That Incredible, Incomprehensible Thing in my Head

 

"The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron

connected to ten thousand other neurons.  Sitting on your shoulders

is the most complicated object in the known universe."

--Michio Kaku

"Everything we do, every thought we've ever had

is produced by the human brain.  But exactly how it operates

remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries."

--Neil deGrasse Tyson

Copyright © 2023

By Ralph F. Couey

We plow through each day, tackling problems, creating solutions, remembering, and predicting.  We calculate numbers, the intentions of others, all happening in that incredibly complex thing inside our head.

The human body, with all the things it has to do, is a wonder of engineering, and it's easy to take it for granted.  We don't have to think about making our heart beat, or breathing, it does it by itself.  But of all the parts of us, I would say that our brain is the one thing we most often take for granted.

Last week, at the behest of my doctor, I submitted myself for an MRI of my brain.  Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one of those miraculous devices that allow doctors to peer inside the human body without doing what used to be called "exploratory surgery."  The device uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to generate images of human organs.  According to Wikipedia, the response of hydrogen nuclei in human tissues are separated from other nuclei by the magnetic field resonating at the hydrogen frequency.  To make a long story short, that resonance allows images to be captured, one slice at a time.  This gives the doctor the ability to closely examine the organ from the inside out.  This has enabled the early diagnoses of a wide range of dangerous conditions, thus saving countless lives.

I've had a few of these before, so I knew what to expect.  After changing into a gown and carefully ridding myself of anything metal, I was taken into the room and laid on the bed.  Over the years, these beds have become much more comfortable, avoiding the annoyance of back muscle cramps.  After a period of instruction and insertion of earplugs, I was slid into the device.  

I've been claustrophobic in the past, but I was given a kind of mirror that allowed me to look out into open space, and not at the curved shell inches above my nose.  Plus, having lost a lot of weight means I don't fill the tube like I used to.  There was a nice cool breeze flowing through the tube which helped a lot.  In fact, I was so comfortable, I fell asleep, even with the TONK TONK TONK going on around my head.

I was slid out after about an hour and after disconnecting the IV, I started back to change.  I stopped long enough to ask for a CD of the scan.

I've been doing that for as long as I can remember.  Somewhere in a box, I have a video record of most of my heart caths, and two other brain exams.  These things fascinate me, but not in a morbid way.  To see my heart working from the inside gave me insight into how complex the heartbeat actually is, all the things that must go right every time for me to go on living.  Images of my brain, however, are on a whole 'nother level.

At home, I loaded the CD and started flipping through the images, of course looking for anything that shouldn't be there.  I spent a good 2 hours taking in and trying to understand what I was seeing.  I was able to identify some parts and what their role was, which was informational.  But the more I looked, slice by slice, my thoughts became less clinical.  

Everything I am, everything I've learned, the roadmap of my personality was somewhere in those mysterious folds.  The creativity that allows me to write was in there, as well as the ideas that became words.  All my memories, both good and bad, were there along with all the faces that have populated my life.  And, somewhere in there in a place which remains undiscovered is the love I feel for those closest to me, especially Cheryl.

But the brain is far more than conscious thought.  It is the Plant Manager for the rest of my body, ordering my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe, my kidney, spleen, and stomach doing what they were hired to do.  Sending commands to my legs that allow me to walk or run.  The parts that process inputs from sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, including my weakness for ice cream.  It tells me when I'm tired, and its time to sleep, and sends hunger when I need to eat.  It sends an all-hands alert when something hurts.  It regulates my temperature as well.  It keeps excellent communications between the left and right hemispheres (contrary to what I once thought, the right hemisphere controls the right side of my body, the left hemisphere controls the other side) making sure my movements, such as right and left legs, are properly coordinated.  It doesn't, by the way, keep me from walking into a room and being unable to recall exactly why I made that trip.

There's a ton more to a brain's many functions, which I will leave you to discover on your own.

I was struck with the sheer wonder of that thing in my skull.  I remembered what I was thinking about during the procedure, and where those thoughts originated and ended.  Of course there are no LED lights blinking to indicate the thing is working, and that can be hard to understand, given everything that is going on in there.  But as I sit here writing, what is going down on this page, and the actions of my fingers on the keyboard, serve as my indicator lights.  I've been frustrated at times in my life at what I thought were breakdowns in functions when I really needed everything to work.  In writing, that manifests itself in pauses, my fingers hanging in the air, while I search for the proper word or phrase.  My learning disabilities that have haunted me my entire life become what I view as betrayal by my brain.  But all things considered, it's still a pretty remarkable thing.

Scientists have striven for years to develop a computer that can do everything the brain can do.  AI is the outgrowth of that search.  Computers may be faster, and more accurate.  They may be able store and retrieve information much better.  But there is one thing they will probably never be able to do.

Experience the wonder and beauty of a wildflower in the woods on a spring afternoon.

I feel sorry for those computers.