From Neural Code to Religion - An Evolutionary Model of the Human Brain

A New Look at the Evolution of the Human Brain

A talk given to the Chiltern Humanists on 10th October, 2013

Copy of slides (pdf)

Illustrated text supporting the slides (pdf)

The following notes outline the arguments which underlie the talk. Most technical information on the model of the neural code used, and the related CODIL research, are available on this blog, and I am happy to answer any questions/comments about more technical aspects of the research.

Evolution of the Human Brain

Chiltern Humanist Meeting

Evolution of the Human Brain

The first of our autumn series of meetings will be held on Tuesday 10 September at Wendover Library.

Chris Reynolds, a retired scientist who has been a member of our group for several years, will take a new look at the evolution of the human brain. This has been researched at a biological level and raises the question of whether there is an inbuilt reason why some people are drawn to religion whilst others are not.

By temperament Chris likes to stand back and get an overview, rather than getting stuck in a narrow specialist area. After taking a doctorate in Chemistry he started working with computers in 1965; he was soon involved in research, and developed a language called CODIL over the following years. As Reader in Computer Science at Brunel University, Uxbridge during the 1970’s, he became involved in a project, funded by the British Library, concerned with interactive publication, which in a very elementary way anticipated the World Wide Web. Later he edited an online professional book review service on the subject of Human-Computer Interaction. In retirement his main interests are genealogy and local history.

His talk promises to be an interesting and different take on evolution.

Humans like to think they are something special - If not actually made by God in his own image, or the centre of the universe, are least we can console ourselves that we are more intelligent than the other animals that inhabit  our planet.

Or can we? No animal needs a brain that is bigger than necessary to survive, and we only have to look at the other mammals that share this planet to see that there are many cases where a species can be characterized by a greatly enlarged organ, whether it is a giraffe with its long neck, an elephant with its greatly extended nose, or the hands of the bat. And what about the changes we see in the whales!

This talk assumes that all mammals have brains that use the same neural code, and that the human brain is no more than a normal animal brain which has been supercharged to give it more processing capacity. It considers the limitations one might expect from a very simple neural code, and asks what the evolutionary pressures would be on the braians of hominids who were faced with the drying out of the African rain forests three million years ago.

The key factor would seem to be the point where cultural knowledge passed between the generations became more important to survival than the basic brain mechanisms on their own. At this point it there was an advantage in have a larger brain and developing faster mechanisms for learning. Better learning means better tools for survival, and one of those tools is language, which will automatically develop from generation to generation. One could get an auto-catalytic situation where the culture we pass on is augmented at a growing rate in each successive generation. 

Unfortunately the basic animal neural code is mathematically not very sophisticated, and while this is not important to other animals the defects become more evident as the human species pushes the code to its limits. While many of the defects can be avoided using language the logical weaknesses, such as confirmation bias, can, and are, exploited by religions and political belief systems. Even scientists will not be immune, as they take part in the rat race for prestige and funds!

After the talk I will be posting the slides used and background notes on this blog..

A Poem for Today

Way down South where bananas grow

A grasshopper stepped on an elephant's toe

The Elephant said, with tears in his eyes

"Pick on somebody your own size."

Not a usual post for this site - but I feel a poem which rattles the walls of one's mental box is worth a mention. It is the poem for the 27th August in Read Me - A Poem A Day for the National Year of Reading, chosen by Gaby Morgan (Macmillan, 1998).

How Much is a Human Life Worth?

Ian Brady

Placing a financial value on human life is a task which most people avoid – but society's resources are limited, and so are those of the world. By failing to discuss the issue decisions are taken which by implication place a value on human life or which have unintended financial consequences.

Let us look at an simple example. The Moors Murderer, Ian Brady, wants to die. He recently asked if he could be moved from a psychiatric hospital – where he can be forcibly feed to keep him alive against his will – to a prison – where he would be able to starve himself to death. The decision was that he should be kept alive, force fed when appropriate, until he died in prison of natural causes.

When I was young Ian Brady would have been hung but it was decided that the punishment of being left to rot in prison till you die of old age should be substituted. In Ian Brady's case the decision not to hang him means that society will end up spending something approaching £3,000,000 keeping him alive for perhaps 60 or more years in a high security establishment. (This figure excludes the £450,000 costs of the recent legal hearing). This sum would be sufficient to build a small new primary school, to fund a consultant doctor for many years, or to provide enough clean water in Africa to save the lives of hundreds of children.

So one of the unintended consequences of our laws, and the way they are implemented, means that preserving the life of a multiple child murderer (who himself considered the lives of the children he killed valueless) is worth more (in terms of tax-payers' money) than saving the lives of hundreds of innocent African children.

Of course, you will say, we got rid of hanging because sometimes an innocent person was hanged. Of course this will happen occasionally, and it is very sad. Mistakes occur in every area of life, and always will, whatever laws we have. Innocent people are dying unnecessarily every day for all sorts of different reasons and in every case it is very sad. If we spend enormous sums of money to avoid accidentally killing one innocent person this means resources are not available to save the lives of many other innocent people. 

Lucy

Belinda

Let us put this into a personal context. At my daughter Lucy's inquest the coroner indirectly suggested that if she had been recognised as being desperately mentally ill when she was in a police station she might not have killed herself on an anniversary associated with the misdiagnosis. At my daughter Belinda's inquest the coroner actually added a formal rider of neglect concerning her National Health Service treatment. In both cases the way that the criminal law treated the mentally ill was an issue. If  society had decided to spend less money on prisons and more on the mentally ill perhaps both my daughters would still be alive.

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The above is a slightly edited version of part of a text I prepared in connection with a Tring U3A debate on "How Much is a Human Life Worth?" 

Rural Relaxation - The Creation of College Lake Nature Reserve

My daughter Lucy's tragic death in 1985 had a major effect on my life, and was undoubtedly an important factor in my abandoning my research and taking early retirement. As a result I spent some 20 years on voluntary work to try and improve the lot of the mentally ill - and I urgently needed somewhere to relax

And I found just the place - a new reserve was being set up only a few miles from from where I live - called College Lake. When I first visited it there was a large white hole in the ground with the promise of a nature reserve at the south end - and a working chalk quarry at the north end. Graham was often seen with an enthusiastic team of volunteers, while Rita's little Sunday cafe in the old barn was not to be missed.

What is so hard about research?

Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters have recently posted a guest blog on the Scientific American entitled What is so hard about research? which looks at the problems of getting students to think imaginatively about research and the available research tools, and commenting that they tend to look for quick and easy options rather than stop and think about the problem. In reply I have posted the following comment.

Do Prairie Dogs have a sophisticated communication language

In trying to model the neural code in human and animal brains one of the key factors to be considered is that of language and whether the biological foundations of human language are significantly different to other animals - or just an existing feature stretched to a significant extent - rather like a giraffe's neck. is a stretched version of a "normal" mammal neck. My own feeling is that virtually all our language is a product of culture - and the more rapidly a brain can absorb culture the more sophisticated the language can become  - in something akin to an autocatalysed chemical reaction.

I am therefore extremely interested in the work of Professor Con Slobodchikoff, as described in Animal Behaviorist, with video, at TheAtlantic.com. Experiment show that not only do their calls distinguish between different threats, but that the calls appear vary to convey additional information - distinguishing between, for example, between a tall human in a blue shirt and a short human in a yellow shirt. It addition there are complex "chatter" between individual prairie dogs which the researchers have no idea how to interpret, different groups of the same species living in different places have different dialects of the "same" language, while different species appear to use different vocalizations. 

Following a holiday and other distractions I am about to return to drafting my detailed notes on the evolutionary implications the ideal brain model (see From the Neuron to Human Intelligence: Developing an “Ideal Brain” Model). Research such as this, which suggests that we have underestimated the ability of animals to communicate with each other, makes it much easier to argue that our brain works in the same way as the brains of many other animals - except that ow brain has adapted to handle large quantities of cultural information. 

Looking back Half a Century on some Holes in the Ground.

The Old Farm Barns at Higher Kiln Quarry circa 1961

Between 1959 and 1962 I was studying for a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Exeter University, but spent much of my time on a different activity - exploring the limestone caves in Devon. I became Secretary of the Devon Spelaeological Society and was involved in the purchase and early work on an important geological and biological site - Higher Kiln Quarry, Buckfastleigh. However my grant ran out in September 1962 and as I needed an income I took a job in Hertfordshire. This meant that I just missed out on the creation of the William Pengelly Cave Studies Trust.

Reopening the refurbished Museum

A week ago the Trust reopened a refurbished museum and held their 50th AGM - so I decided to take a holiday revisiting Devon and get to know more about what had happened.over the last 50 years.  So I went to Buckfastleigh to attend the reopening of the museum - and to enjoy a celebration meal at the Cott Inn, Dartington, after their annual general meeting. I was also interested to see some old films showing what had happened in the last 50 years.

The Trust celebrate with a meal

However the contact with the Trust reminded me of some unfinished work from the 1960's. While I was supposed to be studying chemistry I actually made some detailed notes relating to the formation of caves, particularly in the Buckfastleigh area. However the work was never finished as I was to busy earning a living and raising a family. As a result the bulk of my observations were never published.

Filming the Time Team Programme

There was one notable exception. In about 1960 I visited a cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, which was being explored by the Mendip Caving Group, and wrote up an account of the deposits there. I was contacted for more details by an archaeologist in the mid 1990's and, based mainly on my observation, a Time Team programme was broadcast in 1999. As a result I tidied up my original notes, did a literature search on later developments and published a detailed paper, Cooper's Hole and the Cheddar Master Cave, in the Pengelly journal, Studies in Speleology, Volume 17. The photo shows  Malcolm Cotter (in the green boiler suit) and me being interviewed and comes from the book Behind the Scenes at Time Team, by Tim Taylor (photos by Chris Bennett), published in 1998, which contains an extensive account of how the programme was made. Cooper's Hole can be seen in the background.

My renewed interest in the caves, and in particular a look at some of the exhibits in the museum, has reminded me about my unpublished notes - and in particular the need for lateral thinking in understanding how the caves formed. I therefore took the opportunity to make contacts to see if I can get some photographs taken of some important geological features - mainly relating to the shape of the roof of cave passages and chambers. There is no way, at 75, that I could safely re-enter the caves, and such pictures will help me to document my original notes in a scientifically usable form. The result could well be a couple of serious papers - plus further information which I could well publish on this blog.