Mind - Lost, Found or Created?

What you think is up to you

By Tom Parsons

I want to thank New Zealand for helping me find my mind a few years ago. I’ve been

a citizen for more than 20 years, but I'm still grateful to those of you who were born

here and made this country what it is. It is not that my mind was ever really lost, but it

was hiding in plain sight for far too many years, along with some excess kilograms

and bad mental habits that I managed to blind myself to.

On the practical side, finding my mind has let me shed more than 25 kg, and I think

that the quest has made me a better person in ways the scale can’t measure. One way

or another, my heart is lighter.

Sadly, my native California has made university attendance increasingly difficult and

expensive ever since I graduated from UCLA in 1966. A professor recently wrote an

open letter to his students apologising for the theft of their birthright.1 May New

Zealand shun that selfish course and always continue to educate well the young

people who are our future, and support those who show them the way. And also us

older ones who still have active minds and want to learn and contribute more.

If you are one of those people, I wish you the best and I offer you this sketchy

treasure map to the mind. My starting point was the only possible one in any quest for

adventure, fame, or just to get the groceries: I started from right where I was.
Everything that we see – or fail to see – is seen in our minds, where all experience

happens. Shakespeare expressed this so well that for 400 years Hamlet’s soliloquy has

remained one of the most recognised speeches in the English language.

To be or not to be – that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And, by opposing, end them.

It is in the mind that we suffer from the clash between what reality is and what we

would rather have it be.

In the first Quarto, in a version of Hamlet’s musings less often seen, Shakespeare

correctly places the problem of such puzzlement in the brain, where we now know the

mind resides:2

Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence

But even without the Bard’s help, I already knew where my brain was, and roughly

what it did. I spent years teaching biology, as well as physics, chemistry and

mathematics. But I couldn’t have found my mind without returning to uni to study

psychology, and New Zealand made it possible.

To find my mind, I first needed to know what it looks like. Anyone who ever took

someone else’s shopping list to the market knows this; finding something is pretty

tough if you don’t know what it looks like. The last twenty years has seen a cascade

of excellent books on the brain and the mind, and all begin at the right place by

discussing the brain, because the mind is what the brain does.3

I first looked at the brain’s basic structure: 15 to 30 billion cells (neurons), joined by

perhaps 15 trillion synapses, with many neurons having thousands of these

connections. Neurons constantly interact with each other and with all the muscles,

glands and senses. They form a giant network of interacting, overlapping gossip

circles of all sizes, a network of networks that never stops buzzing with the latest

news. Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman’s more technical term for

gossip circles is ‘re-entrant loops’.4 They are linked assemblies of cells that process

much of the same data repeatedly, in a complex operation that mixes feedback with

new input. Even when consciousness vanishes due to sleep or anaesthesia, that only

means that some of the larger gossip circles are not communicating quite like they do

to make consciousness happen, but activity continues.5

The number of neurons and their connections is huge, but the number of different

ways they can form interlocking communication networks can only be described by

numbers bigger than astronomers need to describe the entire universe; numbers that

make the number of atoms in the whole universe look small. That’s how complex the

brain is.
And all this complexity built itself, using cells for building blocks, and following

fairly simple rules. A real eye-opener for me was that my brain cells want to organize.

They want to talk to each other. They want to learn and process information. After all,

it is essential for the different parts of a multicellular organism like a human being to

be able to communicate with each other to coordinate what the body does. During a

billion years of evolution, these special cells have learned many clever ways to

organise, communicate, and process information. Consider professor DeMarse’s

flying rat brains.

In 2001, Dr. Thomas B. DeMarse found that he could isolate some neurons from the

brains of embryonic rats, making a kind of brain soup, and that the isolated neurons

would settle to the bottom of the container, contact each other again, and organise

themselves into functioning mini-brains. He placed a wired-up silicon chip on the

bottom where they settled, so he could listen in on their electrical activity. He could

also send them signals to see how they responded.

He reported that “Dissociated neurons begin forming connections within a few hours

in culture, and within a few days establish an elaborate and spontaneously active

living neural network.” 6

Most surprisingly, in 2004 those neural networks, just tiny bits of a rat brain that

might have been, learned to fly a jet in a flight simulator when they were sent the

output of the simulator.7 “It's as if the neurons control the stick in the aircraft,”

DeMarse said. The 25,000-neuron mini-brain can learn “whether to move the stick to
the left or to the right or forwards and backwards and it learns how much to push the

stick depending upon how badly the aircraft is flying.”8

Hamlet’s slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were severe trials, but nothing like

what those rat brain cells went through, and they still learned to fly. That gave me

hope. Perhaps my brain was still flexible enough that even longstanding mental habits

could change.

Still, those cells never saw a plane or handled a real joystick. I concluded that the

fundamental brain structure they built was designed to minimise chaotic changes in

the data flow, and to promote stable, regular interactions. To do this, it smoothed out

the effects of simulated turbulence and avoided crashes. Similarly, my brain likes to

continue in its smooth, habitual ways. To get it to change I might need to show it the

way to a new and better stability.

But I felt foolish linking the words ‘brain’ and ‘hope’. Wasn’t brain science revealing

what looks like a machine made from cells? Hadn’t science finally ruled out the

possibility of a mind with free will? I knew that words alone would not lead me to the

answer, because so many other explorers had found only dead ends with words. I

needed to do some math, and needed to identify the right kind of math for this

application.

It seemed to me that the math that would best describe the brain and mind must

involve an iteration process like the one that produces that famous and hauntingly

beautiful visualization of chaos, the Mandelbrot set.9 This amazing object is obtained
by starting with z = 0 and repeatedly applying the procedure z → z2 + c after choosing

some value for c. Since z and c are complex numbers, the result is plotted as a point

on the complex plane after each iteration, and a large enough mass of such points

forms that now famous multi-lobed shape in all its beautiful intricacy.

My brain was also given its latest form by an iterative process, as its signals circulated

and recirculated through those interlocking gossip circles. That recirculation is a vital

part of learning and brain construction. Each time that a signal travels a pathway, that

pathway becomes easier to travel for subsequent signals: learning occurs.

More hope came from knowing that new brain cells are produced regularly, even in

my adult brain. Mature neurons can actually be cloned in the lab and re-integrated

into living brains.10 However, brain cells that do not join gossip circles and serve as

signal-passers die off to make room for the useful ones.11 I found that what I once

thought was a diminishing-cast movie in my skull was really a dynamic equilibrium

between cell generation and the pruning of the less useful cells. I took heart: the

pattern that is my mind is constantly under development.

The Mandelbrot set has been called the most complex object in mathematics,12 which

I regarded as another clue that it might relate to the most complex object we know in

the physical world, the human brain. Like the physical brain, the Mandelbrot is never

completed. It is only approximated more closely as the number of iterations increases.

I didn’t just read books about this13, I visited Wikipedia to read about it and see some

beautiful animated demonstrations, and also downloaded free software to generate the

M-set for myself.14 I checked my experiments at several websites15, varying the way
that the image was created. This was fun. I made a lot of fascinating images, and they

showed other interesting parallels with the mind.

Altering just the magnification and the number of iterations revealed something

suggestive at the boundaries of the M-set, where the interesting action is. Zooming in

on a boundary and then increasing the number of iterations through, say, 10, 20, 50,

100, and 1000 showed a telling progression. A few iterations gave a crude and boring

picture. With more iterations, the detail became so rich that I could only appreciate it

at such high magnification that the screen was filled by only a tiny portion of the M-

set.

This resembles what is happening in the brain all the time. Information that is

encoded as patterns of neural excitations is constantly recirculating, as it represents

and blends current experiences, memories and thoughts. The patterns activated at this

instant are improving the pathways that will be followed later, when the present

patterns have become memories. Each iteration alters the brain slightly, and makes it

more complex than it was before.

Finding such parallels was an important sign that I might be on the right track in

applying this kind of math to the brain and mind.

Another parallel is extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, otherwise known as the

butterfly effect, named when MIT weather researcher Edward Lorenz found a non-

Mandelbrot type of chaos in his computer model of the earth’s atmosphere, and
quipped that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas a

week later.16

I knew how sensitively my mind sometimes responds to the tiniest influence, and I

also knew that the information passing through it actually shapes my brain. Did I

really want to go on filling my brain with things that were unpleasant and unneeded,

like news of car crashes or robberies? Maybe that was related to the problem of filling

my mouth with unneeded food. I actually started to process information about healthy

and unhealthy eating habits, running some excellent information through the gossip

circles instead of leaving it idle in memory, where it had been ignored for years.17 I

tried to avoid mental inputs that would make me feel useless anger or fear, and to

minimise the time I spent processing these harmful emotions when they arose. If

anger or fear is appropriate, I told myself, then do something about the problem, don't

just keep recirculating the bad feelings. Who wants to become an expert in that? Look

for mental input that will make you happier, wiser, or at least better company. And

doing this, and knowing why it matters, actually helped.

I found that this extreme sensitivity to initial conditions is the rule in systems like the

M-set, that are built by nonlinear iteration (i.e. a procedure like z → zn + c, where n is

greater than 1). No formula exists to predict the end result of such iterations, nor even

any points along the way. Each new point that is calculated jumps to a new place, and

after a few jumps no prediction holds except for the general shape of the pattern. Even

in such a simply determined process, the butterfly effect rules, so mathematicians call

it “deterministic chaos”. Determinism cannot predict my mind, so my mind cannot be

ruled by determinism. Even identical twins, with identical DNA, become more and

more different as their individual experiences and choices shape them.

Another breakthrough! My mind is unique, because nobody else started with a brain

exactly like mine, and it has been developing in ways unique to me ever since.

I looked at the M-set boundaries and saw many, many regions that look the same.

There are countless seahorses in seahorse valley, and countless tiny M-set-like buds.

But they are not identical, just similar. A close look reveals that, and it has been

shown mathematically to be true. Another parallel: I am a lot like everyone else, but I

am still my own unique self.

But freedom from determinism is not the end of the story. The Mandelbrot set,

complex though it is, resembles a real mind like a smiley face resembles the Mona

Lisa. The iterations in my brain are far more complex than those that produce the M-

set. The brain is not doing anything as simple as squaring a number, then adding some

constant, then squaring that sum, repeatedly. The brain is altering the pattern and

complexity of its connectivity with each cycle of the information flow, and I know as

a maths teacher that the increasing number of possible permutations must involve not

just some power of a base number, but a factorial.

Representing the actual action in the skull may require a whole new picture of a new

kind of complexity, using an iteration based on factorials. Following that path, and

examining the many different ways that my neurons can communicate, is another long

journey beyond this one. But it is humbling to see that the Mandelbrot is just an
introduction to the mind’s real complexity. The mind is not just more complex, but a

higher order of complexity than the M-set.

To me this was a revelation: I have free will, and I know why and how. This question

has been debated for ages, but the neuroscience and the math and the computer power

have only now come together to let me say this with confidence.

I believe that most previous discussion of free will has been crippled by making the

“freedom” or lack of it an absolute; an either/or choice. Life is not that simple.

I asked myself just how ‘free’ free will should be. How free do I want to be? Do I

want to be as free as an honest pair of dice, equally likely to do anything at all? Do I

want my thoughts and decisions to be free from the influence of my upbringing and

my experiences and memories? That sounds to me like mindless amnesia rather than

freedom.

What I really want is to be free enough so that my choices are my choices, not

someone else’s. Not just the result of some order I was given, or my DNA heritage, or

a program someone brainwashed into me.

I had to do my own research and come to my own conclusions about the question of

free will, and that can’t all fit into this little sketch. But it looks to me like the brain’s

complexity, its self-organisation and the butterfly effect make my mind just exactly as

free as I want it to be.

The free will question aside, what is now known and accepted by science is

remarkable enough. My mind is my brain in action, and my brain is so complex it

boggles my mind. My brain is not as limited as I used to believe. It forms and renews

and organises itself continuously, so that my brain and mind respond to what is

encountered, what is remembered, and what has been learned from my past

experiences.

But I still wonder whether minds can gather information in ways not explained by the

body’s senses. Can minds communicate with each other directly? Can they perceive

the past and future directly? Can they perceive higher realities than the everyday

world? Do they survive when the brain stops? Personally, I doubt it. But my many

errors have taught me to doubt my doubts as well as my certainties. Ask me again

later.

The answers to the really deep questions about the mind will only be found by people

who are well equipped. I do hope that our society will go on producing such people,

because that is so central to our humanity: using well the brains that make us so

different from the rest of earth’s inhabitants. I may not fly like a bird or swim like a

dolphin, but I sure can think, and more freely than I ever thought I could. Also, I sure

can fail to. I think I have a responsibility to go on using my mind in the best way I

possibly can. What you think is up to you.

1
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/08/24/a-letter-to-my-students/
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be,_or_not_to_be
3
In no particular order:

How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker; W. W. Norton & Co, 1997

Global Brain, Howard Bloom; John Wiley & Sons, 2000

The Lopsided Ape, Michael Corballis; Oxford University Press, 1991

The Cerebral Code, William H. Calvin; MIT Press, 1998

How Brains Think, William H. Calvin; Basic Books, 1996

Consciousness, An Introduction, Susan Blackmore; Oxford University Press, 2004

A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi; Basic Books, 2000

Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, Gerald M. Edelman; Basic Books, 1992

The Modular Brain, Richard M. Restak, M.D.; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994
4
A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi; Basic Books, 2000
5
Cognitive Unbinding in Sleep and Anesthesia, Science, 16 December 2005, vol. 310 no. 5755, pp. 1768 - 1769
6
The Neurally Controlled Animat: Biological Brains Acting with Simulated Bodies, T. B. DeMarse et al.,

Autonomous Robots 11, 305-310, 2001

7
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3348734/Brain-grown-from-rat-cells-learns-to-fly-jet.html
8
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/10/65438
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
10
D. Steindler, Development, 133, p3671, reported in New Scientist, 18 August 2006
11
New Scientist magazine, 16 August 2006, p17
12
http://www.cybsoc.org/about-soc/about-fractal.htm
13
Chaos - Making A New Science, James Gleick; Penguin Books 1987

Chaos and Fractals, H-O. Peitgen, H. Jürgens, D. Saupe; Springer Verlag 1992
14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
15
e.g.: http://www.fractalposter.com/fractal_generator.php
16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
17
http://www.drmcdougall.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study