The supremacy of the brain

A post principally about our friends the neurons and the fact that they communicate both inside and outside our brain. But how….and why?

We are told that our brain is uniquely responsible for so many extraordinary things. Not only does it remember, it processes, rationalises and comprises our ‘thinking’ consciousness. Unlike the loss of a leg or arm, without our brain we are lost. But is there more going on in relation to cognition than we currently realise? Whilst our brain is critically important as a processor of sensory information, from whence does it really get its commands? ‘How does the human brain, a bio-physical object, create thoughts and emotions, consciousness, subjectivity, experience? How can the material create the immaterial?’ – Arthur S Reber

New research from NERF published in the journal Science suggests that ‘the spinal cord modulates and finetunes our actions and movements by integrating different sources of sensory information, and it can do so without input from the brain. Indeed neuronal activity in the spinal cord resembles various classical types of learning and memory.’

In my posts of May 2022 Gut Reaction and December 2023 Bossed by Bacteria I examined how our gut microbiota, one of life’s great survivors, communicates two ways with the human brain (gut-brain axis) via the vagus nerve. And we comprise a lot of bacteria. The authors of Vagus Nerve and Underlying Impact on the Gut Microbiota-Brain Axis in Behavior and Neurodegenerative Diseases observe that we are home to 4 trillion microbes with more than 1000 species. 99% of our genetic composition is located in our intestinal microbiota.

They went on to describe the vagus nerve as having ‘ an important role in the signal transmission between microorganisms and the brain’, and stated ‘the projection of the vagus nerve to other parts of the brain …produces various behavioural and psychological effects’.

In correspondence this week with the intellectually generous mycologist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio Professor Nicholas Money, I asked the question, ‘given mycelial expressions of consciousness, including sensitivity, decision making, learning, and memory; and the discovery of positive interactions between mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria -might we be underestimating the role and function of our resident bacteria? 

• Might gut bacteria,  in communicating with the human brain, be in part responsible for an aspect of human consciousness?
• Might we be mistaken in viewing ourselves as the host, and bacteria as the guest? Have we (and other life-forms) evolved as agents for and by bacteria and/or mycelium?
• Are we simply part of their evolutionary cycle?

Nik Money replied, ‘The concept of microbial consciousness is very provocative as long as one does not take it too far into the land of make believe and, for example, tremendously wishful thinking about cooperative behaviour in nature (not that you are doing this). I hope that my article, at least the one that I published in “Fungal Biology” emphasized the importance of language and the idea that consciousness can be viewed as something that exists throughout life, from the simplest cells to something as magnificent* as Homo sapiens. (*Not so much: see “The Selfish Ape.”) This cautiousness about consciousness existing along a continuum of sensitivity applies to the question of mind control by the trillions of bacteria (& billions of fungi) in our guts. It seems plausible that they alert us to the fact that they are hungry, to which we respond by feeling hungry and eating breakfast. We are then, in a sense, farmed animals.

Out there (and you may be one of them) are those existentialists who do not subscribe to a binary world but see all life, and indeed energy, as a single continuum and presence – of which the human consciousness is just an integral part. Whilst they recognise their ‘being’, they regard themselves as an element of a universally connected whole. Moreover, they often present as very happy people. Are they deluded? And might, at the root of all life, it be a fungus or bacteria that binds us all together and makes us what we are?

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Argentine tango under the microscope

A post dealing with the microbiology of Argentine tango (but do read on if you like trees).

My post ‘Learning something from trees‘ appears to have interested my dowsing colleagues that explore and exercise their personal energy; but surprisingly also, my friends who dance tango.

For those few that are not yet familiar with Argentine tango as danced in Buenos Aires (in contrast the the European pastiche), let me start by sharing a few truths.

More than the deadliest virus, once infected with Argentine tango, colonisation is rapid. Your social media fills with classes, events, milongas – your vocabulary embraces ochos, sacadas, boleos, colgadas – your wardrobe becomes populated by tango clothes and shoes – and frequently, non-dancing friends fall by the wayside as you become more and more fixated on your new obsession. Symptoms involve a craving that transcends normal preoccupation. It can be a lifelong dependence for which there is no known remedy.

The reason for such obsession is not what you might have thought. Alright, there may be romance – the late night milonga (the social event devoted to tango), gorgeous Golden Age tango music, a beautiful partner in your arms. Yet it is that which happens quite spontaneously within the tango embrace that really triggers this compulsive behaviour. ‘The magic’ emanates from the embrace in which you or your partner need be neither young nor beautiful. It all turns on energy, and how we deploy it in movement.

In dance, electrical events known as ‘action potentials‘ (rapid sequences of voltage differential across a membrane) cause neurons to release the pleasure inducing neurotransmitters of dopamine (movement), serotonin, norepinephrine (brain), and various endorphins (inhibitory neurotransmitters). What is it in dance that triggers that process? And what evolutionary advantages justify the release of such a pleasure hit?

With age, practice, experience and skill, tangueros appear to develop an electrical charge. Atoms and their pairs of electrons line up to create an energy field that is manifest within the embrace, sometimes subtle and occasionally dynamic. Studies show that, irrespective of steps (for Argentine tango is systematically unstructured) or experience, dancers’ breathing and heart rates synchronise.

Sharing of energy through symbiotic synchronicity seems essential for both trees and humans, perhaps because of a long-lost shared heritage where 50% of our DNA is in common with trees. But more staggeringly, our genes and DNA structure more closely associate us with the mycelium that envelops their roots and occupies our gut.

Might it be our shared match with mushrooms that causes us to dance?

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