Neurology

Hi Gazala.

In sort of an introduction, there is an interesting thing about the brain you should know. You are already aware that its made up of a lot of neurons. But the brain is made up of three major parts, right? But they are all basically neurons only. Neurons have this crazy ability to grow and connect. If you remember back far enough, you might recall the structure of the neuron. Its like a tree with roots and wild branches only at the top. Those branches are called dendrites. Now when you think something, if we try to isolate that thought, then it will be an electrical impulse travelling from one part of your brain to the other. This is why our in brains there is a constant electrical thunderstorm; its a nice image. But what happens when you fire a thought constantly? There are some things you do repeatedly. Say breathing. We have done this so much that there was a unique electrical circuit that constantly repeated itself. And the result is that we literally do not have to think about it anymore. It became automated. Repeated actions cause the set of neurons to grow their dendrites and connect with each other in a beautiful sequence slowly over time, primarily during sleep. In one direction. Think about how you can sing the ABCD easily, but not backwards, even though technically you know all the letters and the sequence and everything, more than by heart. It is that fluency of memory that is promoted by this neuron dendrite growth, and the automation of actions. A larger action such as running or playing an instrument is comprised of a definite set of automated muscle actions, and in due course of time, becomes automated also. One merely has to think of running and you can without worrying about which muscles you will have to use. This is specifically called muscle memory. This neuron growth is the basis of all learning, from skills such as singing and typing, to acrobatics and swimming. It is why we take so long to learn something as simple as one song on an instrument, and the same reason why we take so short to learn song number two, three, and ten. Eventual automation. To the point where you know where the letter b is on your keyboard while you are typing it, but not as fluently as if you are asked point blank. This is also true of things we know. In order to model the life around us, we have to build knowledge systems. The system is born from processing repetitions. Over time we recognize things without having to actively recall them. The very trigger of surprise comes from processing something that is not in this knowledge system, and somehow the opposite of what your knowledge system would expect. There were 216 million documented cases of malaria in 2010. Thats 216,000,000 people. Surprised?

The theory of evolution. What is evolution, and what is it not? Currently evolution is regarded as fact, and is no longer a theory. But evolution provides a scope for many other theories on explaining characteristics and behavior. But can we see evolution? Is it everywhere like people claim? I can understand the reluctance some might have in believing that they came from a barely recognizable cell. But lets set aside that conundrum for a second. Lets talk about one of the fundamental ideas of evolution, and how we can see it everywhere. Evolution is explained by five forces. One of the most important ones, the idea that led to the foundation of modern evolutionary theory is natural selection. Charles Darwin came up with this when he went to the Galapagos Islands and saw several related environment adapted species. One particular observation was Darwins finches, who were all over the islands. They were similar looking, but depending on the environment and how they had to forage food, their beaks were correspondingly shaped. The ones who needed to burrow their beaks deep had more cylindrically shaped beaks, and vice versa.

Natural selection is a simple enough concept. Imagine butterflies of four different colors, red, green, blue and yellow, on a patch of forest land. What will happen if we introduce a predator into this environment, say a hungry frog? Its a green forest! The red ones will be easiest to sight, and in enough time, it is inevitable that the red ones luck will run out. The blue and yellow numbers will also thin, and the life cycles of those butterflies will not complete. Without any other changing factors, it is inevitable that the green ones will survive the most. This idea is as simple as it seems. The survivors are always the progenitors of the next race, so whatever quality is good for survival will be passed down to the next generation. If you are dead, you cant have kids, see? And they cant have kids. Selection actually happens everywhere all the time. A person who prefers blue colored clothes will have more blue clothes in his wardrobe. In the context of his wardrobe, blue survives. Entrance exams all over the world select usually for a combination of qualities. It is a questionable approach to select people because it selects people who are good at the test taking, rather than the actual job. On a large scale, the entrance exam is the environmental change for humans who have to adapt to it to survive, in many ways literally. Is this fair when we do not choose our birth? Nonetheless, whether it is fair that some butterflies are green, and some people are better doctors by birth is a philosophical question for another day. The point is that evolution is not about chance as many are misinformed. It is about the inevitability of chance. If you keep throwing a die, you will eventually throw a six.

Mutation may be a concept you are familiar with from fiction. But what is mutation? Before we answer that question, we have to look at DNA. You are probably aware that DNA stores information about us in terms of four nucleotides [A,T,G,C].

Two hydrogen bonds form A-T, and three form G-C bonds respectively. And there are only these two. As you can see, in the double helix structure of DNA, the code on one side will be complementary to the code on the other. A will always connect to T and vice versa. We can always figure out one side if we know the other. So imagine a book of pages filled with these four letters from your DNA. This book is your genome. Your entire DNA. So what will happen if I tear a page out of it? If you miss a whole page, you are probably in a whole lot of trouble. See, there are lines in that book that corresponds to information about cell behavior. One of those go As long as there arent enough cells, I will replicate. What happens if you remove that line? How is it even possible to remove that?!

The answer lies in mutation. If I change just one base pair, a line will make no sense. If the mutation specifically targets anywhere on this line, the cell will forget that it is supposed to stop replicating, because there is no condition to stand by. And then what happens? The cell will keep multiplying, taking more and more resources, making more and more cells with this EXACT MISTAKE, which in turn multiply like hell. This is what happens in cancer.

Mutation occurs quite commonly actually, and our cell has some mechanisms to help

The neural networks in our brains are vast electrical networks conducting impulses one way and the other. The idea of a net of neurons bonding synergistically with each other to learn a new skill also applies to knowledge. We know nearly nothing at birth, and take years of development before we can have a conversation with someone. This makes sense in context of neural network building. For example, we are now vastly unaware of how we speak. The muscles and the tongue shapes and modulated sounds, this is fairly complex stuff. But we automated it, which is good so we dont have to think about it. But during those years of development, we only know something that the environment tells us. We model the world in our heads, literally. There is tons of physics we intuitively learn on the way. We can accurately predict the motion and position that an object will be in the next three seconds. This is actually vast amounts of calculation that you are exempt from being aware of.

It was the adaptable humans that survived the environmental changes that occurred. It was also humans who were able to model their world just accurately enough so that they can survive. See the question is always about two words, survival and replication. Whatever it is about you that helps you survive and replicate, it is what is carried into the next generation, along with the survival and replication qualities of a mate. Thus ideally the offspring must be able to survive if both his parents were able to survive. Ad infinitum. Imagine that for a second with any species in any environment.

Habits are formed primarily around what gives us pleasure. Habits are repetitive and yes, also influence the position of the neurons, whose dendrites are shifting at all times. And to some extent, it becomes who we are. Run something long enough, it becomes a belief. A belief is not just in our minds, it can theoretically be an actual physical belief. How often in your life do you have to unlearn something? How often in anyones life in the history of time? You never forget how to learn a bike or how to swim. Its almost as though they are hardwired

into our heads. It is not beneficial at all to forget a skill, and thats why it was never a survival skill. In fact, it was beneficial to actually retain the skill as much as possible, because if we were learning how to throw spears, what good would it do to forget that? Assume there was one guy who used to hunt with the pack and he constantly forgot basic skills like spear making. That guy is very likely not getting as much boar as he wants. The point is that we have a system in our heads that takes time to create, and with no reason should be able to deconstruct without leaving some holes. Our beliefs about the world are this way. The system fractures when we first learn Santa Claus is not real, it fractures when we realize the evil people are capable of, it fractures with any undeniable observation that contradicts your viewpoint. We are always trying to figure it out. Beliefs arent built in a day. They nearly get hardwired into our brains. Thats why in spite of surprisingly contradicting information, your beliefs dont go away in a day. This explains all of the irrational fears we have learned, from extreme fear of heights to big ugly spiders, and why no amount of talking will help otherwise. Indoctrination is the word described to talk about a set of ideas that were inculcated for a long time. Our brains are highly resistant to contradicting information by default, because two opposing truths cannot be true. The uneasiness you feel when there are two contradicting pieces of information, for any question in any field, is called cognitive dissonance. Electronically this is like switching something both on and off. Which can be a mess. You have been indoctrinated for 19 years.

Islam. The religion of peace. When I was growing up, I assumed Islam was nearly perfect. Some things didnt make sense, but I silenced those nagging doubts. The Islam that was represented to us, through school and through our parents, in the given context, seemed like a beautiful religion. It asked for humbleness and patience, and I felt that in many ways my personality traits fit pretty well the Islam that we learnt. I say the Islam that we learnt, because it is different from Islam as it is. The Islam that we learnt is the most presentable form of Islam, with all the questionable content removed to leave the idea of a religion propagated by an ideal man, the pious Prophet Muhammed. In truth, I wish the religion we studied was what Islam actually was, because even though it gave no answers to human questions, it was peaceful. Islam could seriously benefit from that sort of reform. Whatever I might say about religion and Islam right now, you might feel personally guilty for. Dont.

You will hopefully be able to see how islam has been misinterpreted to be the nice islam we know today. I am not going to throw the standard proofs that atheists typically throw at all religions. In fact,

Im not even inviting you to atheism, because actually a judgmental god is the least of our worries. Im going to show you something, that if you are able to make this retreat from Islam, you will be able to see. This is not like a religion and a god you cannot see. This is something tangible that you will be able to experience, something which you have never experienced or seen. You asked me if I know the answer. Yes, I just might. But before that, it is imperative that you have to dissociate from some ancient principles of living that are completely unnecessary and more often than not separates people. Think of an idea like the fundamentals of mathematics. It is an idea that started somewhere, maybe several sources, and pooled itself over time. The reason? Math was useful, and made peoples life easier. The set of ideas that we now label Mathematics; is a set of ideas that survived. Why am I talking about survival as though mathematics is a living thing? A meme, as it is called, is an idea or a set of ideas. Interestingly, memes behave very analogous to genes. An idea that is useful for survival constantly replicates, and an idea about how the sky is actually held up by pillars theoretically will not replicate, because it is not useful for survival. People come up with millions of ideas, but just how many are discarded? The useless ones are of course discarded, but think of how similar that is to natural selection.