Information is destroying me. It’s destroying my body and soul. It’s in my bones and in my blood and travels up to my brain. It’s staring out through my eyes. Doctors can’t help me. It’s too dangerous. Too contagious. The prognosis is evident with one look. They know it’s too late. That I am no longer here. My body is a husk for this disease. Although they still take my money, they know it’s over.
Anyone who thought they knew me, now knows that they don’t. They couldn’t, because I am not really here and haven’t been for a while. I left the building decades ago. Everything I am is now dedicated to consuming. Addicted to suspicions. Addicted to ingesting anything I can get my hands on. Absorbing old and new substances. Healthy and unhealthy. Meaningful and meaningless. I can justify it all philosophically- but this has led me to an empty existence. A brain that is self-destructing. A body, being destroyed through collateral damage.
When I was a much younger man, I read an essay written by a anesthesiologist. In it, he theorized that there was no afterlife. He cited his years of witnessing the effects of anesthesia on his patients as proof of this conclusion. The fact that we’re unable to perceive anything. That, when under the effects of the chemical, time doesn’t exist, our memories do not exist, and neither do our identities. He then posed the question, if everything that makes up our soul, can be turned off and back on with the flip of a switch, does it ever really leave? Is this transportation to another realm really happening?
In the decades since I read that essay, the theory has been challenged by unwitting researchers all over the world. Most recently by a group out of Baylor University, who found that the brain has the ability to retain skills such as plasticity and predictive analysis of language while under. Using these functions without any conscious awareness. But is this simply a machine working without its operator? Possibly.
Meanwhile, another group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were solidifying a theory that reduces the soul to bidirectional interactions between neuronal spiking and rhythmic electric field activity (brain waves). They believe goal-directed behavior relies on top-down control to coordinate large neural populations into low-dimensional, task oriented dynamics. Brain waves are supposedly well suited for this role, exerting mesoscale (an intermediate unit between macro and synaptic scale) influence over neural excitability. Supporting analog computation and shaping activity patterns according to underlying computational principles. Brain waves can flexibly route and organize neural signals, enabling multifunctional neurons to assume context-dependent roles, a hallmark of cognition. In this view, goal-directed thought, action, and unified consciousness emerge from cortex-wide wave dynamics that both reflect and transform spiking into coherent brain states.
I once had a theory about consciousness, independent of a hierarchical source, only a theory about the information and what it looks like. But theories are a dime-a-dozen without a way to prove them. All theories are just the imagination, running away with the person’s ego as they convince themselves that these ideas might be an undiscovered and underlying truth in our reality, until they are proven correct. No matter how much evidence you collect and reference, sometimes it’s impossible for the theorist to prove their hypothesis, either because of a lack of technology, or lack of granular knowledge on the subject, or funding. But then, as if the idea was planted by some divine source, someone comes along and proves them right. Is it that we subconsciously know things that can only be revealed through sufficient ingestion of data, experiences, and communication skills? Or is it coincidence? I have to stop here and ask that you excuse me for being over-phylisophical; it’s the result of almost forty years living underground.
That theory that I mentioned earlier was proven correct (kind of).
How do we store the data that is us? What does this data look like? I’ve only heard of these synapses’ singular characteristics. No imagination on the possible image or behavior of all of them as a whole. Maybe one day we’ll find the perfect combination of imaging techniques. Some electro-spectral-radio-thingamajigger that’ll give us the most accurate picture of the trillions upon trillions of connections happening every second. The isolated cloud of electrical connections dancing around. Call me crazy (as if you require an invitation). But I believe the data in our brains is stored as millions of interconnected whirlpools. A chain of swirls in constant motion.
I wrote that in 2019. It appeared in 2020 on the Amazon marketplace in a self-published pamphlet called The Ultimate Self Harm Guide. On June 15th, 2023, Pulin Gong and his colleagues at the University of Sydney published a peer reviewed study in the journal Nature Human Behavior. In it, they described these spirals:
“… by characterizing moment-by-moment fluctuations of human cortical functional magnetic resonance imaging signals, we show that spiral-like, rotational wave patterns (brain spirals) are widespread during both resting and cognitive task states.”
These spirals appear with opposites, some spinning clockwise, the others… you get it. The singularity appears and the spiral grows and travels across regions. At times, or quite often, or maybe always, crashing into each other in an annihilation event. Like two hurricanes dissipating after a head-on collision.
What does this mean? I have no fucking clue. And neither do they, really. But ever since I read the essay written by the anesthesiologist, I’ve spent some time learning useless facts about the human brain. By that, I mean reading a lot of articles and papers while taking a lot of shits. That’ll be funnier later. And all of it has been to try and find a thread to what will eventually unravel what we call the “soul”.
My prediction was a fluke, of course. It turns out that the logarithmic spiral is one of the most efficient patterns in nature’s repertoire to create something with rapid growth in a structurally stable way. So, odds were good the shape was going to pop up somewhere in the waves of signals the brain uses to transfer data. But how many times have you predicted something like this? So, why don’t you humor me.
Before I continue, I would like to preface this part by stating the obvious: I am not a neuroscientist, or a neurologist, or a doctor, or a professor; or any sort of “ist” or “or”, for that matter. I’m an autistic person who spends his time analyzing, but never participating. Reacting and never leading. Traumatized by change and unwilling to reengage in life. I have no clue what to do with this information I’m collecting. I’m just putting together pieces of a puzzle in hopes of discovering something about reality. All the while, being slowed down and stupified by distractions. Enjoying the benefits of progress but disregarding and avoiding anything that requires sacrifice. I place the blame on my environments and the way they’ve shaped my narrative. But science would theoretically blame, or say they can sanitize this narrative by redirecting the waves that control all of my worries, fantasies, and contradictions. By adjusting the movements of the master of all of my thoughts.
According to an international team led by the University of Gothenburg; When we’re born, we have astonishingly high levels of p-tau217 in our blood. P-tau217 is a protein that has long been one of the prime suspects in causing Alzheimer’s. The protein in its healthy state is called tau, and it’s a microtubule-associated protein in neurons.
Microtubules are inside a cell’s cytoskeleton, the cytoskeleton is the thing giving the cell its shape, and act as railways for motor proteins- Of which there are two. One goes up, the other goes down. I heard a podcast where someone was arguing that consciousness was possibly a result of these microtubules. Can’t remember who said this, or what podcast it was. But that’s neither here, nor there.
These tau proteins are thought to be like beams stabilizing the microtubules so they can continue accurately providing the “tracks” for intracellular transport. In this case, inside of our neurons. The protein is essential in healthy brain function, but it becomes (or reverts to a state of being) “hyperphosphorylated”, chemically changing it to p-tau217. Forcing the tau to detach from the microtubule and clump up into neurofibrillary tangles. Retracting sometimes essential connections required for our day-to-day existence, resulting in diseases like Alzheimer’s. Newborns shed the phosphorylated tau after a few months. But it seems like the brain kickstarts its operations through this protein.
As the group of MIT researchers theorized, in the land of neuroscience- the waves of data swirling and sprouting throughout the brain seem to be the king of all consciousness. I find myself… partially in that camp. I believe consciousness emanates from the feedback loop of information from every single cell in our entire bodies. The precious cargo inside of our skulls is less of a command center and more like a town square. All of the information meets and shares the events that are currently happening in its society, then they all form a consensus (or attempt to) and disperse back to where they came from, bringing along the narratives and strategies that the rest of the cells will implement for the ongoing events. But that’s not what this essay is about.
There are these things called Dendritic spines, kind of like the leaves at the end of our neuron’s “branches”, these branches are called dendrites. As the electric wind of incoming sensory data swirls through the compartments of our brain, these leaves dance to the information. The dendritic spines are all exposed to this storm, and transmit the information in it to the dendrites, which is when the tau and microtubules play their part. Transporting the data to the neuron’s cell body.
As we settle into the rhythm of our lives, those trees, or neurons, are responding by developing their own rhythm.
These dendritic spines are one of the major structural foundations of synaptic plasticity, by receiving the most excitatory synapses, meaning they are the main terminals at the opposite end of that spiral singularity. At the widest part of the electrical information hurricane. The gate keepers that are retracting the seemingly useless spines just taking up space while simultaneously growing those that are being used- turning us into who we are and will be. Changing their shape, size, and number in the system’s most fluid state, and shaping your identity by keeping you engaged in the situation and recording it for later use.
What motivates these spines? What causes them to react to the correct signals? Those specific to their specialized analysis? Rewards. Rewards that your environment has programmed into every individual synaptic connection. Through every interaction with your sensuous environment, social environment, and cultural environment. We’re born looking for gratification and never relent in this search.
So, what if we are just stimulus machines. Although in the most beautiful- and at the same time- most horrendous of ways. The randomized birth and annihilation of the stars, alive inside of our skulls. Through the sort of super heat of the singularity in which all of the sensory points meet with their incoming data and almost simultaneously, assign potential values and expand spirals of positive and negative information. Quarks and anti-quarks, snapping together and expanding in the directions where they are most valued. The path of greater rewards and least resistance. What assigns those values? Again, say it with me: Rewards! Data that looks familiar and have a higher chance of being responded to with actions that will be rewarded are brought up and prioritized, alongside the new information that will be added to the neuron’s database of situations it will respond to with this programmed action. If the response was rewarded, that is. If it wasn’t, and more than indifference is the reaction, you receive something tramautizing. A shock that marks the negative information so it provides a more specialized analysis as to the nature of the interaction and the pattern becomes a significant and idiosyncratic part of our conscious and subconscious selves.
Those indifferent or negative parts of ourselves that are tolerated become a sort of idiosyncratic accoutrement to our Identities. Those that are rejected are pushed into the shadows.
I believe that time management. Answering the bell. Being where you’re supposed to be at a certain hour, day, month, year, or decade, is something society always imprints in us and has done so since the dawn of civilization. A Pavlovian conditioning that starts from the day we’re born. In an everchanging psychological and cultural landscape, there have been few constants in common at the base tranches of this things we call the brain, and civilization. One of them is our obsession with time.
To be continued…
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