I normally nod along enthusiastically when reading the Neuroskeptic over at Discover Magazine. From critiquing brain-to-brain communication[1], to his crusade against p-hacking,[2] he rightly questions many aspects of neuroscience. However, it is tough being a skeptic, in particular when skepticism can be used to enforce entrenched ideas and block out the new. I feel the Neuroskeptic may have crossed the line into supporting possible dogma (over insightful questioning) with his discussion of new hydrocephalus (water on the brain) findings. Of interest are the cases in which the condition is developed early in life and is treated (by draining the excess fluid), but then is mostly forgotten about as the person develops. What can happen is spectacular, later in life individuals can be found to still have excess water built up in the cranial cavity. This fluid literally takes up the space which would normally be occupied by the brain, meaning the effected individual has a much smaller brain. See the Neuroskeptic’s article or this academic paper for an image of what this looks like. These images clearly convey the space inside the cranium, with the outline of white being the much reduced brain matter.
What is astounding is that these under-the-radar cases arise because the person shows neither symptoms (swelling or sustained headaches) nor signs of mental deficiency. The paper linked above has the title Brain of a white-collar worker to show how this person was functioning normally in society even with this spectacularly different brain. It is here that the discussion really starts: if a person can operate in pretty much the same way but actually have a much smaller brain, what work is the brain doing?
The Neuroskeptic critiques some interesting claims by Donald R. Forsdyke in response to this line of question. In particular Forsdyke suggests that we need a radical new understanding of how the brain stores information. The specific idea he wants to overthrow is: that the brain scales with the amount of information it contains or scales with intelligent capability. Forsdyke then brings up the brain size debate isolating a poignant consideration: that if brain size equates to intelligence, then men should simply be smarter than women due to men having, on average, larger brains. However, there is no evidence to support this (rather the opposite), and this is further strengthen by research showing that those with savant capabilities do not have larger brains to match this increased ability (see Forsdyke p. 4-5). This then leads a new approach from Forsdyke, who asks: why doesn’t size matter when it comes to the brain? This line of question leads to a possible radical claim, that the information the brain uses may be stored outside of the brain.
Forsdyke presents 3 possible theories for storing information in the brain. The first is the traditional account, that of “chemical or physical form,” in which, presumably, the firing of neurons is an important part. It is this view that Forsdyke sees as being challenged by the hydrocephalus cases. The second is that information is stored in some subatomic form we do not yet understand. In fact the physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff have done just that, suggesting it is at the quantum level that information is stored.[3] However, even if we acknowledge this second suggestion, it still equates more mass with more information storage. If you are missing up to 90% of brain mass, as some of the cases suggest, this is 90% less quantum particles or whatever it is, that is meant to store information.
This takes us to a third option, that the information is not stored in the brain. Instead it may be a form of cloud computing in which:
“The brain is seen as a receptor/transmitter of some form of electromagnetic wave/particle for which no obvious external structure (e.g., an eye) would be needed.” (Forsdyke 2015, p. 5)
In other words, the work of thinking is done outside the matter of the brain and the brains role is to act as a medium for this electromagnetic wave/particle interaction. If this new role for the brain is correct, then you only need as much brain matter as the ‘antenna’ needs and supposedly would allow for there to be reduced brain matter without lost function.
Faced with such a radical new take on the brain, it is not surprising that the Neuroskeptic is, well skeptical. After all, it involves there being all this unseen interactions floating around our head. There are other concerns too, like: why do we need only a small part of the brain to act as an antenna, why not just have that much brain matter in the first place?
However, being skeptical doesn’t answer the question: how do we explain the cases of people acting normally with so little brain matter? The suggestion by the Neuroskeptic is that the brain matter that these people do have is more dense, something that has not been tested for. If the brain matter was somehow forced to compress due to the liquid in the cranial cavity, then there may simply be a lot more brain than the images suggest.
While this is a possible explanation it rings a little hollow. One of the points stressed in the Neuroskeptic’s article is the myth that we ‘only use 10% of the brain.’ While there may be some redundancy in the brain it is not on a huge scale. This means if the brain gets denser, it needs to get a lot denser. Losing half of the brain matter means the density is doubled and if the cases of 90% depletion in brain matter are correct, this would mean a 10 fold increase. It is possible that the plasticity of the brain may allow for this, but such a claim should equally be treated with caution.
This means there is a high level of caution needed to discuss anything related to this unusual phenomena! But I discovered something familiar[4] while researching this topic was the motivation for the cloud computer account of brain. The core idea behind it is not the desire to explain missing brain matter but rather the problem of information storage. One of Forsdyke’s main sources for this is the, at best, patchy work of Simon Berkovich (2014, 1993[5]). His work on the cloud brain and on DNA has one simple focus, many of the physical structures in biology are meant to be holding more information than they physically seem capable of doing. Being an engineer and computer scientist he is worried there simply isn’t enough ‘bits’ to store the information required.
If we take such concerns seriously (and we should if we can’t explain the reduced brain matter cases), then there seems to be two paths we can take. One is to propose new and potentially radical ideas ideas about information storage. The other, and my preferred option, is to question whether it is information storage (in the traditional sense) that the brain is performing.
My issue with the Neuroskeptic is this: he wants to both tow the line of the brain being a information storage machine and the traditional line of ‘chemical or physical forms’ for storing that information. I can’t help but feel that something has to give in this respect, and holding on to traditional ideas for traditional sake is hampering the potential to explain this fascinating phenomena.
[1] For those interested, a signal is ‘taken’ from the EEG read of the sender, while the receiver of this brain-to-brain communication feels pulse on their finger. The receiver is taught to associate different pulses with different actions on a video game the two are playing together. There is no direct inserting of thoughts or commands into the receiver’s brain.
In short, the only interesting thing is the EEG part, the rest is good old fashion communication.
[2] The ‘innocent’ manipulation of data to give your research a better outcome.
[3] There has even been some support for this idea recently.
[4] To those who have read Dreyfus at least.
[5] I was only able to find this article through nefarious means. The reference is: Berkovich SY (1993) On the information processing capabilities of the brain: shifting the paradigm. Nanobiology
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