Networks, Neurons and Building Connections (Unity)
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
Alexander Pope
The Brain is a profound mystery, and it fascinates me. To explore, understand and think about our brain the tool that is available to us is the brain itself. In: ‘The Brain: a very short introduction’ Michael O’Shea notes on this phenomena:
“You’ll appreciate the curious circularity of this riddle if you consider the consequence of concluding, as you might, that your brain is the most exquisitely complex and extraodinary machine in the known universe. Clearly this is, and may be nothing more than, the opinion of your brain about itself: the brain’s way of thinking about the brain. So it seems we are caught in the logical paradox of a self-referencing, and in this case also a self-obsessed, system.”
Considering, as well, that every brain is unique and coloured by the character, experience and disposition of the individual, and that everything that is sensed in the outer world, is filtered and processed simultaneously through the brain in the inner world; it is of vital importance in understanding our own perception of reality.
With regards to design, everything created by an individual is subjective, it emerges through and out of a rich web, the information and influences are taken in, and may, to begin with, be objective; but as soon as your mind interprets anything it becomes subjective. A single word will have completely different associations and therefore different meaning depending on who you are talking to.
An idea cannot be separated from the designer.
So the brain, featuring in an architectural blog, may seem a little out of place. But as our means of understanding everything that we know, I would contest that it is always relevant.
Building on the Connection:
Neurons are responsible for the communication of information in the brain.
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s illustration of a neuron
In addition to Neurons the brain contains Glial cells, or Glia (from the greek word for ‘glue’) and synapses which act as the connectors between Neurons.
When you start talking numbers, the values are so enormous that they are impossible to imagine.
An individuals brain contains one hundred billion neurons, each with one thousand synapses, in the outer celebral cotex alone; producing a machine with one hundred trillion interconnections.
If you started to count them at a rate of one per second you would still be counting 30 million years from now!
Any of the brain’s neurons can potentially be connected with any other via one or more linkages, in fact each neuron is only one or two degrees of separation from another. Linkages once formed are strengthened by repetition, which at a behavioural level takes the form of habit.
The Brain is geared towards building connections.
This becomes even more evident when you discover that over 90% of the brain is its association cortex, an area devoted to establishing networks and thereby linking everything in the brain together. While there are certain areas of the brain that are specialised, if you think about your experience of the world you become aware that you do not encounter it in a separate, specialised way. You do not separately see, smell, hear, feel and taste your breakfast in the morning, you experience it as a unity and this is due to the association cortex.
Yet this idea of unity is something that we have moved quite far away from. We are taught to compartmentalise things. Subjects are portrayed as single, distinct disciplines and the boundaries between them have become firm and unforgiving (much like the lines and colours that divide the land on a map into countries). But when you think of memories in the brain, they are not in a linear, chronological order, but more like an ever-shifting, associative, seamless unity. In reality, time itself flows constantly, with the past and the future having a powerful influence on the present. Everything builds upon and effects everything else, this is how our world works and this is how our brain works.
A vast network, highly interlinked at every level.
This is also how knowledge works.
James Burke, a british broadcaster, science historian, author and television producer, describes knowledge as
“a gigantic and every growing sphere in space and time made up of millions of interconnecting criss-crossing pathways”
And when you consider that creativity could be thought of as the formation of novel and original linkages, perhaps the brain, and an understanding of how it functions, becomes a relevant and important aspect of design.
Tim Berners-Lee inventor of the world wide web (a fantastic example of interconnectivity and its success) says:
“a piece of information is really only defined by what it is related to, and how it’s related, there really is little else to meaning, the structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brain, but what are neurons? just cells, the brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.”
Ideas emerge out of the unity of influences that exist in the brain. Networks and connections; associations from places far and wide; memories; experiences and information from multiple disciplines strengthen and enrich creativity and design.
And I can’t work in any other way.
The mind is like a parachute – it works only when it is open
Frank Zappa
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Information for this post taken from:
‘The Brain: A very short introduction’ Michael O’Shea
‘Mozart’s Brain and the fighter pilot: Unleashing your Brain’s potential’ Richard Restak
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the architecture of ideas 