides to give Juan a gift. "Once and for all," the Spirit says, "you are going to lose your innocent illusions . . . [you] will see objects within [his] normal focal range as though they had been amplified a thousand time"'[138]. This sight will last for one year.

And so Juan sees the world as never before. Cajal writes that "[Juan's] eyes had been turned into microscopes, though not by changing the optical dioptrics"[139]. He sees particles in motion, including disgusting bacteria in his love's breath. Instead of the continuuous, mosaic world, Juan lives in the discontinuous, crystal world[141]. Because of this vision, he has been transformed into "an extraordinary being, a portentous genius"[140]. His life changes dramatically. He is now a well-suited scientist. His former love now becomes his wife. They are successful within the species; they produce one progeny. What's more, they are even happy! For Cajal, life is how one sees the world; his own vision was the primary tool of his own genius.

Alas, in Hamlet, the protagonist meets a different, more emotional spirit that alters his vision: his father's ghost. Immediately before the ghost's arrival, in Act 1, Scene IV, Hamlet speaks to Horatio and Marcellus about his uncle, the king, Claudius:


So, oft it chances in particular men/ That for some vicious mole of nature in them, / As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty/ (Since nature cannot choose his origin), By their o'ergrowth of some complexion, / Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, / Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens/ The form of plausive manners -- that these men, / Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, / Being Nature's livery or Fortune's star, / His virtues else be they as pure as grace, / As infinite as man may undergo, / Shall in the general censure take corruption / From that particular fault. The dram of evil / Doth all the noble substance ofte dout / To his own scandal[23-38].

When it appears, Hamlet calls the ghost, whom he has given his own name, an "old mole"[170]. Truly, this dram of vision will, henceforth, dout Hamlet's noble faculties to a scandal of revenge. Shakespeare understands that Hamlet's sickness is inside himself; more specifically, we know it is in his brain.

Shakespeare's poetic mimesis of grief and depression in Hamlet, an investigation of mind and madness, shows his supreme empathy, the most active and important quality in storytelling. But he also thought much like a scientist. Take, for example, this quote from The Merchant of Venice.

"Tell me where is Fancy bred, / Or in the heart, or in the head"[3.2,63]?

We now know the answer: the head, which my father always facetiously calls "the principal instrument for thinking." Later this week, thirty thousand people will be attending a conference devoted to the jewel inside that head case, the brain, which constitutes two percent of our body weight but demands roughly twenty percent of our resting energy. I will be a humbled one in those Chicago crowds. I will write updates from the annual Society for Neuroscience conference every night, starting Friday. I am still figuring my conference itinerary now, but it so far includes lectures titled "Magic and the Mind," "The Origins of Abstract Knowledge," and, of course "Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul, Science and Art." There will be a wealth of knowledge there.



Again, thanks for reading! I've ordered Cajal's 600+ page autobiography, Recollections of My Life, and will write about that book after I return from Chicago.