Abstract
To start at the beginning then, the brain, according to Collin’s English Dictionary, is ‘the soft convoluted mass of nervous tissue within the skull of vertebrates that is the controlling and coordinating centre of the nervous system’. Catherine Loveday heads the BSc Cognitive Neuroscience course at the University of Westminster. In The Brain she gives us a clear straightforward account of what is currently known of the structure of the brain and what the different bits of it do, profusely illustrated with more or less relevant, but cheerful and upbeat coloured pictures. I am slightly concerned at the absence of references or of any guides to further reading. There is a bit too much of the ‘Scientists at the University of Cambridge have shown that …’. A short list of useful texts and relevant web sites at the back would have improved it enormously. Nevertheless, this is a book which could be usefully offered to any school pupil hoping to go on to study psychology or medicine or to any interested member of the general public.
If the brain is what is inside the skull, what and where is the mind? The invaluable Collins says that the mind is ‘the human faculty to which are ascribed thought, feeling etc., often regarded as the immaterial part of a person’, which I accept as an excellent summary. Daniel Siegel is a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry who seems to have decided that his own internal autobiography is the most interesting thing in the world. Mind is an irritating mixture of long self-indulgent ramblings, bits of what has been described as ‘Buddhism with the religion left out’, and dithyrambs on all the people he has ever met, all of whom seem to have been ruggedly wise and to have taught him so much about himself, all illustrated by small black and white photographs which have no particular bearings on the matter – birds, bits of driftwood, children playing and so on. Interspersed with all this, however, are nuggets of interesting neuroscience and some very interesting insights into the workings of the mind. The whole book would appeal greatly to mindfulness enthusiasts, as an encouraging source of background reading.
In The Brain Loveday notes that ‘the body plays a key role in how we interact with the world… the mind and body are intimately connected, and together provide a sense of oneself in the “here and now”’. Siegel defines mind as ‘energy flow plus information flow’ and, similar to Loveday, notes that there are ‘parallel distributed processing systems … in the intrinsic nervous systems of our heart and intestines … In other words, the body-proper may not just be energy flow, it may also involve information flow’. They both seem to be suggesting that Descartes was wrong in postulating a separation between mind and body.
Siegel, however, goes on to say ‘perhaps this is all there is – separate minds from separate bodies emitting signals to one another’ but ‘we now come to … possibly broadening this notion even further. Could the mind as a whole be more than only something happening inside of us? … What if the mind as we are exploring it is actually not only within us, but truly between us as well?’
This is very much the theme of The Interbrain. Digby Tantam argues that humans are truly social animals, connected not just through culturally acquired common knowledge but also through an innate connection between brains, using specialised structures and networks to carry nonverbal communications. Non-lingual communication is, of course, common to all social animals. Ants form an extreme case (Guha, 2009); in fact, Morton Wheeler (1911) invented the term ‘superorganism’ specifically to describe his beloved ants. Tantam suggests that such a non-lingual interlink between brains has been developed to a higher level in humans, rather than just being an evolutionary relic. This is not an entirely original idea (see, for example, Hatfield, 1994) but I am not aware of any other book to develop it in this way.
I found The Interbrain a difficult book to work through, partly, paradoxically, because Tantam tried to simplify the argument for the general reader by putting more complex philosophical and scientific issues into the copious footnotes, which take up about 20% of the text. I found my attention constantly flicking between the main text and a footnote which may well continue on to the next page. Nevertheless, the main thrust of his argument is clear and well-supported: direct nonverbal links with each other give us the sense of meaningfulness which underlies our feeling of humanity.
Clearly, when there are two forms of communication in operation at the same time, there is a danger of them working in opposition to each other, thus creating internal mental conflicts (the fundamental basis of Freudianism?). The existence of two forms of communication explains the problems which occur when either becomes dominant – raising the risk of the individual being swept up into a mob, on one hand, or of becoming aloof, without sympathy or fellow-feeling, on the other hand. Tantam disapproves of the terms ‘empathy’ and ‘psychopathy’. One can see his point but surely some descriptive labels are needed to cover his different types and levels of communication.
De Rosa et al. (2018) noted that psychiatry is ‘an amalgam of biological, psychological and social causative factors, along with sociological, anthropological and philosophical underpinnings’. The Interbrain makes a challenging and somewhat controversial contribution to these underpinnings.
The Internet is informative, a medium of exchange full of emotion, but, as Tantam points out this is not corporeal emotion … the Internet is a perfect medium for creating, sharing and storing ‘common knowledge’ … but the absence of any interbrain connection means that being on the Internet is being in the same state as someone like the proverbial psychopath who has inhibited their interbrain, like the soldier taken over by the fury of war.
Ventrigio and Bhugra (2017) similarly note that ‘social media provide an element of connectedness’ but ‘such support may be superficial. The more connected we are the more lonely we can be’. Social media clearly can have social benefits but people are becoming increasingly aware of their downside. By comparing papers written by e-health enthusiasts written even 4 or 5 years ago with more recent publications by the same authors, it can be demonstrated that people are becoming much more wary (Guha, 2017).
The Dark Side of Social Media notes that there has been a recent rise in narcissism among young people and that there are indications that average levels of depression have risen coincidentally with the rise of social media. As the title suggests, this book concentrates on the downside, with chapters on revenge porn; bullies and silent victims; the role of the media in propagating body image; cheaters & trolls; and why Facebook users display their ‘desired self’. Obviously the book is already dated – recent revelations on the political effects of Facebook allowing the wholesale acquisition of personal data would certainly rate a chapter now.
I would like to have seen a chapter on the formation of mobs here. The Interbrain has a lengthy discussion on leadership – of how mobs evolve leaders. This question, of course, predates the Internet: I find it interesting that older dictators such as Napoleon or Cromwell came from a strong background of military success and Lenin had highly organised political support, but Hitler or Mussolini came from nowhere – they had no major social class backing or military experience; their sole talents were for manipulating the mass media – film, radio, newspapers and public address systems. The Interbrain focusses on Pol Pot and the horrific massacres he perpetrated in Cambodia. Imagine if Pol Pot had had access to Twitter.
There is a chapter on ‘being yourself’ in The Dark Side of Social Media but I would have liked to have seen more on topics like social contagion: the way in which individuals try to change their behaviour and image to try to match their perceived peers. Social contagion is surely an important part of mob creation. Nevertheless, this is an important and useful contribution to the general discussion of the good and bad effects of the Internet on human behaviour and mentality.
All of these books are well worth considering. An understanding of how our brains operate is of importance to all of us. I would be happy to see a copy of The Brain in every school library. An understanding of how our minds work is a rather more complex task, even without getting into the philosophical issues around the mind–body problem. There is a growing public awareness of treatments which ‘combine ideas from positive psychology, compassion-focussed therapy and the increasingly popular Buddhist-derived practice of mindfulness meditation’ (Bargiela, 2018). The odd combination of autobiography, irrelevant photographs and clear scientific insights may mean that Mind is not everyone’s cup of tea, but, among the wide range of recent books on the topic, I have not come across one that does the job better. Similarly, The Interbrain’s combination of general text and more complex footnotes does not always make for easy reading on the controversial topic of the ways in which human brains can inter-relate nonverbally, but I do not know of any other book which covers the subject in this way. Tantam suggests that this interlinking of brains is an important part of what makes us human. He also raises the disturbing suggestion that communication via the Internet lacks this nonverbal linking. The finally chapter of Mind is entitled ‘Humankind: Can We Be Both?’ If Tantam is right, then the Internet is making being both human and kind a much more difficult task, and The Dark Side of Social Media becomes an important contribution to the discussion of the future of humanity.