In follow-up to our recent discussion of the importance of the lived subjective experience of the individual and the relation to 'brain-events,' I am posting a description of a new field of neurophenomenology.
Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson (2003) have underscored the importance of phenomenology as it anchors theoretical investigations of, for example, neurobiology, on experience as lived and articulated in the first-person, rather than simply on experimental neural correlates or on abstract representations of experience. The term “neurophenomenology” emphasizes that phenomenological data and neural correlates of experience can function as reciprocal constraints. Neurophenomenological explanations proceed in two complementary directions, from the phenomenology of first-hand experience to neurobiology , and back again, with formal dynamical models mediating each way. Neurophenomenology rejects reductive materialism and replaces it with non-reductive naturalism, ie, a radically new biological version of dual aspect theory in which mental and neurobiological properties are viewed as two mutually irreducible aspects of one single underlying human being. Neurophenomenology relies on two key concepts: emergence and embodiment. Emergence extends and enriches the notion of natural causation, without violating the supposed causal closure of physics. Emergence entails both upwards and downwards causation. Embodiment provides the tools for criss-crossing the ‘explanatory gap’ between first-person phenomenology and third-person neuroscience. This is not closing the gap via reductionism, rather it is a way of moving productively from the one domain to the other by way of a third mediating domain, ie, dynamical systems.
Varela and Thompson (2003) noted:
“Given that the coupled dynamics of brain, body, and environment exhibit self-organization and emergent properties at multiple levels, and that emergence involves both upwards and downwards causation, it seems legitimate to infer that downwards causation may occur at multiple levels in these systems, including that of...cognitive acts in relation to local neural activity” (p.276).
These authors cited the idea of J. A. S. Kelso who wrote: “Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable dynamic patterns of the brain.” Walter Freeman described consciousness as an order parameter and state-variable operator in the brain that mediates relations among various neurons. According to Freeman, mind is not epiphenomena, rather, it plays a crucial role in intentional behavior-it is the task of the neurodynamicist to define and measure what that role is.
Another good example, and clinically useful, of ‘downward causation,’ is recent research on human epileptic activity. There is evidence that subjects can voluntarily affect the conditions leading to the initiation and course of seizure activity ( see Francisco Varela & Evan Thompson’s “Neural synchrony and the unity of mind: a neurophenomenological perspective” in Axel Cleermans’ edited volume “The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration, and Dissociation” published in 2003 by Oxford University Press). Epileptogenic zones are embedded in a complex network of other neural regions that actively participate in mental life. These networks are multiple and distributed over a large scale. The global level of integration ( the result of ‘upwards causation’ ) may produce ‘downwards’ effects, acting eventually upon the local level of the epileptogenic zones. Recent studies by Varela and colleagues have demonstrated that there are deterministic temporal patterns within the apparent random fluctuations of human epileptic activity, and that these patterns can be modified during cognitive tasks (Le Van Quyen et al 1997). Varela and Thompson (2003) concluded: “ ...the act of perception on the part of the patient contributes in a highly specific manner, via the phase synchrony of its associated neural assembly...to pulling the epileptic activities towards particular unstable periodic orbits. Thus downwards causation need be no metaphysical will-o’-the wisp, but can be an empirically tangible issue” (p. 277). Varela integrated the phenomenology of the present moment of experience with global neural events characterized by nonlinear dynamic systems.
I would like to refer to a previous posting I made in reference to the research of Michael Merzenich: Merzenich and deCharms (1996) pointed out that functional activity and plasticity are inseparable. Sounding more like neurophilosophers than the basic neuroscience researchers that they are, noted:
“We believe that mind is the product of an environment expressed in the nervous system and manifested by it through actions; it is a circular and relational interaction among an incoming world, an experiential context, and outgoing activity. To a large extent we choose what we will experience, then we choose the details that we will pay attention to, then we choose how we will react based on our expectations, plans, and feelings, and then we choose what we will do as a result. This element of choice and the relational nature of awareness in general have almost never been considered in neurophysiological experiments. We realize now that experience coupled with attention leads to physical change in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact, a fact that is really just a mechanistic confirmation of what we already know experimentally: moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves” (p.76).
An excellent example of a psychoanalytic integration of neuroscience research which speaks against naive reductionism (mind=brain events, a position also attacked by Gerald Edelman, nobel laureate and prominent neuroscientist, in his view that neuroreductionism is “silly” and could not encompass all of the levels it ‘takes to make a person’), can be found in Arnold Modell’s (2003) “Imagination and the Meaningful Brain” published by The MIT Press. Modell emphasized the importance of relational and epistemic pluralistic perspectives on mind (mind must always include the influence of other minds-it is not contained solely in individual neural events apart from the surround-I would counter Francis Crick’s naïve logical positivism with massive research data, including that of ‘mirror-neurons,’ demonstrating the inextricable embeddedness of brain and social environment). He quoted philosopher Thomas Nagel: “To insist on trying to explain the mind in terms of concepts and theories that have been devised exclusively to explain nonmental phenomena is both intellectually backward and scientifically suicidal” (p. 202).
Brian Koehler PhD
New York University
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brian_koehler@psychoanalysis.net
