The long and winding road of the ‘Executive Brain’

This paper seeks to talk as the ‘Executive Brain’ where I aim to demonstrate the minds capacity to find meaning by virtue of our enhanced consciousness. That in turn is the product of the frontal lobes that disseminates the information from all of the other repositories in the complex circuitry in the mass that makes up our amazing modern brains. In a crude sort of way, as suggested by Jean Paul Sartre, they are the self before itself, as a nullity, until such time as the consciousness, like an executive manager, disseminates the ebb and flow of information to make decisions or engage in abstract thinking

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

But as precursor, I want to talk about how our morals arose and the Biology of Belief described in Bruce Lipton’s book by that title. Lipton asserts our sovereign capacity for decision making is evident at the cellular level, as outcomes are belief dependent rather than reliant on our inherited genes. One does not have to be totally convinced by all of his ideas, but I do think he makes some excellent points, all grounded on scientific principles enthusiastically endorsed by his peers.      

Along the way and in conclusion are some thoughts on those fragile frontal lobes which are the gateway to underpin such abstract thoughts.

Introduction

A question arises from whence morals come. I’m comfortable with the idea they are connected in some way to nature as in our cultural mirror. A follow-on question might be:  Does evolution in nature exhibit some form of morality? 

But firstly to define what I mean by morals. I am opting for a definition that involves a kind of work in process.  That is those evolving principles which signify what is considered right or wrong for various cultures at different points in time.

To reiterate it appears reasonable to me one can answer in the affirmative to the earlier question – they are indeed connected to nature as in our cultural mirror, but only to a degree, because the ingredients to moral values are many and constantly evolving. They may change with new discoveries and given a renewed emphasis to realize a kind of expanded social cohesion.

According to William H. Calvin, Ph.D. who is an American theoretical neurophysiologist and professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, the most shocking realizations of all time has slowly been dawning on us: the earth's climate does great flip-flops every few thousand years, and with breathtaking speed. In just a few years, the climate suddenly cools worldwide. With only half the rainfall, severe dust storms whirl across vast areas. Lightning strikes ignite giant forest fires. For most mammals, including our ancestors, populations crash. 

Our ancestors lived through hundreds of such abrupt episodes since the more gradual Ice Ages began two and a half million years ago--but abrupt cooling produced a population bottleneck each time, one that eliminated most of their relatives. We are the improbable descendants of those who survived--and later thrived. 

The reason we have thrived becomes apparent, for to survive such momentous disruptions a high degree of evolution was necessary to favour cleverness in adaptability. Along the way an evolving sense of morality in what was right or wrong was given impetus in our ability to survive and prosper.  Later on we have the idea from the ancient Greek philosophers a virtuous life was a happy one which gave us our meaning.

But this paper wants to concentrate more on the evolutionary journey into modernity and how that plays a role in our enlarged executive brain. In the process it can help explain how our meaning for life can be enhanced by self-awareness and how it is we can avoid a shut down in higher level thinking of our consciousness. That is principally as a consequence of the tension between the older regions of the brain and our more fragile frontal lobes. In other words how to avoid an ensuing tragedy.    

The possibility of biological altruism. 
Rather obviously behaviours evolved earlier on as instinctive type reactions as evident in the animal kingdom, primarily driven by a will to preserve the species. Over time our adaption meant a connection of such feelings to be associated with emotional values.  

Psychological traits evident in loyalty to the immediate family became associated with positivism thereafter leading to hierarchical positions of tribal authority, deference to elders and so forth. But that is not suggest we have little control over these so called repositories to feel what is right and wrong, that arise more or less instinctively. Such feelings are not hostage to our future actions which can be subject to change from the jolt of psychological or environmental factors of one kind or another.  

Sober takes this argument a step further to argue there is no particular reason to think that evolution would have made humans into egoists rather than psychological altruists (see also Schulz 2011). On the contrary, it is quite possible that natural selection would have favored humans who genuinely do care about helping others, i.e., who are capable of ‘real’ or psychological altruism. Therefore, evolution may well lead ‘real’ or psychological altruism to evolve. Contrary to what is often thought, an evolutionary approach to human behavior does not imply that humans are likely to be motivated by self-interest alone. Sober & Wilson’s Evolutionary Arguments for Psychological Altruism:

Patterns of behaviors are often best explained as biological adaptations, i.e., the traits that have evolved through natural selection due to their adaptive effect evident in our everyday existence.

As various instinctive type reactions underpinned enhanced survival, psychological traits became aligned to this social cohesion principle and which was reinforced by evolving beliefs. Hence, what emerges to sustain tribal cohesion and existential order is the requirement to adopt principals of fairness to ensure optimum survival outcomes.    

The Australian aboriginal, as the longest known uninterrupted culture on the globe and the valuable insights of how social cohesion, reinforced by evolving beliefs may have influenced materially their society.

The underpinnings for these came from the dreamtime which posited a first Creator appeared in the physical world to bring forth natural children and plants under the control of a mother earth, from thence came animals but lastly humankind.

Dreamtime stories were instrumental in defining their tribal values, which led to an elaborate system of rules under the common law, such as initiation into adulthood. This law covered ritualistic ceremonies such as the processes for corroborees when the tribes met to resolve matters such as arranged marriages, to plan for trade between the nations and so forth.

Physical evidence of evolved changes in the brain supportive of enhanced moral reasoning.   

We also have physical evidence of the changes to structure of modern day brains and that of the more highly developed animals. There is clear evidence of the older repositories housing the more emotive instinctive responses, which combine in the extensive circuitry to the more newly evolved frontal lobes regions. Hence our brains bear evidence of the evolutionary journey with older instinctive regions designed to signal the emotive survival issues such as danger and the newly formed areas enabling more complexity in abstract thinking. 

There is no reason to feel one region, due to its more recent development, is superior to the other, since each is codependent on the other. What I think we can say about the development of the frontal lobes is they played a key role in terms of awareness.

From an evolutionary perspective it appears this development occurred relatively late in the evolutionary journey, in what would be regarded as modern, in the long journey of humanity.
In many other respects, it facilitates judgments, unclouded by what might be purely emotional reactions. The problem arises when they become overloaded and the older limbic area take precedence over the more rational way of thinking facilitated by the frontal lobes. 

The moral value of fairness.

What is clear is our earliest codes of accepted behaviors was to put sharing ahead of individualism, so that loyalty to the group underwrote enhanced chances of survival. The success of the human species adapting to the enhanced dynamics of the group has been extraordinary, but one might argue this success has been overshadowed as have become consumers and not sharers in nature’s bounty.  

Possibly the early roots for this twist in the evolutionary road from sharers to consumers may be linked to the idea we have dominion or superiority over nature, which is to be tamed and brought under human control. Such a view, combined with our extraordinary inventive improvements and adaptions in modernity has prospered humanity, but often this is at the expense of sustainability. This in turn has the capacity to change our ideas on what are our underlying values; to engender the need for a revision in our thinking to return to the way we viewed the lands when once we were more reliant to respond to the changing seasons for our survival.  But it need not involve a radicalized idea we abandon technology in favour of a far more basic existence, for indeed if we believe that it is technology that has contributed to a crisis than it may well be that it provides the solution. But that is for another paper.  

The Biology of Belief 

The title of Bruce H Lipton’s (Ph.D.) book ‘The Biology of Belief’ aroused my interest- no doubt as was the author’s intention to engender for him a wider reader’s audience.
The author’s first watershed moment is vividly described in the Prologue when he was lecturing medical students in the Caribbean.  
‘I had resigned my tenured position at the University of Wisconsin’s School of medicine and was teaching at an offshore medical school in the Caribbean. Because the school was so far out of the academic mainstream, I started thinking outside the rigid parameters of belief that prevail in conventional academia. Far from ivory towers, isolated on an emerald island in the deep azure Caribbean Sea, I experienced a scientific epiphany that shattered my beliefs about the nature of life.
My Life changing moment occurred while I was reviewing research on the mechanisms by which cells control their physiology and behavior. Suddenly I realized that a cell’s lifer is controlled by the physical and energetic environment and not by its genes. Genes are simply molecular blueprints used in the construction of cells, tissues, and organs. The environment serves as a ‘contractor’ who reads and engages those genetic blueprints and is ultimately responsible for the character of a single cells ‘awareness ‘of the environment, not its genes that sets into motion the mechanisms of life.
His book is an amalgam of the next 20 years of research and experience which I will attempt to engage sufficient portions so that you have some understanding of the nature of his findings.

Cells as Miniature Humans
He introduces us to the idea that every cell in our body – and there are roughly 60 trillion of them – is a smart cell capable of fulfilling all of the known bodily functions we attribute to our mind and body as a whole. This intelligence is resident in the cell membrane and reacts to its physiology through controlling proteins able to override the genetically encoded DNA resident in the cell nucleus. That is to say that although the DNA which is resident in the cell nuclei does determine our preprogramed genetic characteristics their operation can be turned off and on by the controlling proteins within the cells membrane environment. Hence the author contends our ‘belief systems’ are instrumental in the control of our biological functioning rather than by genetic determinants. Lipton explains the trend scientifically towards genetic determinism was adopted since the discovery of genes provided the final missing link to show how Darwin’s species adaption’s or changes were all transferred genetically into each new evolved generation.

An analogy to help explain the Magical Cell membrane
Lipton uses the analogy of the test pattern appearing on old TV sets. You may recall how a test pattern appeared on our TV sets once the day’s programs came to closures traditionally after midnight.

‘Think of the pattern of the test screen as the pattern encoded by a given gene, say the one for brown eyes. The dials and switches, TV fine –tune the test screen by allowing you to turn it on or off and modulate a number of characteristics , including colour, hue, contrast, brightness, vertical and horizontal holds .By adjusting the dials, you can alter the appearance of the test pattern on the screen, while not actually changing the original broadcast pattern. This is the role of the regulatory proteins.

Waltzed through the ‘Magical Membrane’ and on to ‘The New physics; Planting both feet on thin Air”

Lipton waltzes his readers through chapters entitled ‘Magical Membrane’, and on to ‘The New physics: Planting both feet firmly on thin Air’; to introduce the dual wave -particle physics theory to understand how energy underpins his biological beliefs and to persuade us more research is needed into the fields of energy waves rather than what is currently disproportionately devoted to genes.

Lipton’s idea is that ever since Darwin’s species adaption’s changes were thought to be conveniently verified via the modus operandi of genetically transferred information within the DNA of the cell nucleus- into each new evolved generation, so that Scientists assumed this must represent the crucial area for research.

Whilst it is true to say the environmental was accepted as playing a pivotal role in outcomes this was more generally attributed to the overall attitude of the mind and reactions to external stimuli rather than thought to be equally present in the individual cell intelligence as suggested by Lipton.

Disproportionate research efforts have gone into the genealogy pool and away from other forms of research which may be far less drug dependent and be more successful without the dreaded side effects of prescription medicine.
A more multi-disciplinary approach offers the best future opportunities. What might be concluded is the idea of genetic determinism is highly questionable.

It highlights meaning in the sense that what we believe, even at the cellular level, can affect our biological responses to result in more positive outcomes.      

Our fragile frontal lobes

The hardworking executive mechanisms of our brains also require rest and nutrition. It seems the most recent development of the brain, the frontal lobes, are quite fragile, and in need of even more tender loving care than was previously understood. A price to pay, you might say for our development, because this richness of an advanced consciousness made available through the operation of the frontal lobes, easily breaks down under extreme pressures.

Today it is understood that it is the frontal lobes that allow us to clearly identify our "consciousness" and make" executive decisions" when required, on any number of complex and abstract matters. Such development of the frontal lobes does however have a downside, the loss of control by the frontal lobes to the more primitive areas of the brain. As this occurs, initially the two are in "conflict" until such time as the lower brain takes control. When we lose this control of the frontal lobes it is similar to losing control of an "Executive Manager “of the brain.

That means you are operating at a much lower level, largely from an instinctive, survival mode, without the flexibility and higher level thinking provided by the frontal lobes.

Edward Hallowell -psychiatrist –in an Article from Harvard Business Review -re published in the Financial Review:
"As a specialist in learning disabilities, I have found that most dangerous disability is not any formally diagnosable condition like dyslexia or ADD (attention deficit disorder). Its fear. When the frontal lobes approach capacity and we begin to fear that we can't keep up, 'the relationship between their higher and lower regions of the brain take an ominous turn. In survival mode, the deep areas of the brain assume control and began to direct the higher regions.

As a result the whole brain gets caught in a neurological Catch 22. The deep regions interpret the messages of overload they receive from the frontal lobes in the same way they interpret everything. They furiously fire signals of fear, anxiety, impatience, irritability anger or panic. In a futile attempt to do more than is possible, the brain paradoxically reduces its ability to think clearly."

In everyday life a temporary loss of control through fear can happen much easier than we can imagine. Examples abound of people, subject to intense pressure, “blowing up” so to speak, evident in their childish outbursts where they revert to highly simplistic communications.   

Road rage is a good example of where a pent up fear and rage can spill over to a driver behind the wheel of car reacting irrationally in a fit of rage.

Damage to the frontal lobes

In a study carried out of large sample of unpremeditated murderers contained in Elkhonon Goldberg’s Book “The Executive Brain" it was found in all cases the offenders had significant damage or poorly developed frontal brain lobes. The offenders are able to distinguish easily between rights and wrong but in any pressurized environment they break down so that the ability to make rational decisions is eliminated.  

Conclusion
A study of our past behavior will indicate varying times of morality or lack thereof over different periods in history. It is our responsibility to be ever vigilant to our principles but be willing to make changes when new knowledge leads to a better understanding of our moral responsibility. Morals are a moving feast, just like (and at times in harmony with) creation as it also continues to evolve. We share in creation in many mystical unions, of which amazingly may include every single cell in our body. Why should we surprised – are we not star dust?