The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are

"The internet bulges with illustrations of skull-less, glowing brains hovering in mid-air, or artistically ‘flayed’ to reveal the ‘ connectome ‘ (white-matter fibre architecture). Alan Jasanoff, who directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering , sees these as manifestations of skewed thinking. They frame the brain as a source of enigmatic power “like the chryselephantine idols of the ancients”—a bodiless, decontextualized entity. That’s the ‘cerebral mystique.’ This peculiar cultural tic is linked to scientific dualism splitting brain and body, argues Jasanoff (who is, by the way, one hell of a writer as well as an incisive thinker.) He reminds us that brains are organs: messy, awash with fluids and “glue-like” glial cells as well as neurons. Like (and unlike) our other organs, our brains interact with the rest of our bodies. “Brains are organs: messy, awash with fluids and “glue-like” glial cells as well as neurons” Jasanoff’s corrective explores multi-layered neurobiological realities and cutting-edge research. He parses the brain’s complexity and its surprising relationship to function, shows plainly how the brain does and does not resemble a computer, and unpicks fallacies in parsing brain scans. He embeds cognition in the whole body. The manual flexibility of the violinist Niccolo Paganini, for example, may have been due to a connective-tissue disorder, so his wildly complex compositions can be seen as the product of exalted creativity and unusual physique. Jasanoff also looks at how the sensory barrage of the environment are “causative forces that slice to the deepest levels of our brains and minds.” The brain does not sit in a bunker. But he also takes us further, out of science and into society, where adherence to the mystique can have severe consequences. He asks penetrating questions about mental illness: the ways we interpret and stigmatize it. The idea of the ‘broken brain’, he argues, is not just outmoded. It has too much risky potential to shape how policy is made and justice done. In the mid-1960s, a post-mortem on American mass murderer Charles Whitman revealed that he had a brain tumour. But as Jasanoff relates, Whitman also abused drugs, had a violent family life, and suffered repeated rejections and humiliations throughout his career. And (a grim reminder of what is currently playing out in many US states) he had easy access to guns. ‘Neuroessentialism’—a focus on brain alone—can become just another dangerous intellectual bubble. “The idea of the ‘broken brain’ is not just outmoded. It has too much risky potential to shape how policy is made and justice done.” There are a few echoes here of the famous 1998 paper ‘ The Extended Mind ’, by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. But there is much more to this exploration of existential richness. Research on the microbiome reveals the human body as a vast community. Jasanoff reveals the brain as part of that community, and a much vaster one."