Deep, Dark Secrets of His and Her Brains

Inside her walk-in refrigerator at McMaster University here in Ontario, Professor Sandra Witelson's collection of brains filled three walls of metal shelves. The 125 putty-colored specimens sat in frosted jars and snap-top plastic tubs like quarts of boiled shrimp and wedges of cheese.

Every one posed a riddle that had shaped her research for 30 years: How does the structure of the brain influence intelligence?

A professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, Witelson grappled with such a fundamental mystery by studying a somewhat smaller one: why certain abilities develop on one side of the brain rather than the other.

The two hemispheres of the brain are almost symmetrical physically but can seem to be separate minds when it comes to awareness and mental processing. They even have different problem-solving styles, researchers report. Yet they work together seamlessly to produce a single mind.

By 1977, Witelson was trying to learn why language skills developed on the left side of the brain for all right-handers but on the right side for many left-handers.

By 1987, 120 men and women had agreed to donate their brains after death. They all submitted to thorough psychological and intelligence tests so that each brain would be accompanied by a detailed profile of the mind that had animated it.

No two brains are identical, nor are two minds ever the same.

With so many well-documented donors, however, Witelson could conduct comparative brain studies on an unprecedented scale.

She could confidently seek relationships between anatomical features and mental capacities. She could also compare right-handers and left-handers, and sort the organs by gender.

So this seems to me evidence of an embodied model/modeling. The structures of our brains entail (and are entailed by) things like... skilled activity/interaction with the environment and/or the rest of the body (including itself), and I guess what might be called implicit community (e.g. speciation?) as evidenced by gender differences. (Does that ring to a near agreement with you Judith?)

I guess this may be a long way from 'Rosennean Complex Systems as Classifiers', but that too has the feel of applicability. Am I off the mark?

Good gracious, it seems that biology is what Robert said it was, large and daunting.

You're talking about complex, but non-living though, right Tim?

David

P.S. Ayten, what would you like to know about me? I'm a Tarheel and an independent researcher at best. I was turned on to Robert Rosen maybe only four years ago. Seeking insight from his work on a range of subjects: the origin and nature of life, experimentally induced emergence, the mind/body relation, modeling, adaptation, and maybe a few others. I may be trying to cover that too quickly. (Thank you Mr. Whitman)

Oh Ayten, sitting on your mushroom, asking me who are you? If anyone asks, I'm Alice.

But right now, I'm here for you.

I'm a 32-year-old southern boy, with blue-green eyes. And when I feel sexy, the girls know it's true.

I'm an independent researcher, seeking answers to questions. What is the nature and origin of life? That is, who are you? :)

Applications and Critical Experiments

Deep, Dark Secrets of His and Her Brains