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Alexander Nevzorov
ORIGIN
PERSONALITY AND INTELLIGENCE
PERSON
Experience in summarizing data from classical neurophysiology
Origo personae
et cerebri hominis
Alexander Ne vzorov
Origo personae
et cerebri
hominis
Experimentum generalium
notitiarum neurophysiologiae classicae
Alexander Nevzorov
Origin
personality and intelligence
person
Data summarization experience
classical neurophysiology
Moscow
"ACT"
ASTREL SPb
UDC 572 BBK 28.71 N40
Nevzorov, Alexander Glebovich
H40 The origin of human personality and intelligence. Experience in generalizing data from classical neurophysiology / Alexander Nevzorov. – Moscow: ACT, 2013. – 541 p., ill.
ISBN 978-5-17-079795-0
In this book, Alexander Nevzorov - director, screenwriter, writer, member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists - offers clear, detailed interpretations of such concepts as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “thinking” and “intelligence” , based only on those discoveries that were made by classical schools of neurophysiology, and on the natural scientific interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammal.
UDC 572 BBK 28.71
Project curator Lidia Nevzorova
Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova
Project curator Lidia Nevzorova
Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova
Commissioning Editor Stasia Zolotova
Latin text editor Elena Ryigas
IT director Elizaveta Makarova
Art editor, photographer Dmitry Raikin
Assistants:
Ekaterina Aralbaeva, Tatyana Time, Alina Nos,
Alexandra Oranskaya, Evgenia Shevchenko, Victoria Terenina
A. G. Nevzorov: text, photo, 2012 AST Publishing House LLC, 2013
LIST OF LATIN WORDS
AND EXPRESSIONS
absolute
ad infinitum
ad interim
ad oculus
ad verbum
aegrote videre
aliqualiter
anfractus
aut totum aut nihil
undoubtedly
to infinity
at this time
before your eyes
by the way
it hurts to see
in other words
somewhat of a turning point
and
all or nothing
Barbare dictu
bella latebricola
bellum omnium contra omnes
breviter
roughly speaking
lovely outback
war of all against all
in short
callide
capitales principales
caput aperire
ceterum
circiter
circus clausus
claris verbis
contra racionem
OK
initial capital
bare your head (take off your hat)
however
approximately
vicious circle
in clear words
against the meaning
e supra dicto ordiri
ecce rem
eo ipso
et cetera
et vita genuina incepit
evident
exemplary cause
exemplum
explico
Based on the above, the point is
thereby
and real life began
obviously
For example
example
I'll explain
floriculi
fortasse
flowers
Maybe
gaudia private
personal joys
i.e. (id est)
ignis et tympani
in mensa anatomica
in postremo
in tenebris
in toto
that is
hence
fireworks and timpani on the anatomy table
in the end
in the dark
generally
in unda fortunae
locus communis
wave vaste
minimum consumption mirabiliter
molliter dictu
necessario notare
nervus vivendi nihilominus
opportune
per dentes
per obticentiam
perfecte fortasse
plangor infantium
propinquus pauper psittacinae repetitiones punctum pronumerandi puto
radula pro neuronis
ridicule
scilicet
se sustinere difficile secundum naturam
semimalum
severe dictu
sine dubio
taceo ego tamen
ultra limites factorum
ut notum est
ventilius reciprocus verumtamen
vulgus terminale on the wave of success
common place
as rough as possible subsistence level wonderful
to put it mildly
worth noting passionately nonetheless
Now
By the way
through clenched teeth
default
It is quite possible that infants will be beaten
quicker
poor relative parrot repetition reference point
I guess
neuron scratcher
I repeat
funny
Certainly
enough
of course
it's hard to resist
naturally
not so bad
literally speaking
undoubtedly
I'm keeping quiet though
beyond the facts to
as is known
check valve
however, it is still extremely simple
The reason for this book. "Storekeeper". Story
question. Brain in Ancient Egypt. Hippocrates. Galen. Vesalius.
Descartes. Gall. The Brain in the Bible. Translationism. Darwinism.
Theory of reticular formation. Pavlov. Variability
brain homo. Uncertainty of coordinates.
I've been wanting this book for a long time.
To be honest, I would prefer that someone else wrote it, and I would receive it in finished form, with a good reference and bibliographic apparatus and a set of decent tables and illustrations.
This would be better in every sense of the word: et lupi saturi et oves integrae.
I waited a long time and patiently, not even thinking about taking on it myself, since I’m not looking for extra work, and I believe that such books should be done by those whose direct responsibility is this.
Ceterum, I probably never became the mass of readers for whom it is worth writing and publishing a book that would summarize the indisputable scientific facts about the morphology and evolutionary history of the functions of the human brain.
Atque formal summation did not suit me very much. I needed conclusions that were a natural continuation and generation of these facts, so that in each specific case I could “feel the umbilical cord” that goes directly from the fact to the conclusion.
I needed clear, detailed, but not clouded by “psychology” interpretations of such concepts as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “thinking” and “intelligence”. These interpretations could be as bold or paradoxical as desired, but at the same time they should not contradict even the most radical dogmas of classical neuroanatomy and classical evolutionary neurophysiology. Moreover, they had to be a direct consequence of these dogmas.
Repeto, I needed a book like this at hand, and I was completely indifferent to who its author was and whose name was on its cover.
In the same way, it doesn’t matter to me now.
The presence of my name on the book is a mere coincidence. It could have been written by anyone, since the facts and discoveries in this area have already formed an extremely coherent picture, obvious, as I believe, to everyone without exception. My authorship can only be explained by the fact that I turned out to be less lazy than my contemporaries.
Secundum naturam, a significant part of this work is a summary of those brilliant discoveries that were made long before me, or conclusions that are possible only on the basis of research I. M. Sechenov, C. S. Sherrington, V. M. Bekhterev, U. G. Penfield, G. Maguna, I. Pavlova, A. Severtsov, P. Broca, K. Wernicke, T. G. Huxley,
A. Brodal, L. Roberts, G. Jasper, WITH. R. Cajal, S. Oleneva, I. Filimonova, I. S. Beritashvili (Beritova), S. Blinkov, J. Eccles, X. Delgado, E. Seppa, G. Bastian, K. Leschly, D. Olds.
Here I am obliged to quote the statement of Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen a little further than others, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” (I'm not very sure that I "saw further than others," but as I understand it, this does not exempt me from observing a funny ritual with quotation.)
In toto, I act only as a storekeeper who, rattling the keys, can lead you through the bins where brilliant discoveries are gathering dust.
Naturally, like any storekeeper, I can afford a couple of maxims about the contents of this storeroom.
Since I saw myself first and foremost as a reader of this book, I was, accordingly, extremely concerned about the accuracy of formulations and quotes, the balance of conclusions and their purity from any categorism. (You can and should regale the public with categorism, “ideas”, trends, but not yourself.)
Latin, which I (probably) overuse somewhat, is not just senile self-indulgence. In addition to all its other advantages, it creates significant hindrances and inconveniences for those whom I would not like to see among the so-called. readers of this study.
Hypotheses and theories about the origin of intelligence are a field of conflicting doctrines. Some of them are openly “mystical”, some allow a certain percentage of “mysticism”, i.e. mixes neurophysiology with the principles of the “unknowable” and “sacred”.
I firmly base myself only on those discoveries that were made by the classical schools of neuroanatomy, and on the physiological, natural science interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammal.
Alias, for romantics and mystics of any kind, this book is absolutely meaningless and unpleasant.
Puto, any talk about the “secrets” of the brain and the “mysteries” of consciousness is possible only with a deliberate ignorance of the classical basic doctrines of neurophysiology, in the absence of long and thoughtful sectional practice on brain preparations, in the reluctance to evaluate consciousness, mind, thinking and intelligence as a direct and understandable consequence physiological processes and evolutionary history of the vertebrate brain.
Some of the complexity of the issue under study lies in its multidimensionality, in the impossibility of solving it only by methods of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology.
By limiting ourselves to just these two disciplines, we get the well-known effect “phenomeni observantis se ipsum” ( phenomenon , which watches itself or, to be even more precise, a phenomenon that studies itself).
Sine dubio, consciousness, reason and thinking, taking place in a small space of the brain skull, obey, first of all, the laws of neurophysiology, accordingly, they can be understood and explained only in strict accordance with these laws. But there are a number of external (i.e., outside neurophysiology itself) influential factors that must be taken into account in the study of thinking or the mind.
These include data from geochronology, evolutionism, paleoanthropology, paleozoology, comparative anatomy and physiology, recorded history, histology and (partly) genetics and clinical psychiatry.
Moreover, not a single phenomenon is able to evaluate itself, its size, place in the world order, significance and importance. To understand any natural phenomenon, you need an idea of its origin, “size” and meaning.
This concerns thinking and reason to the same extent as any other natural phenomenon.
An idea of their development, since it is (first of all) the history of the physiological substrate of the brain and its functions, can be partly provided by paleoanthropology and paleozoology.
But the questions of “dimensions” and the place of these phenomena in the system of the universe can only be resolved strictly “from the outside,” that is, only by methods adopted in that science that is accustomed to accurately, freely and coldly evaluate both worlds and molecules.
We have many examples of how “one-dimensional” attempts to resolve the question of the essence of consciousness, mind, thinking and intelligence resulted in “psychological verbosity”, vulgar theology or some kind of confusion, which surprisingly could coexist with the most sophisticated understanding of the principle of operation of brain mechanisms .
Example:
Definitely a great scientist Wilder Graves Penfield(1891-1976), studying only the human brain itself, but ignoring the evolutionary history of the brain, despite all his discoveries, as a result he was “locked” in very banal conclusions about the nature of thinking and intelligence.
Another brilliant explorer Henry-Charlton Bastian(1837-1915) was the first to discover the relationship between thinking and speech, but could not give his discovery proper neurophysiological justification. As a result, his discovery was appropriated by psychologists who drowned Bastian's theory in their standard phraseology, depriving it of almost all meaning and content.
These two examples are just an indicator of the final futility of both attempts to one-dimensionally comprehend cerebral processes, and the admission of any extra-scientific disciplines, such as psychology or philosophy, into this topic.
However, it should be remembered that if Penfield and Bastian had not made these mistakes, then someone else would have had to make them. Perhaps for us too. Now all we can do is thank them not only for their discoveries, but also for their mistakes, and study the latter almost on an equal basis with the former.
The value of a real, serious mistake in science is well known. Respect for it was well formulated by “Quantum Sensation” Pauli (as he called himself) in his review of one of Victor Weisskopf’s hypotheses: “This idea is wrong, it’s not even wrong.”
Another thing - example I. M. Sechenova (1829-1905).
He missed the publication of the fundamental discoveries of Nobel laureates C. S. Sherry England just a little bit in time "The Integrative Action of the Nervous System"(1906); S. P. Kahalya "Histologie du Systeme Nerveux de I"homme et des Vertebres"
Ill. 1. I. M. Sechenov
(1909); with the centencephalic theory of W. Penfield, G. Jasper, L. Roberts "Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain" (1954), "Speech and Brain Mechanisms"(1959); with the developments of the theory of reticular formation by G. Magun, A. Brodal, J. Rossi, A. Zanchetti (1957-1963); with the result of many brilliant neurophysiological experiments and studies of the 20th century.
If Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov, with his ability to generalize everything that science has, with his understanding of the principles of how the brain works, would have had all the above materials during his lifetime, then there would not be the slightest need for this book; perhaps all the i’s in the matter of the formation of thinking and intelligence would have been dotted by Sechenov long ago. But we were unlucky: Ivan Mikhailovich died before neurophysiology acquired its real “scientific flesh.”
In the history of brain research, great discoveries are compressed with equally great errors so tightly that it will be possible to dissect one from the other only in the distant future, when the sum of knowledge will probably become final, and some kind of summary of the evolutionary history of the vertebrate brain will be summed up.
We can only be content with the known ad interim.
Briefly - the history of the issue.
The Paraschites of Ancient Egypt (embalmer priests), who prepared the bodies of the dead for eternal life, treated all human internal organs with the most serious respect.
The liver, heart, kidneys, stomach, intestines, spleen, lungs et cetera, upon removal from the corpse, were washed, embalmed and either packaged in vessels or placed back into the mummy. Oblivion or accidental destruction of any of the internal organs was excluded, since it deprived the deceased of part of his status in the afterlife. Each of the organs had a special mystical role and its own patron god.
The heart, exempli causa, was under the protection of the god Tuamutefa ( Book of the Dead, 2002. Ch. XXVI), the stomach was guarded by the god Hapi, and the liver by the god Kebsennuf
In addition to the protector god, each organ also had a demon enemy who tried to damage, steal or destroy it. During mummification, all organs were protected from kidnapping demons with special amulets made of lapis lazuli or carnelian.
The only organ that paraschites discarded without regret or thought was the brain.
It was extracted, as Herodotus writes, “through the nostrils,” but in reality, probably by breaking concha nasalis superior, os lacrimale, proc. uncinatus, those. superior turbinate, lacrimal bone and uncinate process ( Mikhailovsky V. G. Experience in X-ray examination of Egyptian mummies. SMAE, 1928. T. 8)(Ill. 2).
Ill. 2. X-ray examination of the mummy (according to Mikhailovsky)
The brain had neither a patron god nor a secret name.
It had no meaning at all and, after being removed from the head, could even be “fed to the dogs.”
There are no intelligible explanations for this fact.
It is impossible to talk about the exact time of origin of this trend, but if we date it to the eras of the III-V dynasties, which is 2600–2500 BC, then we will probably be somewhere not far from the truth. (At this time, the first editions of the “Book of the Dead” were compiled and the basic techniques and rules of mummification were formed.) But, secundum naturam, it cannot be ruled out that complete neglect of the brain is an earlier tradition, dating back to the 1st-2nd dynasty, to the times of Djer and Khasekhemwy.
About two thousand years later, the Greeks began to suspect that the mysterious formation contained in the skull of the head still had some significance. The first of the Greeks to appear on this topic was, naturally, Hippocrates.
“Hippocrates defined the brain as a gland that regulates the body’s moisture and as the main producer of sperm, which it pumps along the spinal cord to the testicles.” (Morokhovets L., prof. History and correlation of medical knowledge, 1903).
Usually this extract from the Hippocratic treatise "About the glands" cited as a textbook example of the naivety of ancient medicine. There is almost nothing incorrect in citing it; it, indeed, summarizes part of Hippocrates’ ideas about the brain.
But probably only a part.
His treatise “On sacred disease" It was written as if by a completely different person. There is almost no word in it about sperm, but there are developments so reasonable that the greatest authority on neurology of the 20th century, Wilder Graves Penfield, publicly acknowledged their “amazingness to this day.”
Puto, a full quotation from Penfield’s speech at the Detroit Congress of Neurophysiologists would be helpful here:
“...The description of the function of the human brain, which can be found in his book, in the section on “sacred disease” (epilepsy), is truly amazing to this day. It is clear that Hippocrates used the symptoms and manifestations of epilepsy as a guide to understanding brain function, just as Huling Jackson did many years later, and just as we try to do today." (Penfield W. G., 1957).
Penfield may have gone a little overboard with his admiration (he was generally very generous with his praise), but the treatise certainly contains some scientific soundness and a clear understanding of the dominant role of the brain.
However, this treatise did not make much of an impression on Hippocrates’ contemporaries and immediate descendants. Its lack of resonance in ancient science is not explainable, but it is obvious.
This is especially strange, given the sensitivity of the ancient Greeks to any genius and ability to develop brilliant ideas to a global scale. However, the indifference of contemporaries and descendants probably has a very prosaic reason: in the time of Hippocrates, the treatise was either still unknown or had a completely different content. It should be remembered that the authorship of all the works of Hippocrates is generally very controversial; all of his treatises were subject to later additions, editing or distortion. It is impossible to establish the scale of the inscriptions today, just as there is no way to understand which text is genuine and which is significantly later.
Later, nice exercises by Plato and Aristotle appeared on the topic of interest to us, but we will omit them and go straight to Claudius Galen(200-130 BC) and his “hydraulic model” of the brain. (This model is sometimes erroneously attributed to Nemesius, who lived in the 4th century AD.)
Ergo, Galen.
At the beginning of the new era, everything was in approximately the same positions. A certain significance was recognized for the brain, but it was incomprehensible and rather fit into the “naive” formulations of Hippocrates.
Against this dim background, in the complete absence of any scientific dogma and interest in the issue, Claudius Galen had complete freedom, both research and improvisation.
Today it is quite difficult to maintain seriousness when listing his important thoughts on the role of the cerebral ventricles and the tentorium cerebellum.
But seriousness is necessary.
Ill. For -b. Left: Leonardo da Vinci's drawing illustrating
"three ventricles" theory. Right: Drawing from the book
Peter of Rosenheim (collection of engravings, 16th century)
Galen's theory that information collected by receptors is processed in the "front cavity" of the brain into a kind of "sense of experiencing the world" for almost fourteen centuries completely satisfied few interested in questions of reason and thinking.
It became a dogma for extremely narrow scientific circles and was repeated without the slightest doubt even by the geniuses of the Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci (ill. 3 a-b).
“All physicians trusted Galen so much that among them there was probably not a single one who could admit that even the slightest mistake in the field of anatomy could be or had already been discovered in Galen’s writings.” (Vesalius A.
Galen also believed that various "complex" functions (judgment, reflection and recognition) were located in a certain "middle" ventricle, and memory and motor impulses in the "posterior".
Abstracting from the anecdotal nature of these arguments, we nevertheless see some strange and crooked, but still an attempt to understand the structures and hierarchy of the brain.
The “strangeness and crookedness” of the attempt, puto, are not at all explained by Galen’s stupidity, but they force us to take a completely different look at all the “achievements” of ancient anatomy in terms of cerebral research.
All neuroanatomical hypotheses and ideas of Galen cast great doubt on both his personal sectional practice on this topic and the achievements of those who are considered to be his teachers, anatomists of the 3rd-1st centuries Herophila (Herophilus), Rufus of Ephesus (Rufus Ephesius), Marina (Marinus), Celsus (Celsus), Numesiana (Numesianus), Areteea (Aretaeus), Lykosa (Lycos), Martiala (Martialis), Heliodora (Heliodorus) et cetera.
It is clear that having even minimal experience in correctly sectioning the brain, it would be impossible to come to the conclusions that Galen made the dogma of science for 14 centuries.
The fact is that the horizontal sequence of almost equal-sized “cavities” carefully described by Galen is not contained in the human brain.
Probably, not only the anatomists of the Alexandrian and other schools, but also Galen himself did not have the opportunity to thoroughly study the human brain. For one simple reason.
Fresh brain is very difficult to handle with a knife, as in some places it has an almost semi-fluid consistency. When cut, its structures, as they say, “swim” and merge, depriving the anatomist of the opportunity to see demarcations and other nuances of cerebral architecture.
But the opportunity to “thicken” (fix) brain tissue and make it suitable for accurate and complex cutting has not yet existed.
Formalin, ethyl, potassium dihydroxide were not known to anatomists of Galen's era. And it is they who give the brain structures that “density” and even some “rubbery”, which makes jewelry sectioning, separation of structures from each other and the thinnest sections possible.
Yes, as you know, Claudius Galen could cut open a living sheep, expose its heart and give a measured and thorough lesson demonstrating the work of the pericardium. With the brain, such tricks were also possible, both on sheep and on dying gladiators or slaves, but with the possibility of only an external examination of the open organ, nothing more.
With any attempt to cut a little deeper into the soft and arachnoid membranes of such a brain, profuse bleeding of the surgical field begins, and neither vacuum nor other aspirators (blood suction) have yet been invented. Plus, when dissecting a living brain, all the problems that are relevant when working with an unfixed preparation remain, i.e. "spreading" of structures.
“With the removal of the soft shell, the brain expands greatly and, completely falling off, becomes somewhat blurred” (Vesalius A. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 1604).
It would be a mistake to assume that the 2nd century anatomist had no problems with cadaveric material. No, they were, since the heat and distances made almost any death meaningless for science. Considering the fact that the brain deforms and decomposes faster than any other organ, it was impossible to competently and carefully remove it from the brain skull after just a few hours.
It is no coincidence that Galen did his main research in the spoliarii of circuses, studying the bodies of fallen or still agonizing gladiators and bestiaries. Bending over the next body, Galen undoubtedly saw in a bloody mess of hair, skull fragments and scraps dura mater the slimy, pulsating cortex of the brain and, probably, it was there that he first touched it with his hand or a lancet.
It was then, under the dull roar of the stands, in the stench of the gladiator corpse, that neuroanatomy was born.
Galen, the first of the scientists, recognized the brain’s function of controlling the entire human body and bowed before it.
However, the deep structures of the brain remained anatomically inaccessible to him and, accordingly, have not been studied.
In those descriptions where Galen dwells in detail on the structure of the brain, it is easy to notice the predominance of purely external observations: the cerebellum and vermis c cerebellum, hard and soft membranes. The herification of 1 hemisphere, the depth of the sulci, the presence of the falx, and the cerebellar tentorium were correctly noted.
In short, everything that can be touched with bare fingers.
True, he also makes attempts to look a little deeper, but they are limited to that part of the corpus callosum and the commissure, which can be seen by cutting along the line of the sagittal groove of the brain that separates the hemispheres, and some observations of those stem formations that open with simple cutting of the cerebellum .
Suspicions that the absurdity of Galen's conclusions about the internal structure of the brain were caused by the impossibility of its full research are indirectly confirmed by the fact that all his other research related to decay-resistant and dense organs is recorded very well.
As an anatomist, Galen demonstrates passion, consistency and seriousness.
Some descriptions of muscle and fascial tissues, bones, tendons and even joint capsules (adjusted for incompleteness and naivety) can still be taken almost seriously today. Pre-
with Vermis – worm (lat.) – Editor's note
d Furrowing of the cerebral cortex, in other words, the presence of convolutions and grooves that form a complex relief of the cortex. – Note ed.
The trepanation technique he introduced was quite decent for those times, and the almost exact description of the vagus nerve even arouses admiration.
Puto that Claudius Galen of Pergamon, retreating before the complex, essentially capricious anatomy of the brain, simply replaced it with his personal fantasy. I cannot offer any other explanation for the emergence of the strange legend about three horizontal cavities.
Galen's deception, repeto, successfully existed until 1543, when, finally, after almost fourteen hundred years, it was exposed by the anatomist Andreas Vesalius in his work "De Corporis Humani Fabrica" for the first time showing an accurate picture of the human brain.
Having received accurate anatomical data about the geometry and structures of the brain, science should respond with something extremely sound.
First to respond Rene Descartes (Cartesius), who proposed a “dioptric model of the brain” in the first quarter of the 17th century. The soundness of this model was equal to the fantasies of Claudius Galen, but the head of Descartes became a symbol of the intellectual daring of that era.
Descartes was buried without her. His skull was posthumously sawn into exactly 100 pieces. All one hundred pieces were set into the castes of one hundred large rings that adorned the fingers of one hundred Carthusians - fanatics of the idea of "spirits" that penetrate the brain and, reflected in the cavities of the ventricles of the brain, affect the "nervous motor pathways."
This is where, by the way, the “doctrine of reflexes” came from. Stereotypical
reactions later got their name precisely thanks to Cartesian “reflecting” spirits ( refractio– reflection).
The Cartesian version did not last so long, however. Already at the very beginning of the 19th century, the anatomist Franz Joseph Gall(1758–1828) 2 tried to map the brain, meticulously dividing the cortex of its hemispheres into sectors, each of which (according to Gall) concentrated a particle of “higher functions”.
Gall (in his opinion) discovered the places of localization of “cunning”, “poetry”, “wit”, “thrift”, “friendship”, “hope” et cetera (ill. 4 a-b).
His ideas were very popular for some time and even supplanted Cartesian “spirits”.
Ceterum, the popularity was somewhat decorative and concerned not the essence of the theory, but its satellite - “phrenology”, which implied the ability to recognize “properties of character and mind” by the shape of the convexities of the skull.
Gall, of course, was buried without his head, which was separated by the will of the deceased before funeral service, so as not to risk the delicate substance of the brain, intended for study and, of course, mapping.
Ad verbum, Gall, of course, outdid Descartes by bequeathing not only the skull, but also the brain to “science,” but with this will he put some of his relatives in an extremely awkward position. These were simple-minded people who came to an ordinary funeral, and whom no one warned about the somewhat exotic nature of the situation. During the procedure of farewell to the body, wanting to imprint a farewell kiss on the brow of the deceased, they probably experienced some confusion in searching for his forehead.
Gall's developments, which seem so naive today, subsequently provoked a real scientific search for places of dynamic localization of certain brain functions.
Ergo, the very first researchers (today so conducive to irony about them), nevertheless, founded part of the basic principles of neurophysiology: the exclusive role of the brain, reflexivity, localization of functions. Definite success
Ill. 4 a-b. Mapping using the Gall method
Of course it was there. But it was also obvious that man was astonishingly indifferent to the question of the functions and structure of the brain, to the nature of his own consciousness and mind.
In the book, Alexander Nevzorov - director, screenwriter, writer, member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists - offers clear, detailed interpretations of such concepts as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “thinking” and “intelligence”, based only on those discoveries that were made by classical schools of neurophysiology, and on the natural scientific interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammal.
“I’ve had a need for this book for a long time,” says Nevzorov. “Honestly, I would prefer that someone else wrote it, and I would receive it already finished.” I’m not looking for extra work, and I believe that such books should be done by those whose direct responsibility it is.”
In this statement by Nevzorov, as well as in the defense of it from sharp criticism from scientists that followed the book’s publication, regret is clearly expressed. According to the journalist, who is also a member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists, today ordinary readers are hungry for popular scientific literature in the field of brain research, which should be created, first of all, by people of science.
Scientists began to study the brain more or less seriously only in the 19th century - previously it was considered an insignificant organ. With such a late appeal to the main center that controls the body, the publicist explains the influence that religion still has on people’s consciousness, which for centuries has considered the heart to be the seat of the human soul.
The origin of personality is an attempt to define concepts such as consciousness, mind, personality, thinking and intelligence, not clouded by psychology and especially religion, to explain the origin of intelligence exclusively from the standpoint of classical neuroanatomy and neurophysiology based on research data from the world's leading scientists.
“I act only as a storekeeper who, rattling the keys, can lead you through the bins where brilliant discoveries are gathering dust,” the author concludes.
About the “indifference” of neurons
The smell of a female and a page of Shakespeare, itchy skin and a mathematical formula - all these are different, but quite equal irritants, causing reflex responses of varying degrees of complexity. But nothing more. [Over 150 years of studying the brain] there has been no confirmed evidence that the neuron in any way “cognizes the nature” of irritation or is even “interested” in it. The hypothesis according to which the signals in neurons are highly stereotypical and the same for all animals, and synaptic connections have an identical mechanism in all living beings, has received academic status. The mechanism of contraction-expansion of the synaptic cleft, mitochondrial movement, and behavior of synaptic vesicles during neural communication occurring in the locust ganglion is almost similar to the same mechanism in the brain of a lynx, shark, or human, although the characteristics of the stimuli for the three listed species are radically different.
About the secondary nature of any intelligence
In fact, any intellectual act of homo is always, to put it mildly, “secondary”, since it is only a combination-recombination of answers, concepts, nominations, images, etc., which were created before the moment of this combination (intellectual act), that is, the individuality of creativity, science and the so-called events of a person’s inner world are nothing more than a figure of speech.
About aggression as the basis of human behavior
Perhaps it will be completely unnecessary to remind you that all the military exploits of homo (from the Iliad to Stalingrad) are direct children of predatory aggression, and in its purest, primordial form, dating back to the Paleozoic. This may seem paradoxical, but I believe that it is predatory aggression that is the mother of such valued qualities as self-sacrifice, selflessness, nobility, determination, compassion and other virtues.
On masking aggression with virtue
Socialization has somewhat shifted guidelines and revalued values. The object of hunting in the socialized world of homo, the main super-valuable prey, is no longer a rabbit or a hippopotamus, but public approval (the so-called fame, recognition, respect, worship, etc.). It is this spoils that provide dominance, power and dividends. But the hunt for public recognition is complex and subtle, it requires special ingenuity, which is precisely what gives rise to various “self-sacrifices,” “selflessness” and other specific, brightly contrasting and therefore often successful variations in the behavior of homo. A particularly complex goal gives rise to extremely complex tools for achieving it, that is, the so-called virtues.
On the universality of aggression
There is no fundamental biological difference between the ten fingers of Einstein, who accepted the diploma of the Nobel laureate in 1921, and the 220 teeth of Varanosaurus, which 300 million years ago tormented the belly of the silent moss-eater Moschops [prehistoric animals]. Both prey (both the diploma and the belly of the Moschops) are the result of the manifestation of approximately the same qualities, correctly directed, concentrated aggression to achieve a goal.
The significance of inner speech for the birth of intelligence
“Inner speech” (that is, thinking) played a very special role; thanks to her, the most ancient function of the brain “sounded” and made itself the subject of its own close and aggressive attention. Self-awareness has evolved from a mundane neurophysiological process into a very exciting activity. As we know, speech is a symbolization of creatures, properties, phenomena, objects, actions, that is, a verbal duplicate of reality. The dependence of the organism on the environment has been absolute since the Proterozoic.
It is she who determines whether a creature lives or not, and what efforts must be expended by him in order to adapt to it or try to resist it. For the reason that thinking turned out to be an excellent breeding ground for prognosticism, which by its very nature is prone to dramatization and exacerbation, since any animal perceives all the circumstances and nuances of the world primarily in relation to the good of its own biological individuality and rightly looks for hidden and obvious in everything threats. There is no doubt that, compared with other animals, the prognosis of thinking homos has become more dramatic and sophisticated. Thanks to the system of nominations and knowledge, forecasts have become much more accurate, and therefore more pessimistic.
On the influence on a person of his knowledge of death
The recognition of life doomed man to such knowledge of death that was inaccessible to any other animal; Now the image of death has become dissolved in almost every event, phenomenon or thing. This image has turned into an eternal companion, into a cunning, cruel, malicious and inexorable pursuer, and a person’s life into eluding him.
About religions
Religions have also provoked man to constantly make dramatic predictions about how his actions and desires are assessed by the dangerous supernatural beings in whose power he is.
About deceit
Property, sexual, predatory, intermale, territorial, hierarchical aggressions, naturally, became the core and content of all human social games. However, the strength of aggression itself did not guarantee success in these games, and then the search for advantages developed the so-called deceitfulness - a property that was all the more effective the better its consequences were predicted. This phenomenon has been perfectly developed by evolution in the mimicry of fish and insects, it is present in the mating, hunting, and conflict behavior of many animals, and in human culture, lying has developed into such an important factor that today “inability to lie” is a diagnostic sign of such diseases such as Asperger's syndrome and other types of autism.
About labor
Labor was a special, “double-edged” factor. It provoked both simple (labor) forecasting and complex (social) forecasting, generated by the desire to free oneself from labor in general or from its most painful variations. I think the emergence of social relations (estates, classes, dynasties, hierarchies, property and law) is, first of all, the history of the desire and ability of a part of homo to evade the need for labor.
Alexander Nevzorov
Origo personae et cerebri hominis
Experimentum generalium notitiarum neurophysiologiae classicae Alexander Nevzorov The origin of human personality and intelligence Experience of generalizing the data of classical neurophysiology
Moscow "ACT"
ASTREL SPb
UDC 572 BBK 28.71 N40
Nevzorov, Alexander Glebovich
H40 The origin of human personality and intelligence. Experience in generalizing data from classical neurophysiology / Alexander Nevzorov. - Moscow: ACT, 2013. - 541 p., ill.
ISBN 978-5-17-079795-0
In this book, Alexander Nevzorov - director, screenwriter, writer, member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists - offers clear, detailed interpretations of such concepts as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “thinking” and “intelligence” , based only on those discoveries that were made by classical schools of neurophysiology, and on the natural scientific interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammal.
UDC 572 BBK 28.71
Project curator Lidia Nevzorova Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova Project curator Lidia Nevzorova Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova Production editor Stasia Zolotova Latin text editor Elena Ryigas IT director Elizaveta Makarova Art editor, photographer Dmitry Raikin
Assistants:
Ekaterina Aralbaeva, Tatyana Time, Alina Nos, Alexandra Oranskaya, Evgenia Shevchenko, Victoria Terenina
© A. G. Nevzorov: text, photo, 2012 © AST Publishing House LLC, 2013
LIST OF LATIN WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS
The reason for this book. "Storekeeper". History of the issue. Brain in Ancient Egypt. Hippocrates. Galen. Vesalius.
Descartes. Gall. The Brain in the Bible. Translationism. Darwinism. Theory of reticular formation. Pavlov. Homo brain variability. Uncertainty of coordinates.
I've been wanting this book for a long time.
To be honest, I would prefer that someone else wrote it, and I would receive it in finished form, with a good reference and bibliographic apparatus and a set of decent tables and illustrations.
This would be better in every sense of the word: et lupi saturi et oves integrae.
I waited a long time and patiently, not even thinking about taking on it myself, since I’m not looking for extra work, and I believe that such books should be done by those whose direct responsibility is this.
Ceterum, I probably never became the mass of readers for whom it is worth writing and publishing a book that would summarize the indisputable scientific facts about the morphology and evolutionary history of the functions of the human brain.
Atque formal summation did not suit me very much. I needed conclusions that were a natural continuation and generation of these facts, so that in each specific case I could “feel the umbilical cord” that goes directly from the fact to the conclusion.
I needed clear, detailed, but not clouded by “psychology” interpretations of such concepts as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “thinking” and “intelligence”. These interpretations could be as bold or paradoxical as desired, but at the same time they should not contradict even the most radical dogmas of classical neuroanatomy and classical evolutionary neurophysiology. Moreover, they had to be a direct consequence of these dogmas.
Repeto, I needed a book like this at hand, and I was completely indifferent to who its author was and whose name was on its cover.
In the same way, it doesn’t matter to me now.
The presence of my name on the book is a mere coincidence. It could have been written by anyone, since the facts and discoveries in this area have already formed an extremely coherent picture, obvious, as I believe, to everyone without exception. My authorship can only be explained by the fact that I turned out to be less lazy than my contemporaries.
Secundum naturam, a significant part of this work is a collection of those brilliant discoveries that were made long before me, or conclusions that are possible only on the basis of the research of I. M. Sechenov, C. S. Sherrington, V. M. Bekhterev, W. G. Penfield, G. Magun, I. Pavlov, A. Severtsov, P. Broca, C. Wernicke, T. G. Huxley, A. Brodahl, L. Roberts, G. Jasper, S. R. Cajal, S. Oleneva, I. Filimonova, I. S. Beritashvili (Beritova), S. Blinkov, J. Eccles, X. Delgado, E. Seppa, G. Bastian, K. Lashley, D. Olds.
Here I am obliged to quote the statement of Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen a little further than others, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” (I'm not very sure that I "saw further than others," but as I understand it, this does not exempt me from observing a funny ritual with quotation.)
In toto, I act only as a storekeeper who, rattling the keys, can lead you through the bins where brilliant discoveries are gathering dust.
Naturally, like any storekeeper, I can afford a couple of maxims about the contents of this storeroom.
Since I saw myself first and foremost as a reader of this book, I was, accordingly, extremely concerned about the accuracy of formulations and quotes, the balance of conclusions and their purity from any categorism. (You can and should regale the public with categorism, “ideas”, trends, but not yourself.)
Latin, which I (probably) overuse somewhat, is not just senile self-indulgence. In addition to all its other advantages, it creates significant hindrances and inconveniences for those whom I would not like to see among the so-called. readers of this study.
Hypotheses and theories about the origin of intelligence are a field of conflicting doctrines. Some of them are openly “mystical”, some allow a certain percentage of “mysticism”, i.e. mixes neurophysiology with the principles of the “unknowable” and “sacred”.
I firmly base myself only on those discoveries that were made by the classical schools of neuroanatomy, and on the physiological, natural science interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammal.
Alias, for romantics and mystics of any kind, this book is absolutely meaningless and unpleasant.
Puto, any talk about the “secrets” of the brain and the “mysteries” of consciousness is possible only with a deliberate ignorance of the classical basic doctrines of neurophysiology, in the absence of long and thoughtful sectional practice on brain preparations, in the reluctance to evaluate consciousness, mind, thinking and intelligence as a direct and understandable consequence physiological processes and evolutionary history of the vertebrate brain.
Some of the complexity of the issue under study lies in its multidimensionality, in the impossibility of solving it only by methods of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology.
By limiting ourselves to just these two disciplines, we get the well-known effect of “phenomeni observantis se ipsum” (a phenomenon that observes itself or, more precisely, a phenomenon that studies itself).
Sine dubio, consciousness, reason and thinking, taking place in a small space of the brain skull, obey, first of all, the laws of neurophysiology, accordingly, they can be understood and explained only in strict accordance with these laws. But there are a number of external (i.e., outside neurophysiology itself) influential factors that must be taken into account in the study of thinking or the mind.
These include data from geochronology, evolutionism, paleoanthropology, paleozoology, comparative anatomy and physiology, recorded history, histology and (partly) genetics and clinical psychiatry.
Moreover, not a single phenomenon is able to evaluate itself, its size, place in the world order, significance and importance. To understand any natural phenomenon, you need an idea of its origin, “size” and meaning.
This concerns thinking and reason to the same extent as any other natural phenomenon.
An idea of their development, since it is (first of all) the history of the physiological substrate of the brain and its functions, can be partly provided by paleoanthropology and paleozoology.
But the questions of “dimensions” and the place of these phenomena in the system of the universe can only be resolved strictly “from the outside,” that is, only by methods adopted in that science that is accustomed to accurately, freely and coldly evaluate both worlds and molecules.
We have many examples of how “one-dimensional” attempts to resolve the question of the essence of consciousness, mind, thinking and intelligence resulted in “psychological verbosity”, vulgar theology or some kind of confusion, which surprisingly could coexist with the most sophisticated understanding of the principle of operation of brain mechanisms .
Alexander Nevzorov is guided by ideas that were 40 years old.
On the contrary, the further we go, the more evidence is revealed of the active hunting of our ancestors, starting with the gracile australopithecines. Hunted like Australopithecus garhi(however, not our direct ancestors), and the “early Homo"(and these are our ancestors). Currently, a huge amount of material has been developed on this topic.
Primates are not really vegetarians at all. Small animals are hunted by baboons, chimpanzees and even peaceful, phlegmatic orangutans.
(available review: Stanford C. Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution // American Scientist, 1995, May-June, ). What prevented australopithecines and their descendants from doing this? Homo?
L.B. Vishnyatsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, famous archaeologist, Leading Researcher, Department of Paleolithic Archeology, Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences:
Among paleoanthropologists, as well as archaeologists studying the Paleolithic and familiar with this issue not only from the works of B.F. Porshneva, today, perhaps, no one doubts that both early sapiens and Neanderthals (200 - 40 thousand years ago) were skilled hunters and that a significant proportion of their diet consisted of meat products. They say about this:
- finds of animal bones with stone and later bone tips stuck into them (for example, in Umm el Tlel, 50 thousand years ago, see Boda E. et al. 1999. A levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons // Antiquity 73, 394-402),
- finds among animal bones (elephant) wooden spears (Leringen),
- data from numerous isotope analyzes (by the ratio of a number of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in collagen from fossil bones, as well as in tooth enamel, one can judge the nutritional composition of people or animals to whom these bones or teeth belonged),
- sex and age composition of collections of animal bones from sites (not typical for scavengers),
- the presence already in the Middle Paleolithic of tips adapted for attaching spears and darts to wooden shafts (and retaining traces of such attachment)
- and other facts, the number of which is constantly growing. Earlier hominids, starting at least with Homo erectus, most likely also actively hunted, not only small game, which even modern chimpanzees successfully hunt, but also quite large animals, the bones of which show traces of cutting with stone tools (sometimes superimposed on these traces are the traces of the teeth of large scavengers, who, therefore, received access to the bones already after people) are known in large numbers at Acheulean sites. Known, by the way, for this era and
