One of my favorite working neuroscientists is V.S. Ramachandran at the University of San Diego. He reminds me a lot of Nobel Prizewinner, Eric Kandel, someone who loves to investigate anomalies and who is acutely aware of the role that intuition and play play in scientific discovery. He can’t remember where he parks his car, but Ramachandran dreams up all kinds of simple, creative experiments aimed at alleviating people’s pain. For example, he used a five dollar drugstore mirror to rid amputees of phantom limb pain, a procedure that has been tested and adopted by The Walter Reed Army Hospital. He was also the first researcher to publish the fact that the brain doesn’t let unused real estate simply go to weeds. If we lose our sight, the area of the brain customarily developed for vision – the visual cortex – will be taken over by other nearby sensory areas, like hearing and touch. It’s a kind of neural redevelopment project that reliably happens in our heads.
Jesus on the Brain
Ramachandran has been described as both “the Marco Polo of neuroscience” and a free-thinking “poet of neurology.” As an example, off the top of his head he hypothesized a mechanism for how people might hear God or Jesus speaking to them. The thoughts we think every day produce unconscious movement in our vocal cords. Brain damage that results in enhanced sub-vocalization might be the actual process that produces the sensation of an outside voice speaking inside one’s head. In fact, my suspicion is that any number of neurological anomalies might be responsible for many of the “spiritual” experiences that have been passed down to us through the ages. Early life was considerably more stressful then, and trauma-induced neural disorganization very likely accounts for many such “visitations.” For example, if I begin seeing auras or hearing voices coming from a burning bush on my little offshore island, one might question the strength of my connection to everyday reality. The bet with the best payoff would most likely be brain lesions, rather than an actual inspired visitation.
Gandhi Circuits
In a recent New Yorker profile by John Colapinto, Ramachandran spoke about neurons in the brain that he calls “Gandhi Neurons.” As a number of his critics have pointed out, they are more likely Gandhi Circuits, but the critics miss the point. Ramachandran’s assertion is that there are parts of the brain that we can get to fire repeatedly that will grow and connect and move us more and more in the direction of someone like Gandhi – or any number of other people who might serve as inspiring role models. This capacity to imagine ourselves as someone else helps move us away from an egocentric view of the world into a more allocentric view. I don’t think it’s an accident that our current President has studied the life of Lincoln, even going so far as to replicate his train ride to the Capitol. He’s actively working to strengthen the connections to his “Lincoln circuits!” I’m also guessing that when Larry Kincheloe, a doctor in Oklahoma City, practices “intuitive obstetrics,” he’s grown and is activating his own Gandhi Neurons.
Home Growing Our Own
Ramachandran’s point seems to be clearly supported not only by neuroscience research, but by lots of anecdotal evidence as well: if there are qualities in others that we admire and respect and would like to acquire and express for ourselves, we can simply practice acting in the ways those people act. And we can teach and encourage our children likewise, to “fake it til we make it.” At some point, the brain will connect up the circuitry such that we are no longer faking.
But part of such practice must be to actively address those parts of ourselves and our kids that might be the antithesis of what we’re attempting to manifest – we have to somehow admit to and creatively address our dark, unskillful sides. Aversion and denial won’t cut it. So, if I want to be like Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, for example, I have to start doing things for other people, perhaps even with great reluctance and resentment initially. But I can still do them nonetheless – growing my Gandhi Neurons in the process. I’m thinking such an enterprise would make quite Gandhi happy. As a matter of fact, I often hear his high-pitched, lilting voice in my head telling me that himself!
Mark,
Thanks for sharing this! I was thinking, as I read this article, how much this is like the power or attraction. The notion that what we put our mind to, we attract. I hadn’t thought of it before in the terms of character traits. But, what a good place to start. It would serve our global community well if each of us purposed to emulate those who lived lives of selflessness, humility, purpose and compassion…..such as Ghandi.
Hi Mark, I have to take issue with the idea that our capacity for empathy with others is contained inside our brains and depends upon a visual mirroring. As an intuitive, I have the same kinds of experiences as does the obstetrician Larry Kincheloe (in Larry Dossey’s article). I seem to be able to tune into people with whom I am close to and know how they are and what they are going through. And I am accurate.
While I appreciate the many contributions that neuroscience has made to our understanding of our human experience, I believe in a more holistic existance with our world and our cosmos. Someday there will be a more complete understanding and an integration of intuition and science. We are seeing a dawning of this complete picture but we have a way to go.
Thanks for your column, it is thought provoking. Toni
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your ever expanding venture into this complex territory of research.
I’d like to raise a couple of cautions/questions:
It seems to me that the assumption that neurological anomalies are responsible for spiritually felt experiences is somewhat grandiose. But it goes back to the ultimate question whether the brain generates experiences or responds to them, as other organs/body systems do, thus enhancing/limiting the range and quality of our physical/emotional/mental being?
On the “Gandhi circuit” topic, I’d like to add that we might want to be aware of the motivation behind the following in aothers’ footsteps or mimicking behavior, which is typical of children and is sustained through adulthood. My observation is that not infrequently, it is based on the desire to please, receive approval, feel special, be noticed, etc. In my own years of making choices based on the false assumption that these pseudo positive experiences will bring me closer to happiness, I actually found that I got further and further from myself, despite the external “success,” and I wasn’t any happier for it.
By analogy, in traditional art education the student copies the Masters, but while one can produce skillful “masterpieces” one lacks connection to one’s own expressive voice and one’s own expressive calling, the inspiration of which is not in another artist’s work, but in the greater Masterpiece of life.
I appreciate your thought provoking articles!
Hi guyz
well, I’m not found of such articles (well, why are you reading them anyway?). Always someone will find something, a detail, about… noone cares about.
And mister gandhi (the great great ma hat ma). Well, let me tell you that if he was in front of me now, I’ll slap his face twice and again. I explain: he knew no’ting of his own theology or philosophy. An English friend gave him B.gita to read. Then arriving India he was marketed, changed clothes, and became the “old sage” for the masses. He promised a lot, to poor and simple farmers who never asked him anything. But he was manipulated by wealthy families. And when queen V. gave in the chair he said “No, I prefer to give the power to my friends”.
Mr Gandhi, you was probably a good man, but when it comes to respect your promises, there is nobody inside. It’s not surprising that you work on truth. Hope you like mine.
Gandhi neurons? puh (spiting)
and last word, nailing the truth
because he was help by kalenbach and because is friend asked him he agree to give recognition of the state of israel, at the same time knowing the suffering, the slaughter, the genocid of palestinian people. Puh.
After reflexion, I’ll not slap his face, I don’t want to have my hands dirty.
“Fake it ’til you make it” is a good idea that dates back at least 2500 years, to Aristotle. But it’s good to see neuroscientists have reached a level of detailed understanding of the brain that they can start to account for the empirical observations of an acute observer of human experience from a couple of thousand years ago.
That said, if you’re going to follow someone, Gandhi is a good choice. He was an empiricist and individualist, both of which are in short supply today. His commitment to non-violence wasn’t simple and ideological, but empirical and experimental: he wanted to find better ways of changing the world, in part because he knew that violence was utterly ineffective and hugely inefficient.
We can see how well violence works by observing how it has brought lasting peace to Ireland, Spain, Israel/Palesitine, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Kashmir… Only a brain-damaged person would reach for violence as a solution to a social or political problem, because we have so much empirical evidence that it is a lousy solution, taking longer and costing more than every imaginable alternative. Perhaps neurological researchers should look in to why we still bother to try it.
Knowing this, Gandhi tried many different approaches to non-violent action, and I would argue that today’s protestors are taking only a tiny fraction of his lesson by replicating in a rote way one particular tactic he used, without asking themselves the necessary deep and searching questions about what will be most effective in their particular situation. Which is why Gandhi changed the world, and no modern protest–including the massive London demonstration against the illegal invasion of Iraq–has had much effect.