The Hindu Business Line : <I>Brain, a marvellous product and process </I>

Memory is our most defining property, writes Steven Rose in The Future of the Brain, from Oxford University Press (www.oup.com). Memory "constitutes our individuality, provides our life's trajectory with autobiographical continuity, so that we seem to be able, even in the eighth and ninth decades of our life, to recall episodes from our childhood."

Asks Rose: "How can this stability be achieved, even when every molecule of which the brain is composed has been synthesised, broken down, and replaced by others more or less identical many trillions of times?"

The dominant thinking, following a hypothesis of Donald Hubb, has been as follows, Rose explains: "That novel experience (which is incidental or specifically learned) resulted in changes in synaptic connectivity, strengthening some synapses and weakening others, so as to create new pathways amongst some sets of interneurons, which represents the memory in some way, perhaps analogous to the trace on a CD or magnetic tape."

The scholarly discussion that the book offers may be for the science-avid. Yet, the simple style that the author adopts makes it possible to turn the pages, if only to pick up bits and pieces, which are easily understandable. Such as, `recalling is an active, not a passive process.'

Act of recall

The act of recall, retrieval, evokes a biochemical cascade, analogous to, though not identical with, that occurring during initial learning, says Rose, citing evidence. "The act of recall remakes a memory, so that the next time one remembers it one is not remembering the initial event but the remade memory from the last time it was invoked." Which means, `memories become transformed over time.' Unlike computer memories, "biological memories are living meaning, not dead information."

For instance, `mirror neurons' fire `when an individual imitates the actions of others'; and there are `empathic systems' that can respond to `observing another's pain.' Mind is wider than the brain, argues the author, even as he discusses earlier works in this sphere.

"A whole new field is emerging: The cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour — but it will only be made possible in collaboration with psychologists, anthropologists, ethologists, sociologists and philosophers," foresees Rose. Consciousness is an emergent property, and it exists in sets of relationships, he declares.

"This brain then, is that marvellous product and process, the result of aeons of evolution and for each human adult decades of development, the necessary organ of consciousness, thought, memory and identity, which modern neuroscience is beginning both to describe and explain," writes Rose. `Beginning,' please note.

Stimulating read.

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