Let's take the old
Taoist idea, 'the one and the many,' to a new level. The brain is a
fascinating place. Moods, thoughts, reactions, perspectives, flavor …
the neural-weather of synaptic-energy swirls in great gusts of
chemistry. There are thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and even
desert-like calm. But how do these electrical clouds of mind race
about, where are they going, and why?
The brain is a
complex network, comprised of individual units with two fundamental
parts: nodes and connections. A node is a neuron, a special cell
with the digital purpose to fire or not to fire. Connections occur
between axon and dendrite. The brain is like a city of microscopic
people, each with a job and a social group. The metaphor deepens.
Imagine the dendrites as a tangled mess of arms, the node as the
body, and the axon, the leg. We use our hands to touch the world,
sense our surroundings, and interact with materials. Dendrites are a
dense system of thin branches, connecting with the axons, the
outstretched legs and toes, of other cells. The cell gets a feel for
their neighborhood's motion by receiving input via the dendrites.
Each time an axon fires, an array of dendrites are stimulated.
When the cell
decides to move or metaphorically step to the beat, it fires the
axon. What is known about brain function is largely derived from
devices such as the MRI. These things observe how geographic bundles
of floating neural-people dance the rhythm of our consciousness.
They're all just wiggling their legs while feeling the wiggle of so
many other legs. It's like a game. How many wiggling friends does it
take to get me to wiggle and how will I wiggle in response? As the
arms with tiny hands, holding the many legs and toes of others, sense
their community's neural-weather, iron-rich blood flows, changing EM
fields, and lighting the devices. At first, science could only
imagine electricity flowing in one direction and in one way: cell A
fired its axon with a single signal until it reached its terminal.
Cell B's dendrites sensed cell A's signal through the
neural-chemistry of the synaptic clef. Cell B calculated the bias and
decided to fire its axon.
That was then. This
is now. Today, we know signals come in all kinds of patterns and
sometimes signals originate from cell B's dendrites and move into
cell A's axon – backwards. But even with this newly discovered
complexity, it still seems pretty random and meaningless until you
remember that our very consciousness is derived from their little
game of wiggle-wiggle. Though they may seem to dance as a flock in
the air or a school in the sea, they are just like us, individuals
that make complex choices science has yet to fathom.
