I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self (review)

Rodolfo R. Llinás. I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self.Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. x + 302 pp. Ill. $24.95 (0-262-12233-2).

After a productive career as a basic neurophysiologist, Rodolfo R. Llinás brings together modern ideas of brain function, connects them in an evolutionary context, and produces a general statement on the nature of the mind. If this seems at all presumptuous, forgive him, for he has heard the song of the siren:

Those of us that do electrophysiological recording routinely will argue that there are few events as wondrous and exciting as listening to the sound of a live neuron speaking its own language and seeing this language as bursting electrical patterns flickering across the oscilloscope screen. . . . [E]lectrical events of the brain, rich enough to represent all that we can observe or imagine, constitute the mind. These electrical events . . . constitute "us." (p. 70)

This is an uncompromising statement of the strong materialist program for the equivalence between mind and brain. Neuroscience has always considered itself as the life science that cuts closest to the bone on all the old questions about human nature. At least since the time of René Descartes and Thomas Willis, with their recognition that knowing brain structure in detail was crucial, the important question was usually phrased as a search for the seat of the soul. With the foundation of psychology as a formal discipline in the nineteenth century, the question was put on hold as unproductive. There is now a great burst of optimism that the search is almost over, although the question is now phrased as a search for the neuronal correlates of consciousness, and its answer still stays tantalizingly just out of reach. But when one enters a bookstore for the general reader and sees a long shelf of books with titles such as Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self by T. E. Feinberg, or Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness by G. M. Edelman, or A Mind so Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness by M. Donald, one knows this is a serious business.

Llinás's account is authoritative because of his deep background in modern neuroscience and because his basic ideas are stated clearly and convincingly, often backed by examples from a wide spectrum of biological observation. For instance:

(a) The nervous system evolved because it is useful to creatures that move about in their environment. A central location that integrates various sensations allows the mobile creature to predict what effect certain motions will have, and this adds greatly to survivability. The mobile larval form of the sea squirt possesses a central ganglion, but this ganglion disappears in the stationary adult form.

(b) Some motor patterns are so important to the survival chances of a creature that they are hard-wired into the brain before birth. Thus a videotape made in Africa shows a newborn wildebeest calf not only attempting to run away from the attacking lion but making unlearned avoidance maneuvers as it does so (unsuccessfully).

c) Certain prewired action patterns may have no utility to a particular organism, but evolution finds it "cheaper and easier" to leave them in the brain. Thus in birds where only the male develops birdsong, treating the female with testosterone can activate its submerged capacity to also sing.

(d) The "self"—the "I" of the vortex of neuronal activity—is the intangible abstraction that binds together (within a set time period) the sensations from the outer world with internal motivations and memories. Because this authority is centralized, it can then make better prediction judgments on different strategies for dealing with the outside world.

Although Llinás's book is short, it is densely packed with ideas and the reader would do best to have some comfort with basic neuroanatomy and its terms. Do not try to read this book at bedtime. If you do...