Us and the world…connected
When I read that one time that there was a delay between the moment we experience something and the moment we’re conscious about it, I started asking myself questions about the system that makes the information go to and from the brain. Didn’t go further with the questioning, but I pinned that thought very deep because I had found myself going back to it regularly as I was paying more and more attention to my body and the reactions I had in different situations or environments.
Still didn’t have the necessary time and curiosity to go further with the research and my mind was wandering too much to be able to concentrate on a subject of this complexity. But I always felt I needed to know more and to fully understand how it all works in order to take the next steps into my inner journey….because everything is related and the more I understand about the way the brain works, the bigger chances I have in getting to the real issues that troubled mine.
So, how does the information circulate from and to the brain?
The brain is connected to the body through a “highway”, as I like to call it, which is the spinal cord and which is protected by the spine. This highway has points of exit/entry and they are the “gates” that allow the brain to communicate with the rest of the body.
I was always interested in how the thoughts started, how they developed and the world they created, but as I started to study the brain, I realized that I had to know how the brain interacted with the exterior, otherwise I would miss the reasons behind a person’s behavior and character, and therefore those behind thoughts and ideas.
Of course, there is the anatomy of it all, and as I went through all the information, I discovered that there were a lot of notions to be understood in order to get to a point where I could MAYBE get a clearer idea of how the brain works and therefore how it makes us who we are.
The outside world is full of information and every bit of it goes to a certain place in the brain and after that it gets processed, distributed, stocked and so on. As I see it, the capacity of perception (the main idea that was behind my curiosity regarding the brain), is the base on which the brain builds everything. It’s said that we all have a different kind of reality, and well, that was the second concept that triggered me as I really wanted to know how that was even possible. Being an observer by nature, I had, and still have, a lot of inner conflicts when I see human behavior. I have to understand the reason behind every person’s reactions to the world around them, which parts we share and which ones are completely unknown to each other.
So, the anatomy before the philosophy…
I learned that the link between the brain and the spinal cord, or more exactly, the pair of them, is called the Central Nervous System and is in charge of the body’s coordination. It’s the first and most important. The second is the Peripheric Nervous System and is formed of all the nerves all over the body, from the head to the toes and the third is the Autonomic Nervous System (a sub part of the second one, if we were to think in “levels”), which takes charge of all the automatic functions in the body (like the heart rate, respiration, digestion etc), functions we are not conscious of. Besides those three, there are other sub parts that I won’t get into in order to not distance myself too much from the main idea. But these three notions are sufficient enough to understand the basics of the interaction “body/brain”
I mentioned earlier that there were “gates” through which the information circulated. These are the foramens (at a skull level) and the intervertebral spaces (at a spine level). The most known foramens are the eye cavities and the nose cavities, but the most important one is the magnum foramen: the one at the base of the skull and which allows the spinal cord to join the brain in the area called the brainstem.
The brainstem is the base on which the brain stands, and is a fascinating structure, as it “takes over” from the spinal cord by providing a “tunnel” through which pass the sensitive and motor routes, and starts building the basics of the brain by ensuring functions like breathing and heart rhythm. It’s also the place where the 10 of the 12 facial nerves emerge. The intervertebral spaces are very small orifices that allow all of the 31 peripheric nerves to enter. There are 24 vertebrae
So now that we know how the information goes in and out, how do we call the “routes” for the exits and the ones for the entries?
All information going from the body TO the brain is afferent and all information going FROM the brain to the body, is efferent. The brain receives the information from the body via the rachidial nerves and it sends it via the spinal cord
I now had this image of information going both ways, millions of signals sent and received, so many connections being made, and all that done at the same time, up and down.. so I then started wondering how this information got processed on the way…signals are sent but they must be processed mid-way through, or at one point anyway, so they can trigger the following move/thought.
That got me back to the neurons, so to the three types I was talking about in the previous article.
The motor neurons correspond to the efferent part, so the exit: they send information from the brain to the muscles The sensory neurons take care of the other part: the entry. The information collected through the senses, is processed by those neurons (see, hear, smell, feel, touch) and then sent to the brain That brings me to the most developed ones, the interneurons… by connecting the different types of neurons they create connections that allow us to feel while walking, tasting while seeing and so on…but the most important job that these neurons do is creating associations at a cortex level, and that is where ideas and thoughts are born.
That is the part that I’m interested in and I have realized that the number of connections that can be made at that level, really has no limit.
I call this the “highway of life” because I think of it as what makes us react to the external world and also as what allows us to integrate information from the outside into our inner world. We live at the pace of I don’t know how many connections, at all levels, and the brain is capable of knowing, at all times, what goes on and where.
I would call that impressive but the word doesn’t qualify really. I don’t know which one does. All I know is that no matter what our interests are in life, the most important interest we should have is ourselves. Our brains. Find out how WE work on our own, how WE integrate and process information before even trying to understand how others do it.
Unfortunately that is not how this goes out there, and now I’m getting back to the philosophy…
The human race got to a point where we have no idea where we came from and what we are made of, but we can bet our asses that we know where we are going and we can swear that the chosen path is the best one.
I am saying this from a very personal point of view after having analyzed so, so many things: we have never been more wrong…