Thoughts on "The Other" and Synaptic Connectivity

The institution of categorization is an integral part of how we see and try to understand our world.  A concrete example of this occurs in how we try to make sense of humans, as a whole, and understand ourselves within this larger framework- namely, lumping humans into the categories of "healthy" and "unhealthy."  Although we are fascinated, and perhaps jealous at times, by Luria's depiction of S. in The mind of a Mnemonist, we label him as a flawed individual.  We put him into the "other" category where we feel safe to pick apart the inner workings of his brain and, ultimately, make judgements about him.

However, what is ironic about this situation is that S. (as well as Borges' Funes), in a way, is the mind that lies dormant in all of us.  In The Quick Guide to Synaesthesia, it becomes clear how similar all human minds are- how the potential for synaptic pruning to occur in a way that would afford us similar mental capabilities as S. are not as far removed as we'd perhaps, like to think.

I am curious what we will do with the ever-growing influx of information about synaptic development, memory retention, and syaesthesia.  Will we try to find a way to prenatally alter the course of synaptic connectivity- perhaps induce a certain amount of reduced apoptosis to aid in "creative thinking," as the Quick Guide claims is common among people with synaesthesia.  Similarly, I am curious what the Quick Guide means by "intelligence" and why people with synaesthesia typically possess more of this quality than others- and if so, why does it seem that evolution has favored synaptic pruning to aid in the differentiation of sensory areas in the brain?  

Relationship between Synaesthesia and Memory Retention?

I’m attempting to place all of these pieces together cohesively in my mind. So: can we say that both synaesthesia and radical memory retention are a result of a lack of synaptic regression? This is, perhaps, simplifying the process to a level that I understand it (after all, I’m still not certain what each synaptic connection really produces- is it the connection from one thought to another? What qualifies something as a “thought”? Maybe I need to brush up on LeDoux). Yet still, unpruned synapses would seem to imply a bevy of neurological connections, so that one thought led to another thought, which... etc. The “Quick Guide to Synaesthesia” describes a lack of differentiation in the sensory areas of the brain”- is this a result of synaptic regression? This mess of connecting thought patterns fits perfectly into Luria’s case of S., where one observation immediately led to a deluge of other observations, effectively drowning the poor man in a pool of information.

Perhaps this is the connection between synaesthesia and memory retention? I was struggling throughout the readings to understand why the two seemed to be interrelated. They didn’t necessarily seem tethered to one another- one can be synaesthetic without having the mnemonic abilities illustrated in the case studies. Indeed, it seems as if, in some ways, synaesthesia and memory retention serve to contradict one another in terms of potential effects. It’s noted in the “Quick Guide” that synaesthesia seems to be related in some way to creativity. It allows musicians to perceive music in a new way by connecting it to otherwise unseen attributes. It forges connections that spark insight and productivity. Memory retention, however, when it reaches the levels shown by Luria and Borges, can lead to a level of conceptual paralysis. Creativity, even understanding is not something we would connect with S., who is described as “dull” as synaesthetes are described as typically intelligent.

This is supported by the fantastic rumination on “forgetting”, and its importance in the mental process. As is brilliantly pointed out by Borges, “To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract. (126)” That is, to think is to streamline thoughts, deeming some necessary, some unnecessary, to take the applicable traits and work them together into a cohesive line of argument. To generalize, to abstract, one must pinpoint specific qualities. Otherwise, as did S., we lose the forest for the trees.

What exactly is this phenomena that connects both synaesthesia and memory retention? It seems a strange, complicated brew. As discussed earlier, the two conditions certainly seem interrelated, in that they deal with the construction of unseen connections. With synaesthesia, these connections are productive, not so with memory retention. So what exactly is going on when the two fuse together?

A Tale of Two Mnemonists

Borges’ “Funes” and Luria’s “S.” make for a fascinating pair of contrasting mnemonists. Comparing their respective mnemonic abilities from an external, practical perspective, Funes seems like a super-powered fantasy conception of Luria’s real-life patient, whose name a quick internet search discovers is Solomon Shereshevskii. While Shereshevskii can retain and subsequently reproduce a practically infinite series of random information under proper conditions, Funes retains everything; every piece of sensory information he experiences is preserved perfectly in his memory.

Funes’ internal memory – that is, his recall of his mental experiences apart from external sensorial information – also makes that of Shereshevskii pale in comparison. Shereshevskii has a lasting and detailed internal reality, a kind of mental world as palpable is the material one, which allows him, through its manipulation, to form mnemonic devices that have permanence thanks to their imagined physical nature. It is as though he has a computer game world existing inside his head which he can explore and manipulate at will. But Funes does him one better. He holds the entirety of reality in his memory, or at least as much of it as he can experience or imagine. While these worlds do not operate on the same level of complexity – the former is like a dream landscape littered with strategically placed symbolic images and storylines, the latter recalls the nesting warehouse theaters of the film Synecdoche, New York, limited in detail only by the attention of its owner – they both possess an inherent materiality that can both inhibit and aid the man whose mind inhabits them. When trying to recall a word from a series, Shereshevski might miss the word if its image were placed within his mental world in a place where it was camouflaged such that he might not “see” it clearly. He explains that this “happened with the word egg. I had put it up against a white wall and it blended in with the background. How could I possibly spot a white egg up against a white wall?” (Luria 36). Knowing the egg was against the wall was not enough. He had to be able to perceive the egg within the physical laws of his internal world. The world’s physics were in a sense thought-proof. But the physical nature of the internal world could be turned to his advantage. He could make the egg larger, in other words more immediately visible, to facilitate an easier recall of the image. Funes uses a similar device as a tool to manipulate his thoughts. To quiet his overcrowded mind for sleep, he would turn toward the new houses in his town that he had never laid eyes on and could only imagine as “black, compact, made of homogeneous shadow” (Lethem 126). Since he had never experienced them, Funes’ otherwise infinitely detailed conception of reality resorted to a blank, placeholder substance to fill the gaps he knew existed but could never perceive. His thoughts could not infer imagined houses; his memory of everything was so precise and specific that he could not generalize in his imagination to create anything less complex than the rest of his remembered reality. The placeholder shadow houses were so sturdy in their nonexistence that they became a refuge from thought and perception.

Shereshevskii would have been served well by such a refuge. Though their informational experiences differ as significantly as the natures of their internal memories – Funes endures an unending stream of information of overwhelming complexity, while Shereshevskii is muddled by blurring and interweaving sensorial experiences – both men are comparably overmatched by neural stimulation. Neurologically, I can guess that Shereshevskii’s sensory irregularity comes much earlier in the course of processing incoming information. He is sometimes unable to process a simple narrative, because each particle of information triggers a series of sensory experiences that distract from the communicative power of the original information. Funes had no such difficulty with taking in the full meaning of abstract information. His blessing and curse is that he takes in all information at all levels. If there is anything that can be gleaned from any sensory or mental experience at any moment, he retains it with perfect clarity. This wealth of information is too much to process if he is to achieve some semblance of clarity. Similarly, Shereshevski’s mnemonic abilities are hampered by the white noise of extra sensory input. The both want for a method to block out surplus information. It seems strange to me as one of the vast majority of human beings who forgets exponentially more than he remembers, but it is clear that for someone with infinite memory, the most desirable skill is the ability to forget.

thoughts on the mind of a mnemonist

The Mind of a Mnemonist provides another fascinating study of an unusual set of neurological circumstances, refracted through the lived experience of an individual. I’ve enjoyed it, although I find Luria much more restrained than Sacks. Luria’s style reflects a certain discipline and distance, whereas Sacks tries audaciously to stretch neuropsychology to its imaginative and intuitive limits. Luria is a scientist with a humanistic turn of mind; Sacks is a storyteller and philosopher who retains some roots in the sciences. It may be that Luria simply reflects the conventions of his time; and, drawing on Luria’s influence, Sacks has been able to build on a pre-existing foundation, toward greater heights. I’m more inclined to think that this is a difference of personality between Luria and Sacks, however, and the question of personality is quite pertinent here.

All of the cases we’ve considered examine the most extreme neurological circumstances--which is important, because somehow the extreme cases bring to light less marked but noteworthy tendencies in more average minds. That is to say, by looking to the mnemonist, we can gain insight into ourselves. The distinctions between these cases and neurotypical minds is really a matter of degree, it appears increasingly, but not one of kind. In other words, it is a quantitative, not a qualitative, distinction. I remember, as a very young child, experiencing some synaesthesia. For instance, the name of my third grade teacher (Ms. Edward) always seemed decidedly green to me. I remember discussing this with a friend one day, who countered that Ms. Edward's name was not in fact green, but another color. We were both experiencing synaesthesia in some mild form. With age, this slight synaesthesia has become slighter for me, but there are still the faintest traces. What, finally, do we learn from this, this similarity to the subjects? What specifically? The information is fascinating, but I’m unsure of what exactly to take away from it.

The particular case of the mnemonist may be instructive as we try to grasp the psychology of personality. Jung was the first to propose an extensive system of psychological types. There were three primary dimensions of personality in his view, three main areas in which our personalities differ most dramatically (yet in consistent ways) from one another: introversion-extroversion, intuition-sensation, and feeling-thinking. I won’t bore you with too many details, but someone who has sensing as dominant function resembles the mnemonist in a way. Sensing individuals take in information via their senses in a literal, concrete manner. Intuitive individuals immediately abstract from sensory data. These are just prevailing tendencies, at ends of a continuum.The mnemonist, thinking in almost entirely sensory terms, represents a grossly exaggerated expression of a tendency that is present to one degree or another in each of us. Notions of normality and health--as we’ve been discussing a fair amount--are somewhat destabilized by much of our reading.

What I’d like to suggest at this point--based on our discussions of Sacks and Luria--is that we not view the case subjects as fundamentally different from us. They show us the brain’s most extreme potentialities, but these potentialities are latent within ourselves. Seen this way, the model of the doctor-patient relationship that Sacks proposed looks sensible rather than idealistic. They must be equals, two humans, each striving to understand more fully the humanity of the other.

Intellect and Memory

Throughout our course material thus far, I've been struck by the regularity with which Sacks (and Luria, in Man with a Shattered World) describes almost every patient as having had a high intellect before whatever condition afflicted them occurred. It's unclear to me whether this is true, and perhaps the most precocious of brains are the most susceptible to damage or change, or if this is a fabrication, a stretching of the truth on Sacks' part in order to make a more compelling story. Perhaps it is simply that once a mind is gripped by Parkinsonism or sensory deficit or any of the myriad conditions we have discussed, the clarity of functioning beforehand seems all the more extraordinary and precious in contrast.

In The Mind of a Mnemonist, however, we have the story of a man whose memory functions much higher than any normal human being, but who also "[strikes] one as a disorganized and rather dull-witted person" (Luria 65). Despite-in fact, because of-the rich fabric of S.'s inner life and imagery, he has difficulty understanding a simple story. What, then, can be said of the relationship between intellect and memory? S.'s condition is both demonstrable to others and unknowable by them, as is the inner state of the Parkinsonian patient. How are we meant to measure the capacities and faculties of others, and what is the standard against which they should be set?

Analagous Balancing Acts

Ledoux’s presentation of the Instruction versus Selection debate (regarding how, why, and when synaptic connections are formed in the human brain—as well as the extent to which they are influenced by inherent or exterior conditions) dovetailed wonderfully with Luria’s account of the synesthete/mnemonist, S. Not only does the former provide a conceptual basis for (at best) attempting to understand S.’s mind; but the latter—the case detailed by Luria—is an informative illustration of what happens when one of the two complementary mechanisms outlined by Ledoux (synaptic regression) seems to be missing from the picture. Thus Ledoux’s concept that a union between the two often opposed schools of thought (“selectionist nativism vs. instructional constructionism”) underlies ‘normal’ primate brain functioning is given weight—inasmuch as the consequences of a brain leaning more to one side of the debate (so to speak) are readily observed.

It would seem that, both metaphorically and physically, S.’s brain was incapable of undergoing a necessary pruning of connections—whether these were physical (neuronal) or conceptual (associative) by nature. Indeed, that S. was indeed synesthetic implies that the connections between his cortical sensory-association-areas had not undergone the usual parsing and dissociation found in a conventional adult brain (as per the Synasthesia Quick Guide). This structural abnormality (or gift, depending on your perspective) gave rise not only to the functional crossing over of his senses (inasmuch as he could taste and feel color, while perceiving words as colors and syllables as shapes), but also to a psychological and cognitive inability to parse and dissociate nonrelevant or unnecessary information. As Luria describes, “…whenever [S.] would have to deal with a sotry that had been read to him…S.’s faces would register confusion and finally utter bewilderment…‘This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos’…a far more difficult and exhausting job…than others do for whom the written word does not summon up such graphic images; who operate more simply and directly by signaling out key points in a passage—those that offer a maximum of information” (Luria 65). In a way, S.’s compensatory process of cutting down the details of incoming information, via his methods of “shorthand” (described by Luria under the chapter, The Art of Forgetting), can be likened to a self-imposed pruning: a top-down, conscious executive enactment of what usually occurs on a nonconscious, automatic level.

Though S. did find a coping mechanism for his inordinate retention of memory, he still experienced difficulties filtering out the extraneous voices, sounds, and bits of irrelevant sensory stimulation—such as when he began to confuse number sets on blackboards shown to him during his career as a professional mnemonist (Luria 69). Even his process of writing down that which he intended to forget—an apparent reversal of conventional behavior regarding memory—proved unfruitful, as images/words/concepts he wanted to erase repeatedly popped into his mind. This, of course, directly reminded me of particular disorders involving anxiety and obsessive thought patterns. Though S. should by no means be classified as obsessive compulsive or diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, the symptoms (or, reflections) of his anomaly are analogous to those symptoms (or behavioral manifestations) of such disorders. Simply put, the inability for S. to let go of a certain set of numbers or a string of phonemes—and the necessary compensatory behavior to rid himself of this persistence) seems similar to the inability of those afflicted with obsessive compulsive and anxiety disorders to release themselves from their compulsive thoughts, behaviors, obsessions. All such situations, in a broad and perhaps overly generalized manner, involve an inability to let go of superfluous stimuli, a difficulty putting to rest or quieting the mind.

All such examples, however, are in turn mere exaggerations of normal human functioning. Every individual experiences the desire to forget something that will not leave his or her head—for instance, an annoying melody, or a traumatic memory. In turn, most have experienced an inability to cease fixating on (or thinking of), say, an event in the future—such as an impending test or deadline; a nervousness about hearing back from an employer or college after applying. Additionally, as Luria is quick to point out, most humans have “…remnants of synesthesia…which are of a very rudimentary sort (experiencing lower and higher tones as ‘warm,’ others as ‘cole’; ‘seeing’ Friday or Monday as having different colors)…” (Luria 27). Thus synesthesia, also, is an exaggeration of the norm (as regards general/conventional human functioning). [Attentional disorders are also called to mind here, as they may be conceived of as an inability to filter that which otherwise normal individuals hear/see but are not distracted by].

In sum, every instance of exaggeration which may be termed anomalous curves back to the original dichotomy between Instruction versus Selection—and what happens when one side of the debate is more emphasized than the other. Perhaps, then, the ‘norm’ of functioning should indeed be perceived in Ledoux’s complementary sense, with innate characteristics (genes) giving rise to a plethora of structures, which environmental influences cut and parse according to both chance and conditioning. It is only when one such mechanism (either the preprogramming or, in this case, the ‘post-programming’) steps out of sync with the other that an anomaly arises—though this anomaly may be the very thing that individuates one from another.

Short snippet on amblyopia (goes well with To See and Not See)

*sidenote: I listened to this interview a while back on a disorder called amblyopia, aka lazy eye...aka loss of 3D sight/stereo vision. If anyone is interested, it's very pertinent to Virgil's experience in To See and Not See.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99083752
Enjoy!