275. The Disrupted Mind (3)
2 (23m 54s):
Yeah. It's organic and it can be a whole host of things. Absolutely. Those lesions, those things are described like stroke tumors. And so on. I have to say those are the areas in which neurology has made the most progress. Neurosurgery is extraordinary and there are many their books when you're resurgence and a button neurosurgery that that progress is extraordinary. And it's, it's, it's kind of wonderful to see a stroke really can be reversed or a phrase of stroke can be reversed. There are treatments, there are ways of dealing with these things. Vascular dementia, vascular neurology is definitely missing some more amenable to treatment than these other broader, less localized ailments.
2 (24m 41s):
Yes, for sure. But yes, they are. Something's happening. We don't just don't quite know how, but you know, even in the case, I mean, we now there's more and more work now and the interaction between the central nervous system, the brain and well peripheral liver system, which is the rest of the body. And also the guts, for example, the immune system, all this stuff is interconnected. So, and heart, of course. So all the research and the brain are interconnected in ways that are being as part of the interoception research. That being more and more understood. There's a lot to do, but every day then you papers coming out. And so, you know, is in the machinery as you say, but yeah, it's not just the brain, right?
2 (25m 27s):
There's a lot of things happening that can be states of inflammation throughout the body that may be informing. Then, you know, it can actually cause responses at the cerebral level that can happen. We just don't quite know the whole story a bit. There's a lot. I mean, if you had to scientists threaten out talking to you right now, that would be able to tell you much more and more detailed, but I'm not a scientist. So we can also talk about this. I mean, I'm not, I'm just such a humanist who reads a lot of the signs and feels passionate about it. But I still think, and this is really important that just as we non-scientist really do need to learn how to read science, learn how to understand scientific processes, which are never the Folster there's no, there's no such thing as an end story in science, right?
2 (26m 16s):
People get confused about that. There's a real, I'm actually involved in a project right now in Munich based fellowship on the communication of science and understanding that there's a, if there is people who are people reject, the authority of scientists is because maybe scientists don't really know how to present themselves. They don't know. It's very difficult to people to accept and skepticism, skeptic and people have forgotten as you something, you know, that skepticism is foundational to the, to the creation of modern signs, right? 17th century Rosado fed revolution was based upon, you know, explicitly based upon skepticism.
2 (26m 57s):
Revisable knowledge get rid of dogma. There's no such thing as it last answer it constantly open. It's all provisional. And so we need to learn how to read the signs. We need to understand what statistics are when you to understand what these studies are. When you turn to standards. This is very important. On the other side, the scientists also need us to help understand what the questions need to be asked, what questions are not, what answers are not answers and so on. So all this dialogue I think is very important as a dialogue. And I'm very invested at this point. And especially now with this book out, I'm very invested in trying to help develop this kind of interactions, conversations, and getting the more, anymore, more and more of them happening.
2 (27m 45s):
But I think the conceptual aspect needs to be refined. You're right, because there's a lot of, we need to understand what's, what's stopping this communication. What's the two different, the very different kinds of rhetorics and discourse, you know, a novel, a poem is not a scientific paper and nor should they be, but what can the two have to do with each other is a great question. And I tried to do that in the book as well. I mean, this is where the first person, person it's really and stewarding yourself in the, in the, in the study of the, of the other,
1 (28m 23s):
I think of science is a three-legged stool data theory and communication. You need all three. Unfortunately, historically the communication part has always been thought of as dumbing down, you know, oh, you just write for the public. You know, that's not serious, serious scholarship is you just write these obscure papers that no one can understand for 12 other colleagues. And it's not dumbing down. It's a, it's a skill to be able to write clearer for anybody to pick up and read these kinds of what John Brockman calls, third culture, books, Origin as PCs, or, or any of Dawkins books or Pinker's books, your books, you know, anybody could pick them up.
1 (29m 5s):
And these are not the pop versions of the serious books. These are the only versions there are, and anybody can read them. And it's a skill to be able to write for your colleagues and the general public. So they both get something out of it. And that takes practice, right? And a lot of scientists who are trained to write for scholarly papers or scientific papers, which are pretty formulaic, you know, you have the introduction, literature review, here's my hypothesis, the methods, conclusions, and so forth. Anybody it's like laying pipe, you know, it's just, anybody could do it. He just showed grad students how to do it and they do it right. But writing, you know, this kind of book that takes a lot of practice anyway. So you open with this story about your mom.
1 (29m 46s):
You know, she, she, you know, she calls you and says, I can't find your phone number. And you're like, mom, you just called me. And, and then she's trying to find some other phone numbers for this committee. And there's a review of my book on the front page of the magazine. I can't remember the name of it. It must have been my mother who gave me this beautiful scarf. And you say, but mommy died in 1986. Oh, did she? Yes, she did. And she could hardly have bought such an elegant scarf in her religious neighborhood in Jerusalem. And then she says, well, you never know. She could have people bought all sorts of things. Anyway, this reminds me of Michael, <inaudible> his work on this, this kind of memory disorder where he has this patient who thinks she's at home and she's in this hospital.
1 (30m 33s):
And he, the doctor takes her down to the bank of elevators and says, well, how could you be home? Look at these massive elevators in this building. And she says, oh, you have no idea how much it cost us to have those installed in the house. Right. So she's just making stuff
2 (30m 46s):
Up,
1 (30m 48s):
Right? Because anagen says, well, actually we all just make stuff up. Right. It's just all information coming in and thoughts are bubbling up from who knows where in our brains. And then he has this, what he calls the left hemisphere interpreter. There's, there's this area in the brain's neural network that just kind of puts it all together into some plausible story. That makes sense. Right. So like with this split brain patients, you know, they, you know, they flash on one side of the brain through the other hemp, other retina, you know, a can of Coke and then the person gets afterwards gets up and why are you going to get a can of Coke? Well, I'm really thirsty. Oh, really? That's the reason. Oh yeah. Yeah. So they're just making stuff up.
1 (31m 29s):
But his point is that we all do this. Right. So if I ask you, like I did earlier, you know, w w what's your story, where'd you come from? And then you string together, this kind of plausible autobiographical story of how you got to where you are today. Okay. Yeah. I assume it's true to whatever extent it is, but we all do that. We all just kind of make stuff up, you know, like, how did I get to do what I'm doing today? And I'll tell you some story, but it didn't have to be that way. And, and, you know, I'm just making stuff up based on what I can remember. Half of it's probably confabulated and misremembered and edited along the way and, and so forth. And, and so that, so let's talk about autobiographical memory and what it means to even, even be a self, you know, who are you?
2 (32m 12s):
So I think that, you know what to talk about this. Yeah, this is great. So you brought up in a sense too, and then the two words that come out of this, I mean, one is, we're talking about these patients who have what, when calls and as agnosia, which is a lot in my book as well, because dementia patients, I mean, not all certainly Alzheimer's, there is this as an economist, you have to send ability to understand that you're you have an illness, right? So this patient of gets Aniko was one of them. And on the other hand, you talked about concept relation just now you mentioned the words cause fibrillation, which is of course connected at some level, but, you know, I agree we all did it. We all do this.
2 (32m 53s):
And at some, and I, you know, initially, and I, I thought at one point that the center of the book, the center of gravity should be anosognosia as the human condition, right? Because we are all always, you know, blind to ourselves, whatever we do off to some extent it's actually not, it's actually not entirely true. It's true that we don't really see ourselves. We don't really know, but, you know, there's a huge difference between the ordinary neurotic, blind spot and pathological and as agnosia and the same way. There's a huge difference between, you know, inventing, stretching meanings in our lives, quite consciously, perhaps, or not, or, you know, it's still something actionable to accelerate that examination and actual con fibrilation in patients who have some neurological disorder.
2 (33m 45s):
And so that as to the, to the bridge, that, that line, right between normalcy and pathology. And where is that breaking point? Because it is a continuum, but there was one point where it switches, where up is what happened with my mum and it was ordinary confusion. And then it was not ordinary. There's a, there's a point of no return, so to speak in the case of dementia, but certainly there's a difference between normal and pathological. And I think that we are confused about this precisely because we've certainly well in America, the DSM has contributed to pathologizing a lot of ordinary human distress, maybe out of a luck owing to the absence or to the scares dialogue between philosophers and clinicians.
2 (34m 39s):
In this case, a lack of philosophical questioning about what constitutes I thought, because it is a philosophical question at some level, you know, as, as a morning, who determines that your extended morning period is pathological and then Francis the psychiatrist who was the chair of the gypsum for, it was very, very critical of the JSM five because of actually one, one reason was the inclusion of that form of disorder and, and others. So the many problems which are, I don't know what to call them.
