An Expert Suggests We're Wrong About How We Experience the External World

His idea literally turns common assumptions inside out

Hiya!

Trying to understand the mind is like trying to understand the universe at large. Every time we think we find an explanation, someone asks, “but what about before that?”

For instance, when the experts say, “the Universe began with the Big Bang,” we ask, “but what caused the Big Bang?” Similarly, neuroscientists discovered that neurons in the brain transmit commands and information to the rest of our body. And we ask, but what commands the neurons?

Well, systems neuroscientist, co-recipient of the 2011 Brain Prize from the Lundbeck Foundation, and author, György Buzsáki, suggests we should shift our perspective when trying to answer these questions.

Outside-In Framework

It’s helpful to know the status quo in order to recognize how Buzsáki’s ideas alter from it. See, the Enlightenment era was full of curious-minded philosophers like Aristotle, who believed we’re born into the world as blank slates, completely pure. The idea is that the world, and our experiences in it, are what shapes us.

A thousand years ago, they called it “tabula rasa,”—which means “the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions.” Now it’s known as “the blank slate framework,” and once psychologists and cognitive scientists became interested, it took on the name “Outside In.” As in, our sensory information of the outside world shapes our internal response to it — Fire is hot = stay away.

Neurologically speaking, experts assume the brain’s fundamental purpose is to receive and interpret signals from the outside world. This means the neurons begin analyzing simple patterns at first, then they grow and transform into being able to process more complex patterns.

Once you identify an objective for the first time — like, say, a cup — the neurons responsible for recognizing the cup are presumably bundled together to thenceforth define that particular object in your brain, so you will forever know what a cup is.

It seems logical enough, which is probably why the concept lasted as long as it did as the dominating theory. It also completely removes the need for active participation because it assumes that, like a computer, the brain automatically does this.

But there’s something the outside-in concept doesn’t explain. See, if our brain’s primary responsibility is to strictly receive and transmit signals from the outside world, then we’d be no better than a robot.

To make the outside-in perspective work, experts have to include a “hypothetical central processor,” also known as “the experimenter,” whose role Buzsáki explains perfectly in an article for Scientific American (SA):

[The outside-in] approach cannot explain how photons falling on the retina are transformed into a recollection of a summer outing. The outside-in framework requires the artificial insertion of a human experimenter who observes this event.

The experimenter would be responsible for deciding what to do with the sensory information from the outside world. Sort of like how the existence of dark matter is required for Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity to make sense.

Also like dark matter, there are many concepts and names for the hypothetical central processor — free will, decision maker, executive function, intervening variables, and possibly even the mind itself — and for many experts, the next step is locating it. To figure out where, exactly, the central processor is located in the brain and how it decides what to do with the information it receives.

Flipping the Perspective Inside-Out

Buzsáki believes we’ve had it backward all this time and suggests we turn the outside-in approach inside-out. Literally.

See, Buzsáki proposes the brain’s primary function isn’t to learn about the outside world but to maintain its internal dynamics and systems. Buzsáki uses a great example in the SA article about how this would work:

“When an infant utters ‘te-te,’ the parent happily offers the baby ‘Teddy,’ so the sound ‘te-te’ acquires the meaning of the ‘Teddy bear.’”

In other words, seemingly random actions by the brain resonate with the external world, creating a connection. The more often we use these connections, the stronger they become.

The blank slate, or outside-in approach, says brain complexity grows with experience — the more we experience, the more complex the connections in our brain becomes. On the flip side, the inside-out concept suggests experience is not the dominant factor determining brain complexity. Instead, the brain arranges itself into an array of firing patterns called neuronal trajectories, or as Buzsáki says, “like a dictionary filled initially with nonsensical words.”

He explains how this would work on a neurological level, but I don’t have the space to delve into that right now. If you want to know, though, I highly suggest reading the article where he explains it and elaborates on what I’m telling you here. Anyway, according to him, instead of assuming the brain’s purpose is to learn about its external environment, the actual goal of the brain is to survive.

This is sorta amazing because we already know this thanks to Darwin’s theory of Evolution — all of our traits and capabilities evolved to keep us alive. No different than any other living organism. Or, as Buzsáki summarizes it, “the brain is more occupied with itself than with what is happening around it.”

Ironically, I’ve found this is generally true socially too. Most people are typically far too occupied with themselves (and whether anyone is judging them) to care what you’re doing or how you look. Especially strangers at the gym or on the street. (Side note: If you want to join a gym but haven’t because you’re worried about people looking at or judging you, don’t let that stop you. After one look around, you’ll see everyone staring at their own reflection, not yours.)

Perspective Shift

To me, the hypothetical central processor in the outside-in approach feels a bit more like a placeholder required to make our ideas work. It makes sense, of course, to invent a placeholder in the hopes that future discoveries might fill in the gap. But we should be careful not to rely too much on them.

Dark matter is a perfect example since it was invented to make Einstein’s theory of General Relativity work — i.e., gravity. Since then, astrophysicists have devoted their entire careers to searching for the elusive matter that seems to exist beyond our perception yet reportedly fills 95 percent of the Universe.

We’ve become so obsessed with finding dark matter that many have forgotten that perhaps dark matter doesn’t exist — that maybe, something else other than mass (like Einstien claimed) creates gravity. Something like entropy.

Similarly, Buzsáki’s inside-out concept not only matches the parts of outside-in that work but also provides a reasonable explanation of our mind. I didn’t mention this before, but Buzsáki says in the article that the inside-out approach also helps explain how we function, survive, and even thrive in the world — including the formation of our episodic (personal) memories.

The inside-out approach might explain how to create relationships with others and perhaps how to manipulate them. But it doesn’t replace the concept of the mind completely. Like, it doesn’t explain all our judgments or our moral compass. Maybe genetics come into play then and help determine other traits. I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll have an answer in my lifetime. Wouldn’t that be cool?

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Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash