This post will be a little bit more “roaming through knowledge” than the usual.
Actually, it is part of a series, first published in May 2009.
But, following the dictum of somebody else, I will make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.
What is the point? Talking about ways of representing and forecasting the expected decisions of groups and individuals, and some projects that try to build a “model” of what we are and could be- be it our DNA or our brain.
And, while doing this, recalling some useful concepts that you can apply in whatever you do in your business and personal life- including when you are on the receiving end of the results of a model.
As usual- theory is converted into (hopefully) plain English, and the examples are from real life and experience in business, politics, technology- and their impact on personal and business life.
PREVIOUSLY
GMN2009: METASCRIPTING
After scripting event-by-event, you will probably identify the need of some structure of reference.
So that each scripting is linked to a common, shared “way of scripting” that you adopt in your own organization (or for your 20-volume “novel”).
But this scripting about scripting, or metascripting, represents the environment that defines, identify, and justify your activities.
When does it make sense to script? How does scripting link with the model that you built for your reality?
And, finally, how do you represent everything together, and evolve your models, including the scripting rules that are contained within the models?
GMN2009: GENOME AND BRAIN MAPPING
This section will be finally getting toward the purpose of this blog- discussing technology, politics, and their impact on business and private life.
The technological innovations of the last quarter of the XX century gave an acceleration to multiple disciplines.
But probably none will have a more long-term impact than information technology and its application to the study of basic scientific issues.
From stem cell research, to finding the appropriate chemicals to help compensate dis-functions within our brain, the side-effects of these innovations are already visible.
This section will discuss genome as the example on how technology (and science) can create a chicken-and-egg problem in terms of impacts on everyday life, and how the issues have been managed with genome.
The material will try to keep a balance between density of information and readability.
But, unfortunately, I will have no jokes from my own past- I have never been a scientist, albeit I always kept a keen interest on knowing about the advances of science.
Most of the examples will therefore be delivered through quotes from books, articles, and other material.
It will be published over the full week-end, in three installments:
- The introduction, on Friday 22nd, with the title The quest for the Holy Grail
- Genome, on Saturday 23rd, containing Cathedrals and Case study: Genome
- The conclusions, on Sunday 24th, containing Moving forward: the brain
To make your (and my) life easier, there will be just one single post, but I will announce on twitter the updates.
Simply, its content will grow across the week-end.
And, hopefully, the full material will serve two purpose:
- “introductory index to the genome”
- “mini-primer” on the lessons learned from the project
I will adopt the perspective of an external observer, who uses the perspective of somebody managing a project, whatever its content.
Preparing for the finaly section of the GMN2009 series, that will be online on Monday 25th, just in time for the celebration of the speech delivered on May 25th 1961 by President J. F. Kennedy, to announce the Moon program.
Enjoy the reading- and comment on my twitter or via e-mail to influence the content of what will be published.
R
The quest for the Holy Grail
As non-occasional readers of my blog can guess, my reference is to the Monty Python movie, not the the book that “inspired”, according to the witnessing during the trial, the wife of the author of a recent book on a conspiracy theory spanning millennia (that was then converted in a movie starring Tom Hanks) 
Why this reference?
Because we humans do not just adapt to our environment- we study it, and adapt both ourselves and the environment.
And, certainly, Monty Python had their own way of adapting the environment to themselves- including the one between your ears
Well, somebody would say that “adapting the environment” is an understatement.
But true nonetheless.
The visible title of this section is “Genome and brain mapping”.
The link is named “cathedrals”.
It is not a criticism: it is a realistic assessment.
Beside the human genome and brain mapping, this section will discuss also how these and other mapping initiatives could affect not just science and medicine, but our everyday life.
And what are these “maps”? Nothing but yet another proof of human’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
As shown in the title of this series, I chose the genome, brain mapping, and neural networks as a symbol of both projects that can be achieved in relatively short time, and the could dramatically affect our everyday life.
A book that I recently read and re-read is a funny albeit unusual and informative book from 1999, written by Matt Ridley “Genome”, where each chapter is devoted to discussing one of the 23 human chromosomes.
Much more entertaining than other books that I quick-read on science over the last two years, as part of my resettlement program (I am recovering old skills, updating some knowledge, and adding some new skills- notably, linguistic skills )
Beside other things, Ridley wrote the biography of Francis Crick, one of the fathers of the discovery of the double-helix of the DNA (if you need to a refresh in biology- bear with me: you will find in this section all the links to the minimally required material to be able to fake your way through a discussion about Genome).
As Richard Dawkins wrote in his brilliantly selective editing of the “The Oxford Book of Modern Writing” (pagg. 40-41):
One of the things Matt Ridley makes clear in his biography is that Francis Crickâs genius thrived on collaboration and conversation.
He would talk and talk about science with intelligent colleagues whose expertise complemented his own.
After Watson left Cambridge to return to America, Crick teamed up with the effervescently brilliant geneticist Sydney Brenner, recently arrived from South Africa via Oxford, to overtake the next big milestone in the molecular biology journey, the genetic code itself.
Using stunningly clever experiments with viral parasites of bacteria, Brenner, Crick and their colleagues demonstrated that it had to be a triplet code.
The Genome wasn’t the first “impossible” project carried out in the XX century over relatively few years.
And probably more similar projects will be needed in the future- each time, expanding the scope of collaboration, and creating new ethical and technical issues.
As discussed in previous sections, we do not just collect knowledge- we also transmit our knowledge to the generations that follow us.
Some recent studies showed that we are probably not the only species that builds a “culture”, but our long learning phase, from infancy to adulthood, is the best “configuration” possible to transmit knowledge.
I will discuss the human genome project in more detail in the next section, but that project would not have been possible if our knowledge were transmitted orally.
While our current magnates focus on helping to fight specific issues (from malaria to AIDS, to introducing social changes), the industrial era “robber barons” left behind something more than memories of their (not necessarily so ethical) activities as magnates.
Andrew Carnegie “littered” (sorry for the joke!) the US with his libraries- on Wikipedia, it is reported that he created thousands of libraries, and not only in US.
And our ancestors started converting public collections into museums and libraries centuries ago.
If you travel around industrialized countries, you will see that the presence of public libraries and museums is a constant.
Not only because it can be a good business.
But because museums, libraries, galleries, and other cultural institutions were a sign of power.
A notable evolution of the second half of the XX century is that, beside the computer, other technologies, like airplane travel, the fax, satellite TV broadcasting reduced the distance.
And increased the value of specialization.
Before, you had to keep close all the possible skills.
Now, you can have “excellence centers” scattered world-wide: technology will unite them, and airplanes will allow critical meetings to be held within the week, not within the year (if ever), as in the XIX century.
What wasn’t probably expected was the increase in the speed of innovation.
By increasing communication, and allowing the best minds in each discipline to focus, multiple centers of excellence have been able to follow different threads in research and technology.
All the while being fully aware that it would have been possible then to access the results of the best practices, wherever occurred.
This allowed to adopt the same approach that President Kennedy presented in his speech on the space program: focus on what we can do better.
The interesting side-effect of the Internet is that an e-mail message can be considered an “impulse” message.
By removing the human interaction some not-so-positive issues can arise, but once a communication channel (the exchange of e-mail messages) is open, it is almost instinctive to communicate.
Sometimes, before considering issues like intellectual property rights, industrial secrets, and so on.
But in projects borne in and managed by the private sector, some “filtering” toward the scientific community still occurs, as proved by the lengthy discussions about the distribution of the results of the Human Genome Project, and the possibility to apply for a patent on genes sequences identified by researchers.
The Human Genome Project is a wonderful test-case of the limits of our organizational and legal systems, as even before it was completed, it generate also legal impacts, as we will see later in this section.
I referred in the title to the word “cathedrals”- but I should have said: the working model of the cathedrals.
Cathedrals
I know that I have a twisted view on reality.
I have been introducing and managing change, usually via projects, for a couple of decades.
And after the first couple of years (yikes- late 1980s: time flies!) in the “number crunching to support decision making” business, I changed also my view on organizations.
Before, I had the almost natural distrust for bureaucracy, and my activity in politics and my service in the Army did not really change my mind.
Why? Because I saw people doing what they were doing not because they had a purpose, but because they had been told to, and because this, sometimes, helped them to avoid deciding- they had a procedure to follow.
Well, add more rules than those that the “controlling”/”audit” staff can control, and get ready for some flexibility linked more to the personal interpretation of the rules than to a “golden standard”.
But I said that my view changed.
And the reason is, as usual, simple: our society is complex.
And a complex society creates rules to manage complexity, and allow people to work, instead of constantly negotiating an alternative.
Rules that, most of the times, are created to regulate something that already happened- not only with laws, also within companies.
One of the main issues is that some activities outlast the normal willingness of people to carry out those activities: written norms and procedures help them focus on the tasks at hand.
My friends visiting Europe are always amazed by the number and size of cathedrals.
And whenever I explain to them that a cathedral is not a building- represents a social order and an economic system, built to last beyond the completion of the building.
The “opera” or “fabbrica” were organizations to finance and oversee the spending of the funds for the local cathedral- and, usually, became de-facto information exchanges; better: roughly equivalent to our chamber of commerce.
If this analogy seems far-fetched, consider the funding required to build, say, the “Duomo di Milano” or its “sibling” in Florence.
All the community was involved in financing, and sometimes the “fabbrica” was a relevant employer.
“Building cathedrals” inherited in our modern world a negative value- sometimes reinforced, as in “building a cathedral in the desert”.
But I think that their organizational approach was, and still is, quite interesting, for at least few reasons:
- unites a community around a common project
- joins multiple interests, representing all the sectors of society
- build a stable organizational structure to ensure that the proper skills are available if and when able
- generates not only the project (building), but also its continuation (maintainance)
- ensures that the skills will be handed over from generation to generation
The project might end with the completion of the building, but the building will still be there.
In our complex society, I often came across projects that were “budgeted” only to build something, not to use and maintain it.
Moreover, there were no plans to keep the skills required to evolve the “building”.
Yes, it is true, I worked mainly in ICT and organizational projects: but any product of human activity has a lifecycle- be it a bridge, a nuclear power station, a software, or a new way of filling the tax return 
Space exploration, high-energy physics searching to understand how our world works, human genome: all thess projects appear once in a while on newspapers and TV news.
Or, better: it seems that every decade has its own “mega-science project”- and communication is often only emotional, as if it were the modern equivalent of gladiator games in the Coliseum.
In my view, “cathedrals” should be managed as an integrated project, where communication, and continued communication across all the lifecycle of the project and its results, is an integral part of the activity.
If you want, is akin to creating an “advocate” position within each project that has a major public/legal/political impact.
Because, in the XXI century, the spin-doctoring approaches that were available in the second half of the XX century lost their efficacy.
If you want a funny (in my view…) example that I used with some friends as a “quick learning” course on spin-doctoring in the XX century, watch the movie “Thank You For Smoking”- better than reading 2,000 pages book on corporate communications dynamics
But my statement on the XXI century has to be qualified.
For the time being, it covers mainly the generation born after mid-/late-1980s in developed countries, used to personal communication (mobile phones, laptops, etc) and the possibility of personal travel, but it is quickly extending.
Since the introduction of the Euro in some European Union countries (actually, also in part of Switzerland I could pay at the going rate directly in Euro), I had the chance of traveling extensively for my business, until early 2008.
And it was interesting to see the evolution: the Europeans traveling cross-border are still a fraction of the US citizens traveling across their country, but the most well-traveled are the generations used now to:
- a single market
- a single currency
- a single communication toolset (mobiles, web)
- a single “access” language (English, no matter how basic)
- comparing across their own informal network news and information about pricing, political evolutions, and so on
Which means: it is already starting now.
And, to use another movie example that refers to both Europe and genetics… have a look at “Code 46″, a future world where there are laws to control in-vitro fertilization.
At least, in my own projects from early 2000s, I had repeatedly younger people who were so used to the new “framework”, that they made practically used the old rules.
And, occasionally, created a nightmare- and more than once case of crisis management due to “spontaneous” communication using communication tools that weren’t available until, say, mid-1990s.
The main issue is: most of the people used to the new “social framework” has, or can easily reach, somebody that monitors in detail what is happened to specific project.
It could be a NGO, a students’ club, or just a single student that wants to learn everything.
You post an announce. You remove it. Somebody will notice that has been removed, and will inform all his/her network.
Companies that had to apologize publicly were just one every few years, in 1990s. Now, it seems that every few weeks one does. At least, from what I read in the specialized professional communication press.
But there too, it became so common place, that instead of a multi-part article on how X made a communication blunder, it is a matter of few lines; and, maybe, an instant book or two.
This is the change.
The new cathedrals are operating under a new “social contract”, and the best way to defuse potential communication troubles is to get used to transparency.
There will always be somebody leaking on a socially important “cathedral” project- maybe just out of frustration, maybe for a petty revenge. But a PR disaster is nowadays just a text message or a “twitter” away.
Interestingly, the Human Genome Project is the first of these “mega projects” with a clearly understandable purpose and global visibility that started in the time span bridging the pre- and post-Internet.
And, therefore, it is interesting to discuss it- from a scientific management perspective.
Case study: Genome project
The official website has probably enough material online to fill,if printed, all the space available for book in most private homes.
I will start from (almost) the end.
The timeline:
The timeline published by Nature, circa 2003
The tiny picture posted here can be seen in full-size by clicking on the picture; but, due to its size, you can find the original, in printing quality, on the
href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v422/n6934/pdf/timeline_01626.pdf">Nature
I wrote “(almost) the end”.
Because, considering its social impact, I consider the project completed only with the first legal step, the legislation to try to control some of the potential side-effects, the
href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00493:">Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA)
You will immediately notice the first point: the draft version (85%, according to the official announce) was presented in 2000 by President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair, who required that the information be made publicly available.
The production of the first draft was made possible by new technologies that increased the speed of processing the genetic information (technically, “sequencing”; for more information, a nice 12-pages primer is available here): and the publicly-sponsored project wasn’t the only one.
I suggest that your read at least the primer, but let’s see some characteristics, that make this project a fitting example of the “cathedral” concept:
- a public interest
- an activity that was, at the time, beyond the scope of any single organization
- its product is not the definition of the genome of every individual, but a reference
- while the project was considered completed in 2000, 2003, 2006… it will never be really completed
Why it will never be really completed? Because it was selected, on the basis of our current knowledge, to focus not on 100% for all the human beings, but on what we can process now with the current technology.
Moreover- the map will help to develop the science, and improve the understanding- hence, generating further research.
The official completion of the Human Genome Reference DNA Sequence was completed in April 2003, according to the Nucleotide site at the National Institute of Health.
The interesting part is that this project, after discussion due to the competition of a private company that funded its own project and then announced that it was going to apply for patents on genes:
- generated a new legal framework
- spurred international cooperation and sharing of the results
- motivated a new approach to communication
- created a competitive/cooperative framework
The new legal framework: the full database is available online: if you want, you can search
The side-effect? When President Clinton announced that the genome would not be patentable, the immediate side-effect, as reported by BIOTECH PATENT NEWS was a sensible loss on the stockmarket value of few companies.
The real legal framework is still a work in progress, as shown by the GINA, that was first introduced in 2007, but approved in 2008- five years after the initial issues.
The international cooperation is even more important now, as the easy accessibility of the material online allows both private and public organizations to study specific genes.
Some figures from the “primer” will allow to understand why the international cooperation is needed:
- The human genome contains 3 billion chemical nucleotide bases (Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, and Guanine)
- The average gene consists of 3000 bases, but sizes vary greatly, with the largest known human gene being dystrophin at 2.4 million bases
- The functions are unknown for more than 50% of discovered genes
- The human genome sequence is almost (99.9%) exactly the same in all people
Another interesting part is that, when the project was announced, the Department of Energy published documentation on the methodology and operating rules- at 3bln USD (the public project; the private one was assumed to be about 1/10 of that), the project was a programme, as some of the methodologies and technologies had to be developed or improved.
It was a reminder of another project, Project Trinity, that was a result of the more famous Project Manhattan, but was the project that created the industrial structure required.
While those project had mainly military purpose, therefore severely limiting the internationalization of the projects’ results, the concept was similar.
The projects required new technologies, new methods, and plenty of resources.
And once a new technology or method is created, it eventually becomes shared knowledge.
Thanks to the presence of the Internet, also the government institutions adopted a new approach to communication.
Beside online educational material, that you would probably expect, you can also go online and have your say on some social issues linked to the genome use and potential effects (actually, you have time until the 30th of June 2009 to comment on the documents currently available online).
This transparency was probably needed: but, nonetheless, it is an interesting approach, as it is one of the few cases that I know when the public is invited not to comment on proposed laws, but to comment on comments that will be presented to people who will propose laws.
You become part of the legislative support staff of your representative.
And comments have already had side-effects, as some documents are clearly marked as having been modified.
But this project created also a new cooperative/competitive framework, that is closer to the “crowdsourcing” or social networking online than to the usual commercial approach.
The side-effects of the Human Genome Project are beyond the pharmaceuticals companies, as already there are services online like 23andMe.com, that for few hundred dollars will sequence your own personal DNA, and offer a continuous update service.
The point is: while the knowledge on the human genome will evolve, your “online profile” inside this “social network” will keep you posted on what they found that matches with your own personal “map”.
And, if you want, you can also share it with others, or allow that it is used to match with others, and so on.
If this is not social networking online, what is it?
Personally, I am quite skeptical (but I already registered) about sending my DNA to a databank, while the legal framework is still undefined.
Moreover: anything that goes online is de-facto extraterritorial.
And then, you have to consider what is next: the brain mapping.
Moving forward: the brain
A report published in 2008 by the National Academy of Sciences, “From Molecules to Minds: Challenges for the 21st Century: Workshop Summary” (available here for free),discussed moving from genome to the brain.
Actually, to the mapping of the brain: to simplify, understand where each “feature” of our mind is positioned within the brain.
For a short introduction on the way the brain works, visit Wikipedia.
To make it even shorter… let’s say that for the purpose of this non-scientific article, what matters about the brain is:
- contains neurons- trillions
- each neuron has a central body (soma) and a main “pipeline”, called axon
- from the some protude something like the branches of a tree, called dendrites, with the purpose of receiving from other neurons
- the axon terminates in terminals that release neurotransmitters in the gap between its neuron and the dendrites of nearby neurons
- the number of dendrites is… whatever you think, think doubling the number of zeros
Incidentally: it must remembered that the role of the brain has not been always accepted.
Aristotles, between others, considered the brain purpose to be… cooling the blood.
But once the brain was identified as the probable location of the mind, theory after theory discussed the “how” and “Where” of different functions.
Over the centuries, the concept of identifying the position of certain functions was associated also with highly speculative assumptions, sometimes bordering on pure racism.
Like Cesare Lombroso and his use of physiognomic (identifying the criminal character by looking at specific characteristics of the head and parts of the body).
Or phrenology (from the American Heritage Medical Dictionary: “The study of the shape and protuberances of the skull, based on the now discredited belief that they reveal character and mental capacity.”).
To when, in the early XX century, start crossing path with IQ testing, sometimes done through the prism of a definitely racial concept of “intelligence”.
As when new comers to US were required in Ellis Island to pass a test, in a language that they did not know, and selected by criteria that were far from any ideal of “statistical sampling” a population (see History of Intelligence Testing).
In the 1950s other theories tried to explain our brain by association with the computer- in the 1970s it was still common to call computers “electronic brains”.
The advances in technology that enabled the Human Genome Project created new opportunities in the study of our brain.
For example, by reducing the size of the “slice” of the brain that we can observe from outside, and combining the results from different techniques to produce data that can be processed via computers.
The old EEG (Electro-encephalography, that focuses on a certain area of the brain, via electrodes on the scalp) can deliver almost real-time information, but on a large area and under certain conditions.
The newest technologies, like the version of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) called fMRI (the f stands for functional), allow to focus on specific areas, below 3mm in size; but it is based on the blood-oxygen levels, and its response time is slower than the electrical response of EEG.
New tools described in the National Academy of Sciences report include the brainbow (brain-bow), a technique that allows to map multiple neurons at the same time, with wonderful visual effects, as in this picture:
from Marc Zimmer page at the Connecticut College
It is art? No, it is a living brain
The study of the brain is a fascinating subject- in my case, I remember buying some books (Sir John Eccles, I think; and then, on specific subjects) in the mid-1970s, before I went for the first time to use the “electronic brain” (an IBM360) to write my first program, in 1979 (at 14).
But I immediately saw that the “electronic brain” was really a huge stupid- it was doing only what the punched cards that were fed through the reader told him to do (if it has a brain, is a living entity so, “him” instead of “it”).
Our most complex computers are still unable to do simple tasks done by a child without any specific training, just by adapting to the environment.
Anyway, the advances in computing technology and methods allow to integrate our human flexibility with the computers’ capability to keep humming at boring tasks. And fast.
If you look at recent studies on something seemingly as static in definition as memory, and compare with studies from, say, 30 years ago, you will see a not-so-subtle shift both in form and content.
Let’s be frank. We probably know more about our genome than about our brain. And this before the Human Genome Project even started.
As discussed at the beginning of this section, we humans strive to find an explanation about anything.
And strive to make it simple- and coherent- a systemic explanation.
No, not “systematic”, i.e. ordered and planned.
Systemic- of a whole system.
Be it based on experimentation that drives theory, like physics, or vice-versa, like, again, physics (every coin has two faces, doesn’t it? )… we want a single a point of reference.
Probably it is hard-wired in our brain, as shown by kids adoption and research of language structure without any need to teach them some basic structures.
It is interesting that in our complex society, built on applying part of Adam Smith’s concepts on specialization, we eventually built a society so compartimentalized, that sometimes it feels as if we are willingly becoming idiot savants.
Yes, we can get a Ph.D. in a specific subject. And that befits a complex society that needs an optimized use of resources, by concentrating knowledge in one person at a time, to improve the chance of keeping it up-to-date.
But that, often, comes at the cost of losing common sense. Or intellectual curiosity.
The “compartimentalization of knowledge” (if memory does not betray me, this comes from Sir K. Popper) is, in my view, one of the largest enemies of the development of our society.
I remember reading of when a famous US university, in late 1980s or early 1990s, tried to force students to get some courses in English literature- because Ph.D. material was technically sound, but written with the lexical complexity of a elementary school child. 800 words.
Compartimentalization, moreover if associated with an high degree of specialization, has another side-effect: the loss of the ethical dimension in science and technology.
If you think in “vertical” terms, i.e. focusing only on your own narrow discipline, ignoring all the others, you are certainly an expert.
But due to the increasing complexity of the byproducts of our specialization, we need access to other disciplines more than before.
And this is were the industrial model of knowledge (increased efficiency) damages the potential of the application of the results of our applied knowledge (reduces efficacy).
If you look at technologies like fMRI, described above, from a technological view-point you will join:
- neurosciences
- biology
- physics
- computer science
- …
As I discussed before… a project, if not a programme.
Because, if a project uses agreed resources to produce an agreed result in an agreed amount of time, a programme is when, basically, a project needs to be split in projects that could generate indipendent results, but that, as a whole, satisfy a purpose.
I had other examples of systemic thinking that transcend technical jargon, but few months ago I attended a conference,and I found a real story that beats my example.
The conference in March 2009 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to present to Philips the IEEE Milestone award for the 30th anniversary of the first CD.
The CD was a joint Philips-Sony project, that, after the bleeding of the videocassette format wars, considered wiser to work together.
Akio Morita of Sony was a friend of Herbert Von Karajan, the Austrian conductor, and asked him which music should be recorded as a test.
And the reply was: “Pictures at an Exhibition”, by Mussorgski.
It was stunning. Why? Listen to it.
His choice wasn’t simply a musical, esthetic choice. It was an engineering choice.
Because “Pictures” would certainly test the reliability of the new digital support- I know of your compositions that cover all the audible spectrum in such a concise and magnificent way. And, frankly, also some live concerts were less than appealing
And this is an example of systemic thinking.
No matter what is your expertise, you join the skills associated to other disciplines. And, in your role as “systemic thinker”, you think of the purpose, and join all the disciplines (including your own) toward achieving the purpose.
Studying the human brain is even more complex- because the systemic approach is not needed only to build the tools, but also to achieve a systemic understanding of the how and why of our brain
Consider the limited knowledge that we have of the way that the brain works: until not so long ago, “memory” was considered to be localized.
Advances in knowledge on how the brain works started challenging that purpose, and forever losing the link with the “electronic brain”.
Retrieving a specific memory does not imply attaching a specific neuron. Implies “associating” neurons in composing that memory (ok, oversimplified- but the concept should be clear).
If you want, it is an orchestra playing together to generate that memory.
Yes, we have still “macro maps”, identifying specific areas.
But technology is advancing so fast, that a recent article (March 2009) published by Science Daily is challenging also the current idea about memory: “In a study published in the journal Current Biology , they show that our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a finding which challenges current scientific thinking.”.
The title of the article? “‘Mind-reading’ Experiment Highlights How Brain Records Memories”.
And another article, published in November 2007, discussed the different way a woman’s and a man’s brain react to stress.
As you can see from all these examples, the mapping of the human brain seems to be done by specific interest.
And, of course, specific people.
While the genome is said to be 99% shared, the fMRI technology is still too young to be widespread, and to reduce the cost enough to apply it to more than a few people.
And this creates an interesting ethical conundrum that is shared by all the social studies.
In early XX century, after the introduction of “industrialized” production methods (or “scientific management”), studies started to spring about the well-being/productivity of workers.
A famous experiment was the series of studies carried out in the 1920s and early 1930s at the Hawthorne Works, in US.
At the time, it seemed that improving the light conditions improved productivity and had other benefits both on the well-being (represented by employees’ satisfaction) and productivity.
In mid-1950s, a re-assessment of the studies, considering also the results of other studies, showed that it wasn’t really the light that mattered- it was the attention.
And this has some side-effects on the applicability or generalization of studies, as being the subject of a study on brain activity is still an activity where the observation changes the observed.
It is quite funny: the Heisenberg Principle applied to humans.
But, well, one of the theories about the brain talks of the “quantic brain”, as a single stimulus “fires up” multiple neurons.
And this is the ethical issue: if mapping the genome is 99% “individual-neutral”, how much is “individual-neutral” mapping something that is so “chaotic”, as dendrites so far do not seem to be identical in every individual?
Moreover- the observation itself is a stimulus- and might well alter the state of the brain under observation.
If you compound this with the usual enthusiasm that we as humans express in following new theories (remember Lombroso, or Ellis Island IQ tests), you have a potentially troublesome activity.
And we have already some side-effects. Like experiments with brain implants.
Actually, there could be beneficial results, like improved limb replacement, as we will be able to have artificial limbs that are “managed” by the brain as if they were real, with embedded computers able to understand the simple messages from the brain and convert into movement.
I remember reading, I think in mid-1970s, an article (in English, that at the time did not know) an example of “brain ping-pong”, played by moving the racket on the screen thru focus on moving the object, converted via electrode in a message to the computer.
If you want- and EEG applied to a specific location that is known to be generally associated with certain actions.
The trouble could come when the genome results (about the side-effects of certain genes on the absorption of substances), joined with the “wiring” approach could generate experiments-turned-into-commercial-products before the technology and its underlining theory are established.
By applying the lessons of the Human Genome Project to brain mapping and using a systemic approach, technology will be only part of the issue.
Probably, statisticians, social science experts, and so on, will have to join forces with neuroscientists and engineers.
To define at least a central repository of the studies that comply with a certain set of requirements
As technology will improve, and we will be, eventually, able to see a single neuron in action through all its dendrites, and interacting with other neurons, it will be probably become impossible to replicate the same experiment in exactly the same way, following the indetermination principle shown above.
Therefore, only the definition of “pre-emptive standards” will allow to generate an aggregate knowledge of all the experiments that is meaningful, and that maybe will focus further experiments/studies.
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