I of the Vortex: From neurons to self by Rodolfo Llinás, MIT Press,
ÂŁ16.95, ISBN 0262122332
BRAINS. What are they for? Prediction, according to Rodolfo Llinás, is
“the ultimate function of the brain”. An ability to predict dangerous events
obviously improves our chances of averting them. Prediction is also useful for
fine-tuning movements and saving energy. But when Llinás suggests that
predictive capacity is important to explain what he calls the “mindness state”
as well as the self and consciousness, it’s hard to tell where he’s going.
Llinás is known as a leading experimental scientist who has made major
contributions to our understanding of the properties of nerve cells and how they
communicate within the brain. In this ambitious book he attempts to outline a
coherent view of brain function. He discusses all the “big” problems, such as
the nature of the self and of consciousness.
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I of the Vortex is “aimed toward a general audience”. Llinás
presents the simple ideas simply—but rarely managed to explain to this
reviewer how they relate to the main argument. Introducing the basics of his
idea of prediction, for example, Llinás calls to mind a situation where
you found yourself blinking just before a bug landed in your eye. “You did not
see the bug . . . yet you anticipated the event and blinked appropriately to
ward off its entry into your eye.” He tells us that the anticipatory blink can
be explained by “a subconscious sensorimotor image that says close your eye, a
bug is coming”.
Does this simply mean that stimuli associated with irritation of the eye,
through some unspecified mechanism, cause the eye to close? If so, it is trivial
and empty—rather like explaining how a drug induces sleepiness by invoking
its “dormitive virtues”. If the phrase “sensorimotor image” means something
more, which I think it does, it becomes more problematic.
As Llinás approaches his central problem he makes lofty declarations
such as “the self is the centralisation of prediction” and “that which we call
thinking is the evolutionary internalisation of movement”. These sound exciting.
But Llinás does not follow them up with explanations of what the neurons
in the brain are up to when, for example, prediction occurs or is
centralised.
When the book does deal with neurons, a major theme is “oscillations”.
Llinás has discovered that the excitabilities of neurons in some brain
structures oscillate in synchrony. Many neuroscientists believe that such
synchronised activity in sets of nerve cells is the mechanism that connects or
“binds” different sensory inputs into a coherent experience. Llinás
endorses this view—and he also believes that oscillations underlie
subjectivity, the self, consciousness and the discontinuous nature of voluntary
movements.
Exactly how oscillations do these things never becomes clear. As soon as
Llinás discusses concrete mechanisms, the argument becomes problematic.
In fact, other investigators have contradicted some of his claims about stably
synchronised oscillations.
This is a book for those who like a lot of sound and fury but care less what
it signifies.
