Discovering the Self

Book Reviewed: Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, by Jennifer Ouellette

Self is a process and not a thing and the process is present at all times when we are presumed to be conscious. It is not located in any particular part of the body but it is an emergent phenomenon. If there is no matter (or energy), the mind doesn't exist. Soul is uniquely generated by the causal interaction with myriads of elements of the self. The Self-as-Object (the material "me") and Self-as-Knower (the subjective, self-aware "I") are linked. The former is the fundamental cognitive layer that we share with all animals and the latter is a richer self-representation that is uniquely human.

The Self is viewed differently in many fields of study. Physicists suggest that consciousness and the laws of physics are a coherent whole. Existence is explained by the operation of laws of physics on matter (or energy) in spacetime, and consciousness is inherently entangled with physical reality. For a biochemist, self would result from biochemical mechanisms involving genes, hormones, proteins, enzymes and a host of environmental factors that shapes up an individual. The intricate wirings of the brain are the essence of self for a neurobiologist, and for a social psychologist, it is a product of our environment and surroundings. For Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism and many philosophers, reality is an illusion.

In this book, Science journalist Jennifer Ouellette has done extensive literature study to write this challenging book. Even though she has not done any original research in this field, but she has been in touch with the subject matter from discussions with leading biologists, neurologists, geneticists and psychologists. A brief summary of the book is as follows; one of the most active regions of brain, when it comes to our sense of self, is the prefrontal cortex. It is the default mode network which is more active during daydreaming and is critical to self-recognition. This is where we store our representations of the people we know and process social information and predict how other people are likely to behave. So what accounts for the individual differences? The information encoded in the unique synaptic patters in a person's brain is determined partly by genes and partly by environment. Synapses are not passive storage devices but are modified by experiences, and the brain shapes its unique sense of self. Each and every wire in the brain; the dendrites and axons that form the synaptic connections between neurons shapes self. A comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain (the wiring diagram/circuit diagram of brain) is called connectome and they define the characteristics of self. The functions of the connectomes during the resting state and during tasks help in understanding how neural structures result in specific functional behavior such as consciousness. Connectomes are modified by altering the connections as a response to neural activity patterns that accompany experiences. This is where personal nature meets physical nature. Since brains re-wire constantly in response to experience, one would need many connectomes to construct detailed map of synapses. In addition we need a theory to relate brain-functions to anatomical connectivity, because mere anatomy is like a network of roads, but that will not provide the functions, unless we know all the vehicles on the road and cargo they are carrying and where they are headed including their origin, then we will have some knowledge of overall economic and social functions.

With regards to future, the author has something interesting. It is possible to get a total personality download of our selves, an avatar or an incarnation of an individual self in virtual reality in cyberspace. With immersive digital technology, the avatar won't be you in the sense of a conscious being, but a perfect representation of you with which your future generations can interact with this digital self of yourself. An avatar of the future will learn and grow just like a real life of you. It not only uses real life memories of you and your experiences but also learns from its interaction with its environment and people. You can upload your consciousness, mind, memories, thoughts and experiences into cyberspace and achieve immortality. Many neurobiologists believe that this may create many different representations of us that live in virtual space. The biggest challenge in all this is creating human consciousness in cyberspace.

She amuses herself and the readers with her excursion into the Wonderland using "Orange Sunshine," the mind-altering substance LSD to discover herself. This is unorthodox and juvenile excursion, but she defends her actions by listing many luminaries in science, technology and show-business who also used this psychedelic substance. The author concludes with no firm thought on the nature of self and consciousness but some key ideas from leading biologists and medical professionals are discussed. One thing that struck me was that she has not discussed physicists' perspectives of consciousness that are in better agreement with many philosophers, even though many of her friends are physicists and her husband is Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. I recommend this book to anyone interested in biology of Self.