GREYED OUT OF MIND?

(ECLIPSING OF SEQUENTIAL THOUGHTS OVER EARTHQUAKE PREDICTING INTUITION¹)

                 
                        The day after Christmas 2004, it was an ordinary morning for all of us but the pet dogs, until we learned about nasty tsunami that had just struck East Indian coastline. Running amok and howling they seemed restless. We are housed at least 7 km from nearest seashore for any kind of signs to be felt apparently. Later, I came to know from my friends that we are not the only to witness this extraordinary pet behavior. Although I’ve heard about animal intuitive prediction of natural calamity before² this direct witness urged me to learn more about this phenomenon. This phenomenon has been observed throughout the history and has heavily tinted our folklore. And this phenomenon has been venerated and harnessed adeptly by many Human societies3 familiar with and are prone to natural calamity

                   

                    The question that rises at once on one’s mind is ‘How is this possible?’ Well, the researchers have a great deal of struggle with answering that one and the claims are as diverse as, explaining it as an inborn capability which are genetically embedded, to, much familiar hypothesis of associating the behavior with senses⁴. The next question would be ‘Why is this capability restricted to animals?’ Inclined towards hypothesis of natural calamities being sensed by the animals, I’d try to answer the second question in this article with backing of scientific facts.

                  According to the hypothesis animals can either, predict earthquake by sensing the subtle pre-earthquake seismic tremors⁵ (p-waves), slight biochemical or electromagnetic anomalies. This is generally performed by lower organisms like Invertebrates, Amphibians, Birds and Reptiles taking advantage of their low body mass, Or by observing these lower organisms intuitionally and making an authentic warning out of it, which is indeed done by higher organisms like mammals⁶. Almost all animals either sense or intuitionally observe the animals sensing it, except human beings⁷.

There are arguments saying that this is an ability evolved by natural selection after number of earthquake encounters by those species indigenously not an evolutionarily retained one from lower ancestral organisms. These arguments are made flimsy by plenty of available anecdotal references stating animals from region unfamiliar with earthquake having reacted positively during the incident which they were unaware of, for past thousands of generations. This hardly gives any scope for evolution by selection to occur. So it can be assumed as essentially a common behavior of more or less all animals, an aspect of some primitive ancestral organism evolutionarily retained through all evolutionary lineages leading to modern species. This assumption makes its absence in human beings is rather shocking. The incapability of human beings to sense the earthquake or any other seismic calamity, directly, is understandable but the unawareness about the natural world around us intuitionally can only be understood by rendering a close peek at our evolution.

                       To understand this phenomenon we need to ensure this behavior in our closest living evolutionary cousin, The Chimpanzee⁸. Chimpanzees of Central African tropical rain forests 400 miles off Gombe national park living in and around active volcanic mountains are prone to both tremors and volcanic eruptions. Though no authentic researches are done in above aspect of Chimpanzees they can be assumed to do so, as they are more intuitionally motivated than human beings, quoting from Roger Fouts’ “Next of Kin” ‘Chimps while revealing immensely great sequential thinking capability amazingly close to Human beings, through ASL (American Sign Language) thought to them, on the other hand posses sound animal instincts and high level sensory coordination which explains their uncanny ability as successful tropical forest survivors’. 

   

                 The researches on human evolution confirms that it was possibly spurred by the geographical isolation (one of the major evolutionary stimuli enlisted by neo-Darwinists Alfred Russell Wallace and August Weismann) of the tropical forest dwelling common ape ancestor, of both Human beings and Chimpanzees, from its natural habitat to relatively dry, prehistoric, savannah ecosystem. The reason for this isolation is blamed on the contemporary rise of Ethiopian rift valley which might had denied part of the region from monsoon rain, blocking its route.

                    Only a small population was isolated from the main population. Consequently they were forced to inbreed (Mating between close family relatives), a situation known in scientific community as ‘genetic bottleneck’⁹. This sudden exposure to a different ecosystem pushes the population to a state of desperation to find its own ecological niche, necessitating whole new survival tactics.

                        The species is forced to an intense unidirectional natural selection; this is facilitated by the ‘genetic bottleneck’ phenomenon. This natural selection resulted in an array of anatomical evolution for both hunting and gathering of new food resources, physiological evolution which can be attributed to the efficient assimilation of food and maintenance of homeostatic (Temperature balance, Water balance, Osmotic balance and so on ) balance compulsory for the new environment. And lastly neurophysiologic evolution, the one we are going to deal with, in this article.

                          Comparing the brain of human being with Chimpanzee brain- which shows little development in size from fossilized common ancestral species- gives us a general idea about our own neurophysiologic evolution. Chimpanzees have an average brain mass of 420 g which is much lower than the average Human brain mass (1300-1400 g), even if their low body mass (25-45 kg) is taken into consideration. That is, the brain mass / body mass ratio of Chimpanzee is much lower than ours¹⁰. In addition to that, in Human brain neurons have more number of interlinking synapses, which counts 1000 to 10,000 in each neuron. Human brain has enlarged version of all four major lobes with remarkably so, the frontal lobe.

                      The functions of these lobes are vaguely divided. Eminent neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran explains them as follows: “The occipital lobe in the back is concerned with vision. The temporal lobe is concerned with hearing, emotions and certain aspects of visual perception. The parietal lobes of the brain- at the sides of the head-are concerned with creating a three-dimensional representation of the spatial layout of the external world and also of your own body within that three – dimensional representation. And lastly the frontal lobes, perhaps the most mysterious of all. They are concerned with some very enigmatic aspects of the human mind and human behavior such as your moral sense, your wisdom, your ambition and other activities of the mind which we know very little about”.

                As he points out the functions of frontal lobe is a little known but is, more or less, concerned with what one would dare calling ‘Humanness’. Though development of frontal lobe particularly “Broca’s area” contributed more to the human evolution and eventually ‘civilization’, the development of other three lobes which endorsed the former, is crucial. Particularly the development of TPO junction (Temporo-Parieto-Occipital junction), the one which is primarily involved highly coordinated linguistic activities like reading, writing, speaking, listening.

                        As you can notice, all of these are combined activities of; processing the sensory signal which involves language to a final sensory representation, then channeling them to various regions of the cerebrum where various interpretations are made pertaining to the connotations or implications it carries. These interpretation made are based on acquired knowledge from different sources and experiences and they depend on the region of cerebrum interpreting it, for example reading a word ‘apple’ would be interpreted by inferotemporal region as ‘a fruit of some kind’; on the other hand, in Wernicke’s region or other temporal regions the word evokes subtle nuances like ‘I can eat it’, ‘I can smell it’, ‘keeps the doctor away’ and so on. The linguistic interpretations are made primarily in temporal region of the brain. As one can see, these interpretations are mere abstractions and are not coherent. In human brain, cross-modal abstractions are formed, almost all the time, offering metaphors, allusions and other kinds of abstractions, for example roundness of apple evoking the thought of football. This is a kind of abstraction Chimpanzees are not known to form so far, though capable of other high level mental abstractions.  

                     V.S.Ramchandran suggests that triggering of language evolution might be by this phenomenon in the brain. He advocates this supposition revealing the amazingly analogous relation between language and synesthesia¹¹. This can be observed by noticing your mouth movement while pronouncing words like ‘teeny weenie’, ‘little’, ‘diminutive’ you can see your mouth is actually miming the smallness of the object. It might sound absurd that this small phenomenon might have triggered evolution of language but ‘that’s all it takes’, he says.

                        
        The presence of qualia(the ineffable subjective sensation, in words of V.S.Ramchandran)a rather complicated phenomenon, helps managing these complex range of interpretations made and ushers one such interpretation, by encoding them with itself, towards amygdala-the gateway to limbic system-in the form of abstract thought.

                Limbic system of the brain is where emotions are laden and reflexes are originated. Qualia non-arbitrarily select one such interpretation which is biologically worthy ushering to amygdala. 

                Qualia collectively is a phenomenon which, in my words, evolved in conscious brain to anchor the abstract interpretations of specific biological significance to the limbic system.

For example, apple in a salad bowl invokes interpretations of it as a food with more priority and apple poised in a decorated basket in a posh hotel conference table invokes interpretations of it as an object for beautification with more priority, of course in addition to those made in the first circumstance. This is where qualia contributes by the supporting ‘food interpretation’, essential for the species survival. Reflexes originated are the result of analyzing done in the limbic system with aid of memory, emotion and learning. Reflexes are then directed back to cerebrum where reactions are ‘negotiated and planned’ either, in terms of language which takes place in left frontal lobe generally and in the other frontal lobe for 20% of left handers, or in terms of physical activities in other regions. This ‘negotiation’ is very arbitrary, that is, person has control over it. The reflexes can be manipulated, neglected and even turned down in certain occasions, like the ornamental apple in our example which is not eaten, unless the person is audaciously hungry. The whole process is not just single to and fro signal transmission but relayed innumerous times with constant sensory updates.  

                    This process of dealing with sensory representation is the same in all other mammalian brain with cerebral growth, except for the number of interpretations being lesser, less linguistic processing or planning of reaction and so is the manipulative nature of cerebrum on reflexes¹². Humans also posses comparatively higher number of mirror neurons¹³, essential for any kind of conversation to proceed.

                      

                 This neurophysiologic evolution was very much needed but hadn’t been uniform like other evolutionary traits, as there were descendant species which were microchepalic (smaller head size, which is in turn, smaller brain size) than its ancestors, though the evolution was not just in brain’s volume. Although our predecessor hominids like Homo erectus, Homo habilis had considerable development in brain size than their ancestors, the surge took place at some time roughly around 52,000 BP in Homo sapiens¹⁴, which is approximately 6 to 6.5 million years after the split from ancestral species. This is a result of sudden developmental growth of cerebral region or, more crudely, grey matter of the brain. Grey matter or cerebral region of our brain is responsible for the sequential thought (thinking in successive steps), while more evolutionarily ancient unhemisphered white matter constituting parts like hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, as I had mentioned earlier, is responsible for the origin of emotional reflexes with the help of learning and memory.

                          

                     The developmental growth in cerebrum adjoined by the elongation of vocal cord gave us the upperhand over other savannah predators by improving our lingual and linguistic skills, enabling the co-ordination required for hunting in groups, and tool making ability which is highly sequential. Making of a tool involves thinking in number of steps, for example making a stone dagger is a result following abstract thoughts in sequence;

1.     I must hunt to get meat that I can eat

2.     I need a stone to stab the animal

3.     The stone stabs better if sharp

4.     The stone can be sharpened by chipping with another stone.

5.     The stone for chipping can be made by polishing it with another.

The sequential thought to our extent is a feat no animal has achieved so far, for instance, chimpanzees are known to use and even making¹⁵ tool but not using a made tool to furnish another. Now, before we start boasting ourselves about art, literature ultimately ‘The civilization’ that sequential thought has accomplished, there are certain drawbacks which we must confront.

                    
            We above discussed the vaguely simplified procedure as to, ‘How conscious sensory representations are dealt with, in the brain?’ . There is another sensory pathway particularly in vision which is much more primitive called ‘the unconscious old pathway’ as opposed to ‘the new pathway’( the one we are conscious of).

Both old and new visual sensory pathways are shown above

(The pathway to superior colliculus is ‘old’)

                The old pathway is the primal pathway the first to evolve among primitive animals, ones those possessed just limbic system of the brain. This pathway serves all the survival needs for the organisms which are both less complex and unable to afford the energy lavish cerebral operation. In higher organisms, this old pathway is involved in essential unconscious physical orientation like locating object spatially in the visual field, reaching out for it or swiveling the eyeballs towards it. In addition to these, in Human beings, it also does the job of snapping one out of his sequential thinking, of any sort, when needed.

                                         This can easily be understood by visualizing the following everyday incident, imagine a person having an animated argument with his friend, both walking down a busy street, the person is not conscious about the things happening in the street, the noises of the busy traffic, walking through with the help of his unconscious old pathway to limbic system, until he sees or hears something peculiar like a dog or a pit laying on the way. It is the old pathway that receives this sensory alert and gives rise to alerting impulses with the help memory, learning, basic emotions and rather mysterious ‘intuition’. Such alerting impulses from unconsciously informed limbic system is relayed to cerebrum where it is negotiated by sequential abstractions before the respective sensory region is activated, the visual cortex, in above conceived incident. It is after this activation the persons’ consciousness is retrieved and he/she is aware of the situation. Such unconscious negotiation is necessary for higher animal to avoid negligible alarms to interrupt their thought process 

                                 For example; one need not to stop an argument just because a housefly flying cross by but should consider stopping if it is a wasp. It should be understood that this negotiation is not just memory and learning based (which even limbic system can deal with) but involves logical thinking and other cerebral sequential abstractions. These cerebral abstractions analyze secondary details like ‘distance at which the wasp is potentially dangerous’ or ‘its direction of flight’. The old pathway is active not only when the person is out of his sensory consciousness but all the time. But when the person is sensuously conscious he or she need not rely on limbic alarms except intuitional ones.

     

                     Hence one can speculate that, unlike other unconscious limbic alarms (the dog’s on the way) which are learning or memory based, Intuitional alarms (migration or odd behavior of lower organisms prior to earthquake) are turned down to a great extent by negotiating sequential abstractions since they might not find them convincing and logical and are almost wholly blinded by overcrowding of other abstractions, remember, the individual is not conscious of these events in proceed. The animals with less cerebral brain mass/total brain mass ratio has less abstractions  negotiating with the intuitional alarm, so less is the possibility of it being neglected, hence translated almost completely to physical activity and in animals with no cerebral development, from limbic impulse directly to physical activity. The same intuitional alarms displayed by nature would hardly be observed by conscious sensory representation even if observed cannot be interpreted into an authentic warning without access to intuition embedded in limbic system.

                  The speculation of this article simply says that there is a greater possibility of intuitional alarms being neglected, in Human beings, and not that it will always be neglected. Our intuitions are not wiped out completely but are greyed gradually from childhood along with proportionate increase in grey matter, the cerebrum. The toll levied on the civilization.

Notes:

 

1.     The intuitions discussed in this article are limbic intuitions and not cerebral intuitions.  The former deals with preliminary survival strategies while the latter with species’ specializations. We harbor a great deal of linguistic intuitions which are cerebral.

2.     Anecdotal evidences cannot be considered as good scientific proof. In fact there is some very serious debate going on whether the so-called canine premonition of seismic events is nothing but a backward reading of the dog behavior by humans. For example, how many times dogs barking and screeching happen and what is the statistically significant anomaly in dog behavior before seismic event? But there are also scientists –many- who have studied dog behavior and suggest that there is a high correlation between anomalous canine behavior and a seismic event.

3.     Both Chinese and African literature, folklore features abundant allusions and direct references about prediction of earthquake by observing animal behavior.

5.     Every earthquake comes as pair of two wave actions, first the very mild p-wave which is followed by the destructive S-wave. P-waves travel 2-4 km per second faster than S-waves. Among mammals P-waves can be sensed by vibration sensitive borrowing animals like Rodents and infrasound sensitive animals like Elephants.

6.     The mammals which cannot sense P-waves predict forthcoming earthquake by observing other animal those can sense it. These observations are made without consciousness which I would explain in latter part of the article.

7.     I intentionally added the word ‘intuitionally’ to avoid being confused with traditional knowledge educated through generations. Intuitions cannot be thought and are authentic. 

8.     Chimpanzees are genetically found to be the closest living evolutionary cousin, though possesses just 22 chromosomes which is one less than us, shares 97.3% of same genetic code. This is surprisingly close that both genetic codes are more similar than many indistinguishable bird species.

9.     Under such condition, genetic diversity of the population is largely reduced; with less individual genetic anomalies, the population is destabilized regarding species’ evolution. As we all know, the steadiness of a species in terms of evolution is established by the random crossbreeding of individuals with genetic divergence.

10.                        The brain mass / body mass ratio of average Chimpanzee=420g/35000g =0.012 or 1.2%(approximately)                                                                            The brain mass / body mass ratio of average human (male) =1400g/65000g=0.022or2.2% (approximately)

11.                        Synesthesia is a phenomenon of which the person associates different sensory representations. For example associating number ‘5’ with color ‘red’ or ‘shape of a saw’ with sound ‘kiki’.

12.                        The natural habitat of chimpanzee the tropical forest is not challenging enough to reveal their sequential thinking ability completely. Those we know were only brought to light by creating artificial scenarios. Both behavioral scientists and neuropsychologists have no idea of chimps complete potential.

13.                        Mirror neurons are neurons which are responsible for proxying into other’s mental condition and sharing their thoughts by jumping from our own self, pausing the attributes which defines self like embodiment, agency, unity, continuity momentarily.

14.                        The researches on human evolution suggests that the so called great evolutionary leap (52000 BP) must have happened not only because of natural selection, which had been their ever since the split, but majorly because of sexual selection which is a stronger selection. Sexual selection can occur only in species practicing monogamy which had just been into practice among hominids around that time, Possibly due increased dependence of the hominids on food gathering, which women mastered, due to uncertainty of hunting at that time of ice age when lot of herbivorous species were driven to extinction.  As we know chimp communities practice polygamy, I think, it is less likely for such a surge in brain size to happen unless species goes through severe natural selection and practices monogamy which cannot be anticipated from their present tropical habitat.

15.                        The tool using and making capability of Chimps first discovered by Jane Goodall is broadly discussed in her critically acclaimed book ‘In the shadow of man’. 

  

Acknowledgement: 

             I am extremely obliged to Mr.Aravindan Neelakandan, a thorough reader of science, who encouraged me a lot on writing this article, suggested some good books which helped me overcome my prejudice on Chimps as mere hairy apes and whose valuable comments helped me improve the article and formulate the notes which is a result of dialogue we had.

           

   

REFERENCES

1.     Next of Kin –Roger Fouts ; William Morrow and Company, 1997

2.     Seven million years – Douglas Palmer; phoenix publishers, 2006

3.     Naked Ape – Desmond Morris; 1967

4.     The Emerging mind –Vilayanur. S. Ramachandran; Profile books ltd, 2004

5.     Phantoms in the brain - Vilayanur. S. Ramachandran; Quill William Morrow, 1998

6.     Apes, Men and language –Eugene Linden; Pelican books,1976

7.     The Dragons of Eden- Carl Sagan; Ballantine books, 1977

8.     The Third Chimpanzee – Jared Diamond;1999

9.     In the shadow of man- Jane Goodall

10.                        http.news.nationalgeograpic.com