Walter J Freeman

Department of Molecular & Cell Biology

University of California at Berkeley

NYAS Symposium on "Neurobiology of Affiliation", Washington DC 14-16 Mar 1996

In: Carter CS, Lederhendler II, Kirkpatrick B.

"The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation."

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 807: 501-503.

The biology of consciousness is explored with two assumptions: animals are conscious, and neural mechanisms are the substrate of mental processes. My concern here is with a salient property of consciousness: the solipsistic isolation between different brains. How is it that we cannot be certain, by direct experience, what another entity has in its consciousness, whether animal or a fellow human being? And how do humans surmount this solipsistic isolation and engage in social actions based in mutual understanding and trust?

Studies of electroencephalograms (EEG) offer mechanistic answers to these fundamental epistemological questions. It is because brains are dynamical systems that are closed with respect to meaning. Further, human brains maintain mammalian neurohumoral mechanisms for pair bonding, that, through human biological and cultural evolution, have been adapted to group bonding.

Experimental observations of the brain activity, which follows conditioned sensory stimulation of animals show that sensory cortices engage in construction of activity patterns in response to stimuli. The operation is not that of filter, retrieval, or correlation mechanisms. It is a state transition by which a cortex switches abruptly from one basin of attraction to another, thereby to change from one spatial pattern to another, like frames in a cinema. The transitions in the primary sensory cortices are shaped by interactions with the limbic system, which express the intentional nature of percepts. They result from goal-directed actions in time and space. Each transition involves learning, so that cumulatively a trajectory is formed by each brain over its lifetime. Each spatial pattern as it occurs reflects the entire content of individual experience. It is a meaning and not the representation of a meaning. It is the basis for consciousness.

It follows that each brain creates its own frames of reference, which are not directly accessible by any other brain. How, then, can two or more brains be shaped by learning, so as to form groups and cooperative pairs for reproduction and survival? Evolution has provided a biological mechanism that first came under scientific scrutiny in the form of Pavlovian 'brain washing'. Under now well known conditions of stress in the internal and external environments, a global transition takes place, following which brains sustain a remarkable period of malleability. I believe that Pavlov stumbled onto a neurochemical mechanism of mammalian pair bonding. Recent studies of brain chemistry in animals during reproductive behavior have revealed neurohumoral mechanisms, which evolved in support of mammalian reproduction and the care of altricial young, and which are mediated by oxytocin and related neuropeptides. I suggest that our remote ancestors evolved through adapting this mechanism for tribal bonding in dance, chanting, iconic rituals, and evangelical conversions (Sargant 1957). These dimensions of human experience can be encompassed by a theory of neurodynamics, but not by theories of representation.

Socialization through conversion mechanisms may begin in infancy and proceed most rapidly through the early years. These considerations lend support to the hypothesis that some disorders of social behavior, such as autism and psychopathia, might be due to failures in the ontogenetic development of neurohumoral systems, that are necessary for bridging the solipsistic barrier between human brains.

The actions of oxytocin and other related neuropeptides should be investigated, not in relation to Hebbian learning, but in conjunction with processes of unlearning, through which prior patterns of synaptic weights are dissolved, and the cortical neuropil is cleared for new learning. Unlearning is followed by the growth of trust. The processes of socialization in infants and children can be viewed biologically as alternating steps of chaotic breakdown followed by the emergence of new patterns of understanding and behavior, through the state transitions that must precede new learning. The failure of some individuals to develop adequate social skills, while still having strong cognitive development, may stem from deficits in unlearning, that make the growth of trust and consequent new learning impossible.

By this hypothesis a morphine-like replacement for oxytocin or other neuropeptide in socialization, if it were found, would not be given in maintenance doses or as a trigger to release stored behavioral programs, but at stated intervals under close familial observation of behavioral progress to selected critical stages, followed by training exercises to establish desired new patterns of social behavior within the evolving capacities of afflicted children.

Freeman WJ (1995) Societies of Brains Hillsdale NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum

Sargant W (1957) Battle for the Mind Westport CT, Greenwood Press

autism

brain dynamics

EEG

oxytocin

psychopathia

socialization